Dear Patrick,
I ran the Oakland Marathon this morning. It was my 10th marathon, and by far my most enjoyable! The course was a visual delight, the weather was perfect, and the crowd and volunteer support were amazing! But what made this marathon even better was that I ran it fasted. No gels, weird stomach issues, or the simple “yuck factor” of gel-after-gel through months and miles of training, and the 26.2 on race day. What a relief!
When I laid out my training schedule for this marathon, I really took to heart all your advice about becoming a fat-adapted runner. So instead of setting a finish-time goal, I instead set the dual goals of becoming fat adapted and running this marathon fasted.
I am so glad I set these goals and am so grateful for your expert guidance and motivation to help me achieve them. This has been truly life-changing!!
I feel like I’ve been given the keys to the castle! I feel like I know an incredible secret and only a few people know it! I feel like I've been given a "super-hero" power! I cannot believe I could run a marathon without eating beforehand and I take in zero supplementary calories during the race!
But way more important than that, thanks to you I’ve learned an entirely new way of eating and training that keep me satiated every day all day, dropped 15 pounds without even trying, and have finally gotten off the blood sugar spike and insulin response roller coaster I’ve been on my whole life.
I adopted a mantra you mentioned on your podcast, “This is who I am, this is what I do, this is how I live my life from here on out.” I now have this mantra emailed to me once a week, and it is such a good reminder. I am 56 years old, and even though I run, bike, and swim regularly, I still struggle with extra belly fat (not too much, but enough to be annoying for how often I work out). I also have been noticing a higher than normal fasted blood sugar value each year on my annual bloodwork that has me concerned.
I followed your advice and read “The Obesity Code” by Jason Fung (I’ve since adopted an intermittent fasting practice), and also practice some of the hacks offered in Jessie Inchauspe’s “Glucose Goddess” and her extremely popular and informative Instagram posts. I feel like these efforts have made all the difference in my blood sugar spikes and correlated hormone responses.
I’ve never felt more healthy and energetic in my life; my mood is overall better and my brain fog is gone. It probably doesn’t hurt that I also stopped drinking alcohol (another inspiration from you), originally as a ”reset”, but now I haven't had a drink in nearly four months and I’m not looking back (“This is who I am…).
I try not to put myself out there too much to friends and family what I’ve been doing, because the usual responses I get are: “Why would you deprive yourself like that?” or “That sounds terrible!” or “You don’t need to lose weight” (which, by the way, weight loss was never the primary objective, but it’s a nice side effect). Also people tend to turn it back on themselves and offer all the excuses about why they aren’t doing more to take care of themselves, or how “lucky” I am to be able to eat whatever I want because I run so much. For anyone who really wants to know, I will of course share what I’ve learned and how well it’s been working in practice.
The crazy thing about all of this is it seems to be the "magic bullet" everyone seeks for health. How could it possibly be this easy, work so well, not cost any money, and have no negative side-effects? Now that I know how it works, it seems absolutely "bananas" (as you would say) that more people wouldn't jump on the fat-adapted bandwagon and/or adopt a diet strategy to get off the sugar roller-coaster. And now that I know about it, it's one of those things I can't unsee.
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you immensely for sharing all of this on The Running Lean podcast. I look forward to listening to you each week, and have several "favorite" episodes I return to from time to time. You are providing an incredible gift to the world, and I can say you've honestly changed my life!
Lots of love, my friend! And I hope to someday meet you in person. I've added the Flying Pig Marathon to my list of future marathons, so hopefully I will run into you there, if not somewhere else before then.
Thanks again!
Mike Moore
(Buellton, California - March 23, 2025)
