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Jan. 15, 2026

Bad Blood Work??? What Men Should Do To Improve It - 46

Show Notes
Transcript

Getting bad blood work back can be unsettling, especially when you are told to “watch your numbers” but are not given clear direction on what to do next.

Download Herehttps://brianparana.short.gy/improveyourbloodpanels

In this episode of Driven For Health, Coach Brian Parana breaks down what it actually means when your blood panels start trending the wrong way and how men can take practical action before chronic illness becomes the default.

This episode walks through the most important blood markers men over 40 need to understand, including A1c, fasting glucose, blood pressure, triglycerides, waist size, and weight trends. You will learn what these numbers reflect, why they change slowly over time, and which daily habits reliably move them in the right direction.

If you have ever looked at your lab results and felt confused, frustrated, or unsure where to start, this episode connects the dots between blood work, metabolic health, and real life behavior.

This is not medical advice and it is not about extreme dieting or short-term fixes. It is a practical conversation about structure, consistency, and taking control of your health while you still have room to move.

This episode pairs directly with the Improve Your Blood Panels Scorecard and is designed to help men understand their labs, reduce long-term health risk, and take the next step with confidence.

This breaks down blood work in plain language.

A1c, cholesterol, blood pressure, and what affects them.

Here’s the scorecard you asked for.

https://brianparana.short.gy/improveyourbloodpanels

This is not a medical diagnosis or replaces a doctor in any way.

Want help applying this to your own health, weight, energy, or lab numbers?

Coach Brian Parana offers Health Hot Seat coaching segments for men who want a clear next step with nutrition, fitness, weight loss, blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, or daily consistency.

Learn more about The Call To Rise, a 100-day coaching program for driven men over 40 who want to lose weight, improve their health, and rebuild confidence:

www.thecalltorise.com

To connect with Coach Brian:
brian@brianparana.com

Disclaimer: This podcast is for education and coaching support only. It is not medical advice. Always work with your physician before changing medication, treatment, or medical care.

Let me ask you something before we get started. If your doctor called tomorrow and said your blood work was getting worse, not better, what would you actually know to do? I'm not talking about generic advice, not eat better and exercise, but real actions you could start this week that actually move those numbers in the right direction.
Most men I talk to are just not clear on exactly what they need to do. They're not lazy. They're not confused. They get blood panels and they realize they need to change and they just aren't sure what the explanation is around those blood panels and how it responds to their actions in their everyday life.
That's what this episode is about. Connecting those dots, taking the numbers of a bad blood panels, blood blood work, and getting you to actually take the right actions to produce the outcomes that improve those that get them from the red into the green. Welcome back to Driven for Health. This is podcast episode 46. If you're listening to this episode, there is a good chance you did one of two things that just happened.
Either you recently got your blood work back and you didn't like what you saw. Numbers were too high. Maybe there's red instead of green. Maybe if you're on the the had a a line across was too far to the right of the page, your doctor came in and wanted to talk to you and have a conversation. That's not a good thing.
or or someone told you to watch your numbers like your doctor or the app that you use or so many times I can't tell you how many times I've had clients that will come to me in a panic and they say Brian Jake was one Brian Brian I need to do this that the other thing and and do it now I have to go no carbs and all this stuff like hold up whoa whoa whoa whoa Jake we're down 15 pounds what's going on my friend he said that the front desk person at his doctor's office talked to him for maybe 30 seconds to a minute saying that he needed to change. That's
not enough data. That's not enough information. That's not enough feedback or follow through on what the actual problem was and also not enough context. Jake had already changed some of his habits in the last month which resulted in him losing 15 pounds. There is a direct correlation with blood panels improving and weight going down.
I've seen it way too many times. This episode exists for those guys in this exact moment. Men don't want to live their life with chronic illness. Men do not want to end up on medications that they could avoid by living healthier lifestyles, eating healthier food. men who are willing to take responsibility but just need some direction, some clarity, and put in some effort.
I'm just going to throw this out there. This is not medical advice. This is not a diagnosis. Please consult a physician in all entirety. Just going to throw that out there to protect you and me. Let's get to this. What I am going to do is this is a practical explanation of how blood markers actually work and what to reliably improve them which is important.
And also, if you download my improve your blood panels scorecard, it'll be in the show notes. And this is the explanation behind all of that scorecard and the metabolic reset protocol that I have for my guys when they come to me with this concern. Here's a a wakeup call. Let me put you inside this moment. If you just stop, pause, and and close your eyes.
It happens more than most and I certainly don't want it to happen to you, but it could. There's a increasingly large amount of risk as you age that you will end up with a chronic disease, especially if you live a sedentary convenient lifestyle in this modern world. full of ultrarocessed foods, full of fatty foods, full of low protein, low vegetables, low colorful food, low fiber, lots of sugar, lots of alcohol, not a lot of water.
You're going to have this your likeliness of getting these things is significantly more. And it's not even necessarily a nature thing like say I have genetic predisposition for blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, but it's for those the environmental the nurture situation when you've eaten a donut crispy cream donut every morning and you had a McDonald's high calorie sugared coffee every morning too.
You're asking for diabetes to come your way. You might be lucky and it doesn't happen, but there's a strong probability that you are increasing your risk to do that. Mid to late 40s, you're in a good career. Your family is you're you're going on vacations. You're can going to events and watching your kids flourish.
I just watched my son tonight, Levi. He ended up swimming faster than his teammate Sam on the swim team. He edged him out by a couple seconds, about two to three seconds. And it was awesome because 500 meters is over a 5minute swim for him. And this was the first time he's actually showed that he was faster than his teammate.
And whereas before he was always, I guess, getting crushed in a sense. If we think about this guy again, from the outside, the life looks great. It looks fine. It's just, oh, this is he's got a white picket fence, the American dream, he's doing just fine. But he did not [snorts] expect the appointment that he went to his doctor to matter.
He just thought it was a routine checkout, check the box, and off we go for another year to not have to worry about going to the doctor again. It's just routine. to squeeze it in between or calls. He almost rescheduled it even. But his wife was been asking for months to, "Hey, I need you to do this to take care of yourself.
" And and guys, when you're in your 40s, you have to start doing these things. I'm 43. That means that colonoscopy time is coming. Great. Really excited to experience that one. But I need to do it just to make sure that it is preventative and it helps me improve my overall life style and quality and catches things if they happen to be there.
Nobody wants p-ups at the rear end. Just not is going back to this guy. He finally goes and so he shows up. He sits in the exam room scrolling on his phone, half paying attention to anything that's going on, already thinking about what's coming up next, looking at his calendar. I got meetings, I got this, I got that, I got I got to get back to work.
And he feels fine. Anyways, he's a little bit overweight, but not enough to justify any other reason. like doctor might say, "Yeah, maybe lose some weight, but that's all your blood work is good." He's just tired, right? If you're [laughter] if you're in your 40s period, you feel fatigued. Not just because of potential age, but because of the responsibilities, the life, the kids, families, all these things can weigh on you.
Doctor comes in, pulls the labs, A1C is higher than the last time they used and blood pressure is above where it should be, especially the bottom number. The bottom number, we'll talk about it, but that's the dangerous one. If that's it's 120 over 80. When that one goes up to 90, you're in trouble. And triglycerides are up. The doctor explained, "Hey, you know how the doctors are with their white coats and all what you need to do.
" And he's been probably telling you a while to start losing weight, start paying attention when you eat. And then this time, he says, "Hey, these are early warning signs of bigger issues. You should definitely pay attention. This is more than just, hey, lose some weight this time. this is time for let's start raising some red flags and do a different course of action.
He mentions diabetes, heart disease, goes through in the same sentence with that and starts to say you're not diabetic yet but you're headed in that direction for this time. this meaning the words stick they imprint on his brain and they start thinking about what just happened on the drive home the conversation is replaying it's looping in his head trying to feel the weight the impact of it and it's just it's just there enough to get him you know certainly he drives safe home but there's no radio even if the radio was on he didn't hear a single
word it just tuned into what's going on here? And he he just this feeling putting some of these pieces together. The workouts feel harder than they used to. His clothes are a bit tighter than they used to. His weight is trending up in the wrong direction. And then that night after everyone goes to bed, he finally has time to just sit and breathe and look at the printouts of the lab sheet in front of him.
when he sees things that are in the red, he doesn't really understand the numbers. He just knows that this is the wrong place for this little up arrow or down arrow, whichever way it looks on on your graph. This is in the wrong place. This needs to be in the middle in the green area. And things are okay. So, he is liking what's happening here in the reality of that situation.
For the next couple weeks, he pays more attention. and he starts eating cleaner, healthier. He skips late night snacks, cuts down on sugar, and he gets back to the gym more consistently. Other days, they they end up falling apart. Meanings run later, dinner ends up getting rushed. Sleep is sleep is my toughest thing.
And sleep was his toughest thing, too. He he hopes to recover on the weekends, but he isn't actually feeling recovered at all. Now, at night, he reads articles on his phone about these things trying to one says cut out carbs, another says carbs are fine. Another one says fasting is the answer, right? You could magically reset your body.
Another one says that all these things are going to make it worse, right? The news says chocolate's great one day, chocolate's great not great the other. Or wine's good this time and not the other. And it's not clear. Google is causing a lot of confusion. He starts to notice how often the food and the drinks start to fill the gaps in his days with stressful afternoons, long evenings, and even when he's alone by himself at night.
say right before we go to bed or we had guys even eating in the middle of the night when they're supposed to sleep, but nothing feels bad enough to force a change or decision or different. Nothing feels good enough to even forget about it. And so we're we're stuck in this loop of not sure what to do, not sure what the numbers actually mean, and not sure what the actual plan of attack is because he tries to get back to the gym and eat healthier, but then life pulls him back into this rut and he most definitely doesn't want medicine. I have
had this conversation explained to me what feels like a thousand times in the last couple years of guys showing up with blood blood panels and they they send over their results to me and I see like okay A1C is up cholesterol is up cholesterol is 240ish or so like that's alarming blood pressure is up and 130 140 over 85 90 that's a problem and and why blood work is not great when it comes back negative, right? That blood work feels different than say body weight does, right? You you you can ignore the scale. You can
even ignore blood panels until a certain point. And the same thing with the scale. At a certain point, it is reality and it finally hits you. And we don't want to ignore these numbers when they get to say defcon 4 because defcon 5 is chronic illness and it's going to cause permanent issues and challenges, medicine, insurance costs, money costs and time costs.
I don't know about you, but my time is more precious than ever. I am having a hard time with doing this or that. And that's a reality of the situation. Unfortunately, a challenge in our health care system is that most doctors don't have the time because of the standards of say insurance processes or the amount of time available for each patient or the amount of patients that a doctor even has.
And their role is to help with triage and meaning that they help solve the problem first that they help you understand and quickly solve a problem. you come in with high cholesterol, you leave with a statin, and that allows you to be able to lower your cholesterol relatively quickly. It helps, but now you're on statins for a long time. Same thing with say A1C.
Your A1C's up. That clearly says diabetes. You're on metformin or some form of insulin and then you're on it to help manage your A1C. So the problem is is there's a lot of vague information that actually gets handed to you when it is time to leave the office or even afterwards. You might not get a lot of clarity at all.
It's vague advice and there's no plan outside of a pamphlet of eat this food and and don't eat that. But it's the truth that blood markers respond to habits over time. They are a feedback loop to what you've been doing or how things are going in your everyday life, but they aren't a I am this situation and therefore I will say I have high cholesterol and therefore I have a heart attack or stroke or I have high A1C, I am forever a type two diabetic.
Type ones are different. They don't produce insulins and they will forever be a type one. But type two is not. Once you understand what is going on with these numbers, what they reflect, then we can get back in control. You're not as fearful of what's going on, and you can get into a resourceful state to be able to take back.
Now, let's talk about metabolic health and explain it in a simple, easy to understand way. At the center of this, most of the poor blood panels is really around metabolic health. Metabolic health is how well your body handles energy. I went over metabolism in episode 38. I talked about metabolism and how to help you better understand what it is, why it is, and how it is better for you.
What it is and how metabolic health manages your energy in your body. It includes blood sugar control. It includes fat storage. It includes inflammation. It includes how hard your heart has to work, i.e. blood pressure to circulate the blood. Poor metabolic health drives diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, and chronic kidney disease, chronic fatigue, and potentially even cancer in your body.
Weight alone doesn't necessarily tell the whole story either. So, as you're overweight, you're obviously increased risk of it. But skinny people that are at a healthy body weight can still be an an issue because of the way that they have been eating and moving their body. They don't overeat in terms of total calories, but the quality of the calories could just, for lack of better way to say it, garbage.
Let's jump into why this matters and break down some of the things that are in my improve your blood panels scorecard. Blood sugar markers such as your A1C and fasting glucose. So, let's start out with these two numbers. And this gets guys attention pretty quick outside of a high cholesterol number. But A1C and fasting glucose, the A1C reflects your average blood sugar roughly the last three months.
Okay, three months time frame of a cycle and even any time that you go in for the doctor, it's probably going to be three or six month time frame in that range to evaluate if it has changed. That's important because it if we go over a threemonth average, then it gets rid of the daily oscillations or the weekly oscillations.
You see the general trend over time. One good day won't fix it and one bad day won't ruin it either. From a number standpoint, this is really what matters. Let's pay attention. E1C 5.7% is considered normal. Below that, up to 5.7 and below 5.7 to 6.4, you are in an elevated risk range or a pre-diabetic range.
You probably have insulin resistance issues where your body keeps producing more insulin and it gets harder and harder for you to actually lower your blood sugar levels as a result without keep putting more insulin in. And at 6.5 and above, you are a type 2 diabetic. Congratulations. That becomes part of your identity until it goes lower.
And yes, you can get rid of type 2 diabetes. It's not a I got it and I can continue to have it. [snorts] Soon as you get back down to the A1C, you will be out of the category. Now, I have men, the highest A1C that I've ever heard was a 15. And I've worked with guys that were in their 10 or 15 in that range before, but and at that point, it's astronomical.
Usually, it's more like six to nine, which is like, hey, you need to pay attention to this before it gets worse. Assing glucose tells a little bit of a different story. This is the blood sugar first thing in the morning before you eat food. A fasting blood sugar under 100 milligrams per deciliter is normal. So if you measure it and it's 100 or less, then you're normal.
100 to 125 for getting a little bit more of a considerate range and making sure you're starting to pay attention. And if you wake up with it 126 or higher, your risk goes up significantly. And this shifts you more towards having a bad A1C and putting you more likely to be diabetic. That is a problem. Resting blood sugar levels.
I've heard people in the 400 plus, which is astronomical. Did you drink a, you know, frosty milkshake right before you woke up or something or have a whole dozen crispy cream donuts? I I don't know. To be able to produce that. And that's a very big sign that things are not well on the inside of your body. So fasting glucose often rises first before the A1C does.
So it's a warning sign. It tells you, hey guys, your A1C is on the rise. Your A1C will be on the rise if you maintain high fasting glucose levels. All right. So where we get misunderstood with blood sugar levels is that elevated blood sugar levels rarely are caused by just sugar alone is usually a result of a couple things that stack up over time such as irregular meals that can lead to overeing later.
So you skip breakfast, you get busy in a meeting at lunch and now you are overeing endlessly at night. That's a very common trait I get. Liquid calories, alcohol, sugary things, sodas, pops, milkshakes, coffees, drinks that have a lot, juices that have a lot. Just throwing this out here. Eat the fruit. Don't drink it. All right.
Now, late nights will then if you have disrupted sleep from food, stress, it'll shorten your sleep cycle and it will allow for you to have higher levels of blood fasting blood sugar in the morning. Alcohol in the evening will do that. Long days just sitting and very little movement will do that. So, if you sit in a chair all day and you sit in a car to drive to and from work and then when you get home you sit a lot on the couch staring at yet another screen, then yeah, you're going to be in trouble here.
And research consistently shows that losing even five to 10% of your body weight can start to have a significant improvement in insulin sensitivity and lower both fasting glucose and A1C. very important there. So just getting a little bit of weight loss directly correlates to it. As I mentioned before, we don't need to do crazy hard dieting.
We don't need to be super restrictive. We can do eat some vegetables, eat some lean proteins, cut back on some of the carbohydrate calories or fat or ultrarocessed foods. Daily walking helps to get your blood sugars actually used up to pull out the glucose of the bloodstream. That's super helpful because you're using that glucose as energy.
Uh it actually pauses it keeps you from storing it as belly fat as as much or frequent throughout the day, too. That's a big one. Even just having short walks after a meal can help with that. Or doing squats. There's a study it talks about just doing squats after meals can help mobilize the blood sugar levels in a different way.
Uh if you're a performance athlete, then having sugar around your activities is a the best time to do it because your body will use that glucose to help fuel your activity and keep your energy levels high when you're doing it. Having what I call protein first meals because eating protein slows down digestion, improves your fullness, society, it gets your blood blood sugar levels more balanced out and that keeps you more stable throughout the day, which is a good thing.
And sleep again matters. If you're under I've said this a lot of times, but if you're under six, you're increased risk of diseases is significant. There's significant amount of studies that share that five or less four. Oh, you are in trouble faster than if you were to get at least seven.
I'm a more of a six to seven guy. Life stacks responsibilities and keeps me a little bit busier than I want to be. And that's why in the improve your blood panel scorecard, focus on these daily trends and and focus on trends and daily behaviors more so than being perfect or just having these cleanses or resets or fads or whatever.
All right, the improve your blood panel scorecard will explain these numbers in a bit more detail and keeping it super simple. So you can glance at it and know exactly what it says. But then the metabolic reset protocol is what's important here is that it's going to give you the action plan on helping improve A1C, fasting, glucose levels, blood sugar levels.
Next up, we have blood pressure and triglycerides are related, right? The triglycerides are fats that are circulating in your bloods and when they start to build up arteriocerosis and now we have high cholesterol levels and blockages in your blood vessels that could cause a heart attack or stroke. If you have high blood pressure and you have narrow paths, think of a lot of pressure in a plumbing system with small pipes, you have some issues here.
something's going to break, especially in the weakest point. And now you have water everywhere and inside your body you have blood and a heart attack and just not good stuff. Like things don't go well in that situation. So that's why they trend together because they are coincide. Your heart squeezes, blood pumps, the pressure and the vessels, the veins and the arteries are the things that allow for you to be able to then push the say the blood through there.
Blood pressure is measured as two different numbers. We have the systolic and the the diastolic. The systolic is the number that is when the heart contracts. That's the one that everyone thinks about. And sure, there's going to be more pressure when it squeezes, but more importantly is when it's at rest, the diastolic, the bottom one, the number. So 120 over 80.
When that 80 goes to 90, it's a much bigger issue than 120 going to 140. 140 over 90, your doctor's probably putting you on some meds. So 120 or 80 is normal. When we get to that 120 to 129, that's elevated. And if it goes over 130 then it is falling into high blood pressure range. Same thing with the systolic. 80 is normal.
Better keep it under 85 but if it goes to 90 then you are in trouble. So 140 over 90 will probably land you with some meds or a very stern talk to your doctor about doing it. And this is hypertension. I see guys that have high blood pressures that have been on meds for years or even decades and they finally have been woken up by something that says, "Hey, I need to do something about it and I don't want to keep taking medicine the rest of my life.
" Blood pressure reflects how much strain your system is getting put through on over time. If it stays elevated, the heart and the blood vessels have to work harder every single day, every single pump. And this is happens too because of salt and sodium and our types of food. A couple other things that cause blood pressure to rise.
So, say sodium's over 2,000 mg, sleeps under 6 hours, your movement is low, and it keeps your blood vessels actually rigid and not as flexible or able to handle the pressure and the the vasoddilation and and and restriction there because they just are rigid. They don't move. Excess body fat increases pressure because you have just more mass that you have to push blood through.
And regular alcohol intake rises both. We're talking about one, two, three drinks a night as opposed to one, two, three over a week. And the systolic and diastolic numbers go up. Research shows that losing even 10 pounds or even go back to say the one to 2% of your body weight can help to start lowering the systolic blood pressure by five to 10 points.
So if you lose 10 pounds then it lowers. Walking can help lower the systolic as well another four or to nine points as well. You could literally lose weight walking and see that your blood systolic number go down 5 to 10. And if you're at 140 and goes to 130, then you're in just the very concerned range.
Not that you need to do something about this ASAP range. So these can move you out of a risk higher risk category without medications. All right, that's blood pressure. Triglycerides are a type of fat that circulates in your blood stream [snorts] and they are one of the clearest markers of metabolic stress in your body and energy overload.
So some ranges that we want to pay attention to under 150 milligrams per deciliter is normal. 150 to 199 is elevated and over 200 we're at a high risk of poor health. That's not good. We don't want that. Triglycerides go up when the body is regularly taking in more energy than it needs. That means i.e. you're eating too many calories and you're storing as body fat. You don't want to do that.
And it usually comes in ultrarocessed foods and sugars, refined carbohydrates, alcohol, excess calories cause this. There is such a thing as calorie toxicity. You've had too many calories and it is slowly killing you. You see it in our America right now. Obesity rates higher than ever and the rate of disease is higher than ever.
And like cardiovascular disease is one of the top killers of humans and Americans. Adult alcohol can play a big role here and having a moderate amount of drinking and a 24 to 48 hours can raise your triglycerides in that time frame. But then if you continue to drink over time then they can stay elevated which is again causes more issues. We don't want to do that.
This is why triglycerides are often respond quickly when you have more structure. You have more rhythm and reason to what you're doing. you start swapping in better habits and behaviors to do that. When guys reduce their sugar, reduce their alcohol, increase their movement, get to the gym, and start losing body fat, the triglycerides are often one of the first markers to improve.
It means that your body's under less stress. Your cholesterol is down, your blood pressure can go down, and you feel healthier, and your doctor's happier, and you don't need medicine. Let's move on to two other ones that are inside the improve your blood panels scorecard. That's again, it's going to be in the show notes to link to it. You'll be able to get that.
There'll be some very clear identifiers and a protocol for you to follow that's really simple to easy to do. I made sure of it that you could download it, look at it, and implement it even tomorrow. And then you're going to get some emails that'll have recipes and different things to help encourage you and move you in the right direction.
So, check that out in the show notes. The next two are waist size and weight trends. Dealing with body weight, waist size and weight trends. A lot of guys focus on some of these numbers, but they don't pay as much attention to the ones that are most important. Weight size. The waist size reflects visceral fat. This is the fat that is stored around your organs.
And it's really usually hard and dense and say say your dad or your grandpa had a really hard big stomach that poked out but you couldn't put your finger into it. That's not good. That's a it's an actually bad thing to have happen. And this type of fat is metabolically active in the wrong way. it's causing inflammation and sending inflammatory signals out and that interfere with insulin sensitivity and a lot of other things.
This is why that this is strongly linked to a higher blood sugar levels, higher triglycerides, and a greater risk of heart disease. If you have visceral fat, it's literally like living and it's slowly killing you. Most men, the waist measurement that is over 40 inches is associated with a significant higher risk of metabolic disease.
This is going to cause a lot of issues the longer that you have a waist that big. Even if your your body everywhere else is fine, but you have 40inch waist, you're in trouble. This matters more than say the scale does on any single day. And the body weight fluctuates daily for all sorts of different reasons that may or may not have anything to do with fat gain or fat loss, but we want to pay attention to the average waist size.
Now, couple things that affect it is water retention can play into your weight fluctuating 2 to five pounds. So, your amount of sodium that you intake. If you take more than 2,000, you have ultrarocessed foods and things in a box in a container and you eat out a lot and eat a lot of fast food and convenience stuff like that.
Yeah, you're going to get a lot more than you would if you eat at home. Sodiums in all food regardless, but it's an exponential amount because they salt the food to make it taste good or preserve it. Stress and poor sleep, increased water retention, and food is still being digested. that adds temporary weight and that's where we can get a lot of fluctuation in the scale and actually making sure that you're losing or gaining fat happens over time.
You're not going to just gain a pound a day of body fat unless you're eating an exorbitant amount of food and paying attention to averages over the course of not just the time that you're awake, not just even a course of 24 hours, but a 7-day time frame, a 4 week time frame, a 12 month time frame, year after year.
If you gain one pound a year over 20 years, you're 20 pounds overweight. Okay? You have to constantly course correct that to make sure that your body stays in a good healthy position. Blood work it helps reflect these long patterns of behaviors and hopefully you've gone at least every 5 years or so or at least every year to get some blood panel markers especially as you already get.
You should have the yearly checkup and this allows you to manage those and understand where your body's at and the waist and the weight trends and all these things. As your waist size comes down, metabolic risk also improves. It lowers and the scale will move down in the right direction too. This is again why the scorecard focuses on trends instead of just daily numbers and why I want you to pay attention and why I'm even talking to you right now about this.
Let's give another example, another guy that I worked with. Let's call him Timmy. He's mid-4s, busy job, kids, long days. Feels like he lays his head down at night and all a sudden he's woke up again. He's got to get to it. He gets his blood work back and his A1C is creeping up from say 5ish to 55 to 59 to 63. And his doctor like this isn't good.
And your fasting glucose is higher. It's 160 now. and it was 140 and it was 120 and your triglycerides are all over 200 now and this isn't good. His dad has type two diabetes. His mom has a his mom's side has a series of cardiovascular heart disease. Uh this is going to be a mess if he doesn't do something about it.
Now he doesn't feel sick. He's tired. Sure, just that's just everyday life. but he isn't necessarily gained a lot of weight, but he's put a little bit on his belly and he doesn't necessarily even with the numbers as is, he doesn't feel like this is an urgent issue. So Timmy's just like, "Yeah, I'll just I'll get to this one day or maybe it's just because I'm getting older.
" As the wife showed concern and even his kids were aging and this again, this happened over a 3 to five year time frame. He finally got slapped by the doctor and not literally but through a conversation and a glaringly bad a lot of red on his blood panels and this was a big problem. Okay, he did what most guys do. He'd skip meals.
He heard fasting is the way to go or he he just started trying to push harder in the gym and he'd eat better Monday through Thursday. Sometimes on the week nights he'd slip and but the weekends he would that's when he drank and that's where to get to say load the stress the effort on paper looked like he was moving in the right direction but it wasn't in reality nothing was the consistency that he needed to be able to make the progress that he wanted.
And that's the problem is that he needed change and he wasn't making the appropriate amount of change that he was supposed to. And so therefore, we finally found me and we started making real change. Now Timmy, we needed to make sure that we had a something that worked in his schedule, that worked within reason, that allowed him to still function in everyday life and go to client meetings and and run business meetings and even travel and for work or for his family and all these things so that we we couldn't overwhelm his life
and just do a 180. And that was a big thing. But we did find some boring repetitive boring meaning a good boring very repetitive food patterns and behaviors that again you'll see in the improve your blood panel scorecard and the metabolic reset protocol. Specifically I have a meal protocol that you should be eating that will help you.
It gives you very specific ideas of how to create food. I'm not talking about just eating the same thing on repeat but we have a protocol. Nutrition is how we approach this. Diet is a food that you eat. So if someone puts you on a meal plan, I think they're misspoken and they're not doing it right.
But if they do if we do it in a different way, then I think it's a lot better of a process for you to be able to do. We focus on getting 40 grams of protein in the majority of his meals. This allowed him to get adequate amounts of protein throughout the day and then also not overeat because he was full enough. He balanced out his blood sugars and that helped without having to cause cravings.
We got him moving more throughout the day to help with managing his body weight and overall desire to eat and boredom. We we definitely pulled back on alcohol. You do have to you could have one or maybe three beverages but after that it just starts adding up in your daily or weekly calories and all of a sudden his sleep starts improving because he's actually tired when he goes to lay down at bed and he needs to sleep more and this is good to do detoxes, cleanses, extreme workouts, perfect plan because that doesn't exist.
People have tried it for decades and it falls on its face. Two weeks in, Timmy says something. Hey, I didn't realize how bad I felt until I stopped feeling that way. That's huge. He's noted that the cravings had dropped, that he had consistent energy. You don't want to take a 3pm nap. These are things that people are typically doing.
And he saw the scale going down. But even more importantly, he felt more confident about his nutrition approach and understanding what to do. And so, we're losing weight. He's feeling better. He's more energized. He's working out more. He's getting more sleep. He's drinking more water. And then the next time that he goes in for his test, his blood fasting blood sugar level is lower.
His triglycerides were getting to a more normal range. And he was his doctor was ecstatic about what are you doing? You look better. You your blood panels look way better than they were. Keep it up. Let's keep going. Maybe hopefully you've heard that at least once from your doctor, but this is a common thing when we have the right plan and approach.
So what is the metabolic reset protocol anyways? This is what's inside the improve your blood panel scorecard. And we don't do the cleanses and toxes and detoxes and the set. Eat chicken, broccoli, and rice on repeat, but it's a reset that empowers you to make better choices around better portion control, around better foods, around foods that you enjoy, but they also work for your body and not against it.
And then we get some movement in a little bit more than you're used to just to help get it the the energy and the calories burning. And this all is super important. We do protein first meals that help with the hunger and we have better hydration strategies. And this structure is implementing it into your everyday workday and life.
And this is when we get control. That's huge. You need to have control in this process or you will fail. So what do you do next? If your blood panels are moving in the wrong direction and you're not excited about it, your doctor definitely isn't. wants to put you on meds or you have been put on medicine, then the next step is definitely don't panic. Don't do anything crazy.
You don't have to overhaul your life, but we have to get organized. Super important. We have to treat the your blood work like data and not necessarily a diagnosis that you are identified with being a diabetic. But if you have a heart attack, you will be identified as someone who has had a heart attack and that's that.
We don't want that, right? So the simple focus is on small behaviors and a repeatable pattern that you can do in your everyday life with protein, with sleep, with alcohol, managing sugar, with all these things. And that's what the reset, the metabolic reset protocol will do and offer to you. will start paying attention to your weekly averages and start getting your waist to go down, close a bit better, and your labs the next time you go in will actually be in a significantly improved state.
If you want to do this on your own, perfect. Download the improve your blood panel scorecard right now in the show notes and it'll give you the framework that you're looking for. It will help you interpret what the labs mean, what the numbers are, how to build a a longer term plan that fits into your schedule.
And we want to make sure that we don't wait until something forces you to make a change. Please, I had my one of my great friends, his father-in-law had a heart attack and unfortunately it didn't go well after that. It's about a week or so and it just did not end well, if you know what I mean. He was he had diabetes and he had other heart issues and and different things that were warning signs and then he had a significant cardiovascular event and it has caused a lot of pain and challenge and struggle and this is not good because you don't need to
experience that. I literally had a guy once, he was in the hospital after a heart attack and we talked about what to do and how to do it and this was a big problem because he had a heart attack and he doesn't want to have a second one cuz he came out pretty unscathed as a a result of that.
So improve it while you know that it's going in the wrong direction. All right, so download the improve your blood panel scorecard. It's in the show notes and your blood panels will start to improve by taking these simple everyday next steps. So, let's be clear. Just want to throw this out again that this is not a medical diagnosis or advice or anything.
Do consult your doctor as well. And that's important. Lastly, if you do have blood panels and you want an actual plan or protocol for you, great. I have a private lab review that I offer with my clients. I've been looking at labs for shoot a decade now. So, you can look at that in the actual in the first email that you get and you can book a call with me.
It's about 20 minutes long. You'll send me your blood panels. I'll look at them and we will get on a call and go over exactly what you need to do to start implementing the metabolic reset protocol in your everyday life and be able to have an actionable simplest step framework that you can take away to start implementing into your life.
Check the show notes below. I appreciate your time. I hope you got a lot of value out of this and that you will take action if you are struggling with bad bud panels.