September 23, 2021
### [00:00:00] Guest Quote
**Patrick McGilvray:**
We have something like 60,000 thoughts a day, and I got to tell you probably 90% of them are negative, you know? And so we need to get that stuff out and like, look at it and say like, okay, here, here's the stuff I'm thinking about. What of this is serving me and what of this is keeping me like stuck and keeping me from reaching my goals.
And it's pretty obvious once you start to like break it down that way. So that would be something I could, I would recommend, but really it's just like awareness, just awareness of what you're thinking, awareness of what your doing.
### [00:00:33] Show Intro
[00:00:33] **Kevin Chang:**
Hello and welcome to the RaceMob podcast this is episode number 67. I'm Kevin entrepreneur technology and fitness nerd. And I'm joined by the head coach of RaceMob and master motivator, the incomparable Bertrand Newson.
### [00:00:51] Guest Introduction
[00:00:51] **Kevin Chang:**
Patrick is a seasoned athlete, a licensed nutritionist and the host of the popular running lean podcast. He's helped all kinds of individuals lose weight through his one-on-one and group coaching programs.
In this episode, we dive into his big keys to weight loss. Including what most athletes get wrong? We do a deep dive into how athletes can become fat adapted and what that does to performance plus, which had about the benefits of intermittent fasting and fasted training. This is a wide range in conversation.
So whether you're looking to drop a few pounds, maintain your physique, or you're looking for nutrition tips to boost your race stated performance. This will be a fun episode for you. All of the show notes can be found online at RaceMob dot com slash podcast and without further ado here's our conversation
### [00:01:34] Start of the Interview
[00:01:34] **Kevin Chang:**
All right. RaceMob audience. We are so excited to welcome marathoner ultra runner, licensed primary sports nutritionist, the founder and owner of running, leading podcasts and the running lean program. Mr. Patrick Mcgilvray. Hey, welcome to the podcast, Patrick.
[00:01:53] **Patrick McGilvray:**
That was pretty close, Kevin,
[00:01:55] **Kevin Chang:**
Oh, no, I totally butchered your name, but you know, like we talked about before we've got a great podcast editor and hopefully you'll clean some of this stuff up. so Patrick, go ahead and, and tell us how we should be pronouncing your name.
[00:02:07] **Patrick McGilvray:**
Thanks. And I'm just messing with you. It's all good. I've been dealing with this for like 54 years now. And it's Patrick McGillvray. And just like it's spelled. So anyway, thanks for having me on. And yeah, I'm a, I'm a sports nutritionist. I'm a, I'm a runner, I'm a marathon runner. I'm an ultra runner.
I just love running and running has been like kind of a passion for me and has been part of my life for a long time now. And and so has nutrition been a very important topic for me and something that I'm very passionate about and I love talking about, and you know, I think we can get into that and talk about that today.
But yeah, I'm, I'm super stoked to be here and talk with you.
### [00:02:48] Becoming a Weight Loss Coach
[00:02:48] **Kevin Chang:**
And I know you. described yourself as the weight loss coach for runners. Why did you get into that particular niche? I know that you were a runner early on and kind of describe why, why you started, you know, digging into sports, nutrition, and helping runners with weight loss.
[00:03:05] **Patrick McGilvray:**
Yeah. So this is kind of like where I just fell into this in a way, like, I was a coach I've been at Coach for a long time. I was coaching entrepreneurs, you know, helping them with business and things like that. So I've, I've learned like the principles of coaching. Okay. And I've learned the principles of a lot of the stuff I've learned is like life coaching principles and things like that.
How do we, how do we change our mindset so that we can get success in life? You know, that's really what life coaching is all about. And I don't, life coaching gets sort of a bad rap. It's like, oh yeah, all that woo stuff or whatever. But for me, it's been like a game changer, you know what I mean?
So learning how your brain works and knowing that you can change it and knowing that when you have bad habits, you can change them. Or knowing that when you want to go for something big, like, oh, I want to go run an ultra marathon, that the right mindset will get you there. You know, the wrong mindset will keep you stuck where you are, the right mindset will absolutely help you to reach these amazing goals and stuff.
So I'm a fan of the mindset and the coaching piece. And then I've been a runner for a while and you know, was staying pretty lean as a runner until I wasn't, you know, until I started putting on some weights and you know, not, not too bad, but then, you know, over the last few years, you know, 2017, 2018, 2019, I was like, I ballooned up, I gained like 40 pounds and I was like, what the hell is going on here?
You know, I decided I was going to figure it out. And so I started doing all this research and that's when I started getting into sports nutrition and really got just like into the rabbit hole of food and nutrition and, and, and weight gain and weight loss. And like what's driving all this stuff.
And one of the pivotal moments for me really was reading the obesity code by Jason Fong, Dr. Jason Fong, and in it, he talks about the insulin response, you know, so we eat high carbohydrate diet and our, our blood sugar goes up and insulin goes up in response.
### [00:05:12] The Issue with a Carb-Centered Diet
[00:05:12] **Patrick McGilvray:**
And when insulin is high, you know, we're storing body fat, essentially. Okay. When insulin is high, our bodies are in an inflamed state when insulin is high our hunger hormones are off the chart when insulin is high, our satiety hormones are suppressed.
So like all these factors are contributing to weight gain. And I was like, huh, I'm going to give this kind of low carb thing, a try. And and I had been like, plant-based vegetarian for like 15 years. And so, yeah, I had this like, sort of like you know, ideology of like, you know, the more plants eat, the better you are, the healthier you are.
And it just, it wasn't working for me. I think, you know, the, the carbohydrates were a problem for me. Not everybody has a problem with carbohydrates. A lot of people are like, yeah, it's fine. No big deal. But for some of us, we were carbohydrate intolerant. We just can't handle. That big carbohydrate load.
So how does this tie into runners as well? What is the typical runner diet? Right. It's just carbs, right? We're just freaking carb addicts, you know. Pizza and beer donuts before, during and after the runs. Right.
[00:06:28] **Kevin Chang:**
That's right. That's Right.
[00:06:30] **Patrick McGilvray:**
And so we eat all these carbs as just in, in general, you know, eating tons of carbohydrates and then, you know, we're carb loading before, you know, these longer runs, right.
And then the morning of you gotta get some carbs in, you know, and then during the, the event you gotta like take the gels and the goos and get the carbs in and the sports drink. And then afterwards it's like, you gotta refuel. So I'm going to go eat a bunch of pizza and ice cream and beer and whatever.
And so there's this kind of insidious problem, which is: runners can be pretty healthy and seem pretty healthy on the outside, but be pretty unhealthy on the inside. You know, they, they, there's a lot of people who consider themselves ultra runners, but they're, you know, they get diet good diagnosed with prediabetes or type two diabetes.
And they're thin on the outside, but fat on the inside, we call them tow fees, right. Thin on, yeah. Sit on the outside fat on these. And so that's kinda where I was, I was fat on the outside too though. And so I was like, we got to fix this problem, you know?
So I switched my diet, I lost a bunch of weight. I asked some people like if they wanted to learn about this and people were just like, yes, please tell me what to do because. I have so many people when I talk about this stuff that, that write me messages and comment on posts and things. They're like, you're talking to me.
I didn't know what was wrong. All these years. I've been running more and more and more and more I'm training for a marathon and I'm gaining weight. Like what the heck is going on here? You're the first person that's ever really liked told me what was going on.
And I'm like, yeah, well, other people are talking about it. Maybe just not, you know, in these, in this exact way or whatever.
So that's sort of my ramp up to deciding that I want to help people that are kind of like me. You know, we were talking before we hit record here about me, I'm kind of an average runner. I mean, I do some ultra marathons and marathons and things like that, but I'm just like this average runner guy, you know, middle of the pack.
We'll just put it that way. Okay.
[00:08:39] **Kevin Chang:**
You're being too modest. You're being too modest. Like, like I told you, before we hit the record button, there are pictures of you on the website and.
without your shirt on your you're a good looking, good looking man. So I'm being too modest there.
[00:08:50] **Patrick McGilvray:**
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. You're, you're a very smart and very perceptive by the way.
But but I'm like this guy I want to be just relatable. Cause I'm just like that guy. I'm the guy that's like the middle of the pack runner that was overweight that had a problem. And I wanted somebody that could, that I could relate to, you know, and, and I follow all the, all the, you know, top ultra runners.
I
follow all the, the Olympic athletes and the, and the phenomenons, you know, like Zach bitter, you know, Mike McKnight and I follow people like Dean CarnoSyn. And and that's awesome, but what they're doing is, is a little different than what we're doing is we can warriors, you know what I mean?
They're on a different level. And so, you know, I wanted to bring it down to like, what can we do as the weekend warriors as like average people or a little above average, let's just say what can we do like to change the tide for ourselves? How can we become healthier, lose the weight, get leaner, get stronger, enjoy running again, and just become like the best version of ourselves.
And so that's kind of what I set out to do and that's my jam. And, and so I, you know, I decided like one of the ways I wanted to talk to people was through the podcast. So I started the running lean podcast. And as you guys know, like it's such a great way to, to talk to runners, especially because what do we do?
We pop in our headphones and listen to a podcast as we're out on a run. So it's pretty meadow. We can talk about running while we're running. And it's just a great way to, to communicate the message. So I've been having a lot of fun doing that and just sharing this message of like, there is a solution, you know what I mean?
So if you, if you're one of those people out there listening, that's like, you know, maybe you've put on some weight and you, you keep running more and more and it's not coming off. There, there is a solution.
[00:10:39] **Bertrand Newson:**
People want to hear about that solution? Coach pat, I mean, they are tuning in, they are tuned in, and this is the conversation. We are having with our athletes. And if Kevin were to look you know, at the beginning of this year, some of our most popular challenges, popular podcast, and popular town hall, Q and A's all center around nutrition and weight loss and people having a better understanding of food intake and insulin levels and things along those lines.
So as you have found a code that is worked, where you have a captive audience, that audience is growing and as you share we're all runners here and, you know, I can speak for myself. You know, coming off of a broken foot, put on a couple of pounds, I'd like to say it was all because of I'm in the gym and lifting more weights, but that's not entirely true.
And as I'm back to running now the way to starting to come off, but it's harder to come off and I think it has to do, is it, can it be age and metabolism. Maybe the combination of what I'm eating, you know, staying hydrated, the stress play a role as well.
So granted I'm a co-host of this podcast. I'm going to sit back here a little bit and just listen in the audience as well.
### [00:11:44] Five Healthy Habits
[00:11:44] **Patrick McGilvray:**
Yeah. And I'll tell you that. So I'm just going to lay it out here for you. Like there are five really keys. There's like five habits that you really need to embrace. If you want to get healthy, if you're a runner, you want to lose weight and you want to, you want to get healthy.
Number one, I talk about eating real food and this means like eating food that looks like eating food. That's like not processed eating food that, you know, our ancestors have been needing for tens of thousands of years. If it comes in a box or a package, typically that's going to be like, you gotta like really have a discerning eye, read the labels and just be, be cautious because the stuff they're putting in packages they're altering to make hyper palatable.
Like the foods they give us and these scientists that are like creating like the bliss point, you know, the, the, the most palatable through the one that lights up our pleasure centers, the most, they do this because they know that that, that the food, it can be addicting and the food can be something we obsess over and food can be something that we, we use as an emotional management tool.
And food can be something that, you know, we keep going back to, even though it's not good for us, sugar is a good example, you know I would say like, if there was like three things, I would say just to like take out of your diet today would be sugar, flour. And vegetable oil.
Like these things do not need to be in our diet, but what are most packaged foods made of? What are most processed foods made of? Sugar, flour, and vegetable oil. It's like they got all the ingredients in there for, for for their success. They're making lots of money off of this stuff, but it's making us fat. It's making us over overweight is making us sick and it's making us unhealthy, you know?
So we, we need to just go back to eating real food. And I suggest people like shop the outside of the supermarket, you know, where the meat and the produce and, and all the good stuff is dairy products and things like that. And stay away from those middle Isles. You know, occasionally you'll find, you know, some things here and there.
Hey, you know, I like some LaCroix. I like my flavored seltzer water, you know pretty clean stuff right there, you know, but for the most part, you know, I just eat, I eat food that just looks like food, you know? I stay away from a lot of that, that other stuff. If you just made this one change, I think you would, you would see a massive benefits and change changes hard, very simple but hard to do.
It's very hard to do. It's hard to get away from the sugar and the carbs and all this hyper palatable food, because it's so amazing. I mean, come on. I was telling somebody the other day, I'm like scrolling through Instagram and you know, this picture of somebody had shared like a box of donuts. They had bought, you know, it was one of my runner friends.
And each doughnut had like a pie junk on top of it, you know, Oreos and, you know, Butterfingers or all this like candy and food and cookies and stuff on top of the donuts. And I was just like, really, do we really need to put like cookies and candy on top of the donuts?
But apparently we do, but for a minute there, I was like, this is amazing. Like I needed to find these donuts and get them. And then I was like, nah, I don't need that stuff anymore.
But anyway, so eat real food, like that's number one, just go back to eating, like the food that our answer says, ancestors have been eating, you know, that's, that's probably the easiest thing you can do.
Number two. Is, we got to learn how to stop eating all the time. There's this kind of idea that in order to keep your metabolism going, you should eat like six meals a day. You know? So I don't think this is true. And I definitely don't think this is true for everybody spacing out your meals and eating less frequently has so many benefits, you know?
So we call this intermittent fasting and intermittent fasting is basically just listen, just don't eat all the time. It's not something where you're going for, you know five days without food or something like that.
No, it's like you fast every day. Anyway, you're fasting from the time you go to bed to the time you wake up in the morning, unless you're one of these people that gets up in the middle of the night to eat like sleepy. I knew somebody that did that. She would wake up with like cookies in her mouth. Like,
[00:16:10] **Bertrand Newson:**
Oreos again, Butterfingers where he was talking about the
[00:16:15] **Patrick McGilvray:**
So you're starting to think about it and now you're obsessing about it, but yeah, so like spacing out your meals instead, like, you know, just don't, you don't need to snack in between meals. You know, snacking is one of those things that, you know, again I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm just laying it out here, you know?
But the food industry has been like, listen, we got this new category of food. This is like back in the fifties. They're like, we got this new category of food called snacks because the three meals are just not enough. Let's sell more food to these people. Like, so here's, we got the snack thing.
And then somebody, that board was like, Jim, that is a fantastic idea. Let's just keep going with, that does make as many of these snacks as you can. And so we were just a nation of snackers. So just like stop snacking, like cut that out, eat your three meals a day. We don't need a snack in the morning and an after lunch snack and we don't need to eat dessert and stuff like that.
And again, It's like when you were eating all the time and you're just constantly raising your insulin levels, you know, when you're eating all the time, you're just constantly raising your blood sugar. And you're just constantly in that, in that fat storage mode. And we want to get out of the fat storage mode.
And my whole, my whole jam is like burn the fat let's, let's be fat burners. You know, let's learn how to do that more efficiently. Fat burning is, is the way to go. You lose weight and it's how it's a great source of fuel for running. You know, it's how you can like get out there and run you know, all day, basically, without having to like stop and refuel all the time.
So anyway, number one, real eat real food. Number two, space out your meals.
Number three, reduce stress. You know, it's like one of these things that people kind of overlook stress, but stress is a problem. Stress is one of the contributing factors to people gaining weight, because when you, when you're under stress constantly, your body produces that stress hormone cortisol, right?
Cortisol is that response that you get is like the fight or flight response. You know, it was great back in the day when we were facing saber tooth tigers, you know, we get this stress response and our body would respond in a way. That's like, you know, we, they, our body was get flooded with. Cortisol.
And then our blood sugar would go up and, and we would be ready
to like fighter flight, you know, you know, or whatever, you know, fight the saber tooth tiger runaway. I probably would have run away. Definitely, but, but now days we don't have that short term stress. Like we don't have that, like there's no saber tooth tiger, but there's like, oh, I've got all these emails.
I gotta answer. Oh, the traffic is so bad. Or, you know, these kids are driving me crazy. And so our stress levels are just like up all the time. And so cortisol is up all the time. And so our blood sugar is up all the time. It's really of a factor like stress is literally making us fat. And so we got to like, just reduce stress.
One of the best ways we can reduce stress is what go for a run. I mean, it's like one of the easiest things we can do. You don't have to like sit in a bathtub with candles and meditate and all this other stuff. I mean, you can, if you enjoy that kind of stuff, but like go, go for a run, do some exercise.
Some stress is good for us. Short term stress, like, you know, going to the gym, lifting weights, you know, that puts a lot of stress on your body, but it's like, it's intense and it's short. And then you do get that glucose response. Your blood sugar does go up, but then it goes down again. That's good. Like that kind of stress is good when you go for a and you go do like a sprint workout, you know?
So you go out there and you run hard, you do like 32nd sprints or something like that. Maybe for 20 minutes, boom, you're done with that workout. And then your stress levels come back down. The cortisol, cortisol comes back down, blood sugars, come back down. And so that's good. Those are good responses. Those elicit adaptation.
Right? So we, we adapt to those kinds of stresses. But when your body is constantly stressed, it'd be like, if you were to do like sprints every single day, like that would suck. Like you would just, you would just like burn yourself out. So same kind of thing we're doing with our, with our health, which just in general with this general stress that we're always under.
Okay. The next thing, the fourth thing the, you just got to the habit that you just got to get into is strength training. Like I just, I'm such a fan of this. I actually, I started getting into this early last year and I was like, I'd always been lifting weights and stuff, but I never really did it right.
And I was like, I'm going to do this. Right. So I just became a personal trainer. I like did all the courses got certified because I wanted to know everything I could about it. And I've just realized that it's so important, especially for runners, you know, runners are notoriously bad at strength training.
They're like, well, I'll do it in the off season. And listen, you know, your, your body needs, you need to maintain your muscle during your training season more so than the off season.
### [00:21:19] Tips for Strenght Training
[00:21:19] **Kevin Chang:**
I guess if you have tips for, for beginner, runners or runners, just getting into strenght training. what are you see as like some of the pitfalls that they make or mistakes that they make and what are some like early tips that you would give to runners?
[00:21:31] **Patrick McGilvray:**
So early tips, I would say, you gotta do, you gotta do some strength training, like twice a week. If you want to build muscle, once a week is enough to maintain muscle. And a full body workout twice a week is sufficient as a starting place.
You know, and obviously you want to do you got to start out with, with lighter weights and you got to make sure you're using good form and like learn the form before you and get a little bit stronger before you start hitting the heavier weights.
This is a problem that people have in general, but runners in particular, like we, we get out there and start running. Like, let's say you're a new runner and they start running or they start lifting weights and they start to feel pretty good. And they're like, oh, I'm, I'm good. I'm just going to like run 10 miles a day, every day.
And, and then they ended up with like stress fractures and things like that. Same thing with lifting weights. It's like, if you do too much too soon, you risk injury. So I always tell people to like, you know, start slow and then as you build strength cause your muscles can, can adapt, but then it's the connective tissues and stuff that have a harder time getting strong.
So people ended up like, you know, tearing tendons and things like that. If they're not careful with that. But strength training is one of those things that like the, the more you do it, the, if you can build some muscle, you know carrying around muscle helps to raise your metabolism, you know, because it takes more energy for your body to, to have muscle than it does to have fat on your body.
So you're actually burning more calories just by carrying around more, more muscle. And in particular you're burning more fat. So it's one of those things that's often overlooked, but is so important. And I would say it's like more important than, than running for weight loss.
I would say that the two things would be to get the junk out of your diet, like fix your diet and then do strength training, if you do those two things, I would say I, and I work with people who are not runners and we work on those two things and they have tons of success. And then other people that are runners that also do the strength training and, and fix up their diet.
So it's not like running as bad or anything like that, but I'm just saying like, you know, more importantly is probably the strength training when it comes to improving your health overall and losing weight for sure.
[00:23:49] **Kevin Chang:**
I mean, I, I think that those are really important tips for our audience to just, you know, just double down on which is you know, we always tell our audience, it is better to lift heavier, right? So it's better to do compound movements is better to lift heavier. You're in and out of the gym, you're going to build more muscle.
But I think what you double-clicked on is it is important to do it slow because your body, it takes a while for your body to adapt and you don't want to risk the injury. And especially as you mentioned, the tendons. Those do take a little bit longer. And, you know, Yeah. exactly.
You know, you don't want to risk an injury. You do want to go slow. You do probably want to you know, have a plan to be able to lift the weight over a number of different weeks. And especially as we are starting to get back in the gym, those of us that were in the gym pretty regularly before the pandemic, you know, trying to get back to your old weights that you used to lift a while ago.
Take it slow, take it slow. Getting there.
[00:24:42] **Patrick McGilvray:**
Yeah. And I'm a big fan of the, of the heavier weights. One set to failure is, is enough. If you do it the right way, you know, I'm somewhere between like 60 to 90 seconds of, of time under tension per set. And that's, that's all you need to do. And that's going to be sufficient, you know.
I've been doing this for the better part of this year, you know, drop my body fat percent. I think I went from like 15.1 to 12.9% body fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle over the last six months. And I mean, I'm not like Arnold Schwarzenegger or anything like that, but for again, like an average guy like me, I'm like, Hey, this is pretty good. And, and I feel good about this.
You know, I've been lifting weights for years and years and I've never seen these kinds of results. I just wasn't doing it the right way.
And then the last of my five little tips here for, for, for runners, if you want to lose weight is, and this is probably the most important one. And I should've said at first, but I'm saying it lasts because it's important is you gotta be able to manage your mind.
Like this is like the key to everything. You know, mindset is everything, you know, if you wanna you wanna like lose a bunch of weight and you have a crappy mindset and you have an attitude. Oh, this never works for me. It's too hard. I can never do this. I'm just going to quit if it doesn't work by this date, like w whatever it is, like, you're not gonna, you're not in it.
Like you're not committed. You're not, you're not going to get there. Your mindset has got to be like, you've got to be committed. You've got to be all in. One of the things I talk with people about. Because I'm a weight loss coach. And because we're focused on, on losing weight, like this is sort of the, the main focus, I always back it up a little bit and tell people, listen, here's, here's what we're really trying to do. What we're really trying to do is get you as healthy as possible.
In that process of becoming the healthiest version of you, you will lose the weight. That's not like a side effect. It's a nice side effect of being super healthy, but it all starts with this mindset because if you're under the impression that you're going to lose 40 pounds in 30 days or something like that, you know it's just not going to happen. You know?
And or if you're under the impression that, you know, every day, the scale is going to go down a little bit like that is not going to happen. I promise you it's an up and down process. And if you, if you, if you're not on board with. Then it's going to be tough for you.
I encourage people to weigh themselves every day. I encourage people to like get used to that scale, going up and going down, going up and going down. It's just a constant process. And, and they get used to it and they, and they lose the drama around the scale, you know, cause it's not just about the weight on the scale.
It's about how are you feeling. How are you sleeping? How are your clothes fitting? You, you know, how do you feel about yourself? How has your energy, how has your running how's
your hunger levels? And when all these things fall into line, like people are just so much happier regardless of what that number on the scale is. And that's kind of the beautiful thing about it.
But again, this is all the mindset piece, you know. And, and runners are so awesome. This is one of the reasons I love working with runners because they're so awful. They have amazing attitudes. Runners are like determined. They're driven. They're D they're disciplined people, right? They are so good about sticking to their marathon training plan.
They will get up on a Saturday morning in the winter, in the snow, in the rain and whatever they will do that workout no matter what, but then I'm like, okay, that's awesome. Did you stick to your meal plan this week? Oh, no, it's too hard. I tell them, I'm like, you got to take that attitude about your training and just copy and paste that over here to like your food.
You know what I mean? Cause it's the same thing. It's the same exact thing. So those are the five like habits that I think we really need to focus on.
[00:28:37] **Kevin Chang:**
If you like our podcast and sign up for our newsletter, where we give you weekly tips on how to run your best race and have fun in the process, just go to RaceMob. com and sign up today.
Have you learned any tricks to help people with that mindset? Because I, I would say, you know, we probably have the same things sometimes with our athletes, you know, we do the cut, the crap challenge, or we do, you know, something. And for 14 days, for 21 days, people are super motivated. They're helping each other out, but, you know.
But to keep that mindset or keep that, that lifestyle going past those 14 days or to continue that ongoing, I think that is sometimes a struggle to, to make that mindset, create that mindset or, you know yeah. So I didn't know if you had any tips or any thoughts from that perspective.
[00:29:24] **Patrick McGilvray:**
Yeah. I mean, that's a great question and the answer is not simple, so it's not like, I mean, I wish I had a couple of like quick little tips I could give you. That would be like, oh yeah, this is. But here's the thing we're all different and we all have different issues going on.
You really have to learn how your mind works and when you do, then you can start to change things like self-awareness is so important.
Okay, here's a tip, I'll give you, this is, this is something that people can do, is something that I call the daily thought download, which is just taking a piece of paper, take a notebook, and just write down all the junk that you're thinking about in your head. Write all that stuff down, because this is the stuff that you're telling yourself.
This is the stuff that you're ruminating over. This is the stuff that you're thinking of. These are the things that you believe about yourself. And we think about these things and we say them to ourselves all day long, every single day, but we're not really consciously aware of it.
Sometimes we are, but most of the time we're not, but when you start to write it down, you start to make yourself, you start to bring that from your subconscious into your consciousness and you start to become aware of the crap that you're telling yourself all day long.
We have something like 60,000 thoughts a day, and I got to tell you probably 90% of them are negative, you know? And so we need to get that stuff out and like, look at it and say like, okay, here, here's the stuff I'm thinking about. What of this is serving me and what of this is keeping me like stuck and keeping me from reaching my goals.
And it's pretty obvious once you start to like break it down that way. So that would be something I could, I would recommend, but really it's just like awareness, just awareness of what you're thinking, awareness of what your doing.
So there's, there's like three pieces to this it's thoughts, feelings, and actions. You know, your thoughts are just, you know, the sentences in your mind. They're just the things you tell yourself about what's going on around you. But your, your emotions are always created by your thoughts.
So any, anytime you feel an emotion like frustration or stress or anxiety or sadness or fear or anger or any, any emotion that you experience desire is another good emotion.
This is the ones the related to food. You know, we have this over desire for food. Sometimes these are all just driven by thoughts. You, you don't feel an emotion without a thought that precedes it. So it's, it's like putting these pieces together. I'm, I'm having a thought, it's creating this emotion. And then our emotions drive our actions, thought feeling action.
And this is how habits gets formed. You know, this is how like this is how you get the results that you want and the results that you don't want. Thoughts, feelings, and actions. And when you start to put these things together it's really stinking powerful because you can get anything you want in your life.
You can change anything about yourself. You can change the way your brain works. You can change these thought patterns that you think you're stuck in.
People that think that, oh, I could never lose the weight, or I could never run a marathon. And then they start really looking into this stuff and they're like, I'm going to lose a hundred pounds. I'm going to run an ultra marathon, whatever it is then. And they, they, they understand how they can do it. You know, it becomes something that's possible for them.
[00:32:49] **Kevin Chang:**
I love that. I mean, I think, you know, it is, so sometimes that mindset thing is so personal. You know, a, everybody. Reacts differently. And so that self-awareness piece, if you understand how your own mind works, what are the negative thoughts that may be sabotaging yourself?
What actually, how you can actually overcome that, whether that be, you know, goal setting, whether that be joining a community such as yours, so that there's accountability and that you're letting other people know, Hey, this is my goal, this is my plan for this week. Hold me accountable to that.
Or whether that be, you know, Hey, I know that I always sabotage myself by doing this by having these negative toss. And the next time I have that negative thoughts, this is how I'm going to overcome it. So actually putting that plan in place so that you can overcome those negative thoughts, that the self-doubt and all those things, I think that's, that's really that's really perceptive.
That's really important for you to be able to articulate that as a coach who who's worked with so many different people, that there are different personalities, and if you can become self-aware yourself, you may be able to overcome some of these obstacles. So that's great.