Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
There are a lot of dieticians and weight loss coaches out there who preach the benefits of tracking your food. They suggest tracking every bite you eat, entering all of your food into an app each …
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My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 211 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, should you be tracking your food? There are a lot of dietitians out there and weight loss coaches who preach the benefits of tracking your food, they suggest tracking every bite to eat, and drink all your food into an app every day. And then sticking to this routine for basically, forever.
And honestly, I’m not a big fan of this particular approach for many reasons, which I will share with you here on today’s podcast. So today on the Running Lean podcast, I answer the big burning question, should you be tracking your food? If no, why not? If yes, how should you do it?
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about nutrition, weight loss, improving your running, getting stronger. And if you’re new, if you’re just listening to the podcast, you might be like, oh my gosh, this is very overwhelming. I don’t even know where to start with all this.
If that sounds like you, totally fine, I got you covered, I created a free hour-long training just for you to kind of get you started with all of this. And you can check it out anytime just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com and click on the link that says Free Training.
I created this hour-long training, it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner, you’re going to learn all the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset; all geared towards you the runner and everything that I teach here on the podcast, everything that I work on with my clients.
So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself here in 2024, then this free training is exactly what you need. runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and get started on your weight loss journey today.
Okay, let’s get into this episode here, should you be tracking your food? So, I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve been talking to lately, and they’ve told me that they have worked with dieticians in the past, or coaches in the past, who have suggested that they track their food and do this very meticulously, and they have to track every single bite that they eat.
And they have to enter everything into an app, and they have to hit certain macro numbers and calorie numbers. And if they don’t do everything exactly perfectly, then they’re not going to lose weight, they’re not going to be healthy things are not going to work for them, okay.
And I understand sort of the concepts behind that and that they want to, you know, get people to this place where they’re eating exactly what they’re supposed to, quote, unquote, supposed to be eating. The amount of food they’re supposed to eat, eating the number of calories they’re supposed to be eating, the right percentage of macros, the right macro breakdown that they’re supposed to be eating.
And, and I understand that part of it, you know, you gotta be getting 1500 calories a day. And if you don’t, you know, you got to make up for it somewhere, so you got to make sure you’re getting exactly the right amount of calories every single day. Okay. So I understand that part of it.
The problem I have with this is that this is a very new concept in the history of human beings. You know, we have been around as some form of human being for around two and a half million years. And they’ve tracked us back to two and a half million years ago. And we’ve been growing and evolving in that span of time.
That’s a large span of time, think about that. Two and a half million years. For the 2.4999 million years, we did not need the Food Track. And we didn’t have all the obesity and overweight issues and the diseases, and the metabolic dysfunction and diabetes and all that stuff that we have today.
We’ve only been tracking food for how long, you know, maybe a few decades? We’ve only been using an app since we started using apps on phones, so maybe 15 years, 12 years, something like that. So in the grand scheme of things, I look at this and I kind of shake my head a little bit because I’m like do we really need to be logging everything into an app, and counting all of our calories?
And, you know, making sure we’re getting this exact right breakdown of macros every single day. And if we don’t do it perfectly, then we’re going to basically die. You know, and I just think this is a kind of a silly concept. I’m a big fan of going back to our ancestors and trying to mimic what they did.
What did they eat? How often did they eat? What kinds of foods did they eat? How much did they eat, I want to go back to that, I think that is a much better way of approaching your health and your fitness than, you know, looking at an app on your phone, and making sure you get a bunch of numbers, right? I just don’t think it is necessary.
Number one, I really don’t think it works for most people. Because is this something that you can do sustainably? Is this something you’re going to do forever? Do you have to now track all your food forever, or else you’re gonna like all of a sudden balloon up and gain a bunch of weight?
Because if so, there’s something very wrong with what you’re doing. Because we shouldn’t have to do that. So my initial take on this is that I think tracking your food, there are some benefits to it. And I’ll get into some of that in a minute here.
But I think tracking your food and logging all your calories, and making sure you hit all these numbers and stuff. I really don’t think it’s a sustainable practice. And remember, whatever you do has to be sustainable for you.
The right diet for you is the one that you can sustain. The right method for you when it comes to your nutrition and how much you eat and the kinds of foods you eat and what you eat, all that has to be something that you can do forever.
If it’s just something you’re going to do for a short period of time, and it has some benefits to it, and you can learn some things great, that’s fine. And just know it’s going to be a short-term fix.
But I’ve been hearing from a lot of people lately, who’ve been telling me that they’ve worked with other dieticians or coaches who expect them to track all their food and hit all these numbers every single day forever. And the other thing about this is that it’s not really teaching you much in the way of like, oh, these are the foods that are healthy for me, these are the foods that keep me full, these are the foods that work for me, you know, I feel better when I’m eating less often, or I want to get in tune with my natural body. And my body’s natural senses.
Like there are satiety sensors that we have in our body that tell us hey, we’re done eating, we’re full, don’t need to put any more food in us here. We want to get in touch with that. We want to get in touch with our hunger signals to understand, hey, you know what, I’m actually hungry right now.
Not just like, you know, I’m kind of bored. I’m like rifling through the pantry to see what crunchy salty stuff I can eat that will just satisfy my boredom or something like that. So anyway, I know I went off on a little bit of a tangent there.
But listen, the way we have been trained to like focus on calories and numbers and macros and all that stuff. I think there’s some benefits to that for a short period of time just to get some ballpark numbers and to get some awareness of what you’re doing.
But the real key here is that whatever you do has to be sustainable. And I don’t think logging all your food, every single bite you eat every time you you know, lick or taste something that you need to track and I think that is not a sustainable practice, okay?
Now, there are some benefits to keeping track of what you’re eating. And you don’t have to be super detailed about it. But if you’re keeping track of the foods you’re eating, let’s say you’re just keeping a food journal. I think this is a great first step for everybody. To start keeping a food journal just write down the foods that you’re eating as you go through your day, and you eat something you write it down.
If you have a snack in the afternoon, you write that down. If you have a bite of your kid’s cookie, you write that down, you just write down everything you’re eating for the day. If you do this for a short period of time, a few days a week, you are going to start to have a lot of self-awareness about what it is you are actually eating and not eating.
Because so many people are like yeah, I eat pretty healthy. I’m like okay, what does that mean exactly? Oh, you know, I eat healthy foods. I eat lots of fruits and vegetables and stuff. I’m like, okay, you don’t ever eat chips or crackers or cookies or french fries. No, I really don’t eat that stuff. Okay, well keep a food log and then you tell me what is really going on?
And then it’s like, oh, yeah, well, I did eat, you know, some ice cream from my kids. And then oh, yeah, we went to pizza. And then oh, yeah, I did eat a couple of large fries this week or whatever, it just starts to create a lot of awareness about what you really are doing.
And you’ve got to be honest with yourself, if you’re doing this food logging, this journaling. And people who journal their food, people who write down what they’re eating every day, they tend to make better choices, they tend to eat healthier, they tend to not overeat as much, they eat less often. And they tend to lose more weight.
So if you want to get started on a weight loss journey, I think one of the best things you can do is start keeping a food journal, and just writing down what you’re doing. So just create that self-awareness, that one little step right there will start moving you in the right direction, towards making better choices.
Because you’re starting to have this awareness of what it is you’re actually doing, as opposed to just thinking about it. Because when we think about it, and we’re disassociated with it, you know, we’re not writing it down in the moment, we can just remember the good stuff that we do, we don’t remember all those times we sneak the french fries, you know, from our kid’s plate, or the you know, dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets or whatever it is we’re eating.
And I suggest you do this in the easiest way possible. And easiest way for me would be to just write it down using a piece of paper and a pen, or a pencil in a diary or a journal or, you know, some sort of a notebook or something simple like that. Don’t make it more complicated, we don’t want our method of logging or journaling to get in the way of making it easy, it has to be something that is very simple for you to do.
So I used to keep this little tiny notebook, I would carry it around with me if I went out. And it was something that was very small. And then I would just write down what I was eating each day. And I did this for a long time.
And it really worked, it really helped me to begin to create better habits and make better choices around what I was eating and stuff like that. So it doesn’t have to be anything complicated, it can be as simple as just getting a little tiny notebook. And then write down what you’re doing every day as you do it.
You’ve got to do it like sort of in the moment, that’s the best way to do it. So keeping a food journal is great. But there’s even a better way of doing this.
So when you are logging your food after the fact, you are basically saying, here’s what I did five minutes ago, here’s what I did an hour ago, here’s what I did earlier today. And that is fine. And again, you’re starting to create a lot of awareness about what you are doing throughout the day, or what you have done throughout the day.
But there is a much more powerful approach, what we want to do is we want to set ourselves up for success ahead of time. And so I’m a huge fan of pre-planning your food, and writing down what you’re going to do ahead of time.
And one of the big reasons why this works is because you are making decisions in advance, you are making a decision about what you’re eating, but you’re doing it for tomorrow. So you’re you’re deciding today, what you’re going to be eating tomorrow.
And why this works is because when you make decisions ahead of time, you’re using a completely different part of your brain than when you’re making decisions in the moment. When you make decisions in the moment, you’re using that little tiny almond-sized part of your brain called the amygdala, which is one of the most primal parts of our brain. It is responsible for our fight or flight, our fear center.
It’s what’s responsible for our primal urges, like, you know, just like food, sex. You know, whatever feels good in the moment, those kinds of primal decisions, those kinds of primal choices that we have to make in the moment.
So we don’t want to be making decisions using that part of our brain because typically we’re going to choose whatever just feels good right now, we’re going to choose the thing that is the most pleasurable.
We’re going to think, you know, we’re going to choose the pizza if that’s what when we decide that we’re going to have if we don’t decide ahead of time and we have a pizza sitting in front of us, we’re going to decide to eat the pizza because oh my gosh, it’s pizza. It’s amazing. There it is. It smells good. I want that I’m going to eat it right now. Okay.
The other way of doing this is making decisions in advance. And when you do that you’re using your pre-frontal cortex, your pre-frontal cortex that is a modern thinking part of our brain. It’s the part of our brain we use to make good decisions. It’s our planning brain.
And when we use our pre-frontal cortex to make decisions, we tend to make good decisions, we’re going to decide ahead of time, we’re going to use our prefrontal cortex to say, I’m eating, you know, a salad and chicken for dinner tomorrow night, even though I know the kids are probably going to want pizza. And my husband will probably bring home a pizza, but I’m going to eat what I’ve planned to eat today.
When you make that decision ahead of time, you are much, much more likely to stick to that decision. In the moment, you’ve decided you’ve made a little promise to yourself ahead of time. And then when tomorrow comes, and that pizza is sitting there, you’re going to remember that you’ve made this other choice. And that’s what your choice is going to use, you’re going to stick to that plan.
This is where things really can start to come together for you. Because you’re planning ahead, you’re making good decisions ahead of time, you’re making this promise to yourself that you want to keep, because you don’t want to break a promise that you make to yourself, you do this all the time; you break promises to yourself, but it never feels good, right?
You plan ahead, you make a good decision, you make this promise to yourself that this is what you’re doing tomorrow. And then when tomorrow comes the day is so much easier, you don’t have to think about anything, you just do what you said you’re gonna do. You’ve got it all planned out, you know, when you’re eating, you know how much you’re eating, you know, the foods you’re eating, and then you just stick to that plan.
This is how you build any new habit. If you want to create a new habit, you have to change your thinking patterns, you’ve got to change your daily activities, you’ve got to change your actions and changing your actions is hard. This is hard work to do. And when it comes to food, this seems to be the hardest area for people to make, change and make change last. So creating new habits around food is a lot harder than say going to the gym every day.
If you’re somebody who’s like, okay, it’s a new year, I’m going to the gym every day, you might stick to that pretty religiously for a while. I know a lot of people, who end up quitting the gym after February or whatever the gyms are crowded in January, and they’re empty again in March.
But for some of you, you’re like, I’m going to stick to this new running plan, I’m going to stick to this new workout plan and you do it and you’re really good about that. Because it’s important to you and you do it, you make that plan ahead of time you write out your training schedule for the week, and then you stick to it.
Do the same thing with food. That’s all I’m asking you to do here. Do the same thing to food with your food. Just make sure that you are planning ahead. Know what you’re doing tomorrow, or the rest of the week, you can plan a week in advance, you don’t have to.
But when you do this, when you make this plan ahead of time, you’re gonna stick with a plan, you’re gonna start to develop a good habit around that you already have done it for running, you’ve already done it around your workouts at the gym.
And this approach works in all these different areas. It works for planning your workouts, it works for planning your strength session, you know, just decide ahead of time, what muscle groups am I going to work tomorrow, what exercises am I going to do? How many sets and reps write that stuff down?
You already plan your runs, you know what days you’re working out, you know what your runs are going to be like, you know when your long run is this weekend, right? You know what the workouts are, and you know the goal for each of these workouts, just do the same thing with food.
Okay, if there’s any area of your life where you need to create healthy patterns, better habits, or make better choices consistently, then plan them ahead of time until you get the hang of it. And those habits are formed. Once those habits are formed, it becomes so much easier.
And you don’t have to do this forever. You don’t have to make this plan ahead of time and stick to it forever. When I first started out on this last, you know journey of losing weight improving my body composition and developing these good habits, I was very very religious about planning and tracking my food every single day.
I did this consistently for like eight months straight every day. I don’t think I missed a day in there. Maybe I did here and there but I pretty much never missed a day because I was afraid that if I stopped doing it, I would like just fall apart and I would fail.
I was kind of paranoid that I was going to slip up and just go back into my old habits, if I didn’t continue to make this plan and stick to it every single day, and listen to it doesn’t typically take eight months to train your brain and develop good habits. But I was a little bit paranoid, I kind of tend to do things to the extreme.
So I was like, I’m just going to do this until I know without a doubt that I can live my life without it. And then I eventually gave it up, I eventually quit tracking. And those first few days, I was like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do, but I figured it out. And it works that my point with all this is that it did work for me.
And it doesn’t take that long, you know, I usually say if you can be religious and track consistently every day for like 30 days, or 60 days, somewhere in that range, you typically can start to, you know, create those new neural pathways in your brain create good habits, and this becomes kind of effortless for you, it becomes your new normal.
And if it’s your new normal, then you don’t have to effort your way through the day, you can just you just know what you’re doing. And you can do it. Okay. So make a 24-hour plan. This is the way I’ve worked with people who have planned a day in advance.
And that works really, really well just make sure you’re doing this at least one day in advance. I did have somebody who wanted to plan a month ahead of time, and she wrote out an entire month’s schedule of every meal she was eating for a month. Now that was awesome for her, but I don’t think we need to go to that extreme.
If you want to plan a few days ahead of time or a week ahead of time, I think that’s great. A lot of people love to do meal prepping. And so they’ll prep once a week for the week. And they’ll do their shopping for the week. And if that’s you, and that works for you, I think that’s great.
But a few days is plenty of time a day in advance is really that’s all that’s required. But we have to be making these decisions ahead of time. Don’t wait until the day of or it’s like lunchtime, and you’re like, I wonder what I should eat today. No. Decide in advance.
And you don’t have to use some app. And you don’t have to, you know, track every calorie and every macro and all that I love just using a notebook or a journal or a diary. And just write down what you’re doing tomorrow, just write it down, use a pen, when you use a pen or a pencil and you write it down by hand, it kind of cements that into your brain better than like typing into an app, there’s sort of a disconnect when you do that.
But when you write it down on a piece of paper, it tends to cement that decision into your brain. So now you’ve made the decision, you’ve made it in advance, you’ve made this promise to yourself.
Now you just have to keep that promise to yourself tomorrow. Because when you do that, when you keep the promises that you make to yourself every single day, you start to build this immense amount of trust in yourself.
You start to build integrity with yourself, you start to build confidence. And you know that you can do this, you know that you can stay consistent with this. And you’ll start making progress. I promise you that if you make this plan every day, and you stick to the plan every day.
That is how you make progress. That is how you lose weight. And that is how you keep it off. Because now you’re training your brain that this is how I do things now. Okay, everyone I’m working with right now, this is January of 2024. Everybody I’m working with this month, we are making this 24-hour plan every day. And we are committing to do it for the month of January.
So we’re challenging ourselves to do this. And everybody’s being super consistent with this with this. And they’re setting themselves up for success not only for this month or the next few months but for the year.
They’re like restarting the year on this really positive vibe of like, I’m being consistent, I’m making good choices. And I’m promising these things to myself. And I’m keeping these promises to myself, and they’re making great progress too.
Several people that I’m working with have said their weight loss has been a little bit slow. Or maybe they went out you know, took a few steps back during the holidays, you know, things have stalled out a little bit.
But lately, they have been planning every single day they’ve been planning ahead and now they’re starting to see their weight go down again. And all they have changed is this one little thing of making a plan every day making an advance and then sticking to that plan.
This is how powerful this little daily habit can be. So this is the work that you need to start doing for January. Should you be tracking your food? I think there’s some benefit to pre-planning your food. I think there are benefits to journaling your food if you’re just getting started with all this. Really, the most powerful way of doing it though, is planning ahead of time. Okay.
If you want help with all this I always got you covered you can go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me and we can talk about working together.
Cool, all right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
Most people spend a great deal of time thinking about the past. They ruminate over things they did that they regret doing. They replay situations over and over and wish they’d handled things …
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 208 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, remembering your future.
So most people spend a lot of time thinking about their past. They ruminate over things they did that maybe they regret doing. And they replay these situations over and over and over again, wishing that they’d handled things differently in the past, all their focus, all their energy is on past events. And they spend zero time or zero energy thinking about their future.
This is a mistake. Why? Because you can’t change your past. It’s over, it’s done with. But you can 100% change your future. So that’s a much better place to focus your time and your energy. So this episode is all about remembering your future so that you can make that future your reality.
But first, I talk a lot about losing weight, improving your health, improving your fitness, and improving your running here on the podcast. And I know all of this can feel very overwhelming. If you’re looking for a good place to start, where I’ve consolidated everything and given you some steps that you can take right away.
It’s all encapsulated in a free training that I created called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner. In this free training, you’ll learn how to fuel your body properly, so that you can lose weight and improve your running.
You’re going to learn the incredibly important role that strength plays in being a lean healthy runner, you’re going to learn to make mindset shifts that actually help you make all of this stuff sustainable, and so much more.
If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, to run faster and longer, and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, then you need to check out this free training now. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Okay, on to the topic of the day, which is remembering your future. So most people spend all their time focused on past events, and usually not the positive ones. We’re talking about the negative past events, the things you wish you had done differently, the things that you regret the traumas in your life, the things that that you did wrong, the things that you don’t feel good about.
And this can create a lot of stress in your life. And this stress can become chronic stress. And chronic stress means your sleep is disrupted. And chronic stress leads to not being able to lose weight. And chronic stress leads to your workout suffering and your recovery suffering.
And so we spend all this time and energy focused on our past, the things we did wrong, the things that did not go our way, the mistakes we’ve made the people that wronged us. And we do this, and we seem to not be able to get out of this cycle of focusing on the past. A friend of mine explained it to me like this, he said, imagine you have a plastic bag in your pocket. And inside that plastic bag is some dog poop. And every so often you take out the plastic bag and you open it up and you smell it and you’re like, oh god, that’s horrible. That’s horrible. But then you put it back in your pocket. And then a couple days later, you take it out again, and you smell again. Oh my God, that’s terrible.
Why do we do this to ourselves? One of the reasons is, is because as human beings, we’ve evolved to be really efficient problem solvers. And we want to fix the problems that we’re experiencing in our lives, whether they’re happening to us now, or they’ve happened in the past.
And in fact, we spend a lot of time trying to fix our past. Even though it’s over and done with our brains don’t know the difference between past, present and future realities. And this is important, and I’m going to talk about why it’s important in just a minute. But think about this.
You’re trying to fix problems from your past. You rehearse a scenario over and over and over again in your mind. Because your brain is trying to change that outcome. It’s trying to solve the problem. And I know it doesn’t make sense logically. But that’s just the way our brains are wired.
From an evolutionary standpoint. It served us really well. It helped us to learn how to not make the same mistakes twice. So from an evolutionary standpoint, this is great, it’s helped us. But today, we don’t really need to keep focusing on the past, but we do it all the time.
What you’re hoping to get out of all this ruminating on the past is a different outcome. But you can’t get a different outcome, the past is fixed. So one of the first things you need to do is you need to accept the way things played out in the past.
And I talk about this concept called radical acceptance, where you need to be practicing radical acceptance that this is the way things down. This is the way things went down in my life. This is the way things were supposed to go down.
How do you know it was the way they were supposed to go down? Because that’s the way it happened. You know, things were supposed to happen, because that is the way that it actually did happen in the past.
It’s kind of a radical concept. Because most people live in this fantasy world where they think things should be different. They have zero acceptance of the reality of a given situation. This is very convoluted thinking. And it only leads to your own internal turmoil, your own misery.
So you’re focused on these past events, you wish they were different, you think they should be different. And you don’t understand why you’re miserable all the time, you keep taking the plastic bag of poop out of your pocket and smelling it. And then you’re wondering why it smells so terrible all the time. I love that imagery. I don’t know why, but I just love it. It feels really visceral to me like I really get that.
Okay, so instead, what we need to be doing is spending time remembering, not our past, but remembering our future. Now, this is not a hard thing to do, it doesn’t take a lot of time. But it is an extremely powerful tool that you can use if you want to change who you are.
So you’re this version of yourself right now. And if you have any ideas for changing that version of you in the future, then you need to spend some time imagining what that future version of you is going to be like, instead of focusing on your past things that you cannot change, focus on your future, the things that you can change.
And you might be thinking, well, I don’t know, I’m not really going to change that much. But think about your past, like, there’s a version of you from last year, who is vastly different than who you are today, or five years ago, or ten years ago, that’s a completely different person than who you are today.
Would you agree? Yeah, you’re different today than you were in your past than when you’re in your 20s or 30s, or 40s, or 50s, or whatever.
You’re different now compared to who you were in the past, hopefully better. So there’s also a version of you out there in the future, that is vastly different than who you are today. It could be a year in the future. It could be three months in the future, it could be five years, ten years, whatever.
We are constantly evolving and growing and becoming more as human beings, or at least in my opinion, we should be. So what I want you to do is focus on that future version of yourself. What does that future you look like? How’s your health? How’s your fitness? How’s your running? Are you still running?
How’s your mindset? Do you have a growth mindset? Do you have more of a negative mindset? What do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror in that future version of yourself? Think about your relationship with food and with alcohol in the future. What does that look like?
How are you sleeping? How are your stress levels? How do you feel about yourself in the future? So I want to give you some homework assignments. Say I got two homework assignments for you to do here. Step one is to answer these questions. Write out a detailed version of who you want to be in the future. This can be a month from now three months from now, a year from now, five years from now, it doesn’t matter.
And you can do this multiple times in the future. You can keep changing this because we do evolve and grow and we change as we go and our priorities change. So you can always do this later.
But for now, I want you to focus on writing out a detailed version of who you want to be in the future. What does that future version of you look like? Think about yourself from a health and fitness standpoint, mindset, your relationship with food, with alcohol, with other people. How do you feel about yourself?
All those things, write it down, write it down on a piece of paper, write it in a notebook, write it in a journal doesn’t matter, but write it down, take the time to write as much detail as possible, especially those, those ways that you feel about yourself.
Because when you include emotions, in an exercise like this, it makes the exercise even more powerful. Because in order to create that future version of you, you have to be able to feel what it feels like to be that future version of you. Okay, so just write it all down, spend some time on this, don’t skip this step, do it, they won’t take you that long. Okay, that’s step number one.
I said, there are only two steps, the next step is to practice visualizing that future version of yourself. Visualization is a powerful tool that you can use at any time. But most people don’t use it or don’t use it properly. They spend all their time visualizing their past, like I talked about at the beginning here, right?
You’re spending all this time focused on the past the things you cannot change, the regrets, the mistakes, the failures, right, instead of focusing on this amazing, healthy, fit, leaner, stronger, faster future version of you, you get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. Don’t keep spending all your time focused on this version of you that you do not want.
Unfortunately, that’s our default. So you have to stop doing that. Gotta break out of that habit and start focusing on the future, you focus on the version of you that you want to become. When you imagine something, and when you imagine something vividly. Your brain and your body don’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined.
Your subconscious mind just believes that whatever you’re envisioning is happening right here. And now it doesn’t know the difference between the real and the imagined. This is why so many elite athletes, and other people in other industries, but elite athletes spend so much time visualizing the outcome of an event, like a race, because it gives them a competitive edge that a lot of other people do not have, because they don’t spend the time visualizing how they want this thing to go.
A lot of elite athletes spend a lot of time thinking about, let’s say, a marathon, and they think about the entire race, they visualize how they prepare how they show up at the start line, they’re pacing the course they spend time, you know, focusing on how they’re going to feel when they crossed the finish line.
And they see that number on the clock, and they feel that exhilaration of finishing, and they hear the crowd and they can taste the salt in their sweat on their lips. And they, you know, they have this visual and visceral experience this emotional experience of of winning a race. And when they imagine it over and over and over again, they spend time every single day imagining this thing, they inevitably will work. Your brain will work towards becoming that version of you, it will work towards that outcome that you’re visualizing.
They did this cool experiment a while back involving students who were basketball players, and they did this experiment with free throws. And there was an Australian psychologist named Alan Richardson. And he was testing this visualization, this mental imagery, and benefiting athletic performance.
So they did this study, they took three groups of students who were basketball players. And the first group practiced basketball free throws for 20 minutes a day, for 20 days. And then they had two other groups. The second and third groups shot free throws on day one. And then on day 20 because they wanted to be able to compare how they did from day one to day 20.
The second group spent 20 minutes every day in the middle there, so they weren’t shooting free throws just on day one and day 20. But in the middle, they spent 20 minutes every day visualizing themselves shooting free throws, just 20 minutes a day visualizing shooting free throws, the third group did nothing in between.
So they just shot free throws on day one and day 20. They compared the three groups at the end of the 20 day experiment. The first group the people who actually physically practiced shooting free throws every single day. They improved their free throws from day one to day 20 by 24%. All right. The third group did not improve at all. They didn’t practice at all, they didn’t do any visualizing in between at all, and they did not improve at all.
The second group who just practiced mental imagery for those 20 days and didn’t practice any actual physical free throws, they improved by 23%, almost exactly the same as the first group at 24%, who was physically actively shooting free throws every single day.
And this is just one example. There are many other examples like this, that show the benefits of visualization on athletic performance, on relationships, on different areas of your life, even your career.
So what I want you to do is practice visualizing that future version of you. It’s a very simple step. But it does require you to spend some time holding that mental and emotional image of your future self, remembering your future over and over and over again, who do you want to become? How do you want to feel?
It doesn’t take a lot of time to do this. And you don’t have to be like, you know, meditating and sitting in the lotus position and chanting or anything like that. You can do this while you’re journaling in the morning, you can do it while you’re showering, you can do it while you’re driving. As long as you keep your eyes open, you can do it while you’re running.
I think this is an awesome way to hold a vision and to get into that meditative state while you’re running. I love being in this state. While I’m running to feel so good. It really doesn’t matter how you do it.
As long as you do it every single day, you need to spend some time every single day holding that vision of your future self. Practice it just like the basketball players practice shooting free throws, practice being that future version of you, and do this every single day.
Now remember, I said you need to write this down, you need to write it down on a piece of paper. The reason is that you should also spend time reading it every day as well. So read it and feel into it every day. So you can just write this out in your journal. And you can look at it every day, just open up your journal and read it every morning. That’s a great way to start your day. And a great way to finish your day, at the end of the night only takes you a few minutes to read through it.
You can write it on a piece of paper and stick it on your computer, your fridge or your mirror. So you see it every single day. I like the idea of writing it out every day. And really, it only takes a couple of minutes to do this, but open up your journal.
And as you start writing your journal for today, just write out you know, here’s my future self. And then just write out how you feel how you want to feel how you want to be how you want to act, what you look like, what you feel like how your health how your fitness is.
And write this every single day. When you write it, you’re you’re doing something very visceral. And you’re cementing this into your subconscious mind. And it’s a really, really powerful way to remind yourself that every day you are on this journey of becoming more. And this doesn’t stop there is no finish line here.
I want to make that very clear here that we are always evolving, we are always growing, we are always becoming more or we should be, and we don’t want to stay stagnant. We don’t want to stay small, we don’t want to stay where we are now, we always want to grow and evolve and become more.
And that process never really stops. It’s a process that continues to evolve. And change and, and blossom as we as we get older as we become more. So we’re going to become that future version of ourselves. And as we are becoming that that will begin to morph and change into that next version. Or we should always be wanting to become more.
So the two steps to this process are number one, know who you want to become. You have to know that and you have to write it down. So you have to be very crystal clear on who that future version of you is. And then number two, spend some time remembering your future.
Remember, visualize that future version of yourself. This is not hard. It doesn’t take a lot of time. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, but it works. And right now is the perfect time to get started with this because it’s the end of the year. We’re about to start a new year. And instead of spending a lot of time and energy reflecting on the past, take that time spend that time and energy focusing on your future and holding that vision for your future self. Okay. Take a little bit of time every day to remember your future. And then every day just do a little bit of work that’s required to get you there.
Take small actions every day that move you a little bit closer to that future version of you and over time all these little tiny steps, they add up to big big changes. Cool that’s all I got for you today, love you all keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon, bye.
A lot of people set out to lose weight and then quit. They change their diet, start exercising, and then at some point just throw up their hands and give up. This was definitely me and it was …
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 184 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, The Incredible Power of Focus. So a lot of people set out to lose weight and then at some point they quit.
They changed their diet, they started exercising, and then at some point, they just throw up their hands and they give up. This was definitely me, and it was probably you at some point, I’m guessing.
And while there are a lot of reasons why someone might just give up on themselves, one of the most likely reasons is a serious lack of focus. Being focused means more than just paying attention to what’s in front of you, it can actually be the key to accomplishing all your health and fitness goals.
So in this episode, I uncover the incredible power of focus and how it can help you become the leaner, stronger, more badass runner you’ve always wanted to be. But first, I often get asked by runners who want to lose weight, how to get started, how to get started with proper nutrition, resistance training, how to get stronger how to improve their running, maybe run longer or run faster, or maybe they just want more energy, they want to improve themselves from the inside out.
I get asked this so much that I put together a free training program designed to do just that to get you started on your health and fitness journey to get you started on your weight loss journey. And it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
If you’re looking for a great place to start, this is it. It’s an on demand video training. So you can go through it at your own pace, whenever it’s convenient for you, you’ll learn what it means to eat real food, how to improve your ability to burn fat, how to get stronger, how to increase your endurance as a runner, and so much more, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started.
Alright, let’s talk about the incredible power of focus. So if we look up the definition of focus, there’s a couple. One of them is, “The center of interest directivity.”
Another one is, “A clear visual definition.” That’s like when you take a camera and you bring something into focus into clearer visual definition.
And the third definition here is, “To pay particular attention to something.”
Okay. So when we think about focus, I want you to think about a couple different ways of looking at this, you know, this is the center of your interest, you’re putting your mindset on something, and you are paying very close attention to that something or paying particular attention to that area of interest or activity and bringing it into clearer focus, bringing it into clearer definition.
So I like all of those definitions of the word, focus, think about focus this way. And this, this describes the incredible power of focus for sure. If you were to take a 150 watt light bulb, and you are to put it on a lamp in the middle of a large room and turn it on middle of a dark room, and you turn on that 150 watt light bulb, it would scatter light all over the room and light up the room you wouldn’t be able to see in a dark room. Very cool, right?
But if you were to take that same 150 watts, and focus the light into a very small laser beam, you could actually cut through steel with that same amount of light, it’s the same amount of energy, the same amount of light being produced, but it is focused.
And you can see that the power of that focused beam of light is much more powerful than a light bulb that’s just scattered as its light all over the place. There’s nothing wrong with a light bulb, it’s doing its job, it’s lighting up the room. But think about how much more powerful that light is when it is focused.
Okay, your focus is similar. If it’s spread all over the place, if there’s no precise direction to it, if you’re scattered. I mean this is okay and most of us live our lives this way where we kind of scatter our focus and our attention everywhere. And that’s okay. But what would happen, if you took that same amount of energy and you concentrated it?
What if you were to concentrate that energy more precisely on certain areas of your life, on certain goals that you have for yourself? I think things would change dramatically for you. And I think you would agree with that, you would become unstoppable. You could accomplish amazing things.
You know, if you want to lose weight, this requires focused energy. And a lot of people that give up, that quit things, they do it because they lack the focus, they lack the ability to stay focused on the goal.
What do you need to succeed at anything, especially like, health and fitness goals? You need a very clear, focused vision for that end result that you’re looking for. Who is it that you want to become? What do you really want for yourself? What does the future version of you look like?
And we talk about this a lot in my coaching program, when you’re a client of mine, I kind of make you go through this process of like painting a very clear picture of what that future version of you looks like.
What do you look like? How are you sleeping? How? How is your life different than it is today? How are your clothes fitting you? What clothes are you wearing? Are you comfortable taking your shirt off at the pool? You know, things like that.
And when we have this clear vision of our future self, when we have this sense of purpose, and we know exactly what we want for ourselves, well, that’s good, because now we have focus, we have direction, we have a plan a path steps, we can change our actions and behaviors because we know where we’re going.
But you have to have a clear and organized version of that future self, you have to have a clear and focused vision for who you want to become if you want to become that person. Because without a clear vision for yourself, you’re just going to be like, whatever.
So when we have this clear focus, this creates a lot of consistency, it creates a lot of motivation. And we’ll talk about more of that in a minute. But you are more likely to reach those goals. Because you have a clear vision for who you want to become.
When you don’t have focus, you don’t understand where you’re going, you know, you have no clarity of purpose, no clear vision for your future self. There’s no like big picture here, or you have a big picture, but it’s very, it’s like a blurry big picture. It’s not focused, right?
And without focus, we tend to forget our purpose, why we want these things for ourselves. So your health, your fitness, your exercise, your nutrition, it’s all scattered, right? No direction, no motivation to do anything. Because it doesn’t really matter. Because you don’t have that sense of purpose.
You don’t have that clear vision for who you want to become which just drives your motivation down. And this is why people quit. Because they don’t have that focus, they don’t have that clear vision of their future self.
And when you don’t have motivation, you lack progress. You don’t get the results you want. And of course, you’re gonna quit, why would you keep going. But with focus, you create that clear vision of your future self, you have that clarity of purpose, you have very clear goals, and dreams and hopes and things that you want to accomplish for yourself.
This is amazing at helping you to maintain motivation. Because without focus, you get very, it’s very demotivating. You know, you’re just scattered all over the place. You don’t even know where you’re going. How can you even track progress? You know, and that’s where you kind of lose motivation and give up.
But with focus, you maintain motivation. You continually make progress because you’re, you’re taking consistent aligned action. And you end up getting the results that you want, you produce results consistently. And even small results, even if they are, you know, small wins, achieved consistently you will eventually reach your goal.
It’s like running an ultra marathon. It doesn’t matter how slow you go, you gotta run 100 miles, just keep moving forward. But when you stop moving, or when you go backwards, or your heart isn’t in it anymore, and you have no clear vision of where you want to be at the end.
And there’s no purpose for you to continue, why would you continue? It’s just so easy to give up. Okay, so you can start to see, I’m hoping anyway, I hope you can start to see that focus is the key here. Whatever it is you want to accomplish, you want to lose weight, it takes time.
If you want to run an ultra marathon, it takes time, it takes time for the training, it takes time to do that actual event as well. And these things mean that you are going to have to spend a lot of time staying focused, so you stay in the game.
And another way of thinking about focus is this word, constraint, think about constraint. So what is the definition of constraint? This means a limitation or a restriction. And I know when people hear this, they think of this in a negative way, oh, I don’t want to be restricted, I don’t want to be limited. But don’t think about it in a negative way.
Think about it as restricting or limiting your focus to you know, one thing at a time. So constraint of focus is very important. And they’re similar. But it’s almost like taking your focus and really fine tuning it, it’s like, you know, that laser that I’m talking about earlier, instead of being a light bulb, be the laser constraint helps you to do this.
So we don’t want to scatter our focus all over the place, we want it to be very laser like and so constrained is how we do this. So one thing to understand is that people make a big deal about their ability to multitask.
And I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but multitasking is really not something we do well. It’s just as nice as it would be to be able to do two things at once. Lots and lots of studies have shown that the human brain simply isn’t capable of paying full attention to more than one thing at a time.
In fact, our brain has evolved to be really good at single tasking, to only be able to think about or do one thing at a time. So when somebody says they’re multitasking, that’s just somebody who is scattered. They’re trying to justify it. Oh, I’m just, I’m a multitasker. It’s like, no, you’re just not focused. You lack focus and constraint. Okay.
So multitasking is not real, we want to focus on one thing at a time. And let’s, you know, see what this would look like. So if you want to achieve health and fitness goals, you know, and like I said, these things take time, you want to lose weight, it’s going to take time, you want to become a runner, and just be able to run a half marathon or marathon or a 5k, whatever this takes time.
It’s really hard to get out there and just like run and accomplish something big from a running perspective. Or lifting weights at the gym, you know, you want to build some muscle you want to, you know, get more toned, that is not something that you’re going to see right away, you can’t go to the gym three times and be toned, like it takes a while months of hard work to get to that place. Right. And so we don’t see results for a while.
So we need to stay focused. And we need to practice constraint. So here’s an example of someone who’s trying to lose weight, let’s say you’re, you want to lose weight. And you are really motivated to lose weight.
And so you are going to do everything all at once you’re going to cut calories, and give up sugar, and start intermittent fasting and cut out snacking. And you’re going to start logging all your food and tracking your food and an app and counting your macros and skipping breakfast and doing all your workouts fasted.
And I will tell you that this approach can feel way too overwhelming. It’s just too much to change all at once. And you are very likely to fail and or quit. And a quick story of one of my clients who was very motivated early on in the process. And he came to me and on our first call, he had said okay, I’ve made all these changes.
And he literally was doing everything I just said. And he was like I’m super motivated. I’m doing all these things. And I said listen, I really don’t recommend that because you’re going to kind of feel overwhelmed and you’re probably not going to be able to sustain this very long.
But he was determined that it was fine that he could do it all. And so I said okay, let’s see how it goes. And two weeks later, he was like I can’t do this. He could not maintain that type of lifestyle, you know, all those changes at once was way too much for him.
So I said, Okay, let’s just start over. Let’s start over. Okay. But I don’t know about you, I have done this before, too, because I get this, like, you know, what do they call it shiny object syndrome, where I’m like, oh, this is cool. Oh, look at this cool thing over here. Let’s try that too. Oh, that looks fun. I saw that on Instagram. Oh, let’s try that.
So when we have shiny object syndrome, and we try all these different things at once, that all sounds great, but it’s too much. It’s too much. And it’s really hard to maintain that, especially when it comes to, you know, lifestyle changes, like from a nutrition and exercise standpoint, okay.
So constraint means focusing on one thing at a time. So for this particular person, and for you, and for others, I would say, let’s just start with one thing, like, let’s give up sugar, let’s just give that a couple of weeks, see how you feel, get over the withdrawal symptoms, which are real, by the way, once you feel good about where you are, and you’ve gotten over that initial withdrawal from sugar, and you’re starting to feel better, let’s go on to step two. Let’s try something else. Right.
And this is my strategy with clients. It’s always a layered approach, we make one or two small changes, we wait a couple of weeks, we see how things are working or not working. And then we can layer on the next change. This is my, I call this like my layered approach, right?
We’re layering on different changes, making sure that your body and your mind adjust to these things, and give you enough time to adjust to these things. So that then when we move on to the next thing, it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. You’re like, oh, I already got this one thing, let’s, let’s go on to step number two.
So this practice is very effective. It gives you the ability to get used to one small change at a time, this is how you change habits. Right? You cannot change habits by changing everything at once. You have to do these one step at a time.
So this is where constraint is very important, right? This practice is effective because it gives you feedback. And so you know exactly what’s working. What isn’t? Because you’ve only changed the one thing, if you change 10 things, how do you know which one of these things is making you feel terrible, you just don’t know?
Alright, so we change one thing at a time. And then this practice is also sustainable, because we are constraining our changes to one thing at a time. You get used to each stage to each change before we move on to the next stage before we move on to the next change. And so building habits this way is very powerful, very effective.
Okay, so let’s, let’s talk about how to get started with this. How do you get started with practicing constraint and focus? And I want you to start with that vision for your future self. So who are you becoming? Where do you want to be in 6 to 12 months? What goals do you have for yourself?
Do you want to lose weight, improve your strength, you want to get faster, maybe you want to qualify for Boston or run that ultra marathon. Maybe you’re just someone who’s like, I just need to fix my dysfunctional relationship with food. Whatever it is, be very clear and focused on who you want to be. And then write it down.
And then spend at least five minutes a day thinking about this future version of yourself every single day, spend some time writing about it, journaling about it, reading those journal entries, recording a voice memos, talking to somebody else about your goals and your dreams for your future for yourself who you want to become.
Everything that you want for yourself, every accomplishment that you want to achieve starts in your mind. It starts with thinking about who you want to be, and what you want that end result to be, what is the outcome you’re looking for. And the more focused and the more clear that vision of your future self is, the more likely you are to achieve that.
So spend time every single day thinking about who you want to be, you have to have this very clear vision of who you want to be if you want to get there, right? If you don’t have focus around your goals and the vision for your future self you’re just going to fail. So don’t skip this step. Consistent focus on your future self will help you stay motivated. It will help you keep your head in the game and keep you making progress towards those goals.
Keep reminding yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. People who don’t do this, they will be motivated at the beginning of the process. You know, we all get motivated when we make a change. Oh I’m gonna lose weight. I’m gonna change my diet. I’m gonna stop eating sugar and they feel motivated at the beginning.
But over time, that motivation will fade and then they will think that they are just a failure, that they can’t do this, that it will never work for them. That is not true. The actual truth is they just lost their focus. That’s it. Clarity of purpose, that’s the key.
Keep reminding yourself of this purpose, keep reminding yourself why this is important to you, and you will stay motivated. And you will be much more consistent in your actions. And you’ll keep moving toward that vision of yourself for the future. Okay, so start with that vision of who you want to become. And then you have to practice constraint.
And this is the thing that is hard for most people, because I’m going to tell you, just pick one thing to change. You know, pick an area of your life, whether it’s, you know, running, getting faster, improving your endurance, whether it’s losing weight, or getting stronger, pick one area, and then pick one, you know, behavior that you want to change one action that you want to change, don’t get sucked into the shiny object syndrome, where you want to try to change everything at once.
Just choose one area, and then one action item that you can do and give it a couple of weeks, you know, like giving up sugar. Give that a couple of weeks and see how it’s going for you. What are the results? Is this working, or not? Is this terrible? Do I still feel terrible? Or am I feeling better now?
Okay, but don’t be tempted to keep changing things every single day. Don’t do everything at once, make one small change, and then make sure that you’ve adapted to that change before layering on the next thing. And then it’s just a matter of rinsing and repeating this process, because over time, you will find that changing habits is much easier if you practice constraint instead of trying to do it all at once.
And then the third part of this is to have a plan. Being focused means that you have a plan. And of course, you got to stick to the plan. But people who lack focus, people who are scattered, they don’t have a plan.
Their plan is to just wing it with everything that they do. And how does that work for you? That doesn’t work very good. I’m gonna tell you, it might work in the moment, and sometimes we do have to wing it. And that’s just because, you know, maybe something happened externally. And your plan has to change because of outside circumstances that you have no control over.
And that is completely fine. But winging it is not a plan, okay. So I always tell my clients that the key to accomplishing everything that they want is to have a plan, right and stick to the plan. That’s the important part, right? You got to have a plan, but then you got to stick to the plan, right?
Being focused and practicing constraint. This gives you the ability to stay on track. And it helps you to continue to make minor changes, tweaking the plan if necessary. But when you’re focused and you’re practicing constraint, it means you are working a plan very intentionally, not haphazardly.
Like you’re, you’re doing everything with intention. With direction you have a laser-like focus on what you’re doing. And then what the next thing is, what’s that next step that’s going to move you closer to your goals. Without focus, you don’t have any idea what the next step is, with focus.
And with constraint, you know exactly what the next step is, because you’ve planned it in advance, and then you do it because you’re not distracted by a million other things. So make a plan. And stick to the plan. This is simple, but it requires you to be focused and it requires constraint, okay.
Remember to continue focusing on your future self always. And anytime you feel like you’re stuck, or you’re lacking motivation, you don’t feel like going to the gym, you don’t feel like running, whatever it is, remember why you’re doing this, go back to that future version of yourself, spend some time in that place. And then the other thing should fall into place for you here.
And then lastly, be careful where you put your focus. So if you focus on the negative on the things that are not working for you, you’re going to feel terrible, you’re going to feel less motivated, and you’re probably going to quit. So if you focus on your failures, you’re destined to repeat them and continue to fail.
If you focus on how long it’s taking, or I can’t do this or I’m a failure or this is too hard. It will continue to be hard, it will continue. You will continue not to be able to do it and you will continue to fail, right. If you keep focusing on the negative, you’re going to feel more and more negative and keep getting more negative results.
You always get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you want. Have you ever noticed that negative people always seem to attract more and more negativity into their lives? Have you ever noticed that positive people seem to attract more and more positivity into their lives?
It all has to do with where they put their focus, you get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you really want. And I love this quote from Bruce Lee that says, “The successful warrior is the average man or woman with laser-like focus.”
So be the successful warrior. Maintain laser-like focus on your goals and your dreams, and you’ll experience success like never before.
And then lastly, have you ever thought about doing something hard and then just decided I can’t do that? I’ve done this many times. I’ve told myself, I can’t lose weight. I can’t run a marathon. I can’t finish an Ironman. And the problem with thoughts like I can’t is that that thought becomes the truth for you.
Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” And I love this quote so much because it sums up this whole principle beautifully. It means that whatever you believe you can or can’t do will be true for you.
So thoughts like ‘I can’t’, they don’t serve any purpose other than to keep you stuck and limit your potential. By the way, I stopped saying I can’t a long time ago. Since then, I’ve been able to lose weight. Keep the weight off for good. I’ve run like 20 marathons, I finished the Ironman Triathlon.
Stop saying I can’t and start saying I can and see what amazing things you’ll be able to accomplish. Let’s you and I work together to see what you can do. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more about my unique weight loss coaching program for runners. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
I think we can all agree that children need to play. Play is crucial for their brain development and their mental and emotional growth. But what about us adults? Should play be abandoned once we …
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 151 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, the importance of play. I think we can all agree that children need to play. Play is crucial for their brain development. Play is crucial for their mental growth and for their emotional growth.
But what about us? What about us adults? Should play be abandoned once we reach adulthood? The short answer is no. Play should continue for everyone, no matter what age. But why, why is play so important? Why should we make play part of our everyday life? What does it even mean to play? What does play even mean for us adults, right?
So in this episode, I’m going to take a deep dive into the importance of play, and hopefully inspire you to integrate more play into your day to day life. But first, a quick question for you to ponder. Who are you becoming? Who are you becoming? It’s a very valid question, right? But have you ever really thought about it? Have you ever really taken the time to paint a picture of who you want to be in the future, the future you?
What does the future you look like? How do you feel about yourself? What have you accomplished? Where are you in the future? That may seem impossible for where you are right now in your life. This is one of the very important exercises that I do with all of my coaching clients, we paint a very clear picture of who they want to be, who do you want to be?
And then we put together a plan to get you there. If you’re ready to get started becoming that future, you that healthiest and most badass version of you, then you are ready for some coaching, you’re ready for the Running Lean coaching project. This is my unique weight loss health and fitness coaching program for runners where the project is always you.
So to learn more, go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and get started. You and I will jump on a quick call. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you. If it is, boom, we’ll get you in, we’ll get you started right away. Okay, runningleancoaching.com/apply and hope to see you in the Running Lean coaching project.
Okay, so the importance of play. This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about for some time. And I recently spent an entire week in Disney World, which is the happiest place on earth, apparently. And I grew up in LA. So I grew up in the LA area and spent a lot of time going to Disneyland as a kid even as an adult. And it’s one of my favorite things to do to just go and have fun and play.
And I’m going to talk more about my experience at Disney later in this podcast. But it got me thinking that you know, play is something that we abandon as we become adults, and it’s something that we should not abandon. That’s something we need to embrace on a regular basis. So it really got me thinking about why is play on board and for us as adults like why should we be engaging in more play?
Why should we incorporate more play into our life? And so that’s what I’m focusing on today. And I will talk about my experience at Disney World, which was my first time ever there and had so much fun. It just took me back to my childhood and I had such a great time. But here’s the thing, why is play so important.
Why is play important for kids, first of all. So, you know, like I said at the beginning here that for children. Play is important. It’s really important for kids’ brain development. It’s important for them to learn how to connect and interact with others. It helps them to express their creativity and to learn how to be creative and helps them to express their unique self and to be more self aware and aware of others. It helps to nurture Critical Thinking in children.
Healthy play time for kids leads to healthy adulthood. Okay, so we all know that that play is so important for kids, we integrate it into their day to day life. You know, we make recess and free play part of their schooling. Like, we know that this is important for kids.
But at some point, we take all of that and we abandon it because we’ve quote unquote, like become adults, like, what does that even mean to become an adult? Just because you turn 18 or 21? Or 25? What is that? What’s the cut off for playing as adults?
And I’m here to tell you that never is the cut off for playing. For adults, we never outgrow the need for play in our lives. Okay. So some of the reasons why we want to continue playing as adults is that it helps to continue just like it does with kids. It helps us to connect with others and helps us to build healthy relationships with other people.
It helps us to release endorphins, and dopamine, and all the good feeling hormones, it helps us to reduce stress, it helps improve our brain functionality. It helps us to improve our memory, and stimulate creativity. It helps us to feel young, and energetic play just gives us a feeling of youthfulness and energy. And it actually stimulates brain cell growth in adults.
And if you want to live a long and healthy life with a functioning brain, and cognitive function, then you need to continue to play in your everyday life. Why would we ever stop doing this? There are really no downsides to play. There’s nothing negative about it. And I’ll talk about that in just a minute here, like what play is and what it is, and are you doing it wrong.
Because there’s a right way and a wrong way to play. But think about all of these positive health benefits of play, especially for the aging adult. And if you’re finding your life is full of stress, and you’re finding it hard to be in a positive state of mind on a regular basis, then maybe play is the answer for you. Why would you stop playing with all these positive benefits?
Okay, so let’s get into what play is and what it isn’t. So play has to be something that is done. For the sake of play, it has to be done for its own sake, the act of playing, engaging in play is more important than any kind of outcome that you’re seeking. Okay. So I know that most of the people listening to this podcast are runners and if you’re a runner, and you’re like, Yeah, my idea of play is to run a 5k every weekend and crush everybody else out there and beat my time every single time and if I don’t beat myself up, and I get I’m really hard on myself and I work out really hard in order to crush all these competitors every weekend.
If that’s your idea of play. I don’t think you’re doing it right. Okay, I think that might be fun, competitive. Sports are fun. But they’re not necessarily play. If you like to play poker, let’s say, and you enjoy playing cards and you have fun playing a competitive card game every now and then. That’s all good. And that might be considered play. But if you’re a gambling addict, and your only goal is to hit some huge jackpot and you know you’re blowing through all your life savings, then that’s not play. That is not play, that is something completely different. Okay.
Family Game Night, family game night. Oh my gosh, it’s so much fun, right? It’s play as long as your goal isn’t to dominate every other person in the room and make other people cry. If somebody’s crying at the end of the night, and feelings are hurt, and that may not be play, it may be something you’re taking a little too seriously.
Okay, so play can be competitive. Play can involve tactics and strategy, and you can want to win and you can want to crush a 5k but if it’s causing more stress and anxiety for you, then I don’t think you’re doing it right. Play should cause you to feel more relaxed, it should feel like you should get that release of endorphins and dopamine and it should actually feel good and you should walk away from play. Feeling better, not worse. If you’re feeling worse, you might be doing it wrong. Okay.
Now there is an author of a book called Play Dr. Stewart Brown. And he’s been studying play for forever. And he outlines five different types of play that he’s observed during his years of research. Now there’s more than these five types, but I’m going to go through the five that he talks about, because I think it’ll give us a better picture, it’s a good way of explaining what types of play we can engage in.
Okay, so the first type of play that he talks about is rough and tumble play, which is a good way for us to learn, like, if you’re learning how to, you know, hit a baseball or, you know, playing games, like kickball or dodgeball, or soccer, those kinds of things.
Even you know, swimming and diving and capture the flag, you know, kickball, these are all fun, rough and tumble types of games that we can play. And they help us with, you know, mastering something physically like becoming a good diver and learning how to do a triple flip or something like that, like, that’s a great way of engaging in rough and tumble play.
Then there is another type of play, he calls ritual play, which is things like board games, and chess. And this would be like more activities and sports with certain structures and, and rules, you know, basketball and football and soccer and baseball and those kinds of things. It’s also ritual play, when we are creating and strategizing and designing and engaging in activities that bring different people together for a common purpose or a goal.
Then we have imaginative play. So this is the kind of thing where you are storytelling, drawing, acting, taking an improv class painting, these kinds of things are all imaginative play.
Then we have body play. Body play is what a lot of us kind of, in this community tend to gravitate towards. So this is, you know, where we do things like you know, running and hiking, and Pilates and yoga and riding roller coasters and climbing mountains and surfing and, and maybe snorkeling, these are all things that we can do to use our body as a way of just getting out and having fun and playing. Okay?
Again, if we’re getting too competitive with it, it may not be considered play. And if the outcome is more stressful, it may not be play. So just be mindful of that.
And then there’s object play, which is building things like with Legos and making a fort out of the couch, having a snowball fight, designing things, these can all be like object play. So there are many, many ways of play, there’s many categories of play, we can all find things that we can relate to and that we can gravitate towards.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. But just be thinking about the types of activities that you’re engaging in. How are they making you feel? Are you feeling more rejuvenated and more connected to others? And less stressed out when you’re engaging in this play? Or are you feeling more anxiety and stress and actually feeling resentful of others because you lost and they won or something like that, you see what I’m saying there is a very, pretty stark difference, and you’ll know it when you see it. Okay.
So there’s all these ways that play, and a lot of the things that I just mentioned can help improve your cognitive function, how having the ability to deal with stress better, improving your creative thinking, having this childlike exuberance, about life, laughing more often, far into adulthood. Like, these are some of the most important things you can do for your health, for your physical health, for your mental and emotional health. And I would say for your fitness too, because you know, being in a state of chronic stress, it’s going to be really hard on your body.
And if you want to improve your body and improve your body composition, you’re somebody that’s trying to, you know, maybe get leaner and get stronger. Being in a state of chronic stress is going to thwart that progress. It’s going to make it so hard for you to make progress, losing weight and getting fitter. So play can be one of those things that reduces stress and eliminate stress from your life really helps to keep you sharp.
It helps to keep you functioning at a high level and helps you to grow mentally, emotionally, physically. And it’s so good at reducing stress, right? So why wouldn’t you want to engage in play all the time. So, let’s talk a little bit about my week. I’m excited to sort of share some of this with you, because I had so much fun.
So like I said, at the beginning here, I’m a Disneyland person, like, I grew up in LA, and I grew up going to Disneyland, and I have very fond memories of Disneyland. And it was always just one of those places that we went to as kids, my parents would take us there, we only lived about two hours away from there. So we would go there.
And, you know, every summer and I just have so many great memories from being at Disneyland. So, you know, I was talking to my girlfriend about it recently. And we just decided that for my birthday, this year for my birthday. About a week ago, we decided that we were going to take a trip and just spend a few days down there.
And so we booked a place. we booked one of the Disney resorts. So we were close to all the action, we went to all the parks. And my goal was to do nothing but play for a week. Really, I blocked out my calendar, and I spent, you know, I took my laptop with me, but never even turned it on, didn’t even open it up because I was just so focused on just being in the moment and playing.
And listen, I do things for fun, you know, on the regular I, I like to run and I lift weights, and these things aren’t always fun or play, okay, sometimes they can be but not always. But there’s things I do that would fall into that play category for sure. On a regular basis, like walking and doing yoga and listening to books and podcasts, watching movies, TV shows, I’m a huge sci fi nerd, right. Love Star Wars, love, you know, Game of Thrones and things like that.
And so I’m really into a lot of that fantasy stuff. And to me, that is super fun. Family Game Night is something we do spending time with my grandson, oh my gosh, these are all ways that I love to play and try to play on a regular basis. But I wanted to take things to the next level.
So we went to Disney World, got to go to all the parks. And like I said, my goal was just to have fun and play for a week, not with any sort of like outcome in mind, but just to play, and to experience all of the fun that is available, which is everywhere you look, it’s nothing but fun. I love Star Wars and I got to immerse myself into Star Wars Land there, Disney’s Hollywood Studios. And I just felt like a little kid again.
Star Wars was one of those things that I saw when I was about 11 years old. And it sort of changed my life. I really fell in love with sci fi at that time, because it wasn’t something that really appealed to me until then. And then it was something that I was really, really changed my mind about a lot of that kind of stuff. And I really got into it and was really excited to be immersed in this Star Wars lane.
And I felt like I was among my people. Like all the other people I saw there were a lot of people that were similar in age to me, and had similar looks on their face, which they were just really happy and smiling a lot. I rode all the roller coasters at all the parks and laughed so much and had so much fun, huge smile across my face the whole time.
And even while we were down there in the middle of the week, this big hurricane came through Hurricane Nicole that ended up hitting landfall in Florida as a category one hurricane pretty quickly got reduced to a tropical storm by the time it hit us in Orlando. But so, this tropical storm kind of shut down the parks for about a day so they closed the parks early on Wednesday, and then opened them up for about a half a day on Thursday. So we missed out on a big chunk of time there and then dealt with like just torrential rain all day on Wednesday when we were at the parks. Even that did not stop us from playing and just having fun. Like we still had fun.
We bought some ponchos, some plastic ponchos that we ended up wearing all the time. And I will tell you that it was the best $12 I ever spent on each one of those ponchos because we were able to just walk around and have fun, stand in lines outside and be in the rain and stay relatively dry.
Really not an ideal situation but we made the most of it and still had so much fun. So, so coming back from this trip, I just feel so rejuvenated and relaxed and free of stress. And I was thinking about this this morning. And really this whole trip taught me a big lesson. And the lesson is that I need more of this in my life, I need to include even more play into my day to day life.
Somehow I need to make play more a part of what I do every single day. And so I’m asking myself this question, and I want you to ask yourself this question: what can I do today? To play? Not, you know, to crush the competition or, you know, to, you know, make somebody cry? But what can I do to just play for the sake of play? Just because we’re adults, doesn’t mean we have to stop playing. Having fun, being silly, for no other reason than to have fun and be silly, is crucial.
For us as adults, it’s crucial for physical, mental and emotional health. And I talked to so many people who tell me how stressful their life is. It’s their job. It’s the kids, it’s the families, their relationships, it’s their finances, all causing so much stress in their life. And then I’m like, Okay, what are you doing to play? How are you relaxing? How are you having fun? And they got nothing, just crickets? Why not? Why aren’t you engaging in play on the regular?
Are you embarrassed? Is it silly to act like a kid? You know? Are you too serious? And is this like, below you or something? No, it’s not. I mean, I get it. It can be kind of silly sometimes. And I felt like a little kid all week at Disney World. Like, I was waiting in line for all these rides. And there’s a lot of little kids around and but you know what, I loved every minute of it. Because it was like I was a kid again. And it felt amazing. And it feels good to be a kid. Why? Why not?
So ask yourself how can you play today? What can you do today? To start adding more fun and more play into your life? Who can you include in this play? Can you include your kids, your spouse, friends, family, the more the merrier. We want to build those connections. I want to build those relationships. What kind of a play appeals to you like board games, joining Soccer League, learning how to play the guitar, yoga, dancing, jumping on a trampoline, what appeals to you, just find something and do that.
And if you find it doesn’t work for you, you don’t like it, try something else. But make play a priority in your life. Make play something you do every single day, or at least as often as you can. Embrace that feeling of play. Embrace that feeling of being a kid again. However, that looks for you. You get to decide, play more, and you’ll enjoy life more. You’ll keep your mind sharp, you’ll build better relationships and you will live a healthier, happier life. I promise you. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
One nice thing about human beings is that no two of us are alike. And not just in how we look or where we live, but in how we see the world. We each have our own unique Model Of the World (MOW) …
Continue Reading about 143. Upgrading Your Model Of the World →
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 143, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today upgrading your model of the world. One nice thing about human beings is that no two of us are alike. And not just in how we look or where we live, but in how we each see the world.
We each have our own unique model of the world, based on our own past experiences, our beliefs, our values, and our individual upbringings. And your model, the world can either keep you stuck and frustrated, or help you to achieve everything that you want for yourself. So in this episode, I’m going to be taking a good look at how your unique model of the world can be harmful or helpful, and why you might want to consider upgrading your model of the world.
But first, a lot of people ask me about coaching and what it looks like. And it may not look the way you think that it does. So for me, from my perspective, coaching is not me creating a list of rules and then handing that list of rules to every single person that I work with.
Coaching is a relationship, it’s you and I working closely together to look at your goals, to look at your lifestyle, to look at the way that you want to achieve things in your life. And then putting together a plan that is unique to you. Just like we all have a unique model of the world, we each want to approach getting healthy, getting fit, getting stronger, losing weight, we all need to approach this in a slightly different way.
So I don’t have a cookie cutter program that just is the same for everybody that I work with. We’re all individuals and I want to celebrate that really. So with the way that I do coaching, which is different from a lot of other coaches. It is a unique relationship, it’s you and I working closely together to set goals for you to create a plan for you.
And then to help you stick to that plan. It’s really a collaboration, you have some say, in how we structure things, you have some agency here. Okay, this isn’t just me telling you what to do, there’s a little bit of me telling you what to do, but you have to be on board with what we’re doing. Because if you’re not, you’re not going to stick with it. Nobody wants to do something that they don’t want to do. Right.
So what I try to create with my coaching program is a collaborative approach where you get to have some say in how we structure things, okay? The main objective here is to create a plan and then help you stick to that plan. And if you want some help creating a plan, if you want some help sticking to that plan, coaching might be a great fit for you. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply to get started.
I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply fill out a quick application, we’ll jump on a zoom call, see if there’s a good fit for you. Cool.
All right, let’s talk about upgrading your model of the world. So like I was saying at the top of the episode here, we humans are all very different. We each have our own ways of seeing things in the world. And this isn’t just about, you know, our upbringings. This isn’t just about our past experiences, there’s so many different factors that make up how we see the world. So we will see things differently based upon our past experiences and our upbringing and our cultures and where we grew up.
But also you got to look at the things that you have believed for your whole life, your belief systems, you got to look at your values. You have to look at the things that are important to you. All of these things paint a different picture of what reality looks like for you. So when I talk about how we all have our unique model of the world, really what I’m saying here is we each have our own view of reality.
And if you want to extrapolate this out a step further, you could say that, that reality is what you think it is. That there isn’t one reality that is the same for everyone. It’s kind of mind blowing, if you think about that, right. But it’s pretty true, because we each have a different way of interpreting what’s happening around us. And we each have a different way of approaching the circumstances in our life. That means we each have our own version of what’s real and what’s not.
So all these factors are our belief systems, the way we have thought our whole lives, the people around us, our schooling, our experiences, all make up our unique model of the world. And this is important, because your model of the world can affect you. in many different ways. It can affect how you get through life, it can affect how you get through relationships, it can affect how you achieve big things in your life or not.
And when I talk about making big changes in your life, let’s say you want to, you want to lose some weight. Let’s say you want to become a faster runner, these things take time, and they take effort, they take getting uncomfortable. And if your model of the world says, Hey, every time you try to do something like this, every time you’ve ever set out to lose weight you fail, losing weight is too hard. Losing weight is something you’ll never be able to do.
If you have believed that your whole life, then guess what your reality is, you will not be able to lose weight, your model of the world is your reality. And if your model of the world is keeping you stuck where you are, and affecting you negatively, and keeping you from taking action or keeping you from moving in the direction of your goals or what you really want for yourself, then you have to consider maybe changing that.
Now, if your model of the world is positive, and it is, is one of like determination, and if your model of the world is one of hey, I can achieve anything that I set my mind to, then guess what that becomes your reality. You might want to let go of your current model of the world if it is not serving you. Just because you believe this is the way things are. And you’ve always believed this is the way things are does not mean you have to hold on to that. I know it’s kind of a crazy concept, right?
What I’m talking about here is releasing your grip on reality, releasing your grip on your version of reality. And this is not something most people ever consider is even in the realm of possibilities. Most people are so ingrained and so dug into their own model of the world, they cannot see any other way of doing things.
They cannot see themselves ever becoming more than they are. They cannot see themselves ever achieving anything more than what they’ve already achieved in their life. And it keeps them from ever pushing themselves. It keeps them from ever taking any kind of action that would improve their health, their fitness, their relationships, their business, their careers. They are so stuck in where they are and who they are, they cannot see that there’s more available to them.
So what I’m asking you to do is release your grip on what you believe to be true. Release your grip on your own version of reality. Release your grip on your own model of the world. And this takes some work. This is not really a simple process or an easy process. It takes some work and some time but it starts with you challenging your beliefs and challenging the way that you see things.
And the way that you believe things are about yourself, about others, about society, about the world around you. But you don’t have to believe everything you think just because you think something just because you’ve believed something your whole life doesn’t mean you have to continue to believe that you can choose to believe something else instead.
For years and years, I believed that I could not quit drinking, for example, I believed that I was always going to drink alcohol. I mean, I drank alcohol every day for 25 years, or something like that – a long, long time. And I could not imagine going one day without drinking alcohol. I mean, I did it every now and then. But it was not fun. And it was hard. And I was thinking like, this is just, this is just who I am.
And then at one point in my life, I decided I wasn’t gonna do that anymore. I wasn’t gonna drink anymore. That was a huge mindset shift for me to go from being somebody who believed, firmly believed that drinking was just part of who I was. And it was always going to be that way to being a non drinker. What? I know, it’s crazy. That is completely the opposite of everything I believed about my model of the world at that point.
Everything I did, had alcohol involved, somehow, oh, we’re gonna go out to dinner gotta go somewhere where they serve alcohol, oh, we’re gonna go to this sporting event. No, I’m going to be drinking a lot. Oh, it’s, you know, I got to take the kids to, you know, football practice, well, better, you know, make sure I get some beers on the way home or whatever it was.
Oh, it’s Tuesday, well better stock up on alcohol. You know, it was always part of everything that I did. Not having alcohol was a wild concept for me. That broke my model of the world, I was like, does not compute. I had to release my grip on my version of reality, in order to make that shift for myself. And I had to do the same thing.
A few years back, when I made this big shift from being a, a plant based person, somebody who did not eat meat, I hadn’t eaten meat for 15 years, and I made a big shift, I decided that that was no longer what I believed to be the best thing for myself. My model of the world for the previous 15 years was, you know, meat is bad for you, you shouldn’t eat meat, it’s much healthier to not eat meat. And I was dug in with that belief about myself. And for me, it was the way I believed and the way I was eating. And there’s a lot more to this than just meat.
But you know, I was eating a lot of sugar, a lot of carbohydrates and things like that. But I had gained a lot of weight and I was feeling very unhealthy. And I decided to go back to more of an ancestral way of eating, which included eating meat, again, extremely different, extremely difficult to make this decision to start eating meat again, and change my diet. I’m really glad I did that though. I’ve gotten way healthier, I feel much better. I’ve changed my diet in a lot of ways. But this is just one way.
Okay, I’m not saying you know, eating meat is better than being vegetarian or vegan or anything like that. I’m not going to get into that discussion here. I’m just saying for me, this was a good choice for me to make for my body and my health and my fitness and I feel better now. But this was a big shift for me.
So my model of the world that I was holding on too tightly, even though I was gaining weight and gaining weight and gained like 40 pounds. My clothes didn’t fit anymore. I looked terrible. I hated the way I looked in the mirror. I was not letting go of that model of reality, that model of the world. But when I did when I made that shift when I made that change, it changed everything for me. I had to release my grip on reality, my version of reality, in order for me to become the person that I am today.
This doesn’t mean I’m done either, like I have other versions of myself that I want to become, we are always a work in progress, at least we always should be. And though those versions of myself that I see in the future that I am working towards, are different than who I am today, are different than who I’ve been up to this point. And those versions of me require me to release my grip on reality again, in other ways. And this is an ongoing process, and it’s okay, it’s okay that we do this.
But you have to challenge what you believe. You have to challenge the way you’ve been doing things, if you want to become more, you have to challenge your experiences in the past, because listening to your past does not determine your future. Just because you’ve always done something a certain way does not mean it has to continue.
Just because you’ve always had the same results from everything you’ve tried in the past does not mean you’re going to continue to get those same results, your past does not determine your future. Stop looking to the past and saying well see, this is why I can’t get where I want to in life because of what happened, you know, back in the day, stop doing that.
Release that idea, let go of those old ideas. Just because you’ve done something for decades, doesn’t mean you can’t change it, we can always change. And this idea of upgrading your model of the world of making these changes, letting go of the things that aren’t serving you anymore. Choosing new values, choosing new things you want to believe about yourself and the world around you. This is such a difficult process to go through.
This is uncomfortable, because it goes against everything that you believe to be true to this point. Right? It challenges everything you think you know, everything you currently hold to be true. Everything you’ve believed, maybe your whole life. But what I want you to do is I want you to decide, first of all, decide who it is that you want to become. And then you got to start working towards becoming that version of yourself. Okay?
And then look at what version of reality you’re holding on to right now. And is that version of reality that you’re holding on to helping you to become that future version of yourself? Or is it keeping you stuck where you are. The art of becoming more requires you to let go of who you think you are today. The art of becoming more requires you to release your grip on your current model of the world. That’s it, it really does.
You got to you know, you got to do more if you want to become more. And your work this week, is to look at different areas of your life. Look at your past experiences. Look at the things you think you believe. Look at the things that you think you know, look at the things you think you’re capable of. And challenge all of it, challenge all of it.
Your work is to challenge reality, your work is to challenge your current model of the world. And make some changes and upgrade that. If you want to become more, you ‘ve got to do more. If you want to become more, you’ve got to release your grip on your current model of the world and make some changes and start moving toward that direction of becoming more. Okay. That is your work this week. I hope you will do this. It is so worth it. That’s all I got for you today. 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.
Have you ever found yourself wishing your life was somehow “better”, that there was some future version of yourself that was leaner, stronger, and healthier? Of course you have, we all think about …
Continue Reading about 113. Getting Out of the Gap and Into the Gain →
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 113, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today getting out of the gap and into the gain. Have you ever found yourself wishing that your life was somehow better, that maybe there was some future version of yourself that was leaner, stronger, and healthier? Of course, you have. We all think about stuff like this, I teach you to think about stuff like this, there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing this.
The problem is when you’re so focused on what you don’t have, that it completely consumed you. When you’re obsessed about where you’re not, that’s when things begin to break down for you. So today I’m talking about the difference between being in the gap. And being in the gain.
When you’re in the gap, you only see the negative, you never feel like you measure up, you never feel like you’re making progress towards your goals. In fact, making any progress toward your goals feels virtually impossible.
There’s a better way to do this, there’s a better way to think about all of this, and it’s called being in the gain. When you’re in the gain, you’re focused on the positive, you feel more energized, you feel more motivated, and you begin to make significant progress.
I’m going to talk all about this today, I’m going to break down why getting out of the gap and getting into the gain is so important for your long-term health and fitness goals. Cool. This is exciting. I’m excited about this one.
But first, if you’re ready to do this inner work, you know, this stuff that I talked about here, like getting out of the gap and into the gain, this is the inner work, you got to shift your mindset. If you want to become that healthy, badass version of yourself, right?
You have to take action, that action involves doing a lot of this inner work, your outer results are just a reflection of whether or not you’re doing the inner work, okay? The mistake most people make is that they focus on the outer stuff, tell me what to eat, Patrick, just tell me how many times I should lift weights each week, just tell me how many carbs I should eat whatever.
Instead, let’s focus on changing our mindset. Because when you do that, your chances of success go up dramatically. I’m going to talk about this today, I’m going to talk about how when we’re focused on the negative and when we’re focused on what we don’t have, it can affect us profoundly.
But when we start to focus on the positive, the progress we made, it can affect us profoundly in a different way, in a positive way. So if you’re ready to do this inner work with me, then maybe coaching is a good fit for you! Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, apply for coaching with me, we’ll get on a Zoom call, we’ll have a short conversation. But I want you to take that step, take that first step of becoming that future badass version of yourself. Cool. runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And let’s have a conversation.
And then I wanted to give you guys a heads up about something, something very cool. That’s coming soon. So in just a few weeks, I’m going to be teaching a live workshop, all about how to effectively transform yourself from the inside out into a leaner, stronger, more badass runner.
This is going to be probably the most informative and most comprehensive live workshop that I’ve ever taught. And I don’t do this kind of thing very often. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever really done this exact same kind of thing before. I like to teach here on the podcast.
But sometimes, sometimes I’m just so excited about the topic that I want to teach it live. There’s a real energy when we get together for a live workshop like this, you know, I get the feedback from you. Are you enjoying this? Are you getting something out of it?
You get to ask questions you get to you get your questions answered, I get the feedback. We all have a lot more fun doing this. It’s very interactive. So I just want to put this on your radar. That’s all I’m gonna say about this right now. This is a little teaser, I know.
But I’m going to keep you updated on dates and times when this thing is coming. It’s a few weeks out yet, but I’m just I’m so excited. I can’t wait for you guys to take part in this. I can’t wait to share more about this with you.
And if I didn’t mention it’s going to be free, it’s going to be a free live training to help you understand the fundamentals of becoming a healthy, badass human being. That’s all. That’s all. Just that. So more is coming soon on this I promise I’m so excited about this is going to be super fun. So just keep your ears peeled for that. I’ll be talking about it. More on the podcast here, don’t worry, you’ll know when it’s coming.
Okay, let’s talk about this today getting out of the gap and in the gain. So I talk to clients every single day who are working towards goals, right? They want to lose weight, they want to get stronger, they want to improve their body composition, they want to run faster.
And every time we get on a call, and my clients will attest to this, I always ask, tell me what’s good. Let’s talk about something positive share a win from this past week, big or small, doesn’t matter, some victory, some win around your health and fitness, maybe you lost a pound or maybe running felt better or easier, or you’re sleeping better. Or you realize for the first time in a long time that you just weren’t hungry all day long.
Like these are all little wins that we want to talk about and celebrate. Whatever it is, maybe it’s an “aha” moment, like, you know, I just realized that I can run perfectly fine without eating a bunch of sugar. Or when I make a plan ahead of time, and it’s a lot easier to just stick with it. What an aha moment, you know.
So this is the kind of stuff I always like to talk about, I always want to start out our conversations with wins, right? I want to give equal airtime to the good stuff to the positive to the wins, and to the negative to the problems to the obstacles to the struggles.
But sometimes when I ask people, “Hey, tell me something different this past week”, they just sit there and stare off into space. And they’re like, “I don’t know, I can’t think of anything, just crickets. Nothing positive from this whole past week.”
But then I’ll go like, “Hey, okay, well, let’s talk about what’s going on, like, what’s wrong, what issues you’re having, what’s the problem?” and then the floodgates open, there are all kinds of stuff they talk about, they can go on for days telling me what’s wrong, why things aren’t working, the stress thrown at work, the kids are driving them crazy, blah, blah, blah, right?
So there’s a real issue here, right, you’re consumed by the negative, when you’re consumed by all the negative stuff that’s going on in your life when you can’t even articulate one positive thing that has happened for you this past week. You’re in this constant state of like, inner turmoil. It’s a very negative state to be in, by the way.
It has a compound effect on your life. And I’ll talk more about that in a minute. But there’s a real issue here, there’s a bigger issue here because this is a negative state to be in. Right?
This is a place where you are constantly in your whole mental, emotional, physical being is a state of negativity. All right. And I was talking about this recently with my coach, and I was saying, “Listen, I have these clients, and they have a hard time articulating what’s good, and how can I help them?”
You know, why do we have this negativity bias? You know, how can we can’t see the good things in our life. And she started telling me about the gap. And being in the gap. I’d never heard of this concept before.
And so she recommended a book to me. And the book is called The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan. And Dan Sullivan is a coach. He’s awesome. I love him. I read the book. It’s a very simple concept. I’m going to break it all down for you here. I just felt compelled to share with you sort of this concept from this book.
It’s a very simple concept, but very powerful. It explains why we’re so focused on the negative, why it’s so hard to see the good things in our lives. And how we can change our mindset so we can start getting better results.
So what are we talking about here? What is this gap? What’s the gap? So the gap is the space between where you are right now, and where you want to be in the future. So this is awesome. Like I said earlier, if you have a goal of wanting to get leaner, stronger, and faster, that’s awesome. I encourage you to create a very detailed, very compelling future version of yourself. Create that vision of where you want to be that’s important to do you got to know where you’re going if you want to get there, right.
But when you’re not there yet, it can be very easy to focus all of your attention on that gap between where you are today. And where you want to be. There’s a gap you’re not there. And you can focus on the fact that you’re not there.
You can focus on the gap between where you want to be and where you are right now and where you want to be in the future and this can start to feel very terrible, right? You’re focusing on the fact that you’re not there. This is what I don’t have, I am not this person yet.
When you’re in the gap, you start to feel this inner conflict is inner turmoil. So let’s say you want to lose 30 pounds, and you’ve lost 20. So far, right? But you’re so focused on those last 10 pounds that you haven’t, that you haven’t quite lost it that you’re in the gap.
Or let’s say you want to improve your running performance, you want to go from 10-minute miles for half marathon to 9-minute miles, and you’ve made some progress. you’ve increased your speed to 9:39:30 per mile. But you still got like 30 seconds per mile more to go. When you’re just focused on that you’re, you’re in the gap here again, okay.
You may not be in control of your food choices, you’re still binging you’re feeling completely out of control, sometimes, you know, you’re not acknowledging that all the other times that you didn’t binge eat ice cream, that like you used to do. So you’ve made some progress here. But you’re only focused on the gap, you’re only focused on what’s wrong.
Maybe you look in the mirror, and every time you look in the mirror, you just see your flaws. You see the flab, and the wrinkles and the sagging skin, but you don’t see that you’ve already lost inches, your clothes fit better, you’re sleeping better at night, you have a ton more energy throughout the day.
But you don’t see any of that stuff, you just see where you’re not you just see what’s wrong, you are in the gap.
So what happens to us when we’re in the gap? Like when you’re in the gap, you’ll never measure up, you’re not going to see the progress you’ve made, you’re not going to see the good stuff, you’re not going to see the incremental improvements in your health and your well being you’re only going to see what’s wrong. Being in the gap creates this state of inner conflict.
When you’re constantly focused on what’s wrong, and how you’re not where you want to be, you are going to feel pretty miserable, like all the time. And you may not even know why you’re feeling so miserable.
But you’re constantly comparing yourself to some arbitrary place that you’re not there, right. And this conflict, I want to be there. And I’m not, this is what’s going to make it very hard for you to keep going. Alright.
So being in the gap creates this state of inner conflict. It’s also very demotivating. Why the hell would you want to go out there and run faster? Or why would you want to stick to your food plan when all you do is ruminate about how crappy everything in your life is.
Being in the gap will destroy your motivation. Even if you’ve had a little bit of motivation, it’s going to just break it down.
In order to feel motivated, you have to focus on the progress you’ve made, right? motivation comes from within. And focusing on how you’ve been making slow and steady progress can help create this feeling of motivation within you.
Being in the gap, though, has the opposite effect, you feel less motivated, you feel frustrated, you feel like why bother trying, you’re just like tired and frustrated. And you just want to give up.
I talked to a lot of people who have a decent amount of weight to lose, like let’s say you’ve, you know, I’m talking to someone who’s got like 50 pounds to lose, right? And they start making some progress.
So they might lose one or two pounds a week. But they get super frustrated because they’re consumed by this idea of they’ve got like 45 more pounds to go. And it all just feels so overwhelming. I’m never going to get there. Why should I even bother? They just want to throw in the towel.
And I want to just encourage them to stop doing this stop being in the gap. You’re in the gap when you’re getting frustrated and focused on where you’re not.
And it creates these feelings of unworthiness within you, you might know you’re in the gap when you compare yourself to others. Have you ever done this before?
Everybody’s hand should be going up right now. We have all done this. We all compare ourselves to others. But is this ever a good idea? Do you ever come out on the winning end of this comparison? No, never.
Other people are losing weight faster than me. Other people are running faster than me. Other people are making progress, more progress than me. It’s easier for other people. It’s harder for me like this is all the stuff we tell ourselves. When you get caught up in these comparisons. When you’re comparing yourselves to others. You are deeply into the gap.
Alright, you start to feel less than you don’t measure up. And again, you’re like, it leads to frustration and these feelings of just unworthiness, and you feel like a failure. Because you’re like, this isn’t working for me, look at how it’s working for everybody else.
Right. And in this just your perception, the truth is, we all have our own journey, and it looks different for everyone. You have to stop comparing yourself to others because that’s being solidly into the gap. When you’re doing that you’re comparing yourself to others, you are absolutely deep into the gap, okay?
Also, when you’re in the gap, you’re going to have a very hard time making progress, because all of your thoughts and feelings are consumed by where you’re not. And this is demotivating. So you’re demotivated, you experienced this inner conflict, you feel unworthy, you feel like a failure.
Do you think you’re going to feel like you want to stick to your food plan when this is your mental and emotional state? Do you think you’re going to want to stick to your workout schedule when you’re feeling like this? No. Most people just give up, they quit. They can’t see past the gap.
So what about this idea, Patrick, of creating a clear vision of your future self, I mean, should we not be doing that? And, and like I said earlier like I teach people to do this, I think it’s important that we do this, we have to know where we’re going, we have to create this vision of ourselves.
So I want you to, this isn’t about not having a future vision for yourself, okay? You can’t make progress towards your goals if you don’t know what you want for yourself if you don’t know where you’re going. Right?
So I strongly encourage you and I work with all my clients on this to create a vision for their future self, right? Who do you want to become? How do you want to feel? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your body to look like? What do you want running to look like for you?
These are all things that it’s important to know. Got to know where you’re going, right?
So when I talk about being in the gap, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a vision for your future, what I’m saying is stop obsessing about not being there. That’s the part where we’re in the gap.
Okay, it’s important to have that future version of yourself that future vision for yourself. But we have to be, we have to approach this in a different way. We can’t be focused on “Oh, I’m not there yet.” Okay, so there’s a, there’s a difference there. Okay.
So at this point, I think we can all relate to being in the gap, right? We’ve all been there happens to all of us, it’s okay. I don’t want you to freak out about it. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure, you’re broken, or you’re a negative person, or you’ll never reach your goals.
If you find yourself in the gap, even regularly, it just means that you’re normal, okay? Just means that you’re a normal, healthy human being with a normal human brain. That’s it. Nothing wrong at all.
And I see this all the time with clients, we all do it. This is normal. As humans, we have this bias towards negativity, this is how we have evolved. We’ve evolved as humans to recognize dangers, right?
We are really good at spotting the problem. “Oh, this other human creature that’s coming towards me does not look like one, one of the human creatures that I know, danger, danger.” Or “This plant that I’m about to eat looks just like the one that Grok ate last week. And now he’s dead. Danger Danger!” Like spotting danger is hardcoded into our DNA.
Now, you know, if everything’s cool and safe, it doesn’t set off any alarms in our brain, right? Everything’s just copacetic or everything’s cool, no big deal. But as soon as something seems dangerous, we go on high alert.
And the funny thing is that there’s no real danger for us these days, right? There’s no other human that’s trying to murder us, I hope not really. We shop at Whole Foods. So we really don’t need to worry about eating poisonous plants.
You know, we see things like, “Oh, I’m not at my goal weight yet.” That’s the danger we see in our lives, right? That’s the problems that we experience in our lives or our half marathon time doesn’t measure up to other people we run with. This is what we perceive as being a threat to us or dangerous. So just know that your brain is normal. It’s doing what it’s been conditioned to do. It’s not your fault.
But there’s a different way of seeing things, there’s a better way to experience everything in your life. And this is called being in the gain. So when you’re in the gain, you’re focused on the progress you’ve made up to this point. Being in the gain, means you’re no longer obsessed about where you’re not instead, your focus is on how far you’ve already come.
Being in the gain means you have a bias towards positivity, not negativity. Your focus is on positivity is on progress, not on the gap between where you are and where you wish you were.
So what does it look like to be in the gain? Well, let’s go back to that example, if you want to lose 30 pounds, and you’ve lost 20 stuff tend to go. So being pissed off about why those last 10 pounds are taking so dang long, you celebrate the fact that you’ve lost 20 pounds already, you focus on the progress you’ve already made.
You see now that you’ve got your sugar cravings under control, maybe for the first time in your life, you feel better, you’re sleeping better, you have a ton more energy running is getting so much easier.
Or maybe you’ve improved your running pace by that 30 seconds per mile, you still have you know, another 30 seconds more to go by, instead of getting all worked up about it like “Oh, I’m not as fast as I want to be.”
You can see how your running is improved, your running form has improved, your running efficiency has improved, you keep increasing your lactate threshold, your heart rate is going down even when you’re running faster, all of the signs that you’re becoming a total running badass, right.
But when you’re in the gap, you don’t see any of this, you’re just focused on where you’re not. I have this goal, and I’m not there. Right.
Instead, we want to focus on the gain, we want to focus on the progress we made. Here’s the cool part about this: when you’re in the game, things will begin to shift for you internally, you’re going to begin to create a whole new mindset for yourself.
When you’re focused on the gap, this is very demotivating, right. But when you’re focused on the gains you’ve made, it has the opposite effect. Being in the gain means you’re focused on progress.
And when you track progress, and you see you’ve made progress, and you’re always moving a little bit closer to your goals, this is very motivating. This builds motivation, it builds confidence, it builds your self-esteem, it creates momentum, making little itty bitty bits of progress creates a little bit more momentum and a little bit more and a little bit more. And this momentum keeps you feeling even more motivated, which keeps you making even more and more progress, right.
So the more you focus on the gain, the more gains you make. And the more you focus on the gain, the more games you play, it’s a cycle. It’s a beautiful little cycle that continues to repeat, creating more momentum and more positive results.
So the secret really to making any kind of big changes in your life, especially when it comes to things like long-term health and fitness. The big secret is consistency, right? I guess it’s not a secret, really. But like, you’ve got to stick with it, you’ve got to stick with it for the long haul. Like these are changes we make for life. And you’ve got to be committed to being a healthy human being as a way of life.
But if you’re in the gap, this is going to be incredibly frustrating and super, super hard to do. I’m just going to tell you right now, it’s going to be almost impossible.
On the other hand, if you’re in the gain, this is how you do it. This is how you become the healthy badass runner that you want to be and how you make it last for life. Being in the gain feels light, it feels energizing, it feels free.
You build confidence and trust in yourself you create momentum towards your goals, you create these feelings of motivation. And then you just want to keep going.
So if you’re at someplace in your life here, where you’re experiencing the gap. I’m going to just give you a couple of tips on how to get out of that. Okay. So I want to give you an example. Like, let’s say you’re at a point in your weight loss journey where you’ve experienced a stall. So maybe you’ve hit a plateau in your weight loss and you’re you’ve lost some weight, but it hasn’t changed for like four or five weeks and you’re getting super frustrated. You just want to give up right?
Do this one thing. Make this one change and see what happens. Stop being in the gap and start being in the gain. Start focusing on incremental progress. start focusing on all the little things that are good. Start focusing on all the tiny little bits of progress you’ve made, and see how that doesn’t feel for you.
Start celebrating all that progress is going to create momentum and motivation within you and you’ll want to keep going and you know what, I have a feeling that scale just might start to move again.
Or maybe you want to run faster and you say, can’t seem to get past that 9:30 pace, right? Start really tracking your progress, celebrate all the metrics that are improving: heart rate, VO to Max, you know, speed, overall pace, you know, splits, you know, interval paces, all that stuff, start to track all of that.
And start to celebrate the progress that you’re making. And I have a feeling you’re going to see your times improve because you’re going to feel more motivated, you’re going to want to keep going.
Slow and steady progress is how we win the game, right? Slow and steady progress, track it, and celebrate it, all of it.
And I talked to people all the time about how long it takes to lose weight. And the truth is that first some people, it just takes a while, right? It just takes what it takes.
So let’s say you want to, you know, lose those last 10 pounds. And it’s super frustrating. It’s taking forever, cording to you.
And you’re like, “Oh, this is just taking so long.” I’m like, “How long is it supposed to take?” So let’s just say for S’s and G’s like to lose the last 10 pounds, let’s say took a year.
Now when I just said that, did you freak out a little bit like, “Oh my god, it shouldn’t take that long.” Whatever. Let’s just say it took a year.
Think about this a year from now, would you rather be at your goal weight? Or would you rather be upset because you gave up because you got frustrated? Because you quit on yourself.
If you are feeling like it’s just taking too long, and you say screw it and you give up this is what most people do. They just say you know what? Why bother.
But even though you’re making progress, even though you’re on track to lose a pound a month, or whatever it is, when you’re in the gap, you cannot see this progress, you can’t see that you’re making changes, and it’s incremental, slow and steady. And you’ll get there eventually, but you can’t see it.
And so you just end up, most people just end up getting frustrated and quitting. throwing in the towel. Do not do this.
Here’s your call to action for this week, I want you to identify one area of your life where you’re in the gap. I know you know what this is you’ve probably already been thinking about this, right? Where are you focused on where you’re not. Alright.
And then I want you to stop doing that. Okay, stop being in the gap and start being in the gain instead. Don’t be obsessed about where you’re not, start being obsessed about all the tiny little incremental progress that you’re making.
And when you start focusing on that, you’re going to start to feel energized about that progress. And then you’re going to start to feel more confident. And you’re going to start to feel more self-esteem, right? And you’re going to start to make slow and steady progress and you’re going to start to create this unstoppable momentum for yourself. You’re going to feel more motivated to keep going.
So that’s your work for this week. Stop being in the gap. Find one place in your life where you’re, you know, you’re in the gap, and start being in the gain. Start being obsessed about progress. Cool, I think this is super fun, and life-changing. Do this this week. Don’t put this off. Do this for sure.
And remember, if you’re ready to get out of the gap for good and stop comparing yourself to where you’re not, and start focusing on the real progress you’re making towards your goals. You might want to see if coaching is right for you. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. Let’s have that conversation. Let’s get you out of the gap and into the gain. 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.
