Running Lean

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 months or so. Before finding me, Pete was training for an ultramarathon and found himself gaining quite a bit of weight. He ended up getting a DNF (did not finish) at his first 50k attempt and was determine...

Recently, I completed a self-supported, solo 12-hour run. I’ve always wanted to do a 12-hour event, but I could never really find a race that spoke to me. So, I decided to take things into my own hands and do it myself! In this episode of the podcast, I share what I learned running solo for 12 hours – what prompted me to want to run alone for so long, how I approached training, how I fueled...

Your mindset is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. But most people do not spend any time at all working on improving their mindset. This is crazy to me because without the right mindset, losing weight and keeping it off becomes nearly impossible. However, armed with the right mindset, losing weight becomes easy and effortless, and your success is all but inevitable. Everythi...

Most people will agree that exercise should be included in any weight loss plan. Unfortunately, most people think that exercise should be the ONLY component of their weight loss plan. Eat less and move more, right? Isn’t that the mantra that’s been forced upon us for several decades now? How’s that actually working for you? Not great? Well, the good news is…you are not alone! It didn’t work...

Nutrition is going to be the number one driver of your body composition. If you’re a runner and you want to lose weight, you have to get your nutrition game on point. The thinking that just running more is going to solve the weight problem for you is outdated and just doesn’t work. There’s a lot more going on when it comes to weight loss – the types of foods we eat, the timing of our meals,...

At some point in your weight loss journey, you will experience a setback. This is normal and nothing to be ashamed of. But most people just do not handle setbacks very well. They get down on themselves, they feel gross feelings like guilt and shame, and most of the time they just give up. Do not do this! Instead, you have to learn how to handle setbacks properly. So in this episode of the podcast,...

There’s a real crisis happening in our world today, one that’s been decades in the making. And I find it somewhat disturbing that no one is really talking about it. It’s not making the headlines, it’s not in the news, and it doesn’t come up in your social media feed. But if left unchecked, if we allow this crisis to continue as-is, it could lead to the end of human life – at least as we know...

One of the most important concepts you need to learn if you want to take back control of eating is the desire scale. This is a tool we have recently started using in The Coaching Project and it’s been so well-received that I thought I’d share it with you here today! When you’re trying to lose weight, sticking to your food plan makes or breaks your progress. If you’re constantly giving in to tempta...

There are more diets out there in the world right now (and more conflicting information about those diets) than I even care to think about. And there is one thing I’ve noticed that comes up again and again – the fact that diets don’t work. Why? Why don’t diets work? Every one of them claims they are THE answer to your weight loss problems and basically, every one of them fails to produce las...

Most people think that losing weight equals suffering. If you want to lose weight you have to stop eating all “delicious” foods forever and you will suffer every single day. They use words like suffering, struggling, deprivation, starvation, and white-knuckling it. I don’t know about you but all of this sounds pretty terrible to me. If this is what you think losing weight looks like, then it...

One of the biggest problems people talk about when they can’t seem to take action toward a goal is feeling like they are stuck. Feeling stuck can literally stop you in your tracks, make you lose all motivation, drain you of any willpower you might have had, and make you feel pretty terrible. The solution then becomes pretty simple – get yourself unstuck. But what does that even mean? How do...

If you want different results you have to do things differently, right? But doing things differently requires some work, it’s an uncomfortable process, and honestly, this is why most people refuse to change. But what if you could make change easier? What if you could replace a bunch of your bad habits with good ones? That would be amazing, right? That’s the basic premise of developing good habits...

One of the most confusing topics in the health and fitness world today is…what should I eat? There is just so much noise out there on social media, in the news, and even on podcasts. And almost every one of the principles someone says you need to follow is contradicted by some other principle that someone else says you need to follow. Just about every person I talk to tells me how frustrating all...

One of the biggest fears you face when you set out to better yourself is the fear of being criticized. You want to lose weight but you are so afraid of what people will say about you that you quit or you never even start in the first place. The fear of being criticized is one of the three main reasons why most people don’t succeed with losing weight or with anything else for that matter. The other...

Failure, or rather the fear of failure, is perhaps the biggest reason why you do not achieve the important things you want for yourself. People are so afraid of failure that oftentimes, they never even try. They decide ahead of time that failure is inevitable and so they quit before they ever get started. The truth is, failure is always going to be part of the process. Instead of fearing failure a...

Fear of success is probably something most people aren’t aware of. If you ask people why they can’t seem to reach a particular goal, they will come up with all kinds of reasons, excuses, and stories, and they’ll almost never say “fear of success”. But fear of success is a real thing and today I want to bring this into your sphere of understanding. I want you to become so keenly aware of your natur...

When it comes to proper hydration, most runners are all over the place. I get it, it’s a little confusing…how much should you drink, how often, should you only drink water, what about electrolytes, is Gatorade the best option, etc. So today I want to end the confusion for you. I want to give you a very clear understanding of what hydration actually means and how to do it properly. That’s why I’m c...

If you’ve ever struggled to lose weight and keep it off, then this episode is for you. There are many different ways to lose weight – cutting calories, cutting carbs, cutting out snacking, more fasting, eating less meat, eating only meat, eating only cabbage and celery, and on and on… Some of these weight loss methods are more successful and more sustainable than others, but they all work to...

There’s a lot of conflicting information out there in the world today about proper nutrition, the best ways to lose weight, what types of exercise are best for weight loss, and on and on. But I think we can all agree on one thing: if you want to lose weight, you have to burn fat. Losing weight means reducing the amount of fat you have stored in your body, period. When you look at yourself in the m...

Have you ever felt hungry? I know stupid question, of course, you have. We’ve all felt hungry, we all know exactly what hunger feels like. But did you know that not all hunger is “real” hunger? Sometimes what you think is real hunger is just a mental or emotional response to your current situation. Stress, boredom, or even social situations can cause you to feel the need to eat, but are you experi...

When you think about “endurance”, what comes to mind? Since you’re most likely a runner, your mind probably conjures up images of slogging out miles and miles on the roads or trails. And you’d be correct, building this kind of physical endurance is one of the keys to being a healthy, fit human being. But there’s another side of endurance, one that doesn’t get discussed much. This other type of end...

There’s a bit of a debate going on out there in the running community around whether or not runners should be lifting heavy weights. Some people think no, runners should never lift heavy weights and they give a bunch of valid-sounding reasons why. Others think that runners should always lift heavy and they have their own logical point of view on the topic. The two sides both have some good points...

6 months ago, Natasha Sorensen was a little frustrated with where she was physically, mentally, and even emotionally. She was 18 months post-partum with twins and found it difficult to lose the weight she had gained during pregnancy. She was also a very active person, running and doing CrossFit regularly, but she couldn’t seem to make forward progress…she couldn’t break the cycle of emotional eati...

I get a lot of questions about how to improve running performance and one concept I keep coming back to is building your aerobic engine. Before you can run longer or faster you have to improve your aerobic fitness. Building and maintaining a solid aerobic base should be the goal of every runner, regardless of your experience. But many runners skip this step because they just want to focus on the f...

It’s the end of the year and time to look back at everything that’s happened this past year…good and bad. 2022 has been a challenging year for a lot of people and I’m no exception. I’ve had my share of setbacks and difficulties this year but I’ve managed to get through them all. I’ve also had some pretty amazing accomplishments this year and like to reflect on those as well. In this episode of the...