Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
If you’ve ever trained for a marathon then you know that sacrifices have to be made in order to achieve that goal. You have to put in a lot of hours on the weekends running in the cold. You have …
Continue Reading about 221. What Are You Willing to Sacrifice to Lose Weight? →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 221 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, What Are You Willing to Sacrifice to Lose Weight?
So if you’ve ever trained for a marathon, then you know that sacrifices have to be made in order to achieve that goal. You have to put in lots of hours on the weekends running in the cold and the dark, you have to give up time with your friends and your family. You endure sore legs for days, you’re tired all the time, you are more than willing to sacrifice these things in order to finish that marathon.
Okay, so how about when it comes to losing weight? What are you willing to sacrifice in order to hit your weight loss goals? So in this episode, I’m going to take a deep dive into the kinds of sacrifices we all have to make in order to lose weight and keep it off.
But first, I know I talk a lot about nutrition, weight loss, improving your running, and getting stronger here on this podcast. If you’re new, welcome I’m glad you’re here. But you might be a little confused or overwhelmed by all this information.
I get it if that’s you, no worries, I’ve got you covered. I created a free hour-long training that you can check out at any time. It’s called Five Simple Steps to Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner.
I teach you the basics of nutrition and strength and endurance and mindset all geared towards you the long-distance runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner, ready to get stronger and become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself yet, this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and get started on your weight loss journey today.
Alright, so what are you willing to sacrifice to lose weight, there’s a lot of confusion around the weight loss world. And I’ve seen a lot of people who think or assume that you really don’t have to give up anything or make any sacrifices in order to lose weight.
Like you can just kind of keep doing what you’re doing, maybe run more, you know, maybe skip the ice cream every now and then or something like that, but you really don’t have to give anything up.
I’ve even heard, you know, dieticians and certain people touting these diets where you just can eat anything that you want. Just eat it in moderation. You don’t really have to sacrifice anything, just eat a little bit less of everything and all your problems will be solved. Does this really work?
I have to tell you that I know that didn’t work for me. I’ve tried that. I know a lot of people that have tried that it hasn’t worked for them. There’s a lot more going on than just like, you know everything in moderation.
Everything in moderation is a great idea. I wish it worked. If it worked, it would be amazing. But I don’t think it works for most people, especially when we’re talking about some types of foods like sugar, which are very difficult to moderate.
Have you ever tried to moderate your sugar intake? Have you tried to just eat a little bit of sugar? It’s hard to do. One of the reasons is is it brings you so much pleasure it lights up the pleasure centers in your brain every time you eat sugar. And it lights up those pleasure centers even more than certain drugs like cocaine do, you know, it’s crazy, how much it lights up the pleasure centers in your brain.
So just eating some sugar in moderation causes you this abnormal craving for more sugar, right? So if you’re somebody that’s trying to moderate what you’re eating, and you’re trying to moderate your sugar intake, and every time you eat it, you have this huge craving for more sugar, this is going to be very difficult for you, you’re gonna go crazy.
And what ends up happening is you eat a lot more sugar, because you’re trying to moderate. Okay, so that’s just one of the reasons why moderation doesn’t work. And I think that there’s a lot more going on in the human physiology when it comes to blood sugar when it comes to insulin when it comes to how our bodies store fat or release fat from fat cells.
You know, we’ve got to make sure that our insulin levels are low, that our blood sugar is pretty chill most of the time. And if you’re spiking your blood sugar and insulin is constantly high, it’s going to be very difficult for you to lose weight, even if you are eating in moderation, okay?
So the reality here is that we do have to make some sacrifices, and even eating whatever you want in moderation, you are still making some sacrifices there, because you’re not eating as much as you’re used to eating, if that’s the route you want to take, you know, people that do Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, calorie counting, you know, all that stuff.
I personally don’t think those methods are very effective long term, they’re effective short term, but not long term. You know, just for reasons like, you know, your, you know, restricting calories will kind of make your metabolism slowed down a little bit.
So, those types of diets, you know, why they tout just saying, like, oh, you know, we’re gonna, you know, eat everything, we’re just gonna moderate and really watch the number of calories you’re eating, you still have to make sacrifices there, you still have to watch the number of calories you’re eating. All right.
So just know that it doesn’t matter, the method of trying to lose weight, there is going to be some sacrifices that have to be made in order for you to reach that goal. Okay. And I want to say this, you know, I’ve said this a couple times before on the podcast here, but when we talk about losing weight, of course, we’re talking about losing fat, not just weight, we’re not talking about losing muscle or bone mass or anything like that. We want to improve our body composition, we just all understand that weight loss means fat loss, right?
Can we just all agree to that? Cool, okay. So when it comes to your body weight, and the amount of fat that you’re carrying around, or muscle, even in this case, there are three different approaches.
You can choose to maintain your weight, which means you’re just gonna keep doing what you’re doing and maintain your weight easily. You can gain weight, you know, you might be somebody that wants to actively get bigger, you know, maybe from a muscular standpoint, or you can try to lose weight.
So if your goal is to maintain your weight, and your weight is kind of where you want it to be, and you’re okay with where your weight is, then probably what you’re doing is fine, and you just can keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.
You know, you might be eating a certain way, you might be exercising a certain amount each week. And if you can easily maintain your body composition, meaning you’re not gaining fat, you’re not losing muscle, you really don’t need to change anything.
So this is what we call maintenance mode. And eventually, we all want to get into maintenance mode. And the end goal of any weight loss journey should be this place where you can just easily and kind of effortlessly maintain your weight, like that should be the goal.
And that’s the goal with everybody that I work with is like the end goal should be that when you and I are done working together, you know exactly what to do to easily and pretty effortlessly maintain your weight, right? So if you just want to maintain, that’s pretty easy to do. Just keep doing what you’re doing, you don’t really have to change anything. All right.
Now, the second approach is, let’s say you’re somebody that wants to gain weight. And you might be thinking, I’m sort of crazy for talking about this, who would want to gain weight? But lots of people do. Bodybuilders want to gain weight, I’m trying to gain weight, I’ve been trying to gain weight for some time now. And when I talk about gaining weight, what we’re talking about typically is gaining muscle.
So I’ve been actively trying to gain muscle. And it is hard to do because one thing you have to understand is that you have to be very diligent about eating more food, you got to increase your calorie intake, you got to eat more protein, then you have to do a significant amount of weight training.
And that could be training for hypertrophy training for strength, but you have to be actively working towards building bigger muscles, you can’t just expect to eat a lot more calories, and then expect to gain a bunch of muscle, it doesn’t really work that way. Again, that would be awesome if it did, but it doesn’t.
So we want to combine a good healthy diet and I’m not talking about eating a bunch of junk. But a good healthy diet, you just have to increase the calorie intake and then the right amount of weight training and we have to do this stuff consistently for a pretty long period of time, especially as you get older.
You know if I was doing this in my 20s or 30s, I’d probably be gaining weight from muscle weight pretty quickly and pretty easily. But now I’m in my late 50s you know, and putting on muscle and getting bigger in that way is a little bit harder, but I’ve been pretty successful with it you know and I’ll share more about about on a future podcast, I’m not quite where I want to be yet. So when I do get there, I’m going to share my journey with you guys there.
Okay, so that would be the approach of gaining weight. All right. So if you want to maintain, just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing, if you want to, if you want to gain weight, or even if you want to lose weight, then we have to change something, right?
So that brings us to the third approach, which is the one that most people, I would assume one, which is to lose weight, you want to lose that fat weight, okay? So if you want to lose, then we have to change something, if you want to maintain your weight, just keep doing whatever you’re doing, right?
But if you want to lose, what you’re doing is not getting you there, right? So we have to change something. If you have 20, 30, 40 pounds to lose, then whatever you’re doing right now is not going to get you there.
Maybe what you’re doing right now would be a good maintenance plan for you. So think about that. Like what if you’re not gaining weight, you’re just maintaining your weight pretty easily. But you want to lose, think about this. This what you’re doing now could be a good maintenance plan for you long term after you hit your goal weight, of course, right?
So common sense says that if you want to lose the weight, then we have to change something. And when I say change something, that means we have to sacrifice something or some things in order to start getting the weight to move, in order to get you to that goal weight.
Okay, so whenever people are told that they need to make a sacrifice, they figure Oh, my God, it’s like torture, you know, but it doesn’t have to be torture. I looked up the definition of sacrifice. And I like these words that are associated with it.
So the definition is to suffer loss of something to give up something to renounce something, or to destroy something, I like that one, we got to destroy the pizza cravings, you know, especially for an ideal a belief or an end. Right.
So the end, in this case, is your ideal weight. It’s your weight loss goal. And the sacrifices are the things that you need to give up that you need to renounce the things that you need to destroy, in order to achieve that.
And okay, another way of saying this is every goal requires a sacrifice. And the sacrifice could be something you love, like pizza, or ice cream. And, you know, it could be money or time or effort.
You know, if you’re training for that marathon, you know, you have to make sacrifices, months of training in the cold weather, long, long runs on sore, tired legs, you sacrifice time with your family, you sacrifice your social life, because you can’t go out on Friday night, you got to get up early to run 18 miles tomorrow. And then you can’t go out tomorrow night because you’re so tired from running the 18 miles.
You know, most people I talk to are like, oh my gosh, I am so willing to make those sacrifices in order to you know, hit my marathon goal. And so many people are so quick to make that decision. They’re like, cool, I’m definitely going to sacrifice to hit that marathon goal. In fact, I’m going to do this twice a year or three times a year, I run like two or three marathons every year.
So you’re making the sacrifices pretty much year-round. Because if you’re running two or three marathons a year, you’re kind of always in training. So you’re always giving up things. You’re always sacrificing some things for your training. So you know, that training for a marathon requires a lot of sacrifices and you do it gladly. You do it with a smile on your face. Okay.
So what about those sacrifices that you might have to make in order to reach a weight loss goal? You know, you may want to stop eating sugar and you may want to stop drinking alcohol and you may want to cut out the junk food that you’ve been scarfing down happily while you’re doing all that marathon training.
Maybe you cut out snacking or you just go down to eating a couple times a day. Maybe you stop eating all the pizza and the french fries and the ice cream. So all these things are real sacrifices that you might have to make if you want to hit that goal. But the bigger question here is this. Are you willing?
Are you willing to make those sacrifices are you willing to give up the foods that you love that tastes so amazing that light up the pleasure center in your brain like crazy, but they keep making you fatter?
Are you willing to give up those foods, because the cold hard truth is this losing weight requires sacrifices, becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself requires sacrifice. If it didn’t require sacrifice, you already would have achieved it. The fact that it requires a sacrifice means you have not achieved it yet.
So you have to give up something in order to get there, what you want is outside your comfort zone mean, meaning that, you know, if it was in your comfort zone, you’d already have it because it’d be something that you’re comfortable with, you know, but it’s not, it’s outside your comfort zone.
And so just by definition, one of the things you’re going to have to sacrifice is comfort in order to reach that weight loss goal. So sometimes I talk to my clients and they’ll say something like, you know, I’m a little frustrated because my weight has stalled a little bit. And by the way, this is totally normal happens all the time, weight loss can stall for 2, 3, 4 weeks sometimes.
And then it just picks up again, sometimes we don’t change anything. But it’s really not a stall if it’s you know, been four days or six days or something like that, it’s really not. If it’s three, four weeks, yeah, then we got to, you know, look at you know, something, and maybe make a change. And this is totally normal. Everybody goes through this at some point, okay?
So they’ll tell me, my weight is not changing at all, but it’s not going down, it’s staying the same. And when we really dig into what’s going on, almost always, it’s like, well, you know, I’ve had the occasional cookies here and there, I’ve had the occasional piece of cake, I only had one slice of pizza the other night, and I did have a glass of wine too, you know?
Okay, so first of all, all that stuff is fine to do if you want to maintain your weight, because you’re maintaining your way pretty easily here, you know, you can have the occasional cookie, you can have the piece of pizza here and there, you’re gonna have the occasional glass of wine.
And if you do it the right way, and you can do it in moderation. Again, it’s hard to do sometimes with some of this stuff. But if you can do it in moderation, then you’re good from a maintenance standpoint. So if your goal is to maintain your weight, you’re fine. Okay.
But since your goal is not to maintain, it’s to lose your weight, then you’re going to have to be a little bit more disciplined, right, you have to make these sacrifices, at least until you reach your goal weight, then you can go back to the occasional cookie, the slice of pizza, or the glass of wine here and there.
And maybe we practice doing that here and there, as you’re getting closer to that goal weight, so that you understand the mental and emotional aspects of drinking alcohol and eating sugar, because those things can really mess you up. And they’ll they’ll cause more cravings. And it’ll be really hard to stop once you start for some people anyway.
And so we got to be careful with that. So maybe we practice that and we can walk through it slowly. You know, I’m not just going to cut you loose and go Good luck, you know, we’re going to practice doing some of that stuff together. Okay.
So what I’m saying here is like we do have to make sacrifices, but we don’t necessarily have to make these sacrifices for life. Okay. I always talk about how we want to commit to a lifestyle, and commit to a lifestyle of eating healthy, that does not mean we commit to a lifestyle of never having another piece of pizza again, in our lives. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
So losing weight requires these lifestyle changes, you have to change the core of how you approach food, like your mental and emotional approach to food has to be different, right? You can’t keep doing the things you were doing before that doesn’t work, you already know that we and if you want to lose, you got to tighten things up a little bit.
You have to make some sacrifices. And then you have to learn how to do maintenance the right way. And maintenance doesn’t mean you just go back to doing things the way you did before. It’s about sticking to your healthy eating plan most of the time, like let’s say 90% of the time, it means learning that you can eat the occasional slice of pizza, and not the entire large pizza.
That was always my problem. I would be like I’m gonna get some pizza and I would eat like a whole medium or large pizza to myself. Depending on how like thick the crust was, you can only eat so much crust, you know, it means learning how to have a glass of wine once a week, not a bottle of wine every night. Like there’s a big difference there. Okay.
And this learning is how to do things differently. This learning how to moderate amazingly delicious foods that make us feel so good that that’s where the real work comes into play. Right? So if you’re somebody that’s like, you know, the thing that’s going to really be sustainable for me is if I can occasionally have that glass of wine, if I can occasionally have a piece of cake or cookie, but I can occasionally have pizza. I have learned how to do this.
And I have learned that I can eat pizza like couple times a year, I pretty much don’t eat sugar, I’ll have the occasional piece of dark chocolate. So it might be at 5% dark. So it’s there’s not much sugar in there. But I, when I eat that stuff, when I’m eating chocolate, when I’m eating some pizza, I want more of that stuff.
You know, I’ll start thinking about it ahead of time, because I usually plan it out. I’ll be like, oh, yeah, next month on the 14th I’m gonna have a pizza, you know, or eat some pizza. And then I’ll be thinking about, I can’t wait to have that pizza that I haven’t. I’m like, yeah, it was fine.
But then afterwards, I’m like, that was really good. I want more of that, you know, and I’ll and I’ll have to be really cognizant of my mental and emotional state around those types of foods that light up my pleasure centers, okay, and you’re gonna have to do the same thing for you. Okay.
So learning how to moderate some of these foods is really where the work kicks in. Okay, but you can do it. And the cool thing is, is that when you make these sacrifices, so you gotta be willing to make some sacrifices.
And when you make these sacrifices, and sometimes it’s for months on end, you might have to sacrifice some of these things for three months, six months, something like that, when you give them up, when you destroy them, they no longer have the power over you that they once had.
And after some time, you realize that not eating these things is really, you’re really not sacrificing anything at all. You know, it’s just not a big deal anymore. Okay.
So here’s your work for this week. Think about this. What do you need to sacrifice in order to reach your weight loss goals? Right? And then what are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to sacrifice all those things? And it has to be like a yes or no, you have to be committed.
You have to be absolutely committed to cutting these things out of your life, at least for a while. Okay? Every goal requires sacrifice. Losing weight requires sacrifice. What are you willing to cut out of your life to reach your weight loss goal? Okay, think about that. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
There are basically two ways to approach any challenge. One way is to focus on all the reasons why you can’t do it. The other way is to focus on all the reasons why you can. I find it …
Continue Reading about 209. Replay: Stop Arguing for Your Limitations →
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 209 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, stop arguing for your limitations. There are basically two ways to approach anything challenging in your life.
One way is to focus on all the reasons why you can’t do it. The other way is to focus on all the reasons why you can. And I find it interesting that so many people choose option one when facing anything challenging in their life. They spend a lot of time and a lot of energy focusing on all the reasons why they can’t do it.
So today, I’m going to talk about why you do this, how this kind of thinking is keeping you stuck, and how to stop arguing for your limitations. But first, I know I talk a lot about losing weight and improving your health and fitness here on the podcast. And I know that this can all feel a little bit overwhelming.
So if you’re looking for a good place to get started with all this stuff, I’ve created a free hour long training called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. In this training video, you’re going to learn how to fuel your body properly, so that you can lose weight and improve your running because you can do both, by the way.
You’re going to learn the incredibly important role that strength plays in being a lean healthy runner. And you’re going to learn how to make all these changes actually sustainable for you, which is really the key here for everything. Okay?
If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, ready to run faster and longer and ready to become the healthiest, most badass version of yourself, check out this free training now just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
So today, I have a replay for you. And this is a podcast episode I did quite some time ago. But it’s called How to Stop Arguing for Your Limitations. And I thought this would be a good time of the year to replay this episode. I think the thoughts that I share here are very timely as we get into the new year.
So I want you to sit back and enjoy this replay of stop arguing for your limitations.
Alright, let’s get into this topic today. So the topic today is, I titled this stop arguing for your limitations. And I have to tell you a little warning before we get started here that I’m doling out a little tough love today. I think this is an important message for all of us to hear. And listen, I need to hear this too. I’m not exempt from this message either.
So part of me talking about this is to remind myself that I need to stop arguing for my limitations too, because I do it sometimes, too. But I’m hoping this message resonates with you. I wrote a short post about this earlier in the week, and shared it on social media, and I think it touched a nerve for a few people.
And so I thought you know, I think I need to do a little deeper dive into this. Because a few people said, you know, oh, that was tough to hear, but I needed to hear it. So I’m hoping this resonates with you guys. So here’s what I’m seeing, I hear you guys tell me things like I want to do something big. I want I want to accomplish this big goal, I have this, this big dream or goal, you know, I want to lose 50 pounds, I’ve struggled for so long with this weight, I really want to lose this weight, or I want to run a full marathon, I really want to do that.
And so, you know, you say you’re all in, you want this with every bit of your soul, you’re like, I’m so focused on this goal, I’m gonna do it. You might have a plan, you start working the plan. But then you know, stuff starts to happen. Maybe you wake up in the morning, and then the weather’s not awesome, it’s raining outside, and you’re just like, I don’t really don’t feel like running today.
Or maybe you just get tired or maybe stuff like your job is stressing you out. You know, your kids are driving you crazy. Or the one that I love, you know, well COVID hit and so you know what that means as if like it was some hurricane that you know, knocked your house down or something.
But here’s what’s happening, we have all these external things that happen in our life. You know, we get an extra workload at work, you know, our boss is demanding more of us or, you know, the kids are being, they’re doing school from home, they’re doing like remote schooling, or the husband doesn’t help as much as he should be, according to you.
And you have all these external things happening. And instead of just forging on, you use these external things, as an excuse to give up to quit, you use these excuses to give up on these big goals and dreams that you said you are all in on. You wanted more than anything else. And you just use his excuse to quit.
You know, you say, I can’t focus on my health because you know, my kids are our home and they’re doing school from home now. So there’s no longer I can’t focus on my health anymore. What, really? Or I was doing fine, not eating sugar and carbs. But then I had this really stressful day at work. And, you know, my boss gave me a bunch of extra work. So I needed to eat a whole pizza and a half gallon of ice cream at one sitting.
If you’ve done that before, it’s fine. You’re normal. I’ve done that before. Or you’re just like, you know, this is just hard. It’s really hard. Training for a marathon is hard. Or losing weight is hard. So I just, that’s why I can’t do it. By the way, all this stuff I’m talking about here, this stuff is just life.
Stuff happens all the time. Life’s not supposed to be some carefree, happy existence. You know, flowers, daisies, unicorns, rainbows, it’s not like that. It’s more like 50/50 – half the time you feel pretty good. Half the time you feel not so good. That’s okay. You can either just accept this fact, or you can just fight against it with everything you’ve got.
And when you accept it, when you accept that you won’t feel happy all the time. Honestly, there’s a lot of freedom in that. What happens is we get ourselves into trouble when we have this belief. And we hold on to this belief very tightly that we have to feel happy all the time.
And I got news for you, that’s just never going to happen. This is you fighting against reality. And I see it all the time. I see it every single day. Well, I just want to feel better. Guess what, you’re not always going to feel good. And that’s okay. The inner turmoil that you feel is mostly caused by resisting these negative emotions, quote, unquote, negative emotions, unwanted emotions, like stress, like anger, like fear, like sadness.
All these emotions, we feel are just part of the human experience. We’re humans, we get to feel all kinds of amazing emotions, some of them are pretty amazing. Some of them feel so good. And some of them not so much. But to be human means we feel all these emotions. And we have to accept this fact, we will feel some positive and some negative emotion, some wanted emotions and some unwanted emotions, and it’s all good.
Life is 50/50 – be willing to accept all of it. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to agree with it. You don’t have to accept it and say, well, that’s just the way it is. I can’t do anything about it. No. It’s like I tell my weight loss clients all the time, I’m like, you have to love yourself exactly as you are right now. Look in the mirror and love yourself exactly as you are every bit of your body.
You can’t hate yourself and expect to lose weight, I always say can’t hate yourself thin, you got to love yourself exactly as you are. And you can work to change that. But you have to accept what is. It’s when we resist what is when we resist and reject that half of our existence that we quote unquote, don’t like or, you know, don’t think is normal.
That’s what causes us the internal pain and the agony, we resist and reject any kind of unwanted emotion. Okay, that was a little a little tangent, I went off on there. But I just need you to understand that there are external circumstances that are going to happen in our lives. And those things are neither good nor bad, really, I’ll talk about that more in just a second.
But understand that you may feel some stress, you may feel some anger, you may feel some fear. And it’s okay. Don’t push it away. Don’t push it away, just accept it all. I love this quote from Henry Ford. He said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” This is perfect for what I’m talking about here today.
So like I said, at the beginning, there are basically two ways we can approach a challenge. So we have something challenging in our life, we want to lose a bunch of weight, we want to run a marathon, we can focus on why we can’t do it. Or we can focus on why we can do it. Let’s talk about these.
When you focus on why you can’t do something, here’s what happens. You find all sorts of excuses, all sorts of reasons you have stories you want to tell me about why this isn’t going to work for you want to lose weight, but stuff happened at work, you know, my husband doesn’t help as much as he should. The kids are screaming in the background.
And in your mind, these are all valid excuses. They are valid reasons why you can’t do this thing. Why you can’t stay on your protocol, why you can’t train for your marathon. But let’s look at this. Let’s look at how this works. Because here’s the thing, these are all just stories that you’re telling yourself. These are all just stories, you’re believing you’re choosing them, and you’re choosing to believe them.
So let’s look at how this works. You got stuff happening at work, the husband’s not helping the kids are demanding stuff from you. These are what we call circumstances. Circumstances in our lives are always neutral. The circumstances in our lives are facts. They don’t hold any meaning on their own. They only mean something after we have a thought about the circumstances. Okay.
Neutral circumstances are true for everyone. They’re just facts, facts that can be upheld in a court of law, let’s say. So, the kids have to attend school from home, that is a fact. My workload has increased at work, tat is a fact. These are just facts. Everyone would say, yeah, that is true.
None of this means anything, until you have thought about it, until you choose a meaning that you want to assign to this particular circumstance. You with me so far? Circumstances, always neutral. If it’s something happening outside of our thoughts, feelings and actions, it is neutral, we have no control over it.
So the kids have to attend school from home is a circumstance, millions of parents are dealing with this right now. Right? This is just a neutral fact. Kids have to attend school from home, it does not mean you can’t, you can no longer focus on your health. It doesn’t mean you can’t train for a marathon.
Those millions of parents that are dealing with this right now, you know, half of them are probably out there, focusing on their health right now. They’re probably training for their first marathon right now. They’re figuring it out. Kids doing school from home does not mean you can’t run. If that were true, it would be true for everyone. But it’s not.
You’re choosing not to focus on your health, you’re choosing not to run. And what you’re doing is you’re using your kids having to do school from home, you’re using that as an excuse. Because what you’re trying to do is hard. And you don’t want to do it. Because it’s hard, because it’s uncomfortable. Because it’s gonna take a while.
By the way, nobody said this stuff was going to be easy. It’s why it’s a challenge. But you want that thing. You want it with all of your being. But instead, you’re choosing to focus on all these reasons, you’re choosing to believe, you’re choosing these reasons. This amazing story that you’re creating in your mind about why this won’t work for you.
And then I come in as your coach and I say, listen, here’s what your mind is doing, your brain is just making up these stories about why you can’t do this. This is a choice you’re making. These are just neutral circumstances, you can figure this out, let’s figure it out together. And then that’s when I get the pushback.
I get people digging in and fighting like hell, for all the reasons why they can’t do it. Why, you know, it’s different for them. They have all these stories, all these excuses, all these reasons. They defend these things, to their dying breath. They are fighting tooth and nail for these beliefs that they have about why they can’t do it. Why? It’s too hard for them and they argue with me.
No, it’s just the way it is Patrick, there’s nothing I can do about it. But you know what, there is something you can do about it. These are just beliefs that they are choosing. They’re arguing for their limitations. They’re basically saying like, look, I have these limitations. I can’t do it. Here’s all the reasons why. And then they list them all out.
And I hear stories and stories and stories. It doesn’t make any sense. You’re basically saying I want this goal. I want this thing that I’ve wanted for so long, but I know it’s a challenge, but it’s it’s too hard. And here’s all the reasons why I can’t do it.
They’re like focusing on the reasons why they can’t, creating all the reasons, all the excuses in their mind. And choosing to believe them. That’s the scary part right there. You’re choosing to believe these reasons. You’ve got to stop doing this. Just stop it right now.
Stop arguing for your limitations. Because the more you focus on why you can’t do it, the more reasons you’ll find, the more excuses you’ll find. You look for reasons why you’re failing and you will see these reasons everywhere. When you start looking for all the excuses, you will find them everywhere.
My friend Samantha says it this way. She says, “When you argue for your limitations, they’re yours to keep.” Powerful. So there’s another approach. This is the one that I would suggest you take on. It’s up to you though.
Let’s go back to those neutral circumstances. Okay, so my boss is asking a lot of me at work right now. It’s really stressing me out. So you can choose to believe that this workload is stressing you out, you can choose to believe that this means you can’t focus on your running anymore. You can’t focus on your health, and you have to like quit running.
You can choose to believe that this extra workload means you can just sit around and watch Netflix eating a whole pizza and half gallons of ice cream. And that’s just the way it is. As if you know, it’s all happening to you. What results do you think you’re gonna get from that? From taking those actions?
I can pretty much guarantee you’re not going to be running a marathon anytime soon, I can pretty much guarantee your health will definitely not be improving anytime soon. All right, my boss is asking me to do more work right now is a neutral circumstance. So what if you thought, you know, my boss was asking more of me. And I’m up to the challenge.
Hey, I’m really good at what I do. I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve done way harder things in my life. This is no big deal. You know, I might need to adjust my training plan a little bit. But hey, I got this. Wow, that’s a little more powerful, isn’t it? or what have you tried on a thought like, nothing is more important to me than my health.
And running a marathon has been a dream of mine for way too long. Now, I’m not letting a little extra workload stop me from reaching this goal. You know, what if instead of looking for all your limitations, because when you look for them, you will find them? I promise you? What if you looked for all of the possibilities? Focus on why you can’t and you’ll find reasons why everywhere.
Also focus on why you can and you’ll find reasons why everywhere. If you get to choose what you want to believe about your circumstances, because they are neutral, why would you ever choose to believe that you can’t do it? Why would you choose to believe that this stuff means you can’t reach your goal?
Why would you ever choose failure? Because that’s what you’re doing. By the way, I don’t really believe there’s such a thing as failure. You either keep going until you succeed, or you quit. These are two choices that you get to make. And they have nothing to do with anything outside of you know, kids screaming, no workload can change that. These are choices you’re making. You either keep going until you succeed, or you quit. For me, quitting is just not an option.
These are choices you get to make based on your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. It has nothing to do with COVID. Okay. Lots of people are training for a marathon. Lots of people are building a business during this global pandemic. Lots of people are improving their health. I see it every single day. Lots of people are getting amazing coaching and changing their lives for the better. Stop using it as an excuse.
Sorry, this is where the old Tough Love is coming in. I do love you guys. I hope you know that. Everything I’m saying I’m saying with kindness and love. I’m smiling. But listen, where are you in your life with this right now? Like where are you arguing for your limitations? Think about this.
Like, let’s say you want to lose 50 pounds? It’s pretty common for a lot of people I’ve talked to. Why do you think you can’t do it? Think about that. Why do you think you can’t do it? Why? Why isn’t this going to work for you? Ask yourself that question. See what your brain comes up with for an answer.
So maybe you came up with answers like well, I’ve tried everything, nothing’s ever worked before or you know understand I’ve time to figure all this out right now I don’t even know where to begin. These are just reasons you came up with, they’re just thoughts in your head. They’re not the they’re not the truth unless you choose to believe them.
Take a look at the circumstances in your life right now. Ask yourself this question: What am I choosing to believe about this particular situation, whatever it is? You know maybe it’s the kids being home. A lot of people are talking to me about their kids being home and doing school from home and it’s posing some challenges, some unique challenges for people.
What are you choosing to believe about that situation? Are you holding on to a story or a belief about it? That means you can’t do this. You can’t succeed at your health goals or your weight loss goals or your running goals. If that’s you, like, maybe think about that, and what do you want to believe instead? You get to choose what to believe.
By the way, this is a very important question to ask your brain, what thought can I choose to believe? What thought can I choose to believe that will motivate me, that will fill me with courage and passion and excitement about this big goal? It’s so important to me. Maybe something like you know what, I’m going to lose 50 pounds, no matter how long it takes.
I’ve tried a bunch of other stuff. It didn’t work. That’s all behind me now. Now, now is the time I’m going to figure this out. I will not stop until I figure it out. I will not quit until I succeed. This is way too important to me. I don’t want to ever feel sick and tired again.
I don’t know, I don’t really know where to begin with all this stuff. But I’m going to start today. And maybe I’ll ask for help. I’m going to seek out a coach, I’m going to get guidance, I’m going to get direction, I am going to make this work. Damn, that is a much more powerful way to approach something, right?
What if you took all that fight, all that energy that you’re putting into arguing for your limitations, and instead, put all that fight and all that energy into searching out like the possibilities and all the reasons why you’re going to succeed? I wonder what kind of results you’d get if you did that.
Remember, whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. That’s all I got for you today. Lots and lots of love to each and every one of you my friends, 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.
If you are having a hard time sticking with a health and fitness routine, then you might want to have a look at your locus of control. Locus of control refers to where you believe your control lies …
Continue Reading about 189. Shifting Your Locus of Control →
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 189 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, Shifting Your Locus of Control. So if you’re having a hard time sticking with a health and fitness routine, sticking with a healthy food plan, then you might want to have a look at your locus of control. And I’ll explain all this in the podcast here.
But your locus of control refers to where you believe your control lies either outside of you or within you. So people who have a strong external locus of control tend to have a pretty hard time sticking to a plan and accomplishing really anything.
On the other hand, people who have a strong internal locus of control have an easier time sticking to a plan and are generally more successful in all areas of their lives. So today, I’m going to explain what locus of control is, and how you can begin shifting your locus of control so you can get better results and really just live a healthier, happier life.
But first, I know I talk a lot about the amazing transformations you can experience when you join my program and get coaching from me how you can commit to becoming your healthiest self, but instead of me yammering more about it, I’m going to share some of my clients personal stories with you.
So Elisa said, “Since working with Patrick, I don’t beat myself up anymore. I believe in myself. I’m finally in control of my eating habits. I’m steadily losing weight.” Flora said, “I’ve learned how to become a fat adapted runner. And the feeling of running with a clear head and so much energy is just amazing.” Eric said, “I’ve learned how to create good habits to replace the bad ones. I’m down 18 pounds so far, and I feel really good about myself for the first time in a long time.”
Mick said, “Accountability and education were key to my success with Patrick. I’ve had so many positive changes. I know I’m not going to slip back into old habits.” Leticia said, “I no longer have sugar cravings, I’ve taken control of my eating habits once and for all.”
Michelle said, “I’ve lost 25 pounds, I’ve gained immeasurable confidence. I am totally in control now. And I’m fully capable of doing everything I set out to do.” And Amy said, “I’m thinking so much more clearly, I have more energy, I’m sleeping better, running is easier. So far, I’m down 30 pounds and several dress sizes.”
Listen, you can add your name to this list, you can be one of these people with an amazing transformational story to share. All you gotta do is get some coaching. Join the Running Lean Coaching Project. This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. Book an interview with me and you and I’ll have a conversation, we’ll see if coaching is a good fit for you.
And if you want a little bit of help, just getting started with all this stuff, I’ve created a great training program that you can check out. It’s about an hour long video training, you can watch it at your own pace. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. You can get that by going to my website Running Lean coaching.com and click on the Free Training link to get started. Cool.
Okay, so let’s talk about shifting your locus of control. So I talked to a lot of people who struggle to accomplish what they want for themselves, they struggle to reach their goals. So this could be a weight loss goal. This could be a strength goal, it could be a running related goal. Maybe they want to run their first marathon, qualify for Boston, or maybe they just want to run their first 5k.
But when it comes down to when you kind of boil it all down when it comes down to why it is they can’t seem to accomplish whatever goal they’re trying to accomplish. They start telling me all about the external factors affecting their life.
You know, I was doing great at sticking with this running plan. I was going to run my first marathon but then things got crazy at work. Or you know we traveled or went on vacation or the kids out of school so you know how that is or jeez, it just got hot out or it got cold out. Whatever.
So they look at their life as having all these external forces, external being things that are outside of themselves, that are affecting their ability to reach their goals or not to stick to their plan or not. That thing that seems so important to them, not that long ago has been pushed to the side because of all these external factors. Okay.
And the problem with this is that when you allow outside forces to affect your weight loss goals, your health and fitness goals, your running goals, then you’re going to have a very hard time accomplishing anything for yourself, you will always find reasons why you can’t do it.
You’ll have reasons and stories and excuses, you’ll always have somebody or something else to blame for why you can’t lose weight, why you can’t stick to this healthy eating plan, why you can’t train for that marathon or whatever.
The problem is that you’re going to really just stay stuck where you are. You won’t be able to accomplish these big goals that you want for yourself or small goals that you want for yourself, you won’t be able to accomplish much, you will always feel like you’re going to struggle, because it’s out of your hands.
It’s all these outside forces, all these external situations, these external circumstances that are to blame. You don’t have control over your own life. So this is known as having an external locus of control. So locus is just a Latin word, and it means place or location. So locus of control really relates to where your sense of control is located. Is it internally? Or is it externally? Is it within you? Or is it outside of you?
And locus of control is a term that’s used in psychology, and refers to a belief that the control of your life is either within you or outside of you. Okay, some people have a very strong internal locus of control. And some people have a very strong external locus of control.
And they’ve looked at all these people, and they’ve seen that people who have a mostly external locus of control tend to be not as successful, they tend to be not as happy, they tend to be maybe not as healthy.
And the people with a strong internal locus of control tend to be happier and healthier and tend to accomplish more in their lives. Okay. So somebody believes somebody with an external locus of control believes that outside forces control their destiny, I am not in control, I’m profoundly affected by external forces in my life.
People with a strong external locus of control, tend to be more passive, because things just happen to them. They tend to blame others for their situation, they tend not to accomplish goals. They believe that there’s really nothing they can do about their situation, because hey, it just is what it is. Right? Whatever happens, happens, why bother even trying?
They feel like they are unlucky, but like nothing good ever happens to them, because they’re just, it’s just not meant to be. Must be nice for those other people. But never, nothing ever works out for me. And what’s interesting is these people tend to be at greater risk for illness, they’re typically unhappy and unhealthy. They have a hard time sticking to a plan.
If you have a mostly external locus of control, it’s going to be harder for you to stick to a fitness routine, to train for a marathon to stick to a healthy eating plan. If you want to lose weight, you got to stick to a healthy eating plan. You have to be consistent with that plan. But if you’re constantly, you know, blaming everything around you for why you can’t stick to that plan, you’re gonna have a really hard time sticking with that plan. Okay.
So that is what external locus of control looks like. Can you relate to any of this? Does any of this sound like you? Because we’ve all had bits and pieces of this and I’ll tell you a little bit about my story in a minute here. But we’ve all had maybe times in our life when we had more of an external locus of control more of an internal.
So people with an internal locus of control tend to be more active, they’re actively engaging in changing their life. They’re actively engaged in improving their situation. Because they believe that they make things happen. You know, I did this, I made this happen, you know, my determination and my hard work, created my future, I’m not relying on outside circumstances, outside circumstances be damned, I’m going to make this happen.
They tend to accomplish goals regularly, consistently. They feel like they are in control of the events of their lives, they are in control of their own destiny. They don’t look to lock or fate, you know, to determine what they can accomplish or what they can accomplish, they take responsibility for their situation, whether that’s a good situation or a bad situation, they take responsibility, they tend to be healthier, they tend to have a reduced risk of illness.
And honestly, they just tend to stick with a plan. And it’s easier for them. All right. So wherever you feel like your locus of control is now just understand that it is not fixed. It is not something that is predetermined. And it is not something that you don’t have control over, you can actually change it.
It’s about what you believe to be true, not about what you think is true or not, what you believe to be true, will be true for you. If you believe you have no control over your life, and that it’s all about external circumstances, then that will be true for you. If you believe that you’re in control, that will be true for you.
Your locus of control is not something you are born with, it’s not something that is, you know, genetically imprinted in you or anything like that, it’s not a fact. It’s where you put it, it’s where you decide it’s going to be. So your goal then, is to shift your locus of control inward.
If you find yourself blaming external circumstances for where you are, why you can’t lose weight, why you can’t stick to that marathon training plan, why you can’t go to the gym and lift heavy weights. If you find yourself blaming external circumstances, for all that, then it’s time to make a shift, you need to shift your locus of control inward.
So shifting your locus of control can be as easy as making the decision that you’re going to do it, it can be as easy as taking 100% responsibility for everything in your life, for every result you’re getting or not getting in your life, it can be as easy as making that decision. So right now, decide “I’m going to stop blaming others, I’m going to stop blaming outside circumstances. I’m going to stop using stories and excuses and reasons why I can’t and start making it happen. I control my destiny. And it starts with me, and it starts right now.”
Right, that can be a very powerful way of taking control making that decision that you are in control. Because honestly, you are another way of beginning to shift your locus of control is to start reframing situations. So instead of just believing that here’s the way it is, not everything is just the way it is. And that’s the way it is because that right there is just a belief.
You need to start questioning what you believe to be true in every situation. So you can do this by reframing. And that is just like looking at a situation from a different angle. It’s like putting a different frame on the situation. Okay, instead of, “Man, it’s just so hard to stick to my food plan because my wife keeps bringing home junk food for dinner, you know, and burgers and french fries and pizza. Like she just keeps bringing this fun stuff home for dinner for the kids. And I can’t stick to my food plan because there’s pizza on the table.”
So that’s having an external locus of control when you believe that. So shifting inward, you can reframe that situation. And you can ask yourself, like, how can I stick to my plan, even though there’s pizza sitting here on the table right now and it smells amazing, but what am I going to do right now? Right here, in this moment, to stick to my plan. I made this promise to myself that I’m not eating pizza this month or whatever, this week. What am I going to do about that in this moment right now?
How can I control my eating in this moment, right now? Because there is an answer, but you have to look inward. And you have to start asking yourself, What can I do about this? Because the external circumstances are always going to be whatever they are, you have no control over that. You don’t have control over that.
You do have control of what you do about it, though. So reframe these situations. Don’t look outward, look inward. It’s never ever about what’s going on out there. It’s always about what’s going on inside. What can I do about this? How can I make this work? What action? What action am I going to take right now in this moment, that is in alignment with my long term goals?
So I first heard about locus of control in one of my coaching programs, this was many years ago, and I can’t even remember the class I was attending. But it was a live class. I was out in LA, I was there for about a month taking all these different coaching classes and live coaching classes before COVID and all that.
And we were in this class, and the instructor was talking, it had something to do with like the business side of coaching. And at the time, I was struggling to figure out a business plan. I had tried a few things in the past that didn’t really work. I loved coaching, but the business side of things, it just wasn’t clicking for me, you know.
And, and I felt like, I tried some things, and I kept failing. And so after the class, I went up to the instructor, and I was like, okay, I get what you’re saying here. But you have to understand, I don’t think this is going to work for me, because I’ve tried this and it failed. And I’ve tried this, and it failed. And none of this stuff ever works for me.
And I said something like, you know, I don’t think this is my fault. It’s like the economy, it’s the competition out there. You know, I don’t understand the technology, whatever, like I started, you know, kind of rattling off some of these excuses, right? And I’ll never forget this, he just looked at me and said, “Well, it’s definitely not going to work with that attitude.”
And I thought to myself, how dare you. This is not in my control. It just doesn’t work for me. It’s the economy. It’s the technology, it’s the competition or whatever. And I’ve tried these different things. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I just, I’m a failure, you know, and I was really feeling sorry for myself.
And I really had this external locus of control. I didn’t realize it at the time. But I had this aha moment where I had to accept this reality that I had a very external locus of control. And what he was saying to me, wasn’t about, you know, whether I could do it or not it was about or whether the outside circumstances had anything to do with it or not. But it was about my attitude about it. It was about my state of mind about it. It was about what I decided I was going to believe.
And if I wanted to be a successful coach and have a thriving coaching practice, then it was going to be up to me to make it happen. And yes, I’ve tried things that failed. And I tried other things that failed. And I kept trying until I figured out what really worked for me, and what felt good for me, and what was in alignment with my values and my beliefs. But it was always up to me.
It had nothing to do with anything else outside of me, it was me and my attitude. I had to stop blaming circumstances, and take ownership of my situation. And as soon as I did this, as soon as I decided that I was going to make it happen, everything shifted for me.
Now, it wasn’t like turning on a light switch. It took time to get there. But it only took a moment. It was a brief moment where I made that decision that I was never going to blame anyone else ever again. I wasn’t going to look outside of myself for reasons and excuses and be a blamer and a complainer. Like if it is to be it is up to me. If it’s going to happen, I’m gonna make it happen. That’s the only way It’s gonna work. But I made that decision and I took a moment to make that decision. Okay?
So here’s what I want you to do this week, I want you to make that decision. You can do this by taking an inventory of where you are right now. So maybe get out a piece of paper or journal, something like that, and do a little bit of writing on this, like, write down all the things that are happening in your life, what’s going well, what’s not going so well.
What are you getting? Where are you getting good results in your life? Where are you not getting good results in your life? What activities are you engaging in that you’re proud of? That are in alignment with your goals, what activities are you engaging in that are not necessarily in alignment with your goals, maybe you’re not so proud of?
Where are you in regards to your goals? Are you on track? Are you not on track? Are you feeling stuck? Like just kind of take an honest inventory and look at each of these situations with yourself in your life? And honestly, ask yourself, you know, is this something that is in my control or not? Are you in control of each of these areas of your life or not?
Because if you keep thinking, I’m not in control, this has to do with, you know, my boss at work, or my wife is not, you know, being supportive. If you keep looking outside of yourself, for answers to these situations, or reasons why you’re not making progress in these situations, you’re gonna have a really hard time changing any of that.
If you’re feeling stuck in any area of your life, you’re gonna have a hard time getting unstuck, if you continually blame others. Take control. Reframe each of those situations, what can I do about this? What can I alone do about this? How can I take control of this particular situation right now? What is my part in this? Because there’s always an answer. You are always in control. Even though it doesn’t feel like it, you are, you just have to make that decision that you are going to be in control.
Being out of control is an illusion. You know, unless somebody has you chained to a water heater in their basement, you are in control of your life. And if you’re chained to a water heater, in somebody’s basement right now, then please reach out. We’ll help you, we’ll help you get out of that situation.
But listen, you have control, you just have to make that decision that you are going to take control of your own life, that you’re going to shift that locus of Control inward. And start being 100% responsible for everything in your life. You do that and I promise you things will begin to shift for you.
Okay, it takes some time to get there. It takes some time to accomplish those things you want for yourself, but it starts with that decision. Make the decision, you’re going to shift your locus of control inward, make that decision that you’re going to start being 100% responsible for every result in your life, good or bad.
Okay, this is a game changer right here. That’s all I got for you guys today. I love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Most people tend to be pretty motivated when they start something. You decide you want to lose weight so you change your diet, and for the first few weeks, maybe even a month or so, you are super …
Continue Reading about 188. The Cycle of Unstoppable Motivation →
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 188, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, the cycle of unstoppable motivation. So most people tend to be pretty motivated when they start something.
So you decide you want to lose weight. So you change your diet. And at the beginning, maybe the first few weeks, the first month or so you feel super motivated. You’re tracking your food every day, you’re sticking to the plan perfectly, and you feel good about yourself. You think, man, I’m crushing this.
But then over time that motivation begins to fade, you kind of stop tracking your food every day, you cheat on a few meals, which leads to a few more and a few more. And you just no longer feel motivated to keep going. Have you experienced this? I know I have.
This is the same reason why in January, all the gyms are full, but then in March, they’re empty again. Because people lose their motivation. So today, I’m taking a look at why that motivation fades, and what you can do to keep it going. I’m calling this the cycle of unstoppable motivation, so that you can actually crush your health and fitness goals.
But first, listen, when it comes to coaching programs, there are basically two main types of coaching out there. There’s group coaching, and private one on one coaching. Group coaching is something I do in my program where I lead a group Zoom call a couple times a week. These group calls are beneficial for a couple of reasons.
First, you get more opportunities for coaching to be held accountable, to ask questions and get answers. Second, you get to hear from people in the group who share similar goals and experience similar struggles. It’s very helpful. And third, having the support of the group is one of the main reasons why so many people are successful in my program, because they never feel alone. Right?
They always have this group of people who get it who are right there to help them and support them every step of the way. So that’s group coaching.
And then also, there’s private one on one coaching, this is probably the most powerful part of any kind of coaching relationship. This is where you and I develop your personalized plan, we make sure you’re sticking to the plan. That’s the important part. It’s one thing to have a plan, it’s another thing to stick to it, right?
And then that’s also where we make changes to that plan if necessary. One on one coaching is where you specifically are held accountable for your actions. Did you do what you said you were going to do? Yes, no, why? Why not? Losing weight and keeping it off for good requires a lot of knowledge, support, encouragement and motivation, feedback, accountability. That’s why I created my program the way that I did, because it delivers all of this and more.
If you’re interested, you can learn more about the Running Lean Coaching Project. This is my unique weight loss coaching program for runners. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Work With Me.
And if you want a little bit of help getting started with all of this stuff that I talked about here on the podcast, I created a pretty comprehensive training program that you can check out. It’s a video, I think it’s about an hour long.
It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on the Free Training link to get started with that. Cool. Okay, so today I’m talking about the cycle of unstoppable motivation.
So when people set out to do something to make some kind of big change to their health or fitness, you know, like, people will join a gym or they’ll start running or they’ll change their diet. Early on in the process, they feel really motivated. They got all these positive vibes happening. They’re pretty excited.
But over time, something happens. They begin to lose the motivation to keep going. And eventually, they give up and they quit. I know you’ve experienced this in some form or fashion because I think everyone has at some point in their life, right?
Here’s the thing: we use all sorts of external excuses, and reasons why we stopped doing the thing and why we lost our motivation. People will say well, I had a bad week at work and you know, or, you know, the scale just stopped moving or it was really cold outside, so I couldn’t run outside or it was too hot outside, so I couldn’t run outside or whatever.
The bottom line is people lose their motivation and they quit. And they justify quitting with all these excuses, you know, and then they’ll say to themselves, like, why should I even bother, it’s too hard, it’s taking too long, the results aren’t coming fast enough. I don’t think this is working for me. And all of those are just excuses.
Even something like this isn’t working for me, it isn’t working, because maybe you need to change something. So instead of going off track, giving up and quitting, if you want to get results, if you want to improve your health, your fitness, if you want to change your body composition, if you want to lose weight, if you want to gain muscle, if you want to get faster. The only way to achieve this is to keep going, you can’t quit, there’s no quitting, right?
You’ve just got to keep going until you finally succeed. There’s this quote that I love. It’s like,
“Every success is built upon a big ol pile of failures, right?” So even though you think you’re failing, you gotta keep going. But people don’t keep going because they don’t feel motivated to keep going.
But here’s the thing, motivation is one of those things, and I’m gonna explain a little bit more about this in a minute here. Motivation is one of those things that we are responsible for. It doesn’t come from outside of us. It’s something that we create ourselves.
Okay, so if you want to accomplish anything, let’s just say that motivation helps, but it’s not the answer. Like you don’t have to be motivated to go run. I’m telling you what, here’s a good example: this morning, I woke up, I was tired, I didn’t sleep well last night. And for whatever reason, I woke up, and I was really tired.
And I did not want to go to the gym, I had zero motivation for going to the gym, and it was leg day, my least favorite day at the gym. And I was like, I do not want to go to the gym today. And I was saying that to myself, as I was putting my shoes on and as I was brushing my teeth and getting ready to leave the house to go to the gym.
I didn’t have the motivation. But I did it anyway, because it’s something that’s kind of become a habit for me. And while on this topic today, I’m not really talking about habits, that is kind of where we want to get to with a lot of this stuff, we want to build good habits.
Listen, if you want to lose weight, you have to stick with your food plan consistently, you’ve got to develop good habits around that. If you want to get bigger muscles, you have to continually lift weights, you got to get into a good habit around that.
If you want to run faster, you got to practice running faster, and you got to do it consistently. The problem is that most people won’t accomplish what they want for themselves, what they really want for themselves. Because it takes time, it takes time to lose weight, it takes time to get stronger, takes time to get faster.
And the road to getting there is hard. That’s why most people don’t do it. It sucks. Sometimes, today at the gym, I gotta tell you, I did not feel good. That was not fun. But I know that this is a means to an end, like I know that I suffer for an hour at the gym in the morning. And the rest of my day is amazing.
And I’m getting stronger, and it’s improving my running, and it’s improving my body composition. So we just have to understand that those things that we want for ourselves, we have to do them consistently, we have to stick to them. And that’s where this conversation comes in here.
Because how do we stay consistent? How do we stay motivated? How do we keep our head in the game, even when we don’t feel like it? That’s kind of what this whole topic is about tonight. Okay. So the goal of this talk today, this episode, is really to teach you how to make motivation a habit, how to stay motivated, how to stay on track, how to stick to the plan, how to keep taking action, even when you don’t feel like it.
When you get to that place, then there isn’t a question of whether you’re going to go to the gym or not, whether you’re going to stick to your diet or not, whether you’re going to do your speed work or not. You’re going to do it because you’ve created good habits around that. And you feel motivated to do that because you’ve created that motivation for yourself. Okay.
So here’s what I want you to visualize. I teach this to my coaching clients and I’m sharing this with you guys here today. So just so you know, this is one of those things that I teach to my clients but I thought pretty strongly about sharing this with you today.
And one of the things I can’t really show you here, but if you can imagine a visual of a circle with arrows, you know, circling around, like, you know, clockwise arrows circling around the circle. And in the circle, there are four quadrants basically.
And the first one is action. The next one, action leads to progress, which leads to confidence, which leads to motivation, which leads to action again, okay? So just, I want you to be visualizing this, you know.
I have a slide that I, when I teach this to my coaching clients, I have a slide that I use, and it shows this and it gives you a good visual, but just imagine a circle with the words action, progress, confidence, motivation around that circle, okay. I’m gonna explain what all that means here because I think it’s important to understand each one of these steps.
Okay, so the first part of the cycle, the cycle of unstoppable motivation is action. An action is everything that you do. So it’s your behaviors, your routines, your habits, it’s your plan, it’s like making a food plan and sticking to the plan, that’s taking action.
It’s like maybe abstaining from alcohol. So that’s actually something you’re not doing, you’re not taking action, but I’m going to consider that an action as well. Abstaining from alcohol is an action.
Running, you know, sticking to your running schedules, sticking to your resistance training schedule, going to bed early, so that you get a good night’s sleep. So you go, you can hit your workout at four o’clock in the morning, because you gotta do it before you work.
Reading a self help book every day, doing your morning routine, maybe some meditation, yoga, journaling. All of these things are actions. And what’s specific about these kinds of actions is that when you take these actions consistently, you start to get, you start to make progress. And you start to get results.
And the important part of taking action is that you are taking aligned action. So aligned action is actions that are in alignment with your goals. So if you take no action, you’re not going to get any results. I think we can all agree on that. Right? If you take misaligned action, so eating cake for dinner, instead of the salad and the chicken that you had planned, that’s called misaligned action, you’re going to get misaligned results. Results that are not in alignment with your long term goals.
Aligned action will give you aligned results, this will give you the results that you do want. So when you stick to your food plan, and you do this consistently, you will start to lose fat weight, you’ll start to improve your body composition, you’ll start to sleep better, you have more energy, running will improve, all those things, right. So we want to stay in aligned action.
I think we can all agree that this is pretty basic stuff right here, right. But this is where a lot of people will fall off because they stop taking that aligned action because they’re not motivated. So remember, in our circle, we have action, progress, confidence, motivation, which leads to more action and the cycle continues. Okay.
So we need to be taking consistent aligned action, that’s how we are going to make progress. So once you get started with a certain behavior, it’s much easier to just keep going and keep doing it.
It’s much harder to stop and start, stop and start. So for example, let’s say you want to eat healthy and you kind of created a healthy eating plan and you’ve stuck to it for a few weeks but then you went back and forth for a week you went and did you know back to the way you were eating before and then you decide oh, you know what I better go back to eating what I was before.
That’s a lot of work to get back started doing something like that same thing when you take a break from running . It’s much easier to just continue running and keep your fitness level up all year long. Yeah, we train in cycles.
Yes, it’s okay to take some time off here and there, but if we take an extended period of time from running because we just hate it or we don’t feel like it. I’m not talking about being injured but that can apply to you know, but that’s something you may not have as much control over.
So if you take a break from running, trying to get back into running again is really hard and I talk to people about this every day they’re like I just can’t get back into running again. It’s so hard. I took a year off because you know I got injured but then I got better but then I just didn’t feel like running, I wasn’t motivated anymore.
So keeping up and just maintaining your fitness is much easier than stopping and starting. Maintaining your good eating, your diet, your nutrition plan is much easier than starting and stopping. Okay, so we want to stay in action mode, we want to be taking a wind action. And we want to make sure that we are not relying on something like willpower to keep us going. Okay?
Taking action, taking consistent aligned action requires more than willpower, because willpower is like, it’s like a fuel tank, it gets drained as it’s used. So think about this, at the beginning of the day, you have lots of willpower, like you feel pretty, pretty strong and confident that you can stick to all your plans.
But by the end of the day, you’re like you’re tired, you’ve had an exhausting day, you’ve experienced all this stress. And that willpower has been drained that willpower tank is like empty by the end of the day. That’s why so many people just plopped down on the couch with a pint of ice cream and Netflix instead of working out when they said they’re going to work out in the evenings.
And I encourage people to, you know, work out in the mornings, if you can do it first thing in the morning and just get that out of the way, if you can do that. If you can’t, then you got to have more than willpower to get you going. And that’s kind of part of what we’re talking about here.
So really the secret of like creating and starting the cycle of unstoppable motivation is to take aligned action. And you got to take aligned action, even when you don’t feel like it. Example me this morning, putting my shoes on and going to the gym, even though I was like, not excited about it, not motivated, not feeling it. No good vibes happening at all, but I took aligned action, because I know, that’s what I want for myself. Okay.
So number one action, take aligned action, even when you don’t feel like it. What happens when you take aligned action, you make progress. And that’s kind of the second part of the cycle of unstoppable motivation, progress.
When you take consistent aligned action, you make progress. When you don’t take action, you don’t make progress, right? You can’t like lose weight by just thinking about losing weight, or listening to a podcast about losing weight or reading a book about losing weight, like you have to take action, right.
But here’s the thing, once you start seeing some progress, you start to feel good about things, right. Most weight loss principles adhere to the idea that we want to get you making progress from the very beginning and continually keep that progress going. Because that helps you to stay motivated.
Because once you start seeing progress, that progress will lead to the next step, which is building confidence. Okay, but once we see some progress, we want to keep going. We stay motivated when we’re making progress. So when we take consistent aligned action, we make progress. And we stay motivated to keep taking more because of consistent aligned action. Right.
When you make progress, you build confidence. When you make progress, you get results, even though they might be small, like little baby steps. You know, if you start lifting weights at the gym, and you expect to like grow some big giant muscles, it’s going to take some time, like, honestly, if you want to get big, like bodybuilder big, like it may take a couple of years to get there for you.
Which you just have to like understand that that’s the way these things work. And like you just have to commit to that. But progress, even if it’s minimal, we want to celebrate that and continually take action that’s going to lead to more progress. So you take more progress, you create better results, and that cycle just keeps going right? We want to measure our progress, right? So you can’t you can’t track something you can’t improve something that you don’t measure. So make sure you’re measuring progress.
Track your runs, are you getting faster? Track your weight loss, are you losing fat and gaining muscle? Track your strength training, are you getting stronger? Track your sleep, your productivity at work, everything that you want to improve, make sure you’re keeping track of this, okay?
And then also when we’re talking about progress, don’t focus on where you’re not, so don’t focus on well, you know, I really want to run a sub two half marathon. But you know, gosh, I’m at a 2:30 right now. I’ve got so much to go like it’s gonna be so hard to get there.
If you keep focusing on where you’re not though, oh man, you’re just going to be, that’s depressing. You’re going to be very unmotivated, if you’re focusing on where you’re not okay, so focus on the gain. That’s the progress that you’ve made. That’s why we track our progress, because we want to celebrate that and focus on the gains we’re making, even if they’re tiny.
And don’t focus so much on the gap. So let’s say you want to be 150 pounds, but you weigh 200 pounds, you know, you’re gonna be concentrating on that 50 pound gap. And that feels terrible. 50 pounds, oh my God, I got 49 pounds today, oh, my gosh, I got 48 more pounds to go. How about, you know what, I’ve lost a pound a week for the last three weeks. And I feel good about that. Oh, my gosh, that’s great progress, right?
I mean, that’s a very different way of looking at this, okay. So take consistent line action. When you do that, you start to make progress. Making progress helps to build confidence. That’s the next step in the cycle of unstoppable motivation, which is confidence. So confidence is a feeling, it’s an emotion, motivation is a feeling too.
Both confidence and motivation are created by you. These things are not out there. They’re not something that you get from someone else. You know, you might be inspired by somebody else. But you don’t get motivated. Motivation comes from within, you don’t get confidence from looking at what other people are doing, you get confidence because of what you do.
When you do something and you stick to your plan, you build confidence, you build trust in yourself, making progress helps to build confidence. So when you see things moving in the right direction, your confidence builds, you see that things are working, and this feels good. And you’re like, oh, you know, this could actually work, you know, I’ve started losing weight, I’ve started running a little bit faster, oh, man, I might be able to do this, oh, I might be able to hit this weight loss goal. Right.
So just the act of being consistent and taking consistent line action will create a little bit of progress and help to build your confidence. And again, we want to celebrate the wins, we want to focus on the gains, not the gap. So celebrate those successes, celebrate the progress that you make, that helps to build more progress, more confidence. And the longer you stick with something, the more confidence you create.
So keep making your plan and sticking to your plan. Keep planning on your workouts and stick to those workouts, keep planning your food and stick to that food plan. Just the act of being consistent with your plan will help to build confidence. Because honestly, that’s the only way you’re going to make progress and get results.
You don’t get results by being confident you don’t get results by being motivated, you get results by taking consistent aligned action. Okay? Again, confidence is a feeling it’s like this inner knowing that you’re on the right path.
Even if you aren’t getting much in the way of results, but you just know you’re on the right path. So building confidence is one of those things that will keep you in the game, it will keep you on track.
And one thing a lot of my clients have told me is that having somebody there like having me as a coach or the other people in the coaching group there helps them to get through some of the tough spots, helps them to stay on track.
It helps them to make progress and helps them to build their confidence. So having somebody there to hold you accountable is key to like gaining and maintaining confidence to keep you going okay? So you have all this confidence, and this is going to dramatically improve your motivation. Confidence leads to more motivation.
So now you’ve taken aligned action, you’ve made significant progress. This is building your confidence and trust in yourself. An inner knowing that you can do this, which keeps you motivated. Right. So motivation is like a general willingness or a desire to do something. It’s a feeling that drives actions and behaviors in a positive way. So now you feel like taking more aligned action. And then the cycle just continues.
So this is a beautiful thing, this cycle of unstoppable motivation, continually taking aligned action, continually making progress, feeling more confident, feeling more motivated, which leads to wanting to take more aligned action. And that’s it the cycle continues and continues.
And when you’re motivated, when you’re taking consistent aligned action, when you’re making progress, you create momentum. Momentum is what keeps the cycle moving like we want to stay in momentum, we want to keep the momentum going because momentum creates more motivation, which creates more momentum.
So you’ve heard this phrase, probably, “An object at rest remains at rest, while an object in motion remains in motion.” This is Newton’s first law of motion or inertia. So in other words, another way of saying this, and I kind of said this earlier is that it’s much easier to just keep going than it is to stop and start, stop and start, stop and start. Don’t do that.
Get into momentum, and keep the momentum going. Because once you stop, again, it’s really hard to start again. So we want to stay in the cycle, stay in the cycle of unstoppable motivation, which is you’re taking consistent aligned action, you’re making progress, you’re building confidence, you’re, you’re creating motivation to take more aligned action, making more progress, and on and on and on. Okay.
Now, there is sort of a dark side to this, this is the dark side of motivation. And I call this the cycle of demotivation, okay? The insidious cycle of demotivation. So this is where you don’t take action, or you take a misaligned action. What happens there is that it creates a lack of progress, or a regression of backwards progress, negative results, which destroys your confidence.
It creates a lack of confidence, self doubt, uncertainty, pessimism, which leads to a lack of motivation. you’re discouraged, you’re demotivated, which means that you are not motivated to take action. So you don’t take action. And you don’t make progress. And you feel less motivated and less confident. And that cycle just continues and continues, right?
Sounds depressing even talking about it. This is a terrible cycle to be in. So stay out of that cycle. How do you stay out of the cycle of insidious demotivation? Well, the first step is to never get into it in the first place. So, consistently do what it takes to stay in aligned action and consistently stick to your plan.
Just remember that when you’re in this cycle of demotivation, it’s like a whirlpool. It spins faster and faster. Like, especially in the middle. So stay out of the vortex. Like if you’re on the outskirts of this thing, and like you find yourself being pulled in a little bit. Just shut that down as fast as you can.
So that’s like, Oh, I missed a workout. Okay, well get out of this. Get out of the Whirlpool, get out of the vortex. Oh, you know, I had a cheat meal. I just couldn’t give up this donut they had in the break room at work like, okay, next meal, you get back on track, you skipped a workout. Great. Next workout, you’re back on track, stay out of the cycle of demotivation. Right?
Just because you screwed up once it doesn’t mean you’re done. Right? Stay out of that get back into align action as soon as possible. Failure is never final. Just because you screwed up. It doesn’t mean you are done. Right? You pick yourself up again, you look at what you did. Think about what you could do differently next time, and then get back on track as soon as possible.
We never miss two workouts in a row. We never have two cheat meals in a row. Okay, be consistent consistency beats perfection. You’ll never do all this stuff perfectly. Nobody’s expecting you to. I don’t do it perfectly. Nobody I work with does this perfectly. But yet, we all get amazing results. Because we do these things consistently. We are not after 100% perfection. We’re after 90%. Some days 95%. Some days might be 100%. Whatever it is, we want to be just taking consistent aligned action. Okay. So don’t get out of control.
Just, you know, another way of thinking about this is like divide your day up into four quarters. So we have like, early morning, late morning, afternoon, evening. And if you give into temptation, eat some cookies at lunch like okay, you lost that quarter. You lost your afternoon, quarter. No big deal. Now your goal is to win the next quarter. You might lose a quarter, no big deal. Don’t lose the day. Get back on track ASAP when the next quarter.
Losing a quarter will happen. It happens to all of us, okay. Never, ever lose two in a row. Never ever lose the day. Okay. That is how you stay in the cycle of unstoppable motivation. Take consistent aligned action, make progress, get results, feel confident. That increases your motivation to take more consistent aligned action and on and on and on that’s where I want you to be.
You do that, you’re golden. Cool, alright that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
I work with a lot of runners who are awesome at sticking with their running plans. They get up early on Saturday mornings religiously, regardless of the weather outside. They do the required …
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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 185 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, why it’s so hard to stick to your food plan.
So I work with a lot of runners who are awesome at sticking with their running plans. They get up early on Saturday mornings religiously, regardless of the weather outside, they do all the required speed work every single week, no matter what.
They never miss a workout even when they’re sick. And they should probably take a day or two off. So they’re really good at sticking with this plan, but when it comes to sticking with their diet so that they can lose weight, it all seems to fall apart.
Why is this? Why is it so easy for runners to stick to a very difficult marathon training plan, and it’s so hard to stick to a healthy eating plan? I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot lately. So in this episode, I’m going to explain why it’s so hard to stick to your food plan. And I’m gonna offer up some sound advice for changing this.
Okay, but first, when I first set out to change my diet so that I could lose weight, I did not do things perfectly. In fact, for the first few months, I kept slipping up, I kept reverting back to old eating habits. And I kept getting into cravings that I had for junk food.
And I used to think that every time I got off track, it meant that I was a failure. I thought it meant that I would never get this figured out, I would never lose the weight. I would stay on track for a while and I would slip up and then I would start again.
And I did this over and over and over again. And every time I failed, instead of quitting, I just got back on track as soon as I could. So I never did this perfectly, but I always kept going. I never quit, I never gave up on myself.
So instead of focusing on perfection, I focused on consistency. You won’t do this perfectly either. Actually, spoiler alert, nobody does. Nobody does this perfectly. So don’t aim for perfection. Aim for consistency. The key to losing weight and keeping it off for good is not perfection, but consistency over time.
Practice staying on your plan, practice avoiding those urges to eat junk food, practice being consistent over time, and I promise you, you will get there eventually. And if you want a little help with this, you want a little help practicing consistency, I’m here for you.
Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more about my unique weight loss coaching program for runners.
Okay, why it’s so hard to stick to your food plan? So really, the big key to accomplishing anything that you want for yourself is to make a plan and then stick to the plan, right? This is so simple. It’s such a simple concept.
And if you’re part of my coaching program, you know I say this all the time. And we actually sort of joke around about it because I say it so much. But really, it’s ‘make a plan and stick to the plan no matter what’. That’s it. That’s the key.
And you guys are so good at doing this when it comes to running. You’re so good at doing this when it comes to training for some big event. You know, I work with runners all the time. And they are great with sticking to their running plan, their cross training, their weightlifting schedule, their stretching, all these things are easy. Like they’re like, oh, yeah, I got it. That’s not a problem at all.
But why is it so hard when it comes to food when it comes to sticking to a food plan so that they can lose weight and get healthier, and improve their life in all kinds of ways? It’s so hard. It’s so hard that most people don’t do it. Most people rarely will take the time and the effort to stick with a food plant to where they actually succeed at losing weight and getting healthier and failing, but some people do. And that’s great, but so many people don’t.
However, they are sticking with a running plan. They’re training for a marathon or ultra marathons and they’re great at that, they never miss a workout. So it’s interesting, isn’t it? I’ve always found this to be very interesting.
And I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. And I’ve and I’ve got some ideas here that I’m going to get into in just a minute, but I just want you to be thinking about yourself. During this episode, think about where you fall.
In this scheme of mindset here, are you one of those people who was really good at sticking with a training program, but not a food program? And if that’s you, this is definitely going to be something you’re going to want to listen to maybe a couple of times, okay.
So we find it very difficult to stick with a food plan, but find it pretty easy to stick with a running schedule. Even though that running schedule, for all intents and purposes is hard, it is challenging, most people would say, oh my gosh, that is such a hard thing, I could never run a marathon, I could never do the work, I could never run an ultra marathon.
So let’s break this down a little bit. So when you are planning to, let’s say, I’m just going to use the running a marathon as our example here at a training schedule, because that’s pretty difficult, something that requires time and, and it is difficult.
So when you have a training plan written out, so you have a training schedule, you’ve planned this in advance, you know, you’ve signed up for something ahead of time, you’ve got all your training planned out, and you are most likely to stick to that training schedule, like your life depended on it, right?
Why is food so different? Why can’t we just apply that same concept to food? Logically, they are very similar things we’re talking about here. They’re very similar undertakings. Training for a marathon is hard. It requires, you know, a lot of hard work, it requires time, so does losing weight, it requires hard work, it requires time, they both require consistency over time.
They both require you to plan things out in advance and stick to the plan. Even if things aren’t, you know, perfect. Even if the weather is terrible, or, you know, you aren’t at home to make dinner for yourself or whatever, we still stay on track, right?
So logically, they require the same things like making a plan in advance, we have structure around that plan, there are steps involved. So for running, it’s your training schedule, this is a structured rigid thing, and it has very specific steps laid out, you’re going to run five days a week, you’re going to do speed work on these days, here’s when you’re doing your long run every week, you’re going to increase your mileage by so much every week, these are your days off, it’s all laid out for you.
And your food plan can be just as structured, in fact, I encourage you to, to create the structure around your food plan the same way you create the structure around your marathon training plan, eat these things, don’t eat these things. Only eat two, three times a day, cut out snacking, you don’t need to be snacking all the time, make protein your priority, eat mostly whole foods.
Stay away from stuff and packages and processed foods and you know, concentrated forms of carbohydrates. Again, this can be all laid out. It can be very structured and rigid. And it can be something that is all laid out. Right? They’re both the same.
And it’s interesting because looking at these two things on paper, they look identical, right? So what’s the big difference? Why is it so hard to stick with food? And I think that a lot of this boils down to your mindset. And here’s what I mean by this.
The mindset required to train for a marathon and successfully finish that marathon is exactly the same mindset that’s required to stick to a healthy eating plan so that you can lose weight. And I bet you’ve never really thought about it like that before because most people don’t.
They think they’re totally different. There are some differences. I’ll get into that in a second, but listen, here’s what’s required. From a mindset standpoint, to be successful at both running a marathon, you know, training for a marathon and running that and finishing it successfully, and losing weight, they both require a plan.
But more importantly, they both require sticking to the plan. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here is focused on sticking to the plan. So the first mindset standpoint that they’re that they both need is this, this has to be something that is important to you. It matters. There’s a reason why you are doing this.
Why are you running a marathon or why do you want to lose the weight? It’s not just to be healthy. It’s probably to prove something to yourself that you can do hard things. It might be so that you can level up and grow and become more, evolve a little bit as a human being.
Maybe it’s to be an example to your kids. Or maybe it’s because you don’t want to die at age 60. Like, you know, you have a family history of that in your family. And yes, of course, to be the healthiest and most badass version of yourself.
So training for a marathon sticking to your food plan, they both require that same mindset, they are both important to you, it matters or, or it has to you, you have to adopt that same mindset across both. Okay.
The next thing I think you need to make sure you are doing, the other mindset you are adopting is that you have to have a clear end result in mind, what is your goal for this marathon? What is your goal for eating healthy? You need a very clear vision for the outcome that you want for yourself.
I want to finish this marathon, I want to finish it feeling good. I mean, relatively speaking, marathons are hard, and you usually feel pretty terrible at the end of it, but feeling good relative to maybe feeling really bad. Maybe not puking at the end too, I don’t know, maybe it’s to PR, or to, you know, qualify for Boston, that is a very clear outcome that you want for the marathon.
Okay, so what’s the clear goal that you can apply to your healthy eating, what’s the clear end result is it to lose weight is it to lose 40 pounds, is it to just feel better about yourself, to feel good about the body that you are carrying around, to have more energy, to wear those clothes you used to wear, to look better naked?
What’s the end result that you want for yourself? Be very clear about that. Because in order to stick to the plan, you need that clear end result in mind, you have to hold that vision of who you want to become at the end of this process.
Both of these things require a little bit of healthy fear of failure too, so you might not complete that marathon, that’s why you stick to the training plan. Training becomes very important. I remember training for things like my 100 miler that was very challenging.
Just you know, thinking about running 100 miles became one of those things where it pushed me through my training so much because I was failing, I had fear of failure, I did not want to fail, I really wanted to succeed at that.
There’s so many things that can go wrong, or training for an Ironman, lots of things can go wrong there because you’re talking about swimming, and I got kicked in the face, like within the first 10 minutes of being in the water almost knocked me out, gave me a black eye, somebody kicked my goggles and smashed my goggles into my eye socket. And just like really kind of gave me a black eye.
And I was like, oh my god, I could die in the water. I haven’t just started this thing, but you know, being out there on the bike, there’s all kinds of things that can go wrong there. And then, of course, running that marathon at the end of it.
So lots of points of failure can happen in these things that we do for ourselves, right? We can also fail at losing weight. And what does that mean? If we fail at losing weight, we tend to beat ourselves up, it means we’ll never be able to accomplish that, or we’ve tried in the past. And we’re afraid we’re gonna fail again, because we keep doing the same, we keep repeating the same things over and over again.
So there’s a little bit of a healthy fear of failure there. I think it kind of moves you away from what you don’t want, I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to be a failure. I don’t want to not succeed at this. So that’s actually not a bad thing.
Okay, that mindset can apply to both your marathon training and to sticking with your food plan as well. Another principle we need to apply here is that listen, both of these things are hard. They are both challenging, they will be tough to complete. They both require some hard work, some discomfort, some discipline, they both require a little bit of pain and suffering.
There’s pain and suffering involved in training for a marathon. Would you agree? Yeah, I think we would all agree with that. There’s some pain and suffering involved with giving up sugar. Or sitting there when everybody else is eating pizza and you have ordered a salad and you’re just gonna eat the salad that requires discipline, it requires grit, and requires enduring a little bit of suffering.
And then lastly, they both take time, like you can’t train for a marathon in two weeks, right? You just, you know, unless you are you’re already trained up but for most people anyway, training for a marathon takes time. It takes months right? And you can’t lose weight by just sticking with your diet for a couple of weeks. Right? These things both take time, months, sometimes years. years of work to succeed.
I know people who start running, and they’ve never run before, and they’re maybe a little bit older, 30s 40s 50s, whatever they’re like, I’m going to start running. And their goal is to run a marathon, but they know it’s going to take them like 18 months, two years or something like that, before, they’re ready to do that, they’re gonna start with a 5k, and then a 10k, and then half marathon, whatever, they’re gonna work their way up, and they, they plan it out.
And they know that if they stay committed and stay focused, and don’t get injured, that they can run that marathon in 18 months or two years. What if you committed to your food plan like that? What if you just said, you know what, it doesn’t matter how long it’s gonna take, I’m committed to this process, I’m gonna stick to this plan, you’d be a total badass, you’d be like, at your ideal weight, eventually, I don’t know how long it’s gonna take 12 months, 18 months, whatever, it doesn’t matter.
The point is that these things both take time. And so just make sure you understand that and apply that same mindset there. Okay. So I hope you can see that the mindset to be successful at both of these is the same, the mindset to stick to your marathon training program is the same as the mindset of sticking to your weight loss plan to your healthy eating plan.
So then, why is it so hard to stick to the food plan, when you have the same mentality around your training schedule, because you might be saying, oh, well, I do all those things. So we can talk about the addictive qualities of some foods. This is something we do have to consider here, sugar in particular.
So there’s certain foods, we call them hyper palatable foods, they are amazingly delicious. And it makes it hard to lose weight when all these foods are around. You know, it makes it hard to give up those kinds of foods because they light up our brain, they make us feel good.
And even with the right plan, and the right amount of structure around your diet and the right mindset, sugar, hyper palatable foods is a tough one. Every person that I work with has a little bit of struggle when they give up sugar, especially if they haven’t done this before.
So we do this because we want to get out of that addictive state that we’ve been in for a while. So we remove the quote unquote drug (the sugar) for a period of time, and then those cravings go way down. The cravings for junk food go away.
When you give up junk food, the cravings for sugar go away. when you give up sugar, stop eating donuts, and you won’t be craving donuts anymore. Stop drinking beer all the time, and you won’t be craving beer anymore.
And so these things don’t become a big deal after some time, but you’ve got to like have a period of abstinence in order to get to that place. But that’s where freedom comes from. That’s where true food freedom happens. Okay. So there are some addictive qualities of some foods that make it a little bit tougher, I get that part. Okay.
Also, there are a lot of marketing messages around food, like, oh, you can’t have a good time unless you’re eating doughnuts and pizza and drinking beer for breakfast, right? We get peer pressure from the big food corporations from friends and family to eat a bunch of junk food. There’s food pushers in our lives who are like, oh, come on, it’s just a little bit.
Just screw the diet for one day, just live a little bit. Enjoy. Can’t you enjoy your life? Come on. It’s my birthday. So please eat all this junk food with me, you know. And then there’s FOMO of course, which goes along with that.
We have fear of missing out like we feel like we’re missing out on something good if we don’t do what everybody else is doing. Okay, so there’s all that that we have to deal with. It makes sticking to the food plan a little bit more difficult, I get that. Also, food is most people’s go-to emotional management tool.
If you have a hard time coping emotionally without food, then it’s going to be harder to stick to a healthy eating plan. So part of what I do with my coaching clients is that we get to this place where we don’t use food as an emotional management tool anymore. And part of eating a healthy eating, diet or eating plan has to involve not using food to numb out to your emotions anymore. It’s a big part of what we do in my coaching practice.
I help runners to stop using food as a way of dealing with their emotions. And listen, if you’re doing this, if this is something that is an issue for you just understand that we all do it. Everybody uses food as an emotional management tool to some degree, okay, but we want to get out of that habit. You’ve just trained yourself over the years to use food to cope with your emotions. That’s it.
We’ve just got to train you and you can do this right. It’s not impossible to do it. But again, this can be a little bit challenging for people, okay, so there’s a few things here that do make, you know, sticking with a healthy food plan a little bit more difficult. And I get that.
But I think the biggest reason why it’s easy to stick to something like a marathon training plan, but not a healthy food plan is this, you haven’t made the decision. If you want to accomplish anything, first thing you have to do is make a decision that you are going to do it, you have to decide, like really decide.
And if you look at the root of the word decide it means to cut off like, you cut off all other options, except for this one, I am going to do X, I am going to stick to my training plan, I’m going to run a successful marathon. Right, you’ve made that decision. And that’s what you’re going to do.
What about food? Have you made that same decision about food? Probably not, I’m guessing. I know that when I personally make a decision to do something, it’s as good as done. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it, period.
16 years ago, I quit drinking. I wasn’t ready to stop for a long time, I knew that drinking was a problem for me. I knew that I had to stop at some point. But I hadn’t made the decision until I did when I did make that decision to stop, I quit and haven’t had any alcohol since then.
So for me, it’s like when I decide I’m going to do something, I do it. Training for an Iron Man. Once I decided I was all in, I knew I was going to do it. It was hard, hard work during all that training. And the race itself is very hard. But I had made that decision early on. And I did it.
Same thing running a 100 mile trail race. Recently, I sat down and did a 12 hour run and talked about that a few weeks ago on the podcast. I decided to do that back in like November or December of 2022. And I did it in May of ‘23. So I decided six months prior that this is something I’m going to do and I knew I was going to do it. Right.
So you have to make a decision, you made a decision to run a marathon, right? You signed up for it, you paid for it. And you committed to doing that race in your mind that is done. You are all in. So you can do this, right?
So sticking to your training plan, that’s a no brainer, right? Because you’ve already made that decision, you’ve decided I am going to do this, I’m going to run this marathon, I’m going to be successful, I’m going to qualify for Boston, I’m going to PR whatever that is.
So now you just have to make that same decision around food, just decide, I’m going to lose 40 pounds, no matter what I am all in, I’m going to put a plan together and I’m going to work the plan and I’m going to stick to it. And I’m not going to stop until I am successful.
I have decided. I’ve cut off all the other options. No other options. Now I’m just gonna do this. I’m gonna stick to the plan. So make that decision. Yeah, I’ve had this conversation with people, and they’ve told me, but Patrick, I’m stuck. I just can’t decide, I can’t do it. I can’t start. And this is all just BS. This is excuses and stories.
And it’s just you deciding that you don’t want to do it. There is a quote that has stuck with me since I first heard it back in 1980 from the band Rush. And it says this, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
So if you choose to do nothing, you’re making a choice to do nothing. If you decide that you want this for yourself, great. Take action, move forward, but don’t use these excuses about oh, I’m stuck. I can’t do it. I just can’t start.
Think about it like this. I heard another coach use this analogy. And I love it. She was saying like, oh people tell me they’re stuck. And they’re like, oh, I just can’t get up out of this chair. I’m stuck. I can’t get started. I want to go over there. I want to walk across the room, but I can’t because I’m just stuck in this chair. And it sounds ridiculous, right? It’s ridiculous.
But this is what we do all the time. It’s about making that decision and then taking that first step. It’s about just getting up out of the chair, making the decision and then going over there. If that’s what you want for yourself. It’s really that simple. We overcomplicate all of this stuff, okay?
So I hope you understand now why it’s harder to stick to your food plan. Yes, there are a few things that make sticking to a healthy diet a little more challenging than sticking to your training plan. But at the end of the day, I think it boils down to making that decision, decide what you want for yourself, make a plan, and then stick to the plan no matter what.
And that is also the important part is that very last little no matter what, because things will go awry. Your plan will meet challenges, obstacles will be in your way, all the time. This is called life. And it just happens. And that’s okay, we still stick to the plan, or we do our best, you know, plan, plan, plan, plan, plan, and then go with the flow and do the best you can. Right.
But if we decide that we’re going to stick to the plan, no matter what this is, this is all you got to do, is make that decision. Okay, that’s it. That’s how easy this is. It’s not that easy, but it is simple. It’s a very simple concept. Make the decision, make the plan and then stick to the plan no matter what. Okay.
And if you want a little bit of help getting started I’ve got a great training program you can watch for free. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
