My name is Patrick Mcgill, and I'm an
experienced marathon,
Alt runner, sports nutrition, Matt Master life coach
and weight boss coach for runners.
I've dedicated my life to helping runners just
like you, properly few 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 02:36 of
running lean
My name is Patrick Mcgill, the weight loss
coach for runners and today learning to love
the process. So oftentimes we take on a
big challenge like, changing how we eat or
training for a marathon,
and we don't get the results that we
want fast enough. The weight isn't coming off
as quickly as you want or that's training
isn't getting any easier, running is still really
hard.
And when you're focused solely on the end
result, and you're not there yet, you can
begin to hate the process
that it takes to actually get you there.
And this is not a very useful way
to approach anything worthwhile. So today, I'm talking
about learning to love the process.
And how this simple mindset shift will absolutely
change how you approach, everything that you do,
especially going after those big goals. But first,
if you wanna get leaner or stronger, if
you wanna run faster or longer,
you need to change what you do. Doing
the same things will not get you new
results.
Nothing changes if nothing changes. Right? Think we
all get this part.
The real secret is doing new things
consistently.
If you decide you wanna get stronger so
you go to the gym once a month,
that's just not gonna get you there. You
need to adopt new behaviors
and you need to start doing them consistently.
That's where coaching really helps.
Trying to stay on track yourself can be
kinda challenging. I know this because I've tried
it a million times.
I'd start doing something. I'd do it for
a little while, then I'd go right back
to doing these same old stuff or not
doing what I was trying to do and
really never make any progress towards my goals.
Once I got a coach, everything changed for
me. Now I had somebody that was guiding
me every step of the way, holding me
accountable,
calling me out when I started slipping back
in old behaviors. And most importantly,
never ever letting me quit. If you're ready
to start doing some new things,
and wanna make sure that you never ever
quit. Let's get you there. Just go to
my website, running link coaching dot com, click
on work with me, and I'll show you
exactly how to become the most badass version
of yourself yet. Cool.
Alright. So today I have a replay for
you
called learning to love the process. And this
is an episode that I did pretty early
on, this is episode number 39,
which was almost 200 episodes ago, which is
just crazy.
But I wanted to share this with you
today because
I think it's 1 of the most important
principles that you need to adopt
if you want, to improve your health, your
fitness, lose weight and keep it off, run
a faster marathon, really accomplishing
any big goal. You have to learn how
to love
the process. So without any further ado, here's
the replay of learning to love the process.
I hope you enjoy.
Okay. Let's talk about learning to love the
process. So
here's what I see happening
with people. And I'm and I see this
with my clients a lot.
You have a goal.
You want to lose weight or maybe your
goal is to run your first marathon.
So you create a plan.
You change your diet. You change your your
whole way of eating.
You start eating all the right foods, You
start feeling healthy,
and things are going pretty well. Or maybe
you start training for your marathon, so you
put together,
17 week training program.
And you start running, and you get out
there and you're running 4 or 5 days
week, whatever it is. You're doing great
but then something happens.
You you look at the scale
and you're like, you know, I'm really not
losing much weight I've lost a couple of
pounds and, you know, this is hard. This
is a hard work. It's just not it's
not going
fast enough. It's not happening fast enough. I'm
not losing weight. A fast enough. Or, you
know, I'm running 5 times a week, and
my endurance really isn't improving, Like, running
still sucks. It's still hard. I'm not getting
any better. It's not getting easier.
So what we do is we get super
hyper focused on the end result. We get
focused on the goal
to lose the 40 pounds, run the 26.2
miles.
But you're not there yet. You're you're where
you are today.
You still have 38 pounds to lose.
Or you're only up to running, you know,
6 files.
And so there's this
tension.
There's this,
turmoil,
if you will, that you sort of create
inside yourself.
I wanna be there, but I'm only here.
You're not seeing immediate... You're you're not seeing
immediate results. You're seeing some small changes, but
they're small.
It's taking too long.
You know, it's not going fast enough.
You know, I don't look like that 1
woman on Instagram yet, or I can't run
18 miles yet.
And so you get frustrated.
You get frustrated because you're not where you
ultimately wanna be.
And first of all, this
doesn't make sense to me.
It's like you're climbing a mountain, and you're
and you're kinda like, at the at the
base of the amount. You know, you've you've
started, you know you're working your way up
but you're still. You got a long way
to go.
It's like saying, oh, this isn't this isn't
working. This isn't going fast enough.
Or and you're like, looking up in the
mountain. And you're like, I wanna be at
the top, but I'm not there yet.
It's like, you gotta, like, do the work
to get you from here to there.
Okay? You can't just like, hate being where
you are
and expect it to be like, easier to
get to the top. That's That doesn't make
any sense.
So you get frustrated, you hate where you
are. You're putting this hard work in. It's
not working fast enough. And by the way,
fast enough according to who? Like, who's who's
saying you should be losing weight,
a certain rate. Who says it's gonna take
you
you know, 6 weeks to lose 40 pounds
when it took you 8 years to put
it on. That doesn't make sense. Or, you
know, to run 26 miles,
it takes some time to build up to
that.
So anyway,
I don't know why we put these arbitrary
timelines on things.
I used to do that, though, and I
get it. And I used to put timelines
on my goals. And when I didn't hit
the goal in the timeline, I was...
Pissed off.
I got frustrated,
and a lot of times I would just
give up.
So that's another whole story.
That's another topic. I'll save that whole goal
setting and timelines and stuff for another day,
but just know this.
When you are fresh up traded with where
you are it's gonna be very difficult to
get to that result.
So what happens when most people are in
this situation? What do most people do created
when they're not getting the results fast enough,
when they're frustrated,
when when they're hating the process
They quit. Right? They're like screws is it's
too hard it's taking too long. It's not
worth it. I'm just gonna go back to
eating the way I was eating
which by the way, was definitely not gonna
get you to your goals.
Or I'm just gonna sleep it on Saturdays
and spend all day on the couch watching
Netflix,
which definitely won't get you to that goal.
So they give up on these big goals.
They give up on these dreams because it's
not happening fast enough. And they begin to
hate
the process.
When you hate the process,
you are going to have a very
very hard time sticking to that process.
It's all going to be terrible. It's just
going to suck all the time.
And is that how you wanna to approach,
accomplishing this goal.
Is that how you wanna go through life?
Because we're always gonna have goals that we're
working towards. Right?
Here here's an example from my own life
just so you can kind of put this
in perspective.
So I've been trying to increase my lean
muscle mass. I'm been trying to build more
muscle,
and it's hard work. I will tell you.
It is difficult,
and it's taking a while, and I haven't
been seeing some much progress.
And I was beginning to get frustrated with
all of this. So I'm putting in a
lot of hard work. I'm strength training 3
times a week,
religiously,
you know, I go I go to the
gym and I go at it hard, and
I'm starting to think why even bother it's
not working. And I was hating,
what I was doing. I started to just
hate the whole thing. It just was terrible.
And
just a little back story. I've always had
a hard time, like, bulk up, and this
may be my genetics. I was always a
skinny kid until I got fat
And then I was the fat guy with
no muscles.
Then I got skinny again, and I trained
for iron man,
you know, I was going to the gym
all the time, but I could never really
bulk up. I could never really put on
muscle.
And so I was just thinking maybe this
isn't for me. You know, in 53 now.
Maybe it's just not possible for me to
build muscle.
And I was really kind of hating the
process. So I had to make a decision.
I came to a point where I was
like, okay. I can just say
this is too hard,
taking too long, it's not happening fast enough,
you know, I'm just gonna say screw it,
why even bother.
Or
I could adopt this new mindset.
I could learn to love
the process.
And for me, the process is
going to the gym
3 times a week and working out.
The the the process is
putting in the training,
lifting the heavy things,
pushing myself harder each week.
Learning everything I could
about this topic of weight training and how
to do it more efficiently, how to get
the most bang for the buck?
So I started studying
the subject
of
resistance training like crazy, and I started pushing
myself super hard each week at the gym,
and I started really
get into this and start to love the
process.
So much so
that I'm actually becoming a certified personal trainer,
because I'm like, I wanna learn everything I
can about this and be able to teach
it to others,
especially as we get older, It's very important
to continue to,
keep your muscle strength up, build muscle, it's
so good for your for your joints for
your bones, for your overall health,
to have more lean mass. It's great for,
fat burning, it helps you for running,
most runners don't, do enough strength training, and
so I wanna help runners learn how to
do this stuff the right way.
Anyway, I've learned that I need to love
this process.
And it's still gonna take a while for
me to get to the goals.
You know, it's still gonna take a while
for me to to build the muscle or
look the way that I wanna look.
I'm getting there. I'm starting to see some
progress. It's slow
I think it's easier when you're younger to
build... To, like, bulk up, like the Instagram
dues. I see, you know, They're, like, ripped,
and I'm like, okay. Whatever.
It may take me a while to get
there, but my goal is to get there
eventually.
And and it's taking while, but I'm enjoying
the process now.
I'm loving the process. I'm not frustrated
that it's taking a while, because I know
the results will come.
If I love the process
or hate the process,
but I keep doing it, the the results
will eventually come.
You can either hate every minute of it
or you can love every minute of it.
The choice is yours to make.
And I see this with my clients a
lot, my weight loss clients
because, you know what? Losing weight is hard.
Most diets fail. Most people fail at losing
weight is because they're just focused on 1
thing. They're focused on the number on the
scale.
And when I work with people,
we talk a lot about becoming the healthiest
human being possible.
We work on breaking old habits and creating
a new
healthy
lifestyle, new habits.
The goal is permanent
lifestyle change, not some temporary quick fix.
The goal isn't really the number on the
scale, although that eventually will happen.
But it takes time,
and you have to learn to love what
you're doing.
This is why it's
so helpful to have a coach. So anyone
can just tell you what to do. You
can actually go on Youtube and learn what
to eat. You know, But with a coach,
you get to learn how to love the
entire process. You get to learn how to
change.
Your mindset. You learned how to adopt a
whole new attitude, a whole new identity around
what it means to be a healthy human
being.
And my clients, they learn to love
themselves. They learn to love
their new
way of.
Eating. They're a new way of approaching nutrition
and exercise and fitness.
And they they love this new life,
they learn to develop the the mindset
required to make lasting
changes.
They learn to love,
the process.
Yes, they still have goals.
They still want to, you know, lose 30
pounds or whatever it is.
But they're not so focused on the goal
that they hate everything about what they're doing
every day
because they're not there yet.
The results will come in time. You just
gotta stick with it and it's a lot
easier
to stay on track
when you love what you're doing.
Honestly, this is the key to succeeding at
anything in life
is, to love what you're doing. Love the
process. Not only love yourself, but love the
process of
getting there
because the reality is
when it comes to,
like, losing weight. It does take time.
You know, it I often remind my clients
that it took them years, decades to gain
the weight. It's not gonna be gone in
a couple of weeks or a couple of
months. Time
But if you can love the process.
When you learn to love this healthy new
life that you're living,
when your focus is not only on
a number on the scale or some short
term gains. And instead, your focus is on,
optimizing your long term health and overall fitness.
It's still gonna take the same amount of
time.
But it will be way more enjoyable
getting there.
Another example of this is
with my running lately. So
I've been training for a
rather big running event,
in October that I'm not really talking about
too much, I'm being very big, I know.
And normally, when I have a big event
like this. I dread the training. I dread
it. It's grueling. It's very hard work. I
hate the long runs.
But I've noticed something over the last couple
of months like
I've noticed that I have really been loving
the training.
It's been fun. We've been going out a
few friends,
I've only been... I'm running, like, 3 times
a week.
I'm not taking myself too seriously.
I'm increasing distances
and I'm not, like dread those long runs.
I'm actually looking forward to them.
And
without really even trying,
I've just learned to
really enjoy the process of training.
And, yeah, it's still hard sometimes.
Running is hard sometimes. Right? Running 18 or
20 miles,
will probably always be somewhat challenging.
But if you hate every minute of it,
if you are dread every step, you, you
know, you head out the door and you're
like, on my god this next 3 hours
of running is gonna suck. That's no fun.
That's no fun at all. So instead I've
been
I've been loving
the training. I've been loving the process of
just going out there into the... And putting
the work. And it's way more fun doing
it this way. I
promise you it's way more fun.
When you hate the process,
every moment
feels like failure.
But when you love the process,
every moment feels like success.
The end result is the same.
You'll eventually reach your goal,
but you'll be a completely different person
doing it.
That's all I got for you today. Lots
of loved to each and every 1 of
you, my friends, keep on running lean, and
I'll talk to you soon.