Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
A lot of runners are told not to lose weight while training for a race. There are many reasons why they are given this advice (which I cover in today’s episode), but I don’t necessarily agree with …
Continue Reading about 220. Should You Lose Weight While Training for a Race? →
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 220 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, Should You Lose Weight While Training For A Race.
So a lot of runners are told not to lose weight while training for an event. And there are many reasons why they are given this advice, which I’m going to cover in today’s episode, rest assured, but I don’t necessarily agree with all of it.
I believe that there’s a right way and a wrong way to lose weight as a runner, even when you’re training for an event like a half or a full marathon. So in this episode, can you and should you lose weight while training for a race?
But first, I know I share a lot of information here about nutrition, weight loss, improving your running, and building strength. And if you’re new to the podcast, welcome. But all this stuff might seem a little overwhelming to you and might be a little confusing, and you may not know where to even begin with all of this stuff.
So if that sounds like you, no worries, I’ve got you covered, I created a free training to help you get started with all this stuff. It’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’re going to learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance and mindset, all geared towards you the long-distance runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and get started on your weight loss journey today.
Okay, so why I’m talking about this today, should you lose weight while training for a race? I have heard from a lot of people that I talk to out there in the running community that they’ve been told that they should not try to lose weight while they are training for some event, like a marathon half marathon, even for a 5k.
Like you don’t want to, to you know, try to lose weight, just focus on running. Don’t worry about the weight loss. And it could even be bad for you, it could hurt your running. And there are a few things that I want you guys to consider when we talk about this subject today.
So, the first thing before I get into some of the reasons why we’re told not to try to lose weight while training for some event, the first thing to think about is what most runners think the answer is to weight loss.
So most runners believe, and even most coaches that I talk to, that the way you’re going to lose weight is to run more. So pick a race, pick a marathon, and start training for the marathon up to your weekly mileage, you’re going to be running more than ever, and you’re going to lose weight like crazy.
And I don’t know about you guys, but that was not always the case for me. In fact, I went through periods where I was running a lot and gaining weight. And I talked to people all the time who told me the same thing.
They’re like, yeah, you’re the first person that’s ever actually said out loud. What happened to me, was I was training for a marathon and I was gaining weight. And I don’t understand what’s going on there. All the experts tell me I should be losing weight, because I’m doing all this running. But this is the exact opposite of what’s happening to me.
And so I had that same experience, you know, I think there was a period there over the length of two or three years where I was running a couple of marathons a year, I was training for a bunch of ultra marathons.
And in that process, and it was just a couple of years, I gained like 40 pounds, that’s a lot of weight gain over the course of a few years. So for me, I had that experience of trying to, you know, run more and trying to lose weight, but it wasn’t working.
I was actually gaining weight in the process. Okay. So let’s start with why most runners gain weight while they’re training for a marathon. So one of the reasons why is that increased activity levels can lead to increased appetite. This happens for most people.
So you start training more, you’re running a lot more miles and you’re exerting a lot more energy, you’re using a lot more energy. And so your body’s natural response is to want to replace that energy that you’re expending. So you are going to be more hungry and so you end up eating more.
And especially if you’re eating the wrong kinds of foods, you end up overeating. And that’s a really hard way to lose weight. If you’re constantly overeating, then you know, your weight loss is going to be very challenging for you. Okay?
Another reason why a lot of runners gain weight while training for some events is they’re eating the typical runner’s diet. So they’re eating not only more food, but they’re eating that typical runner’s diet of all the carbs all the time.
And so when you increase your carb and your sugar intake, you are going to be holding on to body fat, you won’t be able to burn that body fat, it’s very hard to burn fat when you’re consuming a high, high carb diet, you know, the more carbs you eat, the more you crave carbs, and that makes it very hard to moderate.
And people are like, well just eat sugar. It’s fine, everything’s fine in moderation, you know, but I gotta tell you, I don’t know about you guys. But for me, eating sugar in moderation is very hard for me. Because the more you eat that stuff, the more you crave that stuff, and then you can’t get enough.
Your brain, and your body just want more and more and more. And it’s really difficult to moderate that stuff. And if you are a runner who is eating that typical carbohydrate-laden diet, so I call this being a carb-adapted runner, you’re you’ve adapted to using carbs as fuel, you will naturally need to consume more carbs to maintain high mileage, which leads to even more intense cravings, and an even harder time burning fat.
So your weight is mostly affected by your diet, not by the amount of exercise you’re doing. And nutrition has a much bigger impact on your body composition, the amount of fat that you’re carrying the amount of muscle that you’re carrying, versus exercise, exercise can help you to put on muscle, obviously, it can help you to lose some fat, but nutrition is a much bigger driver of body composition.
Okay, so we just have to understand that these are some of the reasons why you know, it’s why a lot of runners gain weight, even though they’re training for a marathon, okay? It’s not as simple as just calories in calories out. If it was that simple.
You know, you would always lose a ton of weight when you’re training for a marathon. But that is definitely not the case. And I talk to people every single day who tell me this, okay, so it’s not as simple as calories in calories out, increased activity levels lead to increased appetite.
Increased carb and sugar intake means your body’s going to be storing more body fat, it’s really hard to burn the fat. When you’re eating that high-carb diet, the more of that stuff you eat, the more you crave that stuff, the more you rely on that stuff for fuel for running, the more you want that stuff. So all of these things lead to it being very challenging to lose weight as a runner.
Another reason why runners are told not to attempt to lose weight while they’re training for an event is because just about every diet out there is going by this principle of calories in calories out, right?
So they want you to get into a calorie deficit and maintain it. And that’s how you lose weight. And that’s the principle that most diets follow when it comes to weight loss. And it works until it doesn’t work. So if you spend enough time in a calorie deficit, this is going to lead to a dramatically slowed metabolism.
So for example, if you’re eating 800 calories a day, you’re gonna lose weight doing that, okay, but eventually, your metabolism will slow down to match that 800-calorie energy intake that you’re getting.
Because your body’s like, listen, we’re only getting 800 calories a day, our energy output is, you know, at resting metabolic rate is 2000 calories a day, we need to lower that we need to keep lowering this until we can match the energy that’s coming in and over time, people that are in a calorie deficit for a long period of time, they find that their weight loss stalls for a long time and then they start to gain weight, because now their metabolism has slowed down to match the energy that’s coming in.
And it’s even worse if you’re training for something because then you’re exerting more energy and you’re not giving yourself the food that you need and the fuel that you need to repair and recover from all the training that you’re doing. You know, a lot of runners go into a calorie deficit while they’re training. And that’s a problem because your body needs the fuel.
You know most diets that are going by the calories in calories out principle is not recommended because you’re going to be lowering your calorie intake while you’re training. And your body can’t deal with that, like you need the fuel for running, you need the fuel for your running performance, you need the fuel for repair and recovery.
So being in a calorie deficit, while you’re training for a half marathon marathon is not recommended. And so that’s the main reason why most people are like, you know, don’t try to lose weight while you’re training for something, it’s really hard. And your running is going to suffer and it’s not good for you.
So this is why a lot of runners are told not to try to lose weight, while they are training for something, okay? The reason why a lot of runners gain weight, while training is you know, they are eating a diet that literally locks fat in their fat cells.
So when you’re eating a diet that’s high in sugar, and high in carbs, you are literally going to be holding on to fat and those fat cells. So their energy output goes up, right, because they’re training more, their energy intake goes up, because they’re eating more than ever. And they’re locking all the fat in their fat cells. This makes for a very tough combination if you’re trying to lose weight, right?
So runners who are trying to lose weight, and they’re training for an event, you know, they’re making a lot of these mistakes. So there is a better way to do things, okay? And this all focuses around this idea of burning fat, right?
If you want to lose weight, you have to burn fat, I think we can all agree on that, right? And if you’re eating the all-carb all the time typical runner’s diet, burning fat is going to be very difficult for you.
So imagine your body has a fuel tank, and there’s fat in that fuel tank, and then there’s carbs in that fuel tank, sugar, whatever you want to call it, it’s all the same thing. It’s all carbohydrates, essentially, the very top of that fuel tank, the most easily accessible fuel is the carbs as fuel. And your body has a very limited supply of that, but it is available pretty easily.
Okay, once that’s gone, you can start tapping into that larger amount of fuel that you have, which is your stored body fat, you can use stored body fat as fuel, which is amazing. But when you’re eating carbs all the time, you’re eating sugar all the time, you’re you know, training with all the carbs and the sugar and stuff like that, it’s very hard to get into that fat-burning zone, it’s very hard to get into that fat burning state, you’re not going to dip into the fat as fuel.
So when you’re eating that high-carb diet, this is what locks your fat in the fat cells. Insulin is the driver of this. So high-carb diet means high blood sugar means high insulin, high insulin, it locks fat into fat cells.
When you do the opposite, when you do kind of a lower carb diet, that means fat is available to be burned. So the low-carb diet means that your blood sugar is low, or you know normal, your insulin levels are normal and then fat burning can take place.
Okay, so high-carb diet equals storing fat, low-carb diet equals burning fat. Just keep that in mind. That’s a good principle to follow right there. So, if fat burning is the goal, which it should be, then everything you do should be to optimize fat burning.
So that means keeping the carbs low, getting into that fat-burning state and then maintaining it, you know, so switching from being a carb-adapted runner to a fat-adapted runner. So you’ve adapted your body to using your own stored body fat as a fuel source.
If you want to lose weight, you have to burn fat. And eating the typical runner’s diet of all carbs all the times means that you have effectively shut down fat burning and losing weight will be extremely difficult for you.
Okay, but what about running? Aren’t you going to crash and burn without all the carbs? Don’t you need carbs to run? And I think you know the answer to this already if you’ve been listening to this podcast at all, but I’m going to break this down a little bit for you.
So carbs, yes, they’re a great source of fuel for running. This has been pretty well established since the 1980s. You know runners have been using this all-carb approach to running since then. The problem with this is you’re relying on one fuel source, you’re relying on carbs for fuel and that’s it.
And it’s a finite amount of energy that you can store as you know blood glucose and glycogen that’s stored in your liver and your muscles. It’s like around 1800 to 2000 calories of fuel essentially. And this is going to run out in it’s different for each person. But let’s say around 90 minutes or so, and you’re gonna hit the wall and you’re gonna crash and burn.
This is like so many runners hit the wall in the later stages of a marathon, they literally run out of gas in the tank, you know. And for most people, that means that even if you’re running half marathon, you’re gonna be probably hitting the wall, three-quarters of the way into the race.
All right, you know, unless you’re super fast, and you get it done in less than 90 minutes. But for most of us, I think, you know, two hour-ish, you know, half, you know, somewhere around that range is pretty normal.
But if you’re relying on carbs for that, then it’s going to be tough for you. Okay. Another issue with relying solely on carbs as fuel, is that you have to keep ingesting carbs in order to sustain the running. And this can cause a lot of stomach distress with people, it can cause disaster pants, which is something you definitely don’t want to happen while you’re out there running a race.
Have you ever seen somebody sprint off to the Porta Potty, they’re like, oh, maybe a little too much sugar, I don’t know. But the other source of fuel that your body produces naturally is fat, stored body fat. This is an incredible fuel for endurance athletes.
And listen, the whole reason we store fat is to use it later for fuel, you know, eat some food, some of that energy gets used right away from the food that we eat. And some of that gets stored as fat. This is the natural order of things.
This goes back to our ancient ancestors, who went through periods of feasting and fasting, they were very well adapted to use their own stored body fat as fuel, you know, they would find food, meat, berries, honey, whatever some of that energy would be used right away, some would be stored as body fat, then they would have periods were fasting, where they were fasting. And food was kind of scarce, you know.
But it wasn’t a problem because they had all the fuel they needed on board. And they tapped into that stored body fat they were they were fat-adapted, essentially. And I think this is our natural state as human beings to be fat adapted. In order, it’s during these times of limited food availability, that we develop the ability to use our own stored body fat as fuel, and it’s very effective. And we use it very, very well.
Humans do it, animals do it. Think about a bear fattening up for the winter. And then they can live all winter long, hibernating, essentially using their own stored body fat as fuel. And you see those bears coming out of hibernation, they’re all skinny. It’s pretty funny looking, actually.
But they’ve essentially been using that stored body fat as fuel. And so we have that same mechanism built in basically, you know, I kind of feel like hibernating all winter, that would be amazing.
The problem with us as humans, though, is that we never stopped storing the fat we’re just constantly eating the kinds of foods and overeating and just always adding fat to the equation and never burning the fat, right?
So if you want to lose the weight, you have to burn the fat you have to get your body into that fat-burning state and maintain that fat-burning state. So you need to get fat-adapted, you need to adapt to using your own stored body fat as fuel.
So using your own body fat as fuel against the natural state of is humans, we’ve been doing it for millennia. It’s a very effective fuel for endurance activities like persistent hunting or running a marathon. You know, if you can only store 1800 to 2000 calories of glucose or glycogen, as you know for sugar.
Basically, as a carb-adapted athlete, you can easily store more than 100,000 calories as fat. Even the leanest runners have enough body fat to run for days and days nonstop without the need to refuel. That fat is an amazing source of fuel for endurance athletes, okay?
And again, this isn’t some weird fad. Using fat as fuel is something we’ve always done as human beings. Lots of endurance athletes, lots of the top endurance athletes in the world are actually using this approach this fat adaptation approach as a tool to improve their endurance and their racing performance.
So it’s not something they’re doing because it’s detrimental to running, they’re doing it because it’s really beneficial. And it actually gives them an edge it gives them a tool that most runners are not using. When you can get really good at burning fat you have a tool that most other people are not using.
And then fat-adapted doesn’t mean that you never use carbs for fuel. It means improving fat burning immensely. And also using some carbs as fuel so you can get the best of both worlds. So you can use both of these fuel sources very effectively. And you can kind of go back and forth between the two and use two at the same time.
And most runners don’t do this. They’re just using the one form of fuel they’re using the sugar as fuel and they’re trying to I just rely on that as the only source of fuel. So they’re leaving this whole other thing on the table. So don’t do that.
But when you’re using fat as fuel, what happens? You burn the fat, your you lose the weight, like this is an amazing way of not only improving your running performance but also losing weight. And yes, you can do this while you’re training for an event or a race. Okay.
So I think you know, the answer here is pretty clear, you can do both, you can train for a race without inhibiting your performance. And you can lose weight in the process. But you have to take a different approach, you can’t do the all-carb approach because for most people, that just doesn’t work.
For some people that works great, and that’s fine. If you don’t have a problem getting you know, gaining weight while you’re training and stuff like that, then you keep doing your thing. That’s awesome. But if you’re somebody who gains weight, well, whenever you even look at carbs, or when you’re training for something, and you’re like, why am I gaining weight while I’m training for this marathon?
If that sounds like you, then cutting down the carbs might be a way to get your body burning fat. And that might work really well for you. You know, don’t cut your calories. That approach probably isn’t going to work either. You know, you got to give your body the fuel that it needs, but cut out the carbs and the sugar and see if that helps.
Okay, get your body into the fat-burning state. It’ll help improve your weight loss. It’ll help improve your running performance. And I think it’s definitely something you should try. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
Whether you are just getting into running or have been at it a while, you should be actively working on improving your endurance. While there are many methods out there that are designed to help …
Continue Reading about 217. 5 Ways to Improve Your Endurance →
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 217 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners. Today, I’m talking about five ways to improve your endurance. So whether you are just getting into running, or maybe you’ve been at it for a while, you should be actively working on improving your endurance.
And there are many, many methods out there that are designed to help you improve your endurance. But there are a few key principles I think most runners overlook. So today, I’ve got five ways to improve your endurance to help you run longer, and make running easier in general, who doesn’t want that? I know I do.
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about running and nutrition and weight loss and building strength and all these topics. And if you’re new to the podcast, this might all feel a little bit overwhelming and confusing to you. And you just don’t know where to start.
You’re like Patrick, where should I start? Well, funny, you should ask because I created a free hour-long training video that can get you started. It’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’re going to learn all the basics of nutrition and endurance and mindset and building strength. All for you the runner who is maybe interested in improving your body composition, losing some weight.
So if you’re ready to get leaner and stronger, and you’re ready to become the most badass version of yourself yet, which you are, I know you are, then this free training is exactly what you need.
Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training. I know it’s so logical, right? And get started on your weight loss journey today. Okay, so five ways to improve your endurance. Why am I talking about this today?
Well, lots of runners that I talked to don’t know where to begin with this, or they are not really working to improve their endurance, and they don’t understand why they’re not improving their endurance.
So if you’re a new runner, you might have no idea how to build your endurance, you might be just thinking that you’re just going to run and just keep running and just see if it pans out, you know, see if it works.
Somehow see if some magic happens, where you’re going to be, have more endurance, be able to run longer, and maybe run easier. Seasoned runners that I know, might not be feeling very good when they run and they’re like, I don’t understand what’s happening here. I’m running all the time, but I can’t seem to get faster, I can’t seem to run longer, running still feels really hard all the time.
So you know, whether you are a new runner, and just getting started with all this or you’re a more advanced runner or a seasoned runner, and you want to improve your endurance, then you should be actively doing a few things to help you improve that endurance.
Okay, so, and like I said at the beginning here, there’s a lot a lot of principles, if you just start Googling, you know how to improve your endurance as a runner, you’re going to find 20, 30, 40 different ways of doing that. I’m going to narrow it down to a few that I found, or that I that I tend to help people with more than others.
Because these are the things that kind of get overlooked a lot. Okay, so I’m going to talk about some things that may be overlooked. Okay. So why would you want to be actively improving your endurance as a runner?
Well, you might want to run longer distances. So maybe you’ve got a certain race distance that you’re training for, or that you would like to do someday. So maybe you’re a 5k runner, and you want to be able to run a 10k.
Or maybe you’re doing half marathons and you want to run a full marathon, or maybe you run full marathons and you’re ready to take on an ultra marathon. You know, so whether you want to run, you know, five miles or fifty miles, I think that building your endurance as a runner, or improving your endurance as a runner is key, it’s just going to make running feel easier. Okay?
So you might run a longer race, you might just want to run more miles every week. So you might love running, and you just want to be able to run more. So you just want to instead of running, you know, 10 or 15 miles a week you want to bump that up to like 15 or 30 miles a week.
So you don’t necessarily want to train for some ultra marathon, but you just want to be able to run more days or, you know, longer distances. For each typical training run that you do, you might want to run a faster race. So you might want to get faster for a particular distance.
So that could be whatever, whatever distance your jam is, but you may want to get faster and improve your endurance. Sounds kind of counterintuitive, but it can actually help you to get faster, I’m gonna talk about that here in just a minute.
And you might just want to improve your endurance for your heart health because improving your cardiovascular system is so good for your heart, right? The bottom line here is that you probably just want running to feel easier.
And I think most of us would agree that yeah, I want running to feel easier. Now I have to say this running is never going to feel easy, but it can feel easier. Running is hard. You know what I mean? Like, you get out there and you run. And it’s kind of hard, you know, but have you ever had one of those runs where you’re like, that just felt it felt easier, like that felt really good, you know, for a change?
That’s what we want, we want running to feel easier, it’s still going to be a workout, you know, just like swimming is a workout, cycling is a workout, but we want it to feel a little bit easier. Because when it feels easier, you’re going to want to do it more, and you can go longer if it’s feeling easier, right?
So I’m going to give you guys a couple of keys, here, I have five different ways that we can improve our endurance. And the first one is this, and this is going to come as no surprise to you, but it is to just run more so increase your volume.
So increasing your volume is the easiest way that you can build your endurance and build that aerobic system. So the aerobic system, you know, is the slow running system that you use, for most of your running, hopefully, something around like 80% of your running should be done in that aerobic zone.
Which means you’re not pushing it too hard, you’re going pretty easy. So the simplest way to run to increase your endurance is to run more, you know, it’s just like anything else, when you practice doing it more, it becomes easier.
You know, like, if you want to play the guitar, you got to practice playing the guitar and you’re gonna suck at it for a while, it’s gonna be hard, but the more you do it, the easier, it’s gonna get the same with running, you want to run longer than you have to practice running longer. If you want to run more, you gotta practice running more. Okay.
So why this works is because you are building an aerobic engine here, right? This is your endurance engine, this is probably the most important factor in long-distance running is building that strong aerobic engine.
Okay, so most training programs, they feature a lot of aerobic running, and some of them have some speed work built into them. But that that aerobic engine, your ability to run longer, at a slower pace is slower, you know.
Pace is the number one thing you can do to improve your endurance, okay? So if you want to improve your aerobic engine, increase the volume that you are running, and that will help you to build a stronger aerobic engine, it also helps to increase your running efficiency.
So when you can run more efficiently, you’re going to be able to run further, this is going to improve your endurance as well. And running, you know won’t use as much energy. You know, a lot of running, especially when you get into longer distance stuff is about energy conservation, right? We don’t want to be spending energy, flailing your arms around, or running all weird.
I’ve seen some people that run pretty weird. And I’m like, man, how do they do that? Like they, they can run long distances, and they have some strange gaits, you know. But when you run more, you can typically improve your gait. And one thing I’ll just say, a little sidebar about improving your gait or changing your gait as a runner.
As a running coach, we’re sort of taught that we shouldn’t really mess with people’s gaits too much like you should just run the way that you run because that is going to be the most natural way for you to run.
So don’t think that you’re running wrong. Just because you’re going to gradually when you increase your volume, your running volume, you are going to get more efficient running the way that you run naturally.
So I know it sounds kind of weird, but like don’t worry about if you have a weird gait or something like that or if you don’t think your running form is very good. Don’t worry about it seriously. Just run the way you run and over time, you’re going to be very efficient running that way.
Okay, for the most part now, there are some rare exceptions of people that have really weird flailing legs or arms or something like that, which we probably want to check out a little bit. But for the most part, your running gait is fine. So don’t don’t stress out about that too much.
Okay, so we want to improve our running efficiency, we want to be more efficient as a runner, and we want to use less energy as a runner, and increasing your volume will help with this. When you increase your volume, you also are preparing yourself for fatigue in races especially the longer runs right, when you increase your mileage, you’re going to be dealing with fatigue pretty often, and you’re going to get better at dealing with fatigue, fatigue is something that will happen.
It just happens, you know, it’s part of running. And so consistently dealing with fatigue and pushing yourself to that point of like, oh, I’m feeling pretty tight, this is really hard. That’s a good thing.
And that leads me to the last reason why increasing volume will help you improve your endurance is it helps you to build resilience and helps you to build mental toughness, you know, you’ve done all this hard work, you’ve you know, hit fatigue a bunch of times in your training, you’ve run longer distances, you’ve improved your volume immensely.
Now you have some resilience and mental toughness, some grit, okay, so when it’s time to dig deep in a race when you got to like really push it towards the end of a race in order to hit that PR or something like that, you’re going to have that mental toughness that’s going to be there. Okay?
Now, a little pro tip about increasing your mileage. Don’t feel like you can just do a huge increases in your mileage, you know, week to week, you don’t want to do too much too soon. This is what most new runners do. They’re like, oh, I can run. You know, I ran five miles last week, I’m gonna run 10 miles next week, don’t do that.
Try to stick to the 10% rule. That means that we never increase our mileage more than 10%. So for new runners, I would stick to this pretty hardcore. If you’re a pretty experienced runner, and you have been running for years and you’re not injured or anything like that you can be a little looser with the 10% rule. You can do 15%, you know, sometimes 20%, but don’t want to go too much too soon. This is a recipe for disaster, especially for most new runners.
Most new runners, they get injured because they do too much too soon. So increase your volume slowly. That means if you run 10 miles this week, next week, you’re gonna run 11 miles, and then you’re gonna just keep using that 10% rule. Okay, it takes time. So just give it the time that it needs, but increase your volume. That’s number one.
Number two, and this is one where I don’t see a lot of people talking about this, but you probably want to change your diet, you probably want to start training your body to use a fuel source that you have onboard already. That will help improve your endurance immensely. That is your own stored body fat.
And this is called getting fat-adapted, it means that you are basically switching your main fuel source from sugar to fat, from carbohydrates to your own stored body fat. If you want to take a deep dive into this, I talked about getting fat-adapted and using fat as fuel in the last episode of the podcast, number 216: An Alternatieve Way To Fuel Long Distance Running.
So definitely check that out. But here’s some little key takeaways here. Number one, think of your energy stores as a fuel tank. And at the very top of the fuel tank you have this tiny little sliver of sugar or carbohydrate that’s available as fuel.
And then below that sugar, you’ve got this massive storage tank of stored body fat as fuel. So most runners what they’re doing is they’re using the sugar at the top a little tiny bit of the fat. Yeah, we always are burning a little bit of both.
But most runners are burning primarily sugar and when that is available, that’s all they’re going to burn so they have to continually feed with carbohydrates in order to keep that sugar fuel tank that sugar part of the fuel tank topped off.
When you’re doing that you are just relying on sugar as a fuel source and it is a good fuel source for running it does work, but there are problems with that. Eating a lot of sugar causes a lot of people to gain weight and I’m one of those people.
Eating a lot of sugar, especially during running can really upset a lot of runners’ stomachs. And that is not something you want. You don’t want to have disaster pants while you’re out there running. I hear too many stories about that actually, and I don’t really need to know about what’s going on during the run when you’re eating too much sugar.
But people have really upset stomachs with trying to consume all that sugar. And most runners are not really fat-adapted, so they’re not using that stored body fat as fuel. So they hit the wall pretty often, like they just run out of fuel, because that that small little bit of fuel once it’s gone, they haven’t trained themselves to tap into that stored body fat.
So getting fat-adapted just means you’re primarily burning fat as fuel, and you’re not really relying on all the sugar, which is such a good way to go. Because then you don’t need to feel as much during these longer runs, you won’t get the stomach upset.
And you can basically, you’re going to feel like you can run forever like you’re going to feel like you can run long distances much longer. So this is a great way to improve your endurance that just not a lot of people are talking about out there. Okay.
That’s one principle that most runners overlook. But it is key if you want to improve your endurance as a runner, change your diet, get fat-adapted, ditch the sugar, and start you know, relying on your own stored body fat as a fuel source and your endurance is going to go through the roof. Again, check out the last episode number 216 on a deep dive into getting fat-adapted.
Okay, the third way to improve your endurance is to get stronger. So you want to be intentionally building strength as a runner. And this means like head to toe, actively building strength every single week, this has to be part of your training regimen.
You can’t just go well you know, I do strength training a couple of times a month or whatever, once a week, that’s just not enough. And again, I did a whole episode talking about how to build strength and the benefits of building strength in episode number 199. So check out that episode for sure I take a deep dive into how to do it and, and how to actively build strength.
But when we’re talking about building strength, we’re talking about building stronger muscles, you go to the gym, you lift something heavy, you overload the muscle group that you’re working, and then you have a positive adaptation, you build stronger muscles, okay?
Stronger muscles take longer to fatigue, this is a good thing as a runner, that means you can run much longer before you hit the wall because you have stronger muscles and you can go longer before your muscles are going to give out on you. Okay?
Building strength does not just mean stronger muscles, it also means you build stronger connective tissues like tendons and ligaments, and stronger bones as well, which is really important. But that tendons and ligaments, this is where most runners get injured.
Most running injuries are tendon injuries, like a tendinitis type of thing, which basically just means like you have a pulled or strained tendon of some sort, you know. And if you are a runner, and you’re ramping up your mileage and you want to build your endurance, you do not want to get injured through this process, right?
So actively building strength on a regular basis will help you to stave off injury, and help you to improve your endurance at the same time. So win-win.
Now running will help you develop stronger muscles, especially stronger leg muscles. And runners are like, well, I’m running and so that’s enough. That’s all I need to do. But it’s really not enough, okay, it’s not enough to just run.
First of all, you have to understand that running is a catabolic activity, meaning it breaks down muscle tissue, especially if you’re running a ton of mileage. So if you’re not actively doing some strength training to offset that and getting enough protein, you’re probably going to be losing muscle in the process.
Now it doesn’t mean you’re going to you know, waste away to nothing because running does help to develop muscle. But there’s a little bit of a breakdown that’s happening as well. So what you want to do is you want to hit the gym, and you want to be actively building stronger muscles, especially the stronger leg muscles in the gym.
Because when you do that, that’s going to help improve your running endurance, it’s going to help improve your speed as a runner, it’s going to help you become a more powerful runner. Strong runners are fast runners, strong runners are more powerful runners and strong runners can go longer.
So the third key really to improving your endurance is to get stronger because you’ll be able to go longer, you’ll stave off injury, and you’re going to be running is just going to feel easier for you.
Okay, number four is to run faster. I know this sounds counterintuitive if you want to improve your endurance you have to run faster. But speed work is one area that gets overlooked by runners who want to improve their endurance.
Most people have a love-hate relationship with speed work, they hate doing it. Maybe it’s a hate-hate relationship. They hate doing it. And it feels terrible. But the love part of it would be this: when you do speed work consistently, running will get easier.
You know, if you want to be a faster runner, you probably understand that you need to do your speed work, right? But doing the speed work. And doing it consistently will also help to improve your endurance as well. And most runners don’t realize this.
And when I talk about doing speed work, we’re talking about anything where you’re running and you’re pushing it, you start to feel like you’re pushing it a little or pushing it moderately hard, too hard.
So if you’re not pushing it, then that’s what we call the aerobic zone or easy running, this is a good thing. Just think of the cutoff as just being like, I don’t really feel like I’m pushing it at all. That’s when you’re in the aerobic zone.
But if you’re like, oh, I’m pushing it a little bit or I’m pushing a priority right now, that’s then you’re into the doing the speed work type of zones, okay. So really, I love HIIT training and I love tempo runs.
Tempo runs are where you’re running consistently, at a faster pace than your goal, half marathon or marathon pace, whatever your race pace is, let’s say your race pace is a 10-minute mile, then tempo runs need to be done 30 to 60 seconds faster.
So you might do a mile warm-up. And then you’re going to run 2, 3, 4 miles at that tempo pace. So that is like 30 to 60 seconds faster than your race pace. And then you’re going to do like a mile cooldown, okay, that’s a tempo run.
HIIT training is high-intensity interval training, this can be any kind of interval, it could be four hundred repeats, it can be thirty-second sprints, it can be hill repeats, it can be, I like to do longer repeats like 1/3 mile repeats, that you could do eight hundreds, like there are so many different ways of doing HIIT training, but it is so good for you.
So doing the speed work is key. If you want to run longer, then you need to improve your speed. So you want to do the speed work. Here’s why. When you do speed work, this will help to improve your VO2 max. This is the maximum amount of oxygen that you utilize while you’re running.
Higher VO2 max levels will indicate better aerobic capacity and improved endurance. Also, the speed work helps to improve your lactate threshold. So it can raise your lactate threshold doing the speed work will cause your body to produce lactate while you’re training.
Your body will then adapt and burn the lactate more efficiently the next time, so you have a positive adaptation from doing this kind of HIIT training especially. So this means that at higher intensities, you can go longer before fatigue or pain slows you down. So you got to improve that lactate threshold in you know, raise the lactate threshold speed work is how you do it.
The other reason why speed work will help you build endurance is because it helps to improve your body’s ability to deliver oxygen to working muscles. Oxygen delivery is key in endurance. And one really good way to improve your endurance is to do the speed work.
It also helps you with energy production. So your body has this ability to produce energy with oxygen and without oxygen. So when you’re without oxygen is like what we call the anaerobic zone, that’s when you’re doing like sprinting, you’re gonna just run out of gas at some point, you can only sprint for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, something like that.
And then you’re going to absolutely hit the wall. So when we practice that kind of interval training, you’re training your body to use oxygen more effectively. Another key to doing this speed work is that it helps to improve your ability to use both fat and carbohydrates as fuel sources, which is really a key right there, okay.
Because when you’re doing the speed work, you can bump up your body’s ability to burn fat. And a lot of people say well, you know I’m running faster, so I have to have the sugar. I need gels I need to fuel up I need to use sugar. You really don’t.
There have been a lot of athletes. One that comes to mind is Jeff Browning. He’s an ultra runner. And this guy’s been fat-adapted for years. He’s an elite ultra runner, he wins all kinds of stuff. Amazing guy. But he has been proven.
They’ve done some testing on him. And they’ve shown that he has the ability to burn fat, like more than just about anybody else out there. So most runners who are carb-adapted, they hit this switchover point around 65% of their VO2 max where they’re going from burning mostly sugar, or I’m sorry, burning mostly fat to burning mostly sugar.
So 65% is the traditional cutoff point or changeover point for most carb-adapted runners. But guys like Jeff Browning, he’s trained his body to use fat, mainly fat as fuel up to 90-95% of his VO2 max.
Even some people can go up to 100% of their VO2 max using just fat as fuel, it’s pretty awesome. You know, because that means that you can go much faster than previously thought possible. Right.
And then lastly, running faster helps to improve your cardiovascular fitness, it helps to improve your muscular endurance, and just helps you to improve as an athlete overall. So the speed work is key to improving your endurance for all these reasons.
And then lastly, number five. The fifth way to improve your endurance as a runner, and this is probably the biggest key to all of this is you have to be consistent, it takes time to build endurance as a runner. And consistency is going to be the key to doing this.
If you only do these things here and there, so if you do the speed work, you know, once a month or something like that, because you hate it. I talk to so many people are like I hate doing speed work. But I want to get faster, oh, I want to run longer. Okay, well, then you got to do the speed work.
But if you do these things inconsistently, you’re gonna get inconsistent results, right? You’re just not going to get there. You need to be consistent with your training volume, with your diet, with your strength training, and with your speed work. Consistency is key.
The way you accomplish anything in this world really is to take consistent aligned action, what are the actions that you need to take that are going to get you to this goal? Okay, make sure you know what to do. That’s key, right? But then practice doing those things consistently. That’s it. That is the key right there. Okay.
I mentioned like learning how to play the guitar earlier. If you want to learn how to play the guitar, you have to practice it and you have to be consistent with it. And it’s going to suck at the beginning and you’re going to be terrible. And everybody’s going to tell you to stop playing because it sounds awful. But you have to stick with it. And you got to keep doing it.
You have to take consistent aligned action if you want to accomplish anything in this world. Okay. Practice consistently improving your endurance and you’ll be running longer and easier before you know it. Cool. All right, that’s all I got for you today. I love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
As runners, we’ve been told over the last 40 years or so that the only way to fuel for running is with carbohydrates. Loads and loads of carbs. Eat lots of carbs every day, carb load the day …
Continue Reading about 216. An Alternative Way To Fuel Long-Distance Running →
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 216 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, an alternative way to fuel long-distance running. So as runners, we’ve been told over the last 40 years or so that the only way to fuel for running is with carbohydrates, carbs, loads and loads of carbs.
Eat lots of carbs every day, carbo-load the day before you run, carb up in the morning pre-run, consume ample carbs during your run. And then of course, you’re gonna want some carbs for recovery after your run.
This has been the standard approach since the 1980s. But it’s definitely not the only way to do things. The thing is, this approach just doesn’t work for everyone. Some people like me gain a lot of weight eating all those carbs regardless of how much we run. So in this episode, I offer an alternative way to fuel long-distance running one that doesn’t cause you to gain all that weight in the process.
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about nutrition, weight loss, and improving your running. If you’re new to the podcast, it can probably feel a little overwhelming. And you’re like I don’t even know where to start with all this.
And if that sounds like you, totally cool, I got you covered. I created a free training. It’s about an hour long. It’s a video that you can watch, you can check it out anytime it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronge Runner.
In this video, you’re gonna learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset, all these things that are geared towards you the long-distance runner. So if you’re ready to get leaner, and if you’re ready to get stronger, if you’re ready to become the most badass version of yourself that I know you are, then this free training is exactly what you need to get started. Just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training.
Okay, so let’s talk about an alternative way to fuel long-distance running. Why do I want to talk about this today? Because I keep hearing from runners and I keep reading articles online and social media posts for runners that talk about eating all the carbs.
And I’m like, gosh, are we still talking about this? Since the 1980s, the carb-loading approach has been the gold standard, so to speak for runners just eat all the carbs, and you’re going to find that most coaches teach this approach.
Most experts, quote-unquote experts, teach this approach. When I got my running, coaching certification, when I went through my coaching certification program, I was taught this approach. And this approach is fine. And it does work for some people. But it doesn’t work for everybody.
For some of us, like me, eating all those carbs caused us to gain a lot of weight in the process. You know, and I’m not against having carbohydrates. In fact, I think using carbohydrates strategically for running is a great tool.
It’s a really good tool that you have in your tool belt, why not use the carbohydrates as fuel, especially for the higher intensity stuff or races? But eating all the carbs all the time, is what we’ve been taught and it just doesn’t work for everybody.
You know, I’m one of those people that is very sensitive to carbohydrates. You know, I eat carbs and I gain weight. And so if I just take this standard approach to fueling for long-distance running, I ballooned up 40 more pounds, 50 more pounds, whatever.
You know, I’ve shared this before where I was training for ultra marathons, I was running all the time, I was doing a ton of mileage and gaining weight in the process. You can’t outrun the wrong diet, right?
So for me the all carbs all the time approach while I loved it. Who doesn’t love eating carbs all the time? Oh, pizza, sure. Ice cream. Yep, that’s going to, I mean, I’m a runner, so I gotta eat this stuff. Right? Spaghetti all the time. Like I was just I was eating tons of bread and pasta. And sugar, like this was my diet. You know, it was like a 90% carbohydrates, you know?
And I just kept gaining weight and gaining weight and I was like wow, even though I was running a ton, you know, I was training for ultra marathons and running ultra marathons regularly and then gaining weight in the process does not make sense, right?
You are supposed to lose weight when you start training. Well, the wrong diet won’t allow that to happen, right, so the wrong diet will cause the weight to continually stack up. So for me, this this all carbs all the time approach is one that I tried, and it just didn’t work for me.
You know, I also found that I would crash and burn during long-distance events. And I’m like, what’s going on here, because I’m using all the fuel. You know, I’m taking all the gels and I’m eating, I’m pre-loading with carbs and do all this stuff. But I keep crashing and burning and mile 18 to 22 of a marathon, you know.
And I was like this, this isn’t working, like there’s got to be a different approach here. Okay. And there is, there are, there is an alternative approach, there are probably multiple other approaches that you can take.
But there’s one specific that I want to talk about today, one that doesn’t require eating all the carbs all the time, and one that doesn’t require you to gain a bunch of weight in the process, if that’s you.
And listen, if you’re the kind of person that can eat all those carbs, and not gain any weight, and it works really well for you, then keep doing your thing. Keep doing that. My hat’s off to you. But if you’re somebody that’s like Patrick, that really doesn’t work for me, then listen up, because here’s the different approach you want to take.
You want to get yourself fat-adapted. So we’re talking about this concept of fat adaptation. Fat adaptation means that you train your body to burn your stored body fat as fuel for long-distance running.
When you stop eating all the sugar and all the carbs constantly, you give your body a chance to tap into your stored body fat as fuel. So the way this works, essentially, is think about your different fuel sources in your body as like a fuel tank, and the top layer of that fuel tank is what’s gets burned first.
And that top layer is going to be sugar, essentially glucose, glycogen, that kind of stuff. So that is going to be burned first. And as long as that’s available, that is what’s going to be constantly burned. Okay.
And so the concept, but behind all carbs all the time thing is like you want to keep that top layer of the tank filled at all times so that you’re constantly always burning that. The problem is that when you run out of that, maybe you get to mile 20 of the marathon and you just haven’t done a good job of keeping up with the amount of carbs that you need for that event, or you haven’t trained yourself to metabolize carbs that to that extent.
That top layer of the tank is going to run out and then you’re going to crash because you don’t, you don’t have access to that lower portion of the gas tank, which is the biggest portion, I’m going to say it’s probably like 90% of that gas tank is going to be your fat stores.
But you don’t have access to that because you haven’t trained your body to use that fat as fuel, like the pathways are not there. So what happens is that when you stop eating the sugar and the carbs all the time?
You start to train your body to use the alternative fuel source, the fat stores the stored body fat, you know, we all eat some, you know, we all eat food and some of that energy that we consume gets used towards working muscles, some of that energy gets stored as fat to be used later as fuel.
The problem is we’ve just gotten so far away from using our stored body fat as fuel, it’s kind of like we just constantly put wood on the woodpile, but we’re never burning the wood it just keeps stacking up that’s our fat stores just getting bigger and bigger.
So when you train yourself to tap into those stored to your stored body fat as a fuel, now you have this like almost unlimited fuel source for running. So that’s the concept of fat-adaptation, you’re removing the sugar and the carbs that that initial, like, let’s say 10%.
And I’m kind of making these numbers up but just think of it like you know, we only have the capacity to store like 2000 calories as of energy as glucose but we have our body fat can can store hundreds of thousands of calories of energy as stored body fat, so just know that yeah, it’s probably like 10% and 90%, something like that. It’s probably more like 99 and 1% or something okay.
Anyway, so we want to get ourselves fat-adapted we want to be able to adapt to using that stored body fat as fuel. Okay, now, people hear this and they’re like, oh, that’s crazy. That’s just some weird fringe thing, it’s probably a fad, and it’s gonna go away.
Listen, we’ve been doing this for millennia, as human beings, we’ve been doing it for more than millennia, for like millions of years. Fat Burning is our natural state as human beings. You know, we store some of that energy we consume as body fat, and we use it when we’re not eating.
This is the way the human body is designed, you know, there’s periods of feasting, and there’s periods of fasting during those periods of fasting, we should be tapping into our stored body fat as fuel. Humans are really good at this, we are naturally really good at using fat as fuel.
And we’re naturally good distance runners like we used to be hunter-gatherers, we used to be a persistence Hunter, so we would, we would chase down prey, and we would outrun them not from a speed perspective, but from a time perspective like we would, you know, cut an antelope out of the herd or whatever.
And they might be able to outrun us in the short distance, but over time, like over hours and days, we would run them down to where they just would die of exhaustion. You know, poor antelope. I know, but good for us, because now we have this nutrient-dense meal that would that would sustain us, you know.
So the human body is designed to use that stored body fat as fuel during those times when we didn’t have the other food coming in. Okay. So to say that, oh, you have to consume all the carbs, all the pasta, all the bread all the time, just to be able to run?
That’s actually the new thing. That’s actually the weird fad thing that we’ve only been doing for the last 40 years or so. Right? I mean, isn’t that interesting that people look at this fat-burning thing. And they’re like, oh, you know, that’s not the way you should do it.
And I’m like, well, listen, we’ve been amazing runners for millions of years as humans and we never had to eat all the pasta and bread and gels and stuff like that. Why now? Should we have to do that? Okay.
So not only is it not a fad thing, or some weird approach, like there are elite runners that have adopted this approach for years and years and years, and they’re at the top of their game, you know, I’m gonna mention a couple of them here.
And I’ve talked about these guys before on the podcast here. And there are countless others too, but these guys just are kind of like the top, you know, the top 1% or whatever. Jeff Browning. He’s an ultra runner. He’s finished nearly 200 ultra marathons in his career. He’s had over 40 career ultra marathon wins 29 of those at the 100 mile plus distance, making him second in the world for the most 100 mile wins in history.
Ranked seven times in the top 10 of ultra running magazines, North American Ultra Runner of the year, ranked third in Ultra running magazines, North American Ultra Runner of the decade. He builds multiple, multiple course records, including the Moab 240 course record, and he is a low carb, low carb, high-fat kind of he takes that approach to his training.
You know, he’s very vocal about his fat-burning approach, his fat-adapted approach to ultra running, you know, he doesn’t consume all the sugars and all the gels and all the pasta and all the carbs. All right.
And another one that comes to mind is Mike McKnight. He’s an ultra runner. He specializes in the 200 mile distance. And he posed several wins every year for different events. He’s kind of known because he ran 118 Miles while consuming zero calories, zero calories. He ran 118 miles. He was just relying on his own stored body fat for fuel and he’s a pretty, pretty lean guy. You know? He’s amazing.
And I actually tried this, I was like, hey, you know, I’m gonna I’m gonna give this a shot. I didn’t do 180 miles but I did two marathons and a 50k ultra marathon on zero calories just to say like, Oh, can I even do this? Yeah, I could do it and I was fine. Really no problems whatsoever.
And then of course, there’s Zach Bitter. He’s an American ultramarathon runner. He specializes in the 100 miler distance and he’s done like over 60 ultras. He’s known for his low-carb diet, which he uses for training and racing nutrition. He had the record for the 100 miler. One point of 11 hours, 19 minutes and 13 seconds. I’m gonna say that one more time because that is a crazy number, he ran 100 miles and 11 hours in 90 minutes. That’s insane.
He’s the holder of the 12-hour American record at 104.88 miles. He claims the 100-mile and 12-hour world records at the Six Days in the Dome event in Milwaukee in 2019. Competed for team USA world 100 Kilometer team three times.
So these are guys, these are just some of the guys who are benefiting and their, their elite athletes who are at the top of their game. And they’re taking this low-carb approach to distance running. They’re not consuming all the carbs all the time. Yeah, they do use some carbs for their events.
And they’ll tell you, you know, you can check them out, or their websites, check them out on social media, they have podcasts and stuff like that, you can totally listen to what these guys say. And they’ll tell you they do like maybe, you know, 30 to 50 grams of carbs per hour for these events, which is not a lot. But they’re not eating all the carbs all the time. They’re taking this fat adaptation approach to running and it’s working really, really well for them. Okay.
Another thing to consider here is that if your goal is to lose weight, then this is a great way to lose weight. Because listen, if you want to lose weight, what do you got to do? You have to burn a fat, right?
We’re not talking about weight loss, we’re talking about fat loss. So you have to burn the fat. If you are burning the fat, you are losing weight. And it’s really hard to burn the fat when you’re on that super high-carb runner’s type of diet, right?
Because of the whole fuel source prioritization, you know, you’re going to burn through the glucose first, then you’re going to tap into the fat but you gotta like, You got to eliminate that top 1% or whatever of your fuel tank.
So if fat burning is the key to weight loss, which it is, wouldn’t you want to do it? It that makes fat burning the priority? Yes, you would. When you eat for fat-burning, you’re running improves your endurance and improves and you lose weight in the process. Right?
So if you’re somebody who is interested in losing weight, this approach might work for you, it may be something you want to consider. Okay, and and listen, when we talk about a low-carb approach to fueling a low-carb diet, a low-carb, you know, nutrition approach; a lot of people think, you know, you’re talking about keto, or doing no carbs or carnivore or something like that.
No, it’s not about that. It’s about finding the right amount of carbs that keeps you burning fat, while also helping you’re running because carbs are helpful for running, right? You don’t have to be Mike McKnight and do the zero-calorie thing. But it’s cool that the human body can do that, you know.
That’s fat-adaptation. And it’s most impressive, like what that guy does, right? And by the way, this guy is not fat, right? You don’t need a ton of body fat, to be able to use your own stored body fat as fuel.
Even the leanest of athletes can benefit from fat adaptation as an approach. Okay, so this doesn’t mean that you’re never eating any carbs, you can still eat some carbs. I use carbs for fuel, and I encourage my clients to use carbs for fuel, but we prefer like whole food sources of carbs, you know, we might be talking about bananas or sweet potatoes or rice or something like that, right?
And obviously, everybody’s a little bit different. And you have to kind of experiment with what works for you. But there’s, there’s tons of great options just from the natural world like and sticking with whole food sources of carbohydrates is great.
Now I get it that when you’re in any event, like you can’t carry a bunch of sweet potatoes or bananas with you. I mean, it’s just really not that convenient. But what’s cool is that there are a bunch of brands out there that cater to the low-carb endurance athlete, and they have entire product lines that are geared towards helping you fuel for running while maintaining that fat-burning state.
So like Hammer Nutrition is one you can use. S-Fuels, Muir energy, and there are a bunch of other brands out there and new ones coming out all the time. So that’s a very encouraging thing that there are companies out there that are that are gearing their product lines towards the low carb endurance athlete. Okay.
Now, just like I said, at the beginning of this podcast that the high-carb approach isn’t for everyone, just like that, like the fat-adapted approach probably isn’t for everyone. So I’m not going to come out here and say that everybody should do this. And everybody will benefit from this.
Some people do really fine eating all the carbs and the sugar and the gels, and they never have to worry about gaining weight. And if that’s you, that is amazing. That’s definitely not me. But if you struggle with losing weight, and you love running, then this might be the approach that you want to try.
You know, the only way you can tell if it works through you, or if you enjoy it, or if you can do this as a lifestyle as to give it a shot, you might see the weight start to come off, you might experience running feeling easier than ever before.
You might see your energy levels are better all day long, no more afternoon crashes, you might begin to think more clearly be able to focus and concentrate better. And as always, if you want help with any of this, you can always reach out to me you can go to my website runningleancoaching.com.
Every day I help runners get fat-adapted, lose weight, improve their running performance and make all this a lifestyle. So whatever approach you take cool, but it has to be something that is sustainable for you. Because if it’s not sustainable for you, it’s not going to work because this stuff takes time.
You know, if you want to lose weight, and you want to improve your diet, improve your nutrition, improve your running and your nutrition for running specifically, then you’re gonna have to take a little bit of time to figure out what works for you. And it has to be something that you can do sustainably long term, right?
So I work with my clients, we work together to make sure whatever they’re doing is something that they can do on their own like for good, or it’s not about quick fixes, but lifestyle changes, right being fit and healthy isn’t a destination we’re trying to get to. It’s how we live our life. Okay. Consider the fat-adapted approach. I think it’s amazing. It works really well for me and countless people that I work with. Give it a shot. You never know. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
Being overweight is not something that’s not talked about very much (or at all) in the running community. There seems to be some stigma around being a runner and being overweight. Like you’re not …
Continue Reading about 214. Replay: Why Running Doesn’t Work for Weight Loss →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 214 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners, and today, why running doesn’t work for weight loss. Being overweight is not something that’s talked about very much or at all in the running community.
There seems to be some stigma around being a runner, and being overweight, like you’re not doing it right. You’re not running enough. You’re doing it all wrong. If you’re training for a marathon and you’re overweight, you’re you’re doing it wrong.
And I know exactly how this feels. This is definitely my story, which I’ll share with you here in a minute. But in this episode, I’m going to share why running is not an effective tool for weight loss, and why you need to treat the underlying physical, mental and emotional aspects of overeating if you really want to lose weight for good.
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about losing weight, about proper nutrition for running about improving your running about building strength. And if you’re new to this podcast, well welcome first of all, but I can tell that for some of you this might feel a little overwhelming and you not might not know where to start with all this stuff.
And if that sounds like you, no worries, I’ve totally got you covered, I created a free hour-long video training that you can check out at any time it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
You’re going to learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance, and mindset, all geared toward you, the runner. If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, then this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training. I know right? It’s so simple. And get started on your weight loss journey today.
Okay, so this is actually a replay episode, if you’re listening to this, I’m probably sitting on the beach in Hawaii right now. And I decided that this is a topic that I really wanted to share with you guys. And I thought I would go ahead and replay this is one of my very, very early episodes.
So if I sound a little bit different, that’s why. It was from several years ago. But the message still rings true. And I’m talking about overeating, especially in this episode. And it’s one aspect of losing weight and improving your health and fitness that a lot of people really don’t address or don’t talk about. So I really wanted to get into this and share this with you guys today. Okay, so let’s get into this replay of why running doesn’t work for weight loss.
Today I want to talk about a subject that is really important to me and something that I’m really passionate about, and that is why running doesn’t work for weight loss. So being overweight is not something that’s talked about very much, or at all in the running community, there seems to be some sort of stigma around being a runner, and being overweight. It’s like, hey, you’re not doing it right. You must not be running enough. If you can’t lose weight, or if you’re overweight. Oh, I see you’re training for a marathon. Still can’t seem to lose weight. What’s wrong with you?
These are some of the things that I’ve heard around the running community. And some things that people have shared with me and I felt as well. Okay, so I know, I know how this feels. I really do. I know this is something that not a lot of people are talking about. And so I wanted to sort of just like shine a light on this subject and talk about this today, because it’s really something that I’m really passionate about. And I haven’t shared this really before. And I think now’s the right time. So here we go.
So back in the day, back in, like 2003, I was seriously, I was overweight, I was I was probably 50 or 60 pounds overweight. And I was very unhealthy. I was very sick, I had cancer, I was drinking too much. And I was in a very, very bad place. I was basically just really sick and really unhealthy. And I needed to change some stuff in my life.
So I did, I quit drinking, which was a big part of the problem for me. I started eating better. And I started running. And obviously I got treated for the cancer and I’ve been cancer-free for many, many years now. So that’s all good. But the running was like a big catalyst for me to like, do something that would help me to lose weight.
You know, like that was the thing was like, oh, if I just run I’m gonna lose weight. And for me, it was like a change of lifestyle completely. You know, I gave up the crazy eating that I was doing. And I started running and stopped drinking. So all those things combined. I lost a lot of weight and I lost probably 60 pounds and kept it off for a long time and continued to run and train and do all these awesome things.
I’ve run like 14 marathons, I’ve done an Ironman, I’ve done countless other triathlons and ultra marathons, including a 50 miler and a 100 miler. And I’ve done all these things, and was able to kind of maintain this, this weight that I was at for a long time. And I felt pretty good about myself.
Well, in the last few years, I’ve sort of backed off my running a little bit. After I did my 100 miler at the end of 2017. I wanted to scale back my running, and I just didn’t want to put anything on the calendar and I just wanted to be like, I just want to go out there and run and have fun and enjoy it and not to have all these goals out there.
So I stopped kind of signing up for races and having goals like that, and I started gaining weight. And I couldn’t figure out why because I was still training and I was still running and I was still like I would do a marathon a year or whatever. But I was running all the time.
Well, I ended up, you know, gaining like 15 or 20 pounds back, you know, look, looking back over time, it was like, it happened slowly, but it happened. And I found myself in this place of like, okay, I need to lose this weight, what am I going to do? And so I tried all these different things to help me to lose the weight.
And I tried like calorie restriction where I was just like counting calories. And that is very challenging to do, by the way, I had to have this app. And I had to log every bite of anything that I ate, and I had to know all the ingredients in it, and all the breakdown of all the nutrition breakdown of it according to the label.
And it was challenging to try to keep track of that. When the idea there was like, oh, yeah, if you eat, you know, 1500 calories, but you burn off 2000 calories a day, you’ll lose weight. I gotta tell you, I did not lose weight. And I was constantly stressed out about entering all this data into this app. Okay.
Maybe that’s how you lose the weight, you’ve spent so much time and energy, and you’re so stressed about trying to figure out how to enter all that data into this thing. You just lose weight. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work. But you know, I’ve done a plant-based thing for many years. Vegetarian, I tried sort of a vegan-paleo thing, a vegan-keto thing, I’ve tried to eat nothing but fat, nothing, but no carbs. Like, I’ve tried all these things. And I couldn’t get anything to work, I can’t get anything to work.
I’ve always felt like I just haven’t had control of what I eat. I know what the problem is now. And I’m gonna get to that in just a minute. But getting here, you know, I just felt like I did not have control over what I was eating. I didn’t have control over myself. You know, I felt tired all the time. I found myself doing a lot of emotional eating. I’ve been doing that lately, too.
By the way, with the lock down here, The Stay At Home order. And some other things going on in my life, I’ve been doing a lot of emotional eating. And I’m not sorry about it, but I even eat when I’m not hungry. And you know what, I’ve just felt stuck.
I felt like, I am never going to lose this weight. And I’ve keep running. You know, I ran back in August, I did 31 days of running. And I thought for sure that would help me to lose weight. No, I gained weight. Starting in November, I did a running challenge running through the holidays. And I ran for something like 80 days straight. And I thought that would help me to lose weight.
And it didn’t, I didn’t lose weight at all, I actually gained weight. And so I’ve realized that the problem really isn’t about running. It’s not about like, oh, I’m not running enough. The problem is that I’m overeating. The problem is that I overeat, I eat too much. I have an addiction to food. I’ve programmed my body to become so addicted to food, not just my body, but my brain as well, to become so addicted to food, especially sugar.
That not even you know, training for a marathon is going to help me to lose weight. Okay? So, believe me, I’m frustrated by this or have been frustrated by this. And I feel like the advice out there is just like here, Here, eat this. Just eat this over here or eat this or just do this diet over here. And it just this just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for most people.
You know, just changing your behavior, changing what you eat, does not address the underlying issues. You know, I feel like everyone’s out there just saying, eat this as if it’s that simple. It’s not that simple. In order to lose weight in order to be at your ideal weight to be at your natural weight. You need to identify and fix the causes of your over eating. Not just treat the symptoms. We’re so focused on treating the symptoms or not getting to the root of the problem. Okay.
So all these different like diets I’ve tried or whatever, I’ve tried these things and then said, that doesn’t work because I gained weight, or I kept overeating. And the problem isn’t in what I’m eating, necessarily, although that is part of it. The problem is, I wasn’t addressing the mental and emotional part of overeating, okay?
There’s three parts to overeating that have to be addressed. There’s the physical causes of overeating, there’s the mental causes, and then there’s the emotional causes. I’m going to talk about all three of these. But I want you to know something, if you’re out there and you’re a runner, and you’re having a, you know, a struggle with you’re struggling to lose weight or struggling to feel good about your body.
I know what you’re going through, I feel I feel your pain, I really do. And, and I want to help you, and I, and I coach people through this. I’m coaching myself through this and I want to coach you through this. So here’s what we’re gonna talk about today, we’re going to talk about the three causes of overeating. And, and the things that aren’t really addressed. And if you’re a runner, I want you to pay attention. And I want you to really take in what I’m going to say here and be open to trying something that’s a little different, okay?
Because whatever, whatever you’ve been trying is not working. Okay? So let’s try something different. Okay? Okay, so the three causes of overeating. The first is the physical causes. So this is, most overeating is caused by a hormonal imbalance, okay? Overeating, especially sugar, causes too much insulin to be produced in your body. Insulin is a fat storage hormone, okay, the more insulin you produce, the more fat will be stored on your body, the more you way, okay?
If you continually produce insulin, you are going to continue to gain weight. Okay, this is just straight up science, okay? The problem is that when you’re trying to lose weight, the most important thing for you to consume is what it’s your own body fat you want to consume, if you will, you want to burn for energy, your own body fat, in order to lose weight, you cannot do that when your body is full of glucose sugar, your insulin is too high. And you’re in fat storage mode, and you got to, you got to shift that, okay.
So the first thing you need to do is you need to get your insulin levels down. And you can do this by eating less often. And by reducing the amount of sugar you consume. We all know that sugar is bad for us. Okay? It’s actually the worst thing you can put in your body. And I’m saying this, as, as the words are coming out of my mouth here. I’m thinking of the Ben and Jerry’s that I have in the freezer, and I’m like, Oh, my God, I love Ben and Jerry’s. I absolutely love it.
But I’m giving it up, because I know how bad it is for me, and I’m just tired of feeling the way that I felt lately, okay. So I’m giving it up. And here’s the other thing, when you eat too much sugar, you get this huge over desire for food, you get this like physical craving for food.
Because what happens is, sugar is super concentrated, it causes a super concentrated dopamine response in your brain. It causes an excess of dopamine to be produced, which feels really good, right? So much so that the neurotransmitters that are producing the dopamine, they actually down regulate over time.
So it takes more and more sugar for you to get the same amount of pleasure. So you got to eat more sugar to feel good. And your brain and your body or just being there like it’s like a Drug Act, okay? A drug addict needs more and more of the drug to produce the same result. And so what happens there then your insulin goes up again, you get more cravings, you can’t handle the cravings, you eat more, and there’s this crazy cycle that happens, right.
And you know what? This isn’t your fault. We’ve all been programmed this way. For decades, the food industry has made it their mission to make food as delicious as possible, you know, as desirable as possible, they put sugar in everything, for the love. And the food that we eat, it’s so concentrated and processed that it gives us this incredible hit of dopamine when we eat certain foods. And then we have to eat more and more just to get that same feeling.
Okay, so it’s like being addicted to drugs or alcohol, you need more to produce the same effect. So in order to fix the physical cause of overeating, you have to get that insulin level down, you have to eat less, eat less often and eat less processed foods like sugar and flour. Okay? When you do this, you actually can start to get your hormones back in balance and start burning fat instead of burning to sugar. Okay. So that’s how we fix the physical part of overeating.
Okay, next is the mental part of overeating, the mental causes. So mental cravings, this is a real thing. Again, the food industry has concentrated this sugar in our foods so much that we are constantly craving more and more food, more and more of this delicious sugar, right? Our brains are actually responding the way they’re supposed to, though. They’re not,your brain is working normally. Okay, this isn’t your fault.
You eat the sugar, you eat the flour, you release the dopamine. And then your brain wants more of that. It’s just like your primitive brain, the amygdala, part of your brain responding to this like, it’s like a life or death situation, you know, are primitive brains, they’ve learned over time that when food is good, we’re going to produce a hormone that makes us feel good. So that will remember that, hey, this is good, okay.
So when you know when we would be eating blueberries back in the caveman days, you know, back in the day, we’d be eating some blueberries and be like, ooh, these are really good. And you get this little tiny dopamine response, right? That’s good. Oh, I want to remember this, I want to eat more of those because they made me feel good. And so you’ll go back and eat more of the blueberries.
Okay, but over time, it’s kind of developed into this thing of like, life and death kind of situation with our brains. Because now we have like blueberry syrup, blueberry pie, blueberry toaster strudels. We juice everything. So it’s super concentrated, and we get this super intense hit of dopamine. And then when we don’t get it, our brains are like, we need this now or we’re going to die.
Your brain actually literally thinks it’s like a life and death situation happening here. Okay. So that’s kind of like what’s happening with your brain. And then you get these thoughts. So the thoughts will start to come into play here, you get these thoughts of, I’m restless, I’m bored. I feel deprived.
You know, when you stop overeating, even for a little bit. You start to feel like, you know, oh, I just deserve this. I’m deprived. What’s one box of Oreos? You know that you can justify that all you want. And all that mental chatter. All it’s doing is just continuing to build into that idea and support that idea that your brain is thinking like you need this or you’re going to die. And so you give in to it, you give into the mental craving, okay.
And we’ve just been programmed our whole lives, we’ve essentially programmed our minds to over eat and buy now. It’s our subconscious mind that’s running the show. Our subconscious minds have been programmed to make us think we have to overeat or will die. Okay, we get these intense cravings for something sweet.
And I know I talk about Ben and Jerry’s all the time, but it’s just a good example. It’s so good. But it’s like Ben and Jerry’s. You know? I think about that. And I’m like, I’ve just got to have it. And these thoughts go through my mind. Like if I don’t have it, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I might die. And I’ll go to the store and I’ll get some.
I’ll go drive miles to the store to get Ben and Jerry’s just so I can like satisfy that mental craving. And there’s a physical craving there too. But here’s the thing. The good news is that you can reprogram your mind to not overeat, you can reprogram your mind to just just eat normally. This is actually one of the most powerful things I do with my coaching clients is I help them change their brains literally by creating new habits, new neural pathways.
And if you really want to stop overeating, you have to break those old habits and create new habits that serve to reprogram your mind, especially the subconscious. But even if you can get the physical piece to work, and you can get through some of this mental stuff, there’s still that emotional side of overeating that has to be addressed.
One of the biggest underlying factors in weight gain is emotional eating. And you know what? Runners just don’t want to talk about this. Runners think I’ve got this. I’m a runner, I know what to do. I know all this stuff about nutrition, I’ve read the books, like I’m good, thanks. They just don’t want to talk about it. Okay.
Runners do love talking about food, though, but not overeating. You know, we talk about donuts and ice cream and pizza and chips and cake and all that. What are we going to eat after the run? And I would do that too. And I would just eat all that food. But then I noticed something happening to me, I started to feel bad about myself.
You know, I started gaining weight. And I started feeling guilty about overeating. And I started to feel like shame around it. I felt shame about how I looked and how I felt I’ve been fit for a long time and had been really in great shape. And then I got to this point where I didn’t even want to like, take my shirt off at the pool or whatever. Because I was like, oh, I you know, feel fat again, okay.
And I felt judged by other people, like people were talking about me. They probably weren’t, it’s probably all in my head. But I just felt that way. And I felt like a failure. Like, I used to be really fit. I used to be in good shape. And now I’m not anymore. And like, I’m never going to be that person again. And honestly, I just felt depressed about it and sad.
And you know how I know how I dealt with all these emotions I was feeling? Yes, I ate over them. Because eating gives me that little dopamine hit and it feels good. Does that make any sense whatsoever? As I’m saying this, you’re probably like, dude, that makes no sense whatsoever. Or maybe you’re like, yep, I get it.
Here’s the problem, though. When that little feel good, dopamine wears off, you’re still left with feeling all those emotions. But now it’s worse because you feel bad about overeating. So you eat more to feel better. And then like, oh my gosh, it’s this crazy vicious cycle that just goes on and on. But you know what? Emotional eating is a very common thing. It’s a very, very common theme. A lot of people do it, they eat, so they don’t have to feel their feelings. Especially right now during this like stay at home order people are dealing with this crisis by going to the refrigerator. I’ve seen a lot of people joking about it on social media, but I think there’s an underlying like, oh, yeah, that’s me. You know?
I mean, I’ve been doing it. I know that it’s been me, okay. I mean, it does work for a little bit like you do feel a little bit better while you’re eating the Ben and Jerry’s. But when you stop, what happens? Like what results are you getting? Who are you? Who are you becoming in the process of stuffing down your feelings and feeling good momentarily, like you’re using this? It’s like a false pleasure.
You know, to just try to feel good in the moment we were so afraid to feel our feelings that we will become overweight, instead of feeling our feelings. You know, if you want to stop overeating, if you want to lose weight, you have to be able to manage your emotions, you have to be able to feel your emotions. Well, how do you do that?
Well, one of the things you do is you need to stop using food to feel better. Okay, that’s one thing. And you need to learn how to just sit with your feelings, how to sit with your emotions, how to allow them to be there, without reacting to them, or without eating to now feel them. And you know what, here’s some truth I’m gonna drop on you right now.
This is not a comfortable place to be. Sometimes it’s not comfortable, to feel sad, or to feel frustrated or to feel angry, or to feel shame or guilt or whatever it is, it might suck pretty bad sometimes. And honestly, in those times, it’s really good to have somebody there and help you. And that’s where I come in.
And I, one of the most powerful things I do as a coach is I help my clients work through their emotions, I help them to learn to allow those emotions to be with them, to allow them to be present in their body, to embrace that temporary uncomfortable feelings so they can get to the other side of that because on the other side of that is all the stuff that you want, okay, on the other side of those uncomfortable feelings are the results that you want in your life, okay?
All right, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
A lot of people set out to lose weight and then quit. They change their diet, start exercising, and then at some point just throw up their hands and give up. This was definitely me and it was …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 184 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, The Incredible Power of Focus. So a lot of people set out to lose weight and then at some point they quit.
They changed their diet, they started exercising, and then at some point, they just throw up their hands and they give up. This was definitely me, and it was probably you at some point, I’m guessing.
And while there are a lot of reasons why someone might just give up on themselves, one of the most likely reasons is a serious lack of focus. Being focused means more than just paying attention to what’s in front of you, it can actually be the key to accomplishing all your health and fitness goals.
So in this episode, I uncover the incredible power of focus and how it can help you become the leaner, stronger, more badass runner you’ve always wanted to be. But first, I often get asked by runners who want to lose weight, how to get started, how to get started with proper nutrition, resistance training, how to get stronger how to improve their running, maybe run longer or run faster, or maybe they just want more energy, they want to improve themselves from the inside out.
I get asked this so much that I put together a free training program designed to do just that to get you started on your health and fitness journey to get you started on your weight loss journey. And it’s called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner.
If you’re looking for a great place to start, this is it. It’s an on demand video training. So you can go through it at your own pace, whenever it’s convenient for you, you’ll learn what it means to eat real food, how to improve your ability to burn fat, how to get stronger, how to increase your endurance as a runner, and so much more, just go to runningleancoaching.com and click on Free Training to get started.
Alright, let’s talk about the incredible power of focus. So if we look up the definition of focus, there’s a couple. One of them is, “The center of interest directivity.”
Another one is, “A clear visual definition.” That’s like when you take a camera and you bring something into focus into clearer visual definition.
And the third definition here is, “To pay particular attention to something.”
Okay. So when we think about focus, I want you to think about a couple different ways of looking at this, you know, this is the center of your interest, you’re putting your mindset on something, and you are paying very close attention to that something or paying particular attention to that area of interest or activity and bringing it into clearer focus, bringing it into clearer definition.
So I like all of those definitions of the word, focus, think about focus this way. And this, this describes the incredible power of focus for sure. If you were to take a 150 watt light bulb, and you are to put it on a lamp in the middle of a large room and turn it on middle of a dark room, and you turn on that 150 watt light bulb, it would scatter light all over the room and light up the room you wouldn’t be able to see in a dark room. Very cool, right?
But if you were to take that same 150 watts, and focus the light into a very small laser beam, you could actually cut through steel with that same amount of light, it’s the same amount of energy, the same amount of light being produced, but it is focused.
And you can see that the power of that focused beam of light is much more powerful than a light bulb that’s just scattered as its light all over the place. There’s nothing wrong with a light bulb, it’s doing its job, it’s lighting up the room. But think about how much more powerful that light is when it is focused.
Okay, your focus is similar. If it’s spread all over the place, if there’s no precise direction to it, if you’re scattered. I mean this is okay and most of us live our lives this way where we kind of scatter our focus and our attention everywhere. And that’s okay. But what would happen, if you took that same amount of energy and you concentrated it?
What if you were to concentrate that energy more precisely on certain areas of your life, on certain goals that you have for yourself? I think things would change dramatically for you. And I think you would agree with that, you would become unstoppable. You could accomplish amazing things.
You know, if you want to lose weight, this requires focused energy. And a lot of people that give up, that quit things, they do it because they lack the focus, they lack the ability to stay focused on the goal.
What do you need to succeed at anything, especially like, health and fitness goals? You need a very clear, focused vision for that end result that you’re looking for. Who is it that you want to become? What do you really want for yourself? What does the future version of you look like?
And we talk about this a lot in my coaching program, when you’re a client of mine, I kind of make you go through this process of like painting a very clear picture of what that future version of you looks like.
What do you look like? How are you sleeping? How? How is your life different than it is today? How are your clothes fitting you? What clothes are you wearing? Are you comfortable taking your shirt off at the pool? You know, things like that.
And when we have this clear vision of our future self, when we have this sense of purpose, and we know exactly what we want for ourselves, well, that’s good, because now we have focus, we have direction, we have a plan a path steps, we can change our actions and behaviors because we know where we’re going.
But you have to have a clear and organized version of that future self, you have to have a clear and focused vision for who you want to become if you want to become that person. Because without a clear vision for yourself, you’re just going to be like, whatever.
So when we have this clear focus, this creates a lot of consistency, it creates a lot of motivation. And we’ll talk about more of that in a minute. But you are more likely to reach those goals. Because you have a clear vision for who you want to become.
When you don’t have focus, you don’t understand where you’re going, you know, you have no clarity of purpose, no clear vision for your future self. There’s no like big picture here, or you have a big picture, but it’s very, it’s like a blurry big picture. It’s not focused, right?
And without focus, we tend to forget our purpose, why we want these things for ourselves. So your health, your fitness, your exercise, your nutrition, it’s all scattered, right? No direction, no motivation to do anything. Because it doesn’t really matter. Because you don’t have that sense of purpose.
You don’t have that clear vision for who you want to become which just drives your motivation down. And this is why people quit. Because they don’t have that focus, they don’t have that clear vision of their future self.
And when you don’t have motivation, you lack progress. You don’t get the results you want. And of course, you’re gonna quit, why would you keep going. But with focus, you create that clear vision of your future self, you have that clarity of purpose, you have very clear goals, and dreams and hopes and things that you want to accomplish for yourself.
This is amazing at helping you to maintain motivation. Because without focus, you get very, it’s very demotivating. You know, you’re just scattered all over the place. You don’t even know where you’re going. How can you even track progress? You know, and that’s where you kind of lose motivation and give up.
But with focus, you maintain motivation. You continually make progress because you’re, you’re taking consistent aligned action. And you end up getting the results that you want, you produce results consistently. And even small results, even if they are, you know, small wins, achieved consistently you will eventually reach your goal.
It’s like running an ultra marathon. It doesn’t matter how slow you go, you gotta run 100 miles, just keep moving forward. But when you stop moving, or when you go backwards, or your heart isn’t in it anymore, and you have no clear vision of where you want to be at the end.
And there’s no purpose for you to continue, why would you continue? It’s just so easy to give up. Okay, so you can start to see, I’m hoping anyway, I hope you can start to see that focus is the key here. Whatever it is you want to accomplish, you want to lose weight, it takes time.
If you want to run an ultra marathon, it takes time, it takes time for the training, it takes time to do that actual event as well. And these things mean that you are going to have to spend a lot of time staying focused, so you stay in the game.
And another way of thinking about focus is this word, constraint, think about constraint. So what is the definition of constraint? This means a limitation or a restriction. And I know when people hear this, they think of this in a negative way, oh, I don’t want to be restricted, I don’t want to be limited. But don’t think about it in a negative way.
Think about it as restricting or limiting your focus to you know, one thing at a time. So constraint of focus is very important. And they’re similar. But it’s almost like taking your focus and really fine tuning it, it’s like, you know, that laser that I’m talking about earlier, instead of being a light bulb, be the laser constraint helps you to do this.
So we don’t want to scatter our focus all over the place, we want it to be very laser like and so constrained is how we do this. So one thing to understand is that people make a big deal about their ability to multitask.
And I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but multitasking is really not something we do well. It’s just as nice as it would be to be able to do two things at once. Lots and lots of studies have shown that the human brain simply isn’t capable of paying full attention to more than one thing at a time.
In fact, our brain has evolved to be really good at single tasking, to only be able to think about or do one thing at a time. So when somebody says they’re multitasking, that’s just somebody who is scattered. They’re trying to justify it. Oh, I’m just, I’m a multitasker. It’s like, no, you’re just not focused. You lack focus and constraint. Okay.
So multitasking is not real, we want to focus on one thing at a time. And let’s, you know, see what this would look like. So if you want to achieve health and fitness goals, you know, and like I said, these things take time, you want to lose weight, it’s going to take time, you want to become a runner, and just be able to run a half marathon or marathon or a 5k, whatever this takes time.
It’s really hard to get out there and just like run and accomplish something big from a running perspective. Or lifting weights at the gym, you know, you want to build some muscle you want to, you know, get more toned, that is not something that you’re going to see right away, you can’t go to the gym three times and be toned, like it takes a while months of hard work to get to that place. Right. And so we don’t see results for a while.
So we need to stay focused. And we need to practice constraint. So here’s an example of someone who’s trying to lose weight, let’s say you’re, you want to lose weight. And you are really motivated to lose weight.
And so you are going to do everything all at once you’re going to cut calories, and give up sugar, and start intermittent fasting and cut out snacking. And you’re going to start logging all your food and tracking your food and an app and counting your macros and skipping breakfast and doing all your workouts fasted.
And I will tell you that this approach can feel way too overwhelming. It’s just too much to change all at once. And you are very likely to fail and or quit. And a quick story of one of my clients who was very motivated early on in the process. And he came to me and on our first call, he had said okay, I’ve made all these changes.
And he literally was doing everything I just said. And he was like I’m super motivated. I’m doing all these things. And I said listen, I really don’t recommend that because you’re going to kind of feel overwhelmed and you’re probably not going to be able to sustain this very long.
But he was determined that it was fine that he could do it all. And so I said okay, let’s see how it goes. And two weeks later, he was like I can’t do this. He could not maintain that type of lifestyle, you know, all those changes at once was way too much for him.
So I said, Okay, let’s just start over. Let’s start over. Okay. But I don’t know about you, I have done this before, too, because I get this, like, you know, what do they call it shiny object syndrome, where I’m like, oh, this is cool. Oh, look at this cool thing over here. Let’s try that too. Oh, that looks fun. I saw that on Instagram. Oh, let’s try that.
So when we have shiny object syndrome, and we try all these different things at once, that all sounds great, but it’s too much. It’s too much. And it’s really hard to maintain that, especially when it comes to, you know, lifestyle changes, like from a nutrition and exercise standpoint, okay.
So constraint means focusing on one thing at a time. So for this particular person, and for you, and for others, I would say, let’s just start with one thing, like, let’s give up sugar, let’s just give that a couple of weeks, see how you feel, get over the withdrawal symptoms, which are real, by the way, once you feel good about where you are, and you’ve gotten over that initial withdrawal from sugar, and you’re starting to feel better, let’s go on to step two. Let’s try something else. Right.
And this is my strategy with clients. It’s always a layered approach, we make one or two small changes, we wait a couple of weeks, we see how things are working or not working. And then we can layer on the next change. This is my, I call this like my layered approach, right?
We’re layering on different changes, making sure that your body and your mind adjust to these things, and give you enough time to adjust to these things. So that then when we move on to the next thing, it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. You’re like, oh, I already got this one thing, let’s, let’s go on to step number two.
So this practice is very effective. It gives you the ability to get used to one small change at a time, this is how you change habits. Right? You cannot change habits by changing everything at once. You have to do these one step at a time.
So this is where constraint is very important, right? This practice is effective because it gives you feedback. And so you know exactly what’s working. What isn’t? Because you’ve only changed the one thing, if you change 10 things, how do you know which one of these things is making you feel terrible, you just don’t know?
Alright, so we change one thing at a time. And then this practice is also sustainable, because we are constraining our changes to one thing at a time. You get used to each stage to each change before we move on to the next stage before we move on to the next change. And so building habits this way is very powerful, very effective.
Okay, so let’s, let’s talk about how to get started with this. How do you get started with practicing constraint and focus? And I want you to start with that vision for your future self. So who are you becoming? Where do you want to be in 6 to 12 months? What goals do you have for yourself?
Do you want to lose weight, improve your strength, you want to get faster, maybe you want to qualify for Boston or run that ultra marathon. Maybe you’re just someone who’s like, I just need to fix my dysfunctional relationship with food. Whatever it is, be very clear and focused on who you want to be. And then write it down.
And then spend at least five minutes a day thinking about this future version of yourself every single day, spend some time writing about it, journaling about it, reading those journal entries, recording a voice memos, talking to somebody else about your goals and your dreams for your future for yourself who you want to become.
Everything that you want for yourself, every accomplishment that you want to achieve starts in your mind. It starts with thinking about who you want to be, and what you want that end result to be, what is the outcome you’re looking for. And the more focused and the more clear that vision of your future self is, the more likely you are to achieve that.
So spend time every single day thinking about who you want to be, you have to have this very clear vision of who you want to be if you want to get there, right? If you don’t have focus around your goals and the vision for your future self you’re just going to fail. So don’t skip this step. Consistent focus on your future self will help you stay motivated. It will help you keep your head in the game and keep you making progress towards those goals.
Keep reminding yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. People who don’t do this, they will be motivated at the beginning of the process. You know, we all get motivated when we make a change. Oh I’m gonna lose weight. I’m gonna change my diet. I’m gonna stop eating sugar and they feel motivated at the beginning.
But over time, that motivation will fade and then they will think that they are just a failure, that they can’t do this, that it will never work for them. That is not true. The actual truth is they just lost their focus. That’s it. Clarity of purpose, that’s the key.
Keep reminding yourself of this purpose, keep reminding yourself why this is important to you, and you will stay motivated. And you will be much more consistent in your actions. And you’ll keep moving toward that vision of yourself for the future. Okay, so start with that vision of who you want to become. And then you have to practice constraint.
And this is the thing that is hard for most people, because I’m going to tell you, just pick one thing to change. You know, pick an area of your life, whether it’s, you know, running, getting faster, improving your endurance, whether it’s losing weight, or getting stronger, pick one area, and then pick one, you know, behavior that you want to change one action that you want to change, don’t get sucked into the shiny object syndrome, where you want to try to change everything at once.
Just choose one area, and then one action item that you can do and give it a couple of weeks, you know, like giving up sugar. Give that a couple of weeks and see how it’s going for you. What are the results? Is this working, or not? Is this terrible? Do I still feel terrible? Or am I feeling better now?
Okay, but don’t be tempted to keep changing things every single day. Don’t do everything at once, make one small change, and then make sure that you’ve adapted to that change before layering on the next thing. And then it’s just a matter of rinsing and repeating this process, because over time, you will find that changing habits is much easier if you practice constraint instead of trying to do it all at once.
And then the third part of this is to have a plan. Being focused means that you have a plan. And of course, you got to stick to the plan. But people who lack focus, people who are scattered, they don’t have a plan.
Their plan is to just wing it with everything that they do. And how does that work for you? That doesn’t work very good. I’m gonna tell you, it might work in the moment, and sometimes we do have to wing it. And that’s just because, you know, maybe something happened externally. And your plan has to change because of outside circumstances that you have no control over.
And that is completely fine. But winging it is not a plan, okay. So I always tell my clients that the key to accomplishing everything that they want is to have a plan, right and stick to the plan. That’s the important part, right? You got to have a plan, but then you got to stick to the plan, right?
Being focused and practicing constraint. This gives you the ability to stay on track. And it helps you to continue to make minor changes, tweaking the plan if necessary. But when you’re focused and you’re practicing constraint, it means you are working a plan very intentionally, not haphazardly.
Like you’re, you’re doing everything with intention. With direction you have a laser-like focus on what you’re doing. And then what the next thing is, what’s that next step that’s going to move you closer to your goals. Without focus, you don’t have any idea what the next step is, with focus.
And with constraint, you know exactly what the next step is, because you’ve planned it in advance, and then you do it because you’re not distracted by a million other things. So make a plan. And stick to the plan. This is simple, but it requires you to be focused and it requires constraint, okay.
Remember to continue focusing on your future self always. And anytime you feel like you’re stuck, or you’re lacking motivation, you don’t feel like going to the gym, you don’t feel like running, whatever it is, remember why you’re doing this, go back to that future version of yourself, spend some time in that place. And then the other thing should fall into place for you here.
And then lastly, be careful where you put your focus. So if you focus on the negative on the things that are not working for you, you’re going to feel terrible, you’re going to feel less motivated, and you’re probably going to quit. So if you focus on your failures, you’re destined to repeat them and continue to fail.
If you focus on how long it’s taking, or I can’t do this or I’m a failure or this is too hard. It will continue to be hard, it will continue. You will continue not to be able to do it and you will continue to fail, right. If you keep focusing on the negative, you’re going to feel more and more negative and keep getting more negative results.
You always get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you want. Have you ever noticed that negative people always seem to attract more and more negativity into their lives? Have you ever noticed that positive people seem to attract more and more positivity into their lives?
It all has to do with where they put their focus, you get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you really want. And I love this quote from Bruce Lee that says, “The successful warrior is the average man or woman with laser-like focus.”
So be the successful warrior. Maintain laser-like focus on your goals and your dreams, and you’ll experience success like never before.
And then lastly, have you ever thought about doing something hard and then just decided I can’t do that? I’ve done this many times. I’ve told myself, I can’t lose weight. I can’t run a marathon. I can’t finish an Ironman. And the problem with thoughts like I can’t is that that thought becomes the truth for you.
Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” And I love this quote so much because it sums up this whole principle beautifully. It means that whatever you believe you can or can’t do will be true for you.
So thoughts like ‘I can’t’, they don’t serve any purpose other than to keep you stuck and limit your potential. By the way, I stopped saying I can’t a long time ago. Since then, I’ve been able to lose weight. Keep the weight off for good. I’ve run like 20 marathons, I finished the Ironman Triathlon.
Stop saying I can’t and start saying I can and see what amazing things you’ll be able to accomplish. Let’s you and I work together to see what you can do. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more about my unique weight loss coaching program for runners. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Today I have a special treat for you, I’m sharing a candid conversation I recently had with Pete Caigan. Pete is one of my clients who has had a pretty remarkable transformation over the last 6 …
Continue Reading about 181. Ultramarathon Redemption with Pete Caigan →
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 181 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today: Ultramarathon Redemption with Pete Caigan. So today I have a special treat for you.
I’m sharing a candid conversation I recently had with Pete Caigan, Pete is one of my clients who’s had a pretty remarkable transformation over the last six months or so. Before finding me Pete was training for an ultra marathon and found himself gaining quite a bit of weight, and ended up getting a DNF.
So he did not finish his first 50k attempt and was determined to try again and succeed. So he’s going to share his story of changing his diet, getting fat adapted, and the things he struggled with along the way, losing weight and then attempting that same 50k again.
I hope you enjoy this episode of Ultramarathon Redemption with Pete Caigan. His story is truly inspiring. But first, if you’re ready to learn what it takes to get leaner and stronger, run faster and longer than you ever imagined, then I have just the thing for you.
Check out my all new free training called Five Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner, Stronger Runner. This comprehensive training will teach you how to lose weight and keep it off for good without running an extra million miles per week.
It takes everything I’ve been teaching on this podcast for the last three years or so and distills it down into an hour long training program to teach you everything you need to know to get started on your weight loss journey the right way, and it’s all designed with you the runner in mind, just go to runningleancoaching.com click on free training to get started.
Okay, let’s just get into it. Without further ado, please enjoy my recent conversation with Pete Caigan.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, so today we’re having a conversation. Me and Pete. Pete Caigan has been working with me for a period of time now, and has experienced some pretty amazing stuff, some pretty amazing transformations. And I want to talk about that. So welcome, Pete.
Pete Caigan
Thank you. Good to be here, Patrick. Thank you for having me.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So give me an idea of, you know, what things were like for you before we started working together. So think back to that time. It’s been a while now. I guess it was back in probably October, September, October of last year. And you needed some help with some things and you had some goals. So just give me an idea, kind of a little bit of a snapshot of where you were at that time and what you were looking for some help with what your goals were at that time.
Pete Caigan
Sure. It was September of 2022. And I was feeling frustrated. I was 30 pounds more than I am now by running and slowing down to crawl. I had done a half marathon trail run in the fall of ‘21 and it went great. Started training the spring of ‘22 for 50k.
I took the advice of my cousin to eat a lot of carbs and load and just eat whatever you want and run a lot. And I did that and I gained about 20 pounds and attempted my 50k in the spring of 2022 got taken off the course at mile 10 by the sweepers. Mumbled and grumbled for a few months and then heard your podcast a bunch of times and decided to get in touch.
Patrick McGilvray
So that that experience of training for that first ultra marathon and eating all the what I’ll just call like “carbage”, right, all the junk food or whatever, will lead to 20 pounds of weight gain.
Pete Caigan
Yeah, I gained 20 pounds and slowed down. My endurance was really good. I was so slow and it was brutal. Everything was difficult.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and it’s crazy because we’re told, at least by traditional coaches and you know, this is you know, long standing principles, I guess, of running that you need all these carbs, but some of us are a little more sensitive than others to them and they have an adverse effect and even training for an ultra marathon isn’t going to undo kind of what your experience was of loading up on all those carbs and and you can’t outrun that bad diet.
Pete Caigan
As I said before, I was doing long runs over 20 miles. And so gaining weight, and you’re probably running 40 miles a week or that entire time gave me wings. It was very strange. I was going on and I was legitimately hungry. It wasn’t like, I felt hungry. It was signals, and I was listening.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And then you tempted this 50k. And you said around mile 10, you got taken off the course because you didn’t make a cut off?
Pete Caigan
Yeah, there was a cut off. And the sweepers came and the race director said, come on, get the bus. And I was like, no way. He’s like, well, you can keep going, but you’re not part of the race anymore if you want to keep going. And this is very bad country, Vermont. So I was, I think, wise and got on the bus. And I was really mad at the guy for like months. Like I was like telling all my friends and took me when whining finally hit me like maybe he was right. Like maybe I already got hurt, not made it. So that’s what I recommitted and called you.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, so you were 30 pounds overweight at the time, or 30 pounds heavier than you are now. You were frustrated. Sounds like from not being able to finish this event that you train for, you’re probably frustrated that you gain all that weight in the process.
So give me an idea of what some of the goals were when you wanted to, you know, start working with me and like why you came to me and like what is it that you wanted out of that coaching experience? What did you need help with?
Pete Caigan
Well, I needed to get help, because I couldn’t figure it out. I was eating, I thought well, and I was working out a lot. So I wanted to initially lose 20 pounds and try to do the same race again. And finish. Be successful was my initial goal when I joined up with you.
Patrick McGilvray
So those are the big goals. To lose 20 pounds and then do this race and redeem yourself, you know, not be taken off the course or suggested to be taken off the course.
Pete Caigan
Yeah. Exactly.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, good. So you committed to those goals, we started kind of changing something. So what was that process like for you at the beginning? Like, what were some of the changes that that seemed to help you the most at the beginning, especially.
Pete Caigan
I think getting off grains, sugar, and seed oils was really the beginning. And start to be more conscious of what I was eating. So I started to journal food. And I started to eat in a window. You know, like I was doing 16 hours a day not eating, eight hours a day eating.
That is really the biggest change and really not easy. It was extremely difficult. For me it was about two weeks of discomfort, but it wasn’t miserable. I was just a little cranky, little hungry. I was very slow as a runner. I felt like I was carrying a bag of rocks. And
Patrick McGilvray
How many times a day were you eating before? Like how often during the day were you eating prior to this?
Pete Caigan
Oh, seven.
Pete Caigan
Yeah, just like constantly eating all the time.
Pete Caigan
Well, I usually would like wake up, have some coffee, hang out and have a bowl of oatmeal. Maybe wait an hour, go for a run, get back. You know, have a protein bar. Work a couple hours more.
Have lunch, pretty good lunch, maybe a salad, chicken, maybe some rice. Mid afternoon I’d be back at it with some more food, whatever nuts, bag of nuts, maybe more bars or something. And then before dinner I was snacking a bit on whatever, chips. It’s pretty healthy.
Like I was shopping at the health food store. I was eating good foods, but then dinner, it could be like anything. I mean, could be anything. It could be a bowl of pasta with, you know, fish or whatever. It was a lot of carbs. No window, you know, I was eating like 14 hours a day.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so you’re describing what I’ve talked about in the past, which is that typical runner’s diet. Which is just eating all the time, because you’re hungry all the time, and you’re eating all the carbs all the time.
And when you’re eating all the carbs all the time, that makes you more hungry. So you just got to keep eating the carbs so you can keep satisfying that hunger but the satisfaction never comes. And you end up doing a couple things.
Number one, a lot of that energy that you’re taking in, a lot of the food that you’re taking in, gets converted to fat stores and you, you recognize that from gaining 20 pounds during this process.
The other thing is that you’re never feeling really satisfied, you’re always hungry, you know, and the only thing that you’re your body, you’ve you’ve trained your body essentially to crave more carbs.
You know, the body will crave what you continue to give it, what you repeatedly do. And so when you repeatedly eat carbs, you’re just going to be craving more and more and more carbs. And that is a really kind of a downward spiral. It’s a cycle that you can’t get out of.
Pete Caigan
There for a little bit like when I was working out and I was working a lot. I was doing CrossFit three or four times a week, I was running four days a week, and I was stretching every day and my work is active.
So I was working out and feeling like when I did eat the carbs, I was like, okay, good. I’m good to go. And I’d have like an hour. I don’t know what it is, a sugar rush? But then the hunger would come quickly, you know, and I realized now, it wasn’t real hunger when it felt like hunger.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, well, it feels great eating that stuff. It feels amazing because it lights you up. You know it hits those dopamine receptors in your brain and produces serotonin and you know, all the good feeling hormones and things like that.
It’s very similar to the way drugs and alcohol light up our brains. You know, they’ve done all these studies on the poor little rats who you know, they make them take all this cocaine and sugar and things like that. And the rats kind of prefer the sugar to the cocaine because it just feels so amazing.
So even the rats will choose carbs over cocaine. It’s kind of funny. But yeah, so that that whole process is maybe, okay, for some people like what you just described there is the way a lot of people approach running, especially when doing ultras.
Pete Caigan
Yeah, my cousin who recommended it, he eats like that, and he came in third on the 50 miler on the same event. That he was like, wasn’t that great? I don’t know.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. And I followed a bunch of ultra runners early in my running career. And, and they were doing the same thing. And I was like, well, I guess this is what I need to do. And I had the same experience you did Pete, where I just kept gaining weight until I was like 40 pounds overweight, and like what is happening here, you know, so that doesn’t work for everybody.
And if you’re somebody listening to this, and you’re like, yeah, that’s my experience too. Just know that you can change like, you don’t have to keep doing that. And being in that cycle, that frustrating cycle of like, eating all the carbs, being hungry all the time, getting fatter and fatter as you go, like, that’s not a good place to be. It’s not healthy.
It’s just not, you know. And so, you know, the solution is not to just, you know, never eat another grain or carb again in your life. That’s not what we’re talking about here. So, what did that sort of diet look like for you, you know, at the beginning at least, Pete?
Pete Caigan
Well, I would drink coffee. I started to use heavy cream in my coffee, which I always avoided because that was taboo. And I love the taste. So I could put a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream in my coffee in the morning and feel like good.
So that would usually be the morning combined with a fasted workout. And I was at first struggling with that, the fasted workouts, but within a couple of weeks, it was better, actually. Surprisingly even the lifting and Crossfit was better.
And then I would wait till noon generally to eat and what it would look like was a nice serving a protein could be like 12 ounces of fish, or chicken, usually fish or chicken with the big salad, no starchy vegetables, but a big salad with olive oil, salt and pepper. Very satisfying.
So I would do that and then at first I was really struggling getting from lunch to dinner, like to get from noon to six for me because I’m pretty active was hard. And I did that for a while but I was constantly like kind of freaking out.
So I added a protein shake mid afternoon, like a whey protein. And if I’m really hungry, I might eat some nuts but not a lot. And then dinner would generally be another big serving of protein and not salad more like cauliflower or broccoli.
I could use cheese. I was using a lot of coconut oil. I mean it’s still scary but not crazy amounts, a lot of coconut oil, a lot of olive oil, a lot of avocado oil. And, you know, it could even be a big serving of protein like I can eat a 16 ounce steak, which I love.
And I got into blue cheese which I have to be careful about but it’s, I love it so much. And it’s so satisfying. I kind of can’t eat anything after a blue cheese, it’s overwhelming. I’ll eat that. And then if I was really craving dessert type food, you know, I’d have some berries like blueberries on Greek yogurt, maybe with some stevia and cocoa powder, had the feeling of like ice cream, a very satisfying and good amount of protein. But often nothing like I don’t, the no sugar thing is much better. If I hit any fruit, it’ll be like berries, maybe an apple? Well, you really just got a big part of my diet.
Patrick McGilvray
Yes, so for you a couple of the changes. Just to kind of recap here, you went from eating seven times a day to eating, you know, two or three times a day, which is normal. That’s kind of what normal human eating patterns should look like. You know what I mean, we shouldn’t be eating seven times a day.
Because when you do that, you just train yourself that you are going to be hungry all the time, you know, especially if you’re eating a lot of carbs in those meals. So when you switch to eating a couple times a day, two, three times a day, your body will naturally switch to being hungry those two or three times a day, which becomes normal, and then it becomes very easy to only eat a couple times a day. So you made that change, which is great. It was a little bit of a struggle at the beginning, but you got used to it. You know? Do you enjoy eating that way today still?
Pete Caigan
The thing I love is the high fat high protein because I avoided fats like the plague for so many years. And it’s really some of my favorite foods. So I love that aspect of it. You know, now that I’m fat adapted, I do eat carbs sometimes and it’s not a big deal. I mean, I do notice like the day after. I have to clean up a little bit but I don’t if I eat carbs once a week if I have sweet potatoes or something. I’m generally I don’t want it the next day, like maybe I’m loaded up or something. So it’s not even that big a deal.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, we’re not talking about like, birthday cake every week or something like that. It’s just some sweet potatoes like it’s fine.
Pete Caigan
Honestly, the sweet sweet stuff, I have a bite sometimes it’s so overwhelming. I don’t really enjoy it at all. Like I used to get it really barely once in a blue moon, I ate a marshmallow recently, and I was like woah. I’m so sensitive now to the sugar. I didn’t realize how strong it is.
Patrick McGilvray
So you’ve shifted. That’s good. That’s a good time.
Pete Caigan
Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It’s like, it’s almost a relief.
Patrick McGilvray
Another big change was focusing on more protein.
Pete Caigan
Right? Well, yeah, I’ve been keeping track, I use an app on my phone, right? I don’t do it all the time. But entering my food during a journal shows me the protein I’m getting. And I’m trying to get almost a gram per pound of body weight. Because I’m so active. I’m training for another 50k.
Patrick McGilvray
I think that’s a good place to be.
Pete Caigan
The macros are significantly different. It’s like 60/30/10 usually fat to protein to carbs.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay. Yeah, like 60% fat, 30% protein, 10% carbs. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And that’s different for everybody. But you know if that works for you, awesome. Yeah, so you focused on more protein, not eating all the time. And, you know, what were some of the results of that? Or like, how did you feel through the day? Did your hunger start to like, go down?
Pete Caigan
Yeah, after two weeks, it was way better. And then the hunger went down. But it wasn’t gone. I also learned a lot working with you and the group about hunger and like, whatever. It’s not the end of the world, you’re hungry. And usually it goes away in like 10 minutes. It’s not that big a deal.
So one of the things for me is my life really shifted in a lot of ways away from other than food and running, which is I got way more motivated on what I do. And I started working harder and sleeping less, which was a very unexpected side effect of all this, like I was sleeping a solid hour to two hours more than a night than I do now.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, so you’re sleeping less but how’s the quality of sleep?
Pete Caigan
Yeah, I’m sleeping a lot less and my quality of sleep is better. So that was an interesting thing that I didn’t, uh, I wasn’t planning on which is great. I feel way more energy.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, good. Yeah, typically, people would say that they need more sleep or they sleep longer when they get off of the crazy foods, but you’re saying you’re sleeping less, but it’s a positive change. Right?
Pete Caigan
Well, I would say maybe at the beginning I was sleeping more but after I feel like I cleaned up and lost the weight and got off that food, I just I was sleeping eight to nine hours a night and now it’s been seven.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay, gotcha. So probably more in line with the way you should be then. Okay. Yeah, that’s cool. That’s good. So what else was your experience during this process of like shifting your diet and what you’re eating, how often you’re eating, upping in the protein, all those things. What was, or was there anything that you really struggled with, you know, during that transition?
Pete Caigan
Yeah, there were some things I struggled with me, I was very moody. I had to not be a jerk to my mate, my wife. I definitely was cranky for a while. So that was hard. And then, like, I just had to deal with myself more, my emotions, and reality.
And the accountability with you and with the group just made me be like, no, I really want to lose a pound this week, like, I don’t want to gain this week. And I would have moments, usually at night in front of the fridge, where I’d have to be like, don’t do it! But there were moments, so the struggle was really like dealing with my emotions, like if I had a really stressful day, and like figuring out other ways to deal with it.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and for how long did that like cranky pants last?
Pete Caigan
Probably a month. I mean, it still happens occasionally. Like in the morning, if I’m waiting till noon to eat. But I’ve learned how to do it. Usually if I’m not, if I haven’t worked out, really, I find I could do a fasted workout and then feel great, it doesn’t happen. But if I end up like waking up, having some coffee and ending up at a desk for two or three hours, I’ll get like, like, edgy.
Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, that sounds like it’s probably from lack of exercise, because you didn’t get your endorphin rush that you’re used to in the morning.
Pete Caigan
Exactly.
Patrick McGilvray
But that crankiness at the beginning, whenever we get off of a really high carbohydrate diet. It is basically like withdrawal symptoms. It’s one of the symptoms of withdrawal from like a sugar addiction, you know. And it’s the same, you know, kind of shows up the same way that when you stop drinking alcohol or doing drugs or something like that. It can have the same sort of withdrawal effects, which is crazy to think about. That sugar has that kind of an effect on us.
Pete Caigan
Right? It’s so accepted that we eat tons of carbs all the time. Maybe that’s not how our bodies function best, but that’s how we were brought up. So you think you’re supposed to eat breakfast or you’re bad. Maybe you’re fine.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, well, that whole idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That’s just a marketing tactic. You know, that was made up by the cereal companies like Kellogg’s or someone made that up.
Pete Caigan
You can still have breakfast, but have breakfast at 11. Like it’s okay. Your first meal can be your bacon and eggs.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, eat some protein at that first meal for sure. Okay, so you went through this process, you got fat adapted, which just means that you, you know, we’re running without the need for all the carbs without the need for a bunch of fuel. And you trained yourself to use your stored body fat as fuel. And I’m guessing through this process, you started losing weight as well. Right?
Pete Caigan
Yeah, started to come off by two pounds a week at the beginning.
Patrick McGilvray
Nice.
Pete Caigain
A lot at the beginning. Yeah, I started to lose significant weight. And that’s always really great to see what the first person notices and your clothes fit. That’s a big moment.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. That’s motivating and it keeps you going because you’re seeing progress. I mean, you can literally see the progress happening. And it keeps you in the game.
Pete Caigan
In like 5 weeks I lost like 10 pounds or something. And the first person was like wow Pete, and I was like thank you. And then yeah, I’d like to think I don’t have a big ego, but at first it really feels good. Clothes fit better, it’s starts to be like actually fun. Because once I got fat adapted it was not difficult.
For me, it was many ways a pleasure because I was eating the fat switch I stayed with the running and I started to get better quickly too. So you think now put on a 10 pound pack and go for a run. That’s enough to make a big difference.
That first 10 pounds and as I say now I feel like free back to running like bouncing. I run in the woods and just fly around. I’d forgotten that a little bit. Like I kind of had it in my memory. But it wasn’t. It’s been a few years since I felt that so now it’s back and it’s just it’s incredible.
Patrick McGilvray
Well you get used to it. You know you get used to being overweight, you get used to carrying around an extra 30 pounds or whatever. And until you lose the weight again, it’s like oh, now I see what I was carrying around and you know, I had that experience too some years ago, lost 40 pounds and it was literally like running just became so easy.
It was so much more enjoyable. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
And then you started training. So let’s talk about that a little bit. So you decided you’re going to conquer this 50k, the same one, same race. And but this time, there’s no way you’re gonna DNF. So talk about the training a little bit with that, like, what, what was that like for you?
Pete Caigan
Sure. All Fall, I was doing three runs a week, kind of short, medium long, but not as a structured plan, which is keeping my fitness up and losing weight. And then I started, I think an 18 week training cycle in maybe the beginning of February, that you helped me design. That was four to five days a week of running, and I was doing strength training two days a week, which often ended up once a week. But I was hitting it hard, like I was getting a lot of miles on the trail.
And where I live is in the mountains in upstate New York. So I was dealing with running snow and the ice and very cold temperatures. And I was getting up in the mountains, which means carrying a 15 pound pack and wearing spikes. So it was very challenging in February March, but I got the miles in and I didn’t miss many runs.
And I was losing weight. I wasn’t as late as I am now. But I was probably down 20 pounds at that point, and feeling good, you know, struggles. I had definitely had a lot of struggles through the 18 week training cycle, I had two injuries that weren’t really injuries, they were just pain, which was a good thing for me to understand, and notice that just because you’re hurt, doesn’t mean you’re injured. That’s a big difference that I didn’t quite understand fully until this training cycle.
One day I finished a 20 mile run, which included a lot of concrete running and running shoes, which I don’t do I mostly do trails. I woke up the next day and there was like a peak on the top of my first metatarsal. Like it looked like I broken my metatarsal. It hurt, couldn’t walk. So I was just like, oh, I’m so screwed. So I just did and I hobbled around for a few days. And then like after like five days, I got back to like jogging lightly, like it didn’t really hurt. And then by the next week I was back out.
Patrick McGilvray just the joys of running, you know.
Pete Caigan
So that was a good lesson. And then I played golf, like four weeks out from my event, and I hurt my neck. And I couldn’t move. And I was like, I’m so dumb. So that put me down for like, over a week of no running, when I was in my peak phase. And I was really scared at that point.
Like I blew it like I can’t believe I hurt myself at the end. But again, you helped me to see like, you know, you’ve banked a lot of fitness here. Like don’t sweat it like it’ll be okay. And then I got back they did one more long run after that I did. My race was 32 miles, I went out and did like a 25 mile run with maybe 4700 feet a gain, in the mountains, it was big deal. And I did and I was like alright, I got this.
So yeah, then the last few weeks just took it easy as I was supposed to which was a challenge into unto itself to taper. But yeah, that was the training cycle. It was challenging in many ways. It was hard to make the time on my long runs because I’m in the mountains. It could be like an eight hour day. So it was challenging to just be like alright, family I’m leaving. I’ll see you tonight.
Patrick McGilvray
How was this training different from your approach last year when you were going for the same event?
Pete Caigan
I didn’t do nearly as many miles or as many runs last year, I was doing three days a week, I would do like a short run or medium run and a long run. But my longest run last year was 21 before the race, before the 32 mile race. And my you know I had done a few like 15-18 days as well. But like really slow, like way more walking than I did this time.
Patrick McGilvray
So more volume and a few longer runs. Yes, more work overall for sure.
Pete Caigan
More miles for sure. And more frequency. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s one of the biggest things for an event like that because you are going to be on your feet for so long. You gotta you got to make sure you are putting in the time like time on your feet, you know, and increasing the amount of running that you’re doing per week has to go up pretty high to get you there. So good. Good job with all that.
So the race comes and where were you at? Give us a snapshot of where you were like for the race itself, like from what was your kind of weight loss at that point? How much had you lost? You know, come race day.
Pete Caigan
I got to 30 pounds down.
Patrick McGilvray
Okay. Beautiful.
Pete Caigan
And, you know, for whatever it’s worth, if you care about body composition was like I was at 18% fat.
Patrick McGilvray
Awesome. Yeah, no, that’s great.
Pete Caigan
Do you want me to tell you about the event?
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, just like, how was it for you?
Pete Caigan
It was brutal and it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. I totally had many, many times the week leading up to it where I thought maybe I was gonna chicken out.
Patrick McGilvray
Really? Okay.
Pete Caigan
I just had like weird thoughts. Like, maybe this isn’t for you, you’re gonna hurt yourself. Every ghost came up into my mind trying to get me to not do it. It was like the one side’s the angel the other side’s evil and like telling me not to do it.
But I was like, just go, keep going. I made the hotel reservation, the race is about three hours for me. So I got a hotel the night before, and the night of the race. So Friday, Saturday. I went and I did some research on the race director Luis Escobar? You could look him up. He’s one of the guys in Born to Run. The guy had been personally before.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh, yeah. Cool.
Pete Caigan
So I was like, oh, this guy’s like legitimate. Like come on. Pete like get over yourself. So I went the day before Friday to get my race bed and I hung out at the starting line was 100 mile distance was starting that night.
So I like spent like an hour there with him and all the other race directors and CO race directors are also well known. ultra runners so I like really spend time with them chatted Luis was like, man, it’s so great. You came back you have good, you’re gonna do great. So that was cool, because it gave me like a vibe of the race and it’s a Spartan Race, and it’s really friendly environment.
There were 300 participants. So I spent some time with the people picking up their badges and just trying to get into like the vibe of what was going on in its a gorgeous place. It’s the guy who started Spartan, I don’t know his name. It was his home, of course, and beautiful Vermont. So I really enjoyed that.
And I went home, I had packed all my food which was smart. Last year I’d gone out to a restaurant and gotten like, I don’t even know like a bowl of cheesy fries for dinner. It was horrible.
So I had like my two purple sweet potatoes and like a little chicken salad. At my dinner I had my race vest pack like before, which I highly recommend for anybody. So you’re not nervous in the morning packing. I woke up super early, race time was seven. I got up before, just like took my time, got my stuff together, got to the starting line by 6:00.
Everybody like it’s a really good camaraderie of these things. Spend time people are nervous talking, you know, people doing the 50 mile the 100 miler have been going down for 14 hours. So they’re still going and then went out. It was like in the front of the pack. Like I went too hot like but too hot. Really? Maybe in retrospect. So I kind of crushed the first 10 miles I did. I was really fast for me, which was also the reason is 6500 feet a gain 32 miles. So you know it’s a lot.
And a lot of it was bushwhacking, like difficult terrain where there’s puddles and mud and very little trail. But the first 10 miles was generally really nice, trails up and down, a couple more, got to the first checkpoint where I had been pulled off the year before. And the guys were like Pete, you’re doing great. You’re like, you know, you’re not at the back of the pack, so that was cool.
Miles 10 to mile 15 was up and over a huge mountain. Very difficult. Extremely difficult. But I did all this generally fasted. I only had about 200 calories an hour. You know, it was I had electrolytes. But I felt great. I felt fine. Up and down this big mountain who was cool. I was okay, but I was definitely not as fast.
And then there was a checkpoint it was like a party, like they had like barbecue and beer like music cranking, and I maybe made a mistake, and I had like two sips of beer. And I was like, This is bad. Don’t do it. And then they had it cut off. You had to get to mile 22 by 3pm, which was eight hours.
And at the beginning of the race. He stood up on a table he said does anyone disagree that if you’re not at mile 22 I’m taking you off the course? Nobody said anything, he shouted it so everyone understood. So now miles like 15 to 22 up and down many mountains.
At this point, it was little mountains, but up and down a few if something happened, I started to slow down significantly. But I did not stop. Like I didn’t stop and I sit down, I sat down once the whole race just to change my socks, like I was relentless for me.
Relentless forward progress zone for the majority of the time, which sounds crazy, but somehow my body held up. So anyway 15 to 22 miles I was slow, like things were falling apart a little bit, kept going, I got to 22 to seven and a half hours. And I’m like, pumping my chest. And now there’s a bus already filled with people who are calling it a day, even though they made the cut off the next.
The 22 or 32 is extremely difficult. 22 to 28 is extremely difficult. So a bunch of people quit and then like RIP, you’re done. Right? And you want to get on the bus. We’ll take you back. And I was like, no way, there’s zero chance of getting on your bus goodbye, and they were like alright.
So I took off. And now I’m going up and down three mountains, mile 22 to mile 29. Alone in the woods. The sweepers are behind me, but they’re not in sight. They’re back. And I just started to lose my mind. Like I was having a very, very hard time functioning.
My body was like leaning left, I kept on drifting left. I didn’t know what was going on. I was like, I’m gonna have a stroke, am I dying? Like, I didn’t really think that but I was hurting. And I didn’t know what was going on. But I just kept trudging forward going as fast as I could. And I got out into back to civilization, which is at mile 29 is the top of this mountain but there’s houses.
The last three miles is downhill. Three miles back to the starting line through country roads. And the checkpoint there. It was 6pm. And they say alright, well, Whoever didn’t get here by six, we’d have to take you down the hill. You got to get in the bus.
And I was like, I’m not getting in your bus. I don’t care what you do. I’m leaving goodbye. And they were like, really? I was like, really, goodbye. And I took off and I was holding myself up on my ribs because I couldn’t stand up straight. But I was okay. I was okay. And then I passed the guy’s house. He comes out of his house. He’s like, are you okay? Like you’re leaning all the way over?
I was like, I don’t know if I’m okay. I think I’m okay. And I sat down hung out with him. He was really cool. And older Vermont guy. And then the sweepers came by in a car and they’re like, go Pete. Okay, we’ll see you at the finish line. Right? I was like, yeah, I’m good. Like, yeah, go man go.
So I got down to the finish line. I was like, within 200 meters, I could see the finish line and straighten up and pull my head I’m talking my shirt like, act like I got my act together, went as fast as I could to the finish line got through and all those sweepers who were trying to get me off the course were cheering me on.
Good job, you made it. You made it, we love you! Giving me hugs, you’re the reason we do this. You’re so great. And I finished in 12 hours, and I got a DFL, I did not finish last. So there was a girl behind me, which was great. And so I accomplished my goal. I was so happy. It was like one of the great moments in my life. It was really, really cool.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s so awesome. And I love your determination of like, you know, nope, nothing you can do or say is gonna get me into that van at this point. Like I’ve trained for this. I’m ready for this. I’m doing it. What was the deal with you, like leaning to the left? What was that all about?
Pete Caigan
So Luis at the finish line personally came up to me, he’s like, I’m so happy you did this. I’m so happy you came back. You just show that like perseverance is I can work and use it was cool. And he said you got the leans, man. You got the leans, you gotta go take care of that. And I was like, what?
And I realized what had happened is that and I looked it up. And it’s a thing that can happen where your core fails. And you can’t keep your spine up, right. And it’s not entirely uncommon. So I realized it was going on and I just kind of took it easy. And I went to bed and I woke up I was fine, the next day, it was Mother’s Day. It was gone. I was totally fine. I was able to walk. it I wasn’t even that sore. But it’s called the leans I guess, in that community.
Patrick McGilvray
Shows you the power of like or the importance of strength training and core strengthening probably would help with that.
Pete Caigan
Yeah, I think so. It was definitely a weakness, maybe doing more that type of work would be helpful.
Patrick McGilvray
So what an amazing experience. I mean, super. I mean, it’s kind of life changing, right?
Pete Caigan
You know, it is and it completely translates to everything else. Because everything else that feels hard. I’m like, this isn’t that hard? It isn’t just running things, but things I’m talking about, like emotional things or work? You know, struggling to do the stuff I don’t want to do is not as big a struggle, because it’s like, oh, I freaking ran 32 miles.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you’ve proven to yourself that not only can you do hard things, but you can accomplish things that maybe you’re not even. Maybe you don’t even believe in yourself or you’re not even sure you can do it. But you can do it anyway.
Like, you can push yourself out of that comfort zone. And because you’re, you know, remember you were talking about how you were having some doubts in those weeks leading up to it and thinking about, you know, pulling out and things like that, but you didn’t do any of that you just kept moving forward, and you just stayed with the plan, and you trusted your training, and look what you did. It’s amazing.
Pete Caigan
Yeah, thank you. I mean, I do have such a long term goal to be so persistent and consistent with something and then see the results was a big lesson for me. Or, you know, sometimes it’s persistence over a long period of time that gets you somewhere, it’s not the two week effort could be the year of doing something, a lot of things, you know.
I will say thank you, Patrick, for your guidance. And you know, what you do is so valuable and like, I feel like I went to school, honestly, nutrition and fitness and in many ways, life. I had no idea you can eat like this or train like this, it’s gonna be like, it wasn’t something that I thought could be for me, people used to talk about being keto or low carb. Never seemed possible or appealing, just seemed like not normal. Now that I’ve been doing it. I see how, for me at least, it’s it’s a really good way to be.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, yeah. And just for clarification, like everybody does this a little bit differently, you know, the way that Pete approached his nutrition and training was probably different from everybody else I work with.
So there’s no two people really doing this exactly the same, which is the way it should be, you know, there isn’t one plan, one diet, that’s going to work perfectly for everybody. I know, that’s what everybody wants you to believe out there. But it’s just not true.
So we got to figure out what works for us as individuals. And that’s a big part of what Pete and I did is kind of that figuring out process, you know, figuring out the right combination of foods and training and strength training and in the running to make these positive changes for you as an individual.
Pete Caigan
With me in terms of like, I’d be like, oh, I’m eating too many nuts, I’m going to again, and I’m going again, not losing weight. I mean, he’s not saying I can’t eat nuts, and you would often just be like, oh, you just eat less nuts. And that was so helpful for me. That was like one of those little tidbits to help me to realize that, you know, to do in my, what works for me, but maybe I don’t need to be so extreme.
Patrick McGilvray
So tell me where you are today with things. How’s everything going for you? How are you from like a nutrition standpoint? And from like a training standpoint?
Pete Caigan
Yeah, took the past month, I’ve been very light training. But I took a week off pretty much but not even off just not running a lot, or lifting a lot. And then the past three weeks, I’ve been running three times a week and lifting two to three times a week.
And actually, today was day one of the 13 week training cycle of doing another 50k.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh, heck yeah!
Pete Caigan
So I’m back in the game. I’m way ahead of where I was 13 weeks out from the last run. Now, that being said, I’m humble about this experience, I don’t expect this to be easy. And I have to do 20 mile uphill run on Sunday. So that’s no joke. So that’s good.
And the nutrition, I was a little lax after the race on the food for a couple of weeks. But I didn’t really gain weight. But now I’ve been eating really clean and on program for about 10 days, and I’m getting down to my lowest ever. Lowest weight ever for many, many years. And I’d like to get lower for this race I see, you know, even just five or 10 pounds less, thatwill make a big difference to be no faster. And I want to know I don’t expect to compete, but I’d like to be able to faster at this point. So that’s one of my goals for this.
Patrick McGilvray
Cool and how are you feeling about this next 50k having just completed this last one? Feeling a little bit different about this one?
Pete Caigan
You know, in my mind, I’m like, oh, this will be easier but it’s not easy. There’s nothing easy about this. So I do feel a little differently, but I’m also slightly reserved. Uh, in terms of letting myself feel like this is like a big deal, because it is a really big deal to do something like this again. Yeah, out there, in the woods all day.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, you probably have more confidence. But you also know it’s still gonna be at some point you’re going to enter the pain cave out there, right? Because we all do.
Pete Caigan
This one has no time cut off, which is interesting. Oh yeah,
Pete Caigan
Oh yeah, interesting.
Pete Caigan
I’m excited. And it’s a lot different to train where I live in summer than in the winter. So I enjoy the heat. So I’m really actually, it’s good to be out there this summer where we live, which is blueberry, wild blueberries and you know, streams, you can drink water on them. It’s gorgeous.
Patrick McGilvray
Heck, yeah. That’s amazing. And then maintenance, like, how’s that for you feeling like, that’s pretty easy for you to do going forward? Like, this has become something that is more natural for you now?
Because I know, we talked about at the beginning of the process, especially with the change in diet, it was a little bit of a struggle, you know, there was a little bit of a transition period there where you’re like, you know, this is kind of hard. I’m a little hungry. I’m a little cranky, you know, um, uh, but now, like, how does all that feel for you?
Pete Caigan
I mean, it feels easy. Maintenance is a non-issue to get leaders challenging, because I’m kind of like anyone wants to be so, you know, when I get into like, eating, try to get leaner. It’s a little challenging. It’s okay, maintenance, though. Not hard, because I’m eating foods that I like. Intermittent fasting has gotten so easy.
Patrick McGilvray
That just feels normal to you now?
Pete Caigan
Yeah, I don’t want to eat after dinner or in the morning. I don’t want to be. So. Yeah. Okay. Make the window 14 hours just set to 16.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, one of the goals is that by this point of the process, this should all feel easy and effortless. It just should feel normal for you. Yeah.
Pete Caigan
I don’t have to talk about it with people anymore. I don’t have to make a big deal. And what to do. If I go to a restaurant, I can like whisper to waiters like keto. They know exactly what to do. You know, no low carb, no carbs. No problem. I don’t even talk about it with people anymore. I used to talk about whatever. You really care what I eat. Anyways, that was a big hard thing at first, which it isn’t now.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, yeah. And then you mentioned something which is like, the maintenance is easy, once you get used to this, but then if you’re like, Okay, I want to, I want to lose a few pounds here, you know, I want to get down to a little bit lower weight, that’s easy to do, too. It just takes a little bit more discipline a little bit more, you got to be a little stricter about what you’re doing.
So sometimes I recommend to journal food again, you know, or track your macros again for a couple of weeks, you know, just to get you to the place where you’re like, okay, now I’m, you know, kind of recommitted. I know what I’m doing. And I can start to make some incremental changes here. Because it doesn’t take much to dial the weight down. You know, sometimes it’s just cutting back on the amount of food you’re eating, you know, and, you know, something as simple as that.
Pete Caigan
Yeah, it is a small margin between gaining and maintaining, small margin’s maintaining.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and it’s possible while you’re training, for an event like this, especially at the beginning of the training cycle, it’s a little bit easier to do. To lose weight, like you can, you can lose weight while you’re training for sure. I don’t recommend it as you’re getting into that last half of the training cycle, like the you know, as your race is approaching, you don’t want to be focused on losing weight, you just want to be like maintaining and focused on running and improving your performance and doing all the things you know and not be stressed out about trying to lose. But it’s possible, it’s possible to do that.
Pete Caigan
One other thing I want to say before we wrap up is it was a big step for me to take to decide to get in touch with Patrick to do the one on one initial consultation. You know, I somehow found the podcast I don’t know how. But I started listening to it a lot. I was like, I like this guy’s like my buddy like I felt simpatico with you.
But to like call somebody you don’t know to like do something over the internet was a big stretch for me and to think about spending money on it was a stretch and then I realized like investing in myself.
First of all, you eat less food so you’re gonna save money. But it was a big stretch to do it on this like kind of anonymous internet thing, but I can’t say like, how great it was of a decision for me to do it in the community is incredible.
I mean twice a week to have these group calls, which I still get on, at least one of them a week is very big, because these people who I’ve never met, are like my buddies, and we’re like working together on the same goals. And it seems a little weird that you’ve never met these people in person, but it really works. It works for me. So I highly recommend if you’re thinking about it, to have the faith that it can be real.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, it is a great group of people. And you’re right, I feel like you guys are kind of my family in a way, you know, because we do spend a lot of time together. And not only do I do all these one on one calls, where you and I spent a lot of time together over the last six months or so. But then we do the group calls where we all come together and, and can kind of share what’s going on share wins, you know, ask questions, and kind of…
Pete Caigan
They go through almost the same thing you go through. It’s like, we’re not all that different. Most of us and we each have our own issues, but there’s a lot of similarities. So to hear that someone else is struggling with something similar helps a lot, because then a lot of people have strategies that work out.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and I remember cracking up last week because somebody else shared a story of injuring themselves golfing right before their race, right. And I was like, and Pete, you were just like cracking up because you’re like, I did the same thing. And lesson here is like to stay away from golfing, you guys, okay? It’s a dangerous sport. It’s apparently very dangerous.
Pete Caigan
That’s serious.
Patrick McGilvray
Good stuff. Anything else you want to share? Pete, this has been awesome. Thank you for being here and sharing all this stuff with us.
Pete Caigan
Thank you for your work, Patrick, I know you’ve been working on this a long time. And you’re very thoughtful. And you put a lot of time into this. And, you know, just grateful for what you do. And it’s really what. So that’s all just gratitude towards you, and acknowledgement of all your hard work goes into this, as well.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, well, I’m just over here yammering on about stuff, you’re the one actually doing the work, you know, you showed up, you made a decision that you were going to conquer this 50k, you are going to lose the 30 pounds, you made that decision, which is really important.
And you said it was a little bit scary, because who is this guy, this random guy from the internet or whatever. But you made that decision. You committed to the process, you know, which was I’m going to change the way I’m doing things. Because what you were doing wasn’t working for you. It was, you were having the opposite effect. You were getting slower, you were gaining weight, you were feeling terrible. Like you needed to shift that you know, and that takes a commitment.
And that is scary. Because you’re getting into uncharted territory. When you do that, you know, you’re like, I don’t know if it was gonna work or not, you know, I don’t know what’s gonna happen here. But you committed to the process.
And anybody listening to this, if you just do that part right there, if you commit to the process, like I know, this is what I want for myself, here’s the goals that I have for myself. They’re very clear, very measurable goals. And then you commit to that process of change, I guarantee you can get there. As long as you don’t quit. The only way you can really fail kind of like with the 50k is if you just quit, you get on the van. But if you keep going, you’ll finish. Right.
Pete Caigan
So let’s keep going back every time you fall off, it’s like okay, well, I fell off. Well, we’re back on.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So you did the work. And I’m proud of you for showing up for yourself for making that commitment to yourself for making that decision that this is what you wanted for yourself. And then just doing it and like continually sticking with it.
Even though it was hard sometimes, even though it was a struggle sometimes. You didn’t give up. You kept going. And I can’t wait to hear about your next 50k. I want to I want to hear about how you crush your last time on that.
Pete Caigan
You know, yeah, I’ll keep you posted for sure.
Patrick McGilvray
All right. Well, thanks again, Pete for everything. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate it.
Pete Caigan
Thank you, Patrick.
Patrick McGilvray
So a lot of runners who struggle to lose weight, wonder if coaching is a good fit for them. I’m going to be very honest about this. Coaching is a good fit for you. If you are willing to go all in on yourself.
You have to be willing to commit to the process of change. You have to be willing to get uncomfortable. You have to be willing to give it everything you’ve got.
The people in my program who do amazingly well are the ones who go all in on themselves. There are a few people who don’t do so well. And those are the people who kind of half ass it, right?
You cannot expect to accomplish anything of value in your life by half assing it, you just can’t. You have to full ass everything you do. So if you’re ready to commit to becoming the most badass version of yourself, then you’re ready for The Coaching Project.
That’s my lifetime access weight loss coaching program for runners. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/join to learn more. That’s all I got for you today, love you all, keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you soon.
