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Feb. 27, 2026

How Men Lose Weight While Eating on the Go: A Restaurant Guide - 79

Show Notes
Transcript

If you're a man who eats out for most of your meals, this episode was built around your schedule.

Eating on the go is one of the biggest obstacles to fat loss for driven men in their 40s and 50s. Not because they lack discipline, but because nobody has ever given them a clear plan for the situations they're actually in every day.

In this episode, Coach Brian Parana walks through a real client's week, a guy in software sales who travels

constantly, eats out almost every meal, and has a full family life waiting at home. Brian breaks down exactly what he eats now across the most common situations working men run into.

That includes:

Airports and early morning travel
Fast casual spots like Chipotle, Panera, and Subway
Drive-thrus like McDonald's and Chick-fil-A
Gas stations and long road days
Client dinners and work conferences
Family dinners out with young kids

This is practical nutrition advice for men who want to improve their energy, body composition, and long-term health without overhauling their life or their schedule.

If you've been trying to lose weight while keeping up with the demands of running a business or leading a team, this episode gives you a starting point that actually fits how you live.

5 High Protein Breakfasts HERE!

https://brianparana.short.gy/proteinbreakfasts

If this episode resonated with you, Brian put together the Eating On The Go Guide specifically for men who eat out regularly and want a clear, repeatable system for making better decisions without overthinking every meal.

It covers the exact frameworks discussed in this episode, including default orders, restaurant strategies, and how to stay consistent when your schedule doesn't slow down.

It's free, practical, and built for the way you actually live.

Download the Eating On The Go Guide here:

https://go.brianparana.com/eatingonthego

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.

How to lose weight while eating on the go, a restaurant guide. If you're a guy and you eat out most of your meals, especially in the week related to work or even family, I know what happens when you get home after a busy day of work with a bunch of kids. They're hungry and you probably don't have a plan around what you're going to eat.
Eating on the go is one of the biggest obstacles to fat loss for driven guys in their 40s and 50s. Because they don't know what to do. There's no clear plan for the situation that they're actually in every day. And in this episode, we're going to walk you through a real client's week. A guy in software who travels a bunch and how he's constantly eating out almost most of his meals, especially when he is on the go.
I'm going to break down exactly what he does in these different situations and all sorts of different scenarios. Airports, early morning travel, fast casual spots like Chipotle, Panera, Subway, drive-throughs like McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, gas stations on long drives or even long road days, client dinners or conferences, whether they're close to you or they are in another state, family dinners with your family, banquets.
This is going to be a practical nutritional advice for men who want to improve their energy, their body composition, let's lose the belly and not gain it every single time you go out, and for a long-term health plan that you can manage day in and day out. Stop and think about this. If every time you left and ate out somewhere and you gained even a quarter of a pound, how much weight would that end up putting on you at the end of the year if that was your lifestyle? If you've been trying to lose weight while keeping up with the daily demands
of work, business, and all the things that going on, this is going to hit really good for you. Now, if you stick to the end and check the show notes, I actually have an eating on the go guide that I built specifically for this. It's full of really useful tips, tricks, hacks that are really easy to read and understand.
You literally it's got a table of contents, go to the page, open it up, and you'll see exactly what you should do in those situations to maintain the progress that you want for yourself. It's a very clear, repeatable approach for making better decisions without having to overthink. Oh, I walk into this restaurant.
I don't know what to eat. You don't need to worry about that. It's going to cover frameworks on how to manage this. I'm going to include what this client, Ryan, would default order, different strategies and how he's able to maintain his health, his body weight, and not have to start over every single time he comes home. And you'll be able to download that guide.
There's a link in the show notes for that. Most of you aren't destroying it at home. You're not overeating at home per se. You might be doing just fine, but if you have a very busy schedule, then that's where the challenges hit and today. And I'm walking you through Ryan's story. He's 44, married, two kids under five. He sells software, which means he's on planes.
He's in the car. He's driving to The one time we talked, he had a 3-hour one-way trip to go to Milwaukee. He's based out of Chicago. Go to Milwaukee to be able to then do the uh do the deal, sit down, have lunch, and then drive home. That's literally what his day was, a 45-minute lunch meeting. And that was it.
And then a bunch of time on the road. Now, he spends time in hotels, convention centers, and client weeks, and dinners. These are just typical weeks that he does or typical months. He's usually gone at least one to four times in a month on trips like this. Now, let's also reach out about his day-to-day activities, how tired he is >> [laughter] >> to to try and count macros, and or even decide what dinner might be.
When you're tired and you're on back-to-back calls, you're driving around long days or in and out of airports, and you have a 20 to 40 minutes, what are you going to grab? Probably whatever's in front of you. You get off that airplane and you look around and see the first one or two spots, that's where you park your butt to go eat.
Or you go to Hudson News and grab whatever looks tasty. Now, by Friday, Ryan would have four or five of these meals and unfortunately, it would throw him off track. He'd come back 2 3 lb heavier, bloated, and not feeling really excited about himself. And as we worked on his plan, then we're able to figure out what he should be doing.
Now, this is episode 79, Driven for Health. I'm Coach Brian Prahl. I'm a seasoned veteran in this coaching space around health, fitness, nutrition, and I'm here to help you do this, figure it out, understand what's the best scenario for you to be successful. Who's Ryan and and why does it matter? Before we get into the specifics, real-life picture of him.
Ryan wakes up early. He's got two kids that are five and under. He gets out the door sometimes even before his kids wake up. And he and his wife are tag-teaming their responsibilities. He's not always the first one out the house, but sometimes he gets to stay home and play dad duty as well. Now, when he's actually going on a flight, then yeah, he's obviously he's got to get up and moving.
He'll be gone for three, four days at a time. He loves his family. He's great at his job, and he likes to stay in shape. This guy's got some muscle on him, but he also had a belly. The Ryan has started off at 250-ish, 240, 250 in that range, and now we have him down at a steady 225, and he carries the weight well.
The guy bench presses 300, no problem. I think the one time we talked about doing reps at 225. And he has a an extensive exercise background, and this dude just has a lot of strength. But you can't look like the Hulk if you have a gut and you're just bloated all the time. And what we did was what got him into that spot in the first place was the traveling, was the demands of the work schedule, and the eating on the go.
And this was important to make sure that he he didn't want to look like this. He didn't want to identify this. That's one of the first pillars of my Culturize program is identity. He wanted to be a healthy, fit father that was there for his kids. All right. Let's go over five rules we built for everything that is around him.
And as we go, we're actually going to walk through a week, but here are the five rules that we put in place to make it simple, to make it easy, and they are yes, they're foundational. They're concepts. These are the things you want to put in your head. Pause this as you go and write it down. Rule number one, decide before you get there.
Okay? The worst time to figure out what you're going to eat is when you're staring at a menu and your stomach's grumbling, hangry, stressed, time pressured. Humans don't make good decisions there. You'll be staring at the menu and then the host or hostess going to come up, the waiter or the waitress will come up, and they will say, "Hey, we have these specials, too.
" So, even if you thought about eating a in quotation salad, whatever their special of the day sounds way better. And it's something that you don't normally have, but it's probably high calorie. Most restaurants going to serve you out easily a thousand plus calories, even up to 1,500 calories, and you stack a course light in there, then you're you're talking about some massive amount of calories.
Rule number two, read the menu in advance. So, know where you're going to go, read it in advance, and pretty much every restaurant has a menu online. Or even going back to this, looking at say Apple Maps or Google Maps, you can actually look and see around what places are available in the location that you'll be at to do a little recon in the sense.
Now, looking at your menu before takes 1 or 2 minutes and you'll be able to pull it up and find two or three reasonable options that make sense for you. As soon as you decide in a place of calm, cool, you won't have an impromptu decision that you end up just making as in a rush. All right? I know people that make rush decisions and it's not what they actually wanted.
They just panic ordered. That is a term now. They panic ordered and they end up eating something that they really actually didn't want. It was the last thing they saw on the menu before the the waiter was said, "Okay, and I'll take your order." Just like, "Uh guy here." Just do this. Rule number three, build your meal around protein.
4 to 6 oz is a minimum amount. If you're eating out, you could even do 7 or 8. That'll help buffer protein at other meals because protein can be a little more scarce on the road unless you're specifically buying the obvious protein shakes or bars or beef jerky. Heck, I'll even have guys go to the grocery store and buy deli meat if we need to in a pinch.
Protein first, veggies, and then whatever carbs or fats fit the situation. Now, I'll let you know fats are going to show up. It's just part of the process. They cook in oil and butter because they want the food to taste good. And anything that comes in a package has a lot more fat than you would hope. Rule number four is drink a glass of water.
That the big one that they give to you? Yeah, drink that before you eat anything. Why? It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to start feeling full. And once you know and understand that you drink the water, you order, and then 10 20 minutes later the food shows up, then you can start to bring down that level of hunger and fullness and it actually works pretty well. It's a solid habit.
Plus on the road hydrating yourself can be a challenge. It It is an issue. Now rule number five. If hunger is not an emergency and the options in the front of you and you generally are just bad and you just can't wait and we don't want you falling apart at meals, then we might need to find a way that you can just have a snack and be able to manage the calories in the day.
So, always have an emergency just little snacky on your person or in your bag in case you get into situation in a lunch meeting, in stacked meetings of the day. Things like that will allow you to be able to have a strong day without going extra long without it because that'll throw you off. Let's go into some typical days that you and Ryan definitely experiences.
Monday morning at the airport. It's 6:00 a.m. Ryan's at the airport. He's smart. He's got TSA precheck, so he's not waiting in the line, a long security line. But because of the early morning and getting in to the airport, thinking and and rushing around he didn't sleep that great.
He's He's already stacked with a full day, checking his phone messaging, emailing, trying to keep things there and he hasn't eaten yet. Okay? Now, sometimes that is a good strategy. If you're going to get to a place before noon then you could just not eat and that'd be okay. But if you are going to end up landing and going straight to meetings yeah, you probably wouldn't want to eat something beforehand.
Old Ryan walks through the terminal, smells the cinnamon rolls at the Cinnabon bakery thing that's near his gate and he's been doing pretty good lately. All right? It's very easy for humans to justify their actions, especially when it smells so good. He grabs a large cinnamon roll and a big sugary latte, one of those drinks that has more calories than a meal.
It's like a coffee milkshake. We got one of those. >> [snorts] >> He boards the plane and unfortunately after he's eaten it, he's he's ultimately loaded, tired, and he's ready for a nap at that early in the morning because of the amount of calories that and sugar that has carbs. Why? Cuz this is it's literally the cinnamon rolls are 500 calories or more.
The sugary latte can be 300, 400, 500 calories depending on how they are made. Now, the new Ryan what he does the night before, he he looks at different options in this terminal. He sees that there's a Starbucks and he can get a for me, I'm going to get a Americano with a splash heavy cream or same a dark coffee dark roast coffee with a splash heavy cream. I do like the heavy cream.
It does make it just enjoyable. Yeah, there's calories in it. It's going to be about 50 calories in a tablespoon of heavy cream. I'm good with that. I'm fine. But it just makes so much more enjoyable. And then he's got two options. Sometimes he'll bring a protein bar with him or he'll grab a protein shake at Hudson's or he will literally just eat before.
And the fourth one is he'll pack a sandwich, a little sandy. There he will have 5, 6 oz of protein on it, lower calorie slices of bread. He'll bring an apple and some carrot sticks and that will actually hold him over until he'll be able to eat that around 8:00 or 9:00 when he's getting ready to land so that he can jump out of the airplane and get to run it.
He'll skip the bakery. He'll go straight to Starbucks. He'll get the egg bites if he does that routine or a protein box. Sometimes he'll just get two egg white that the egg white bites. Why? Because they're higher protein, lower calorie, and they will fill him up. He'll pass on the croissant the cake pops and and then enjoy that meal.
Now, he's also again got some protein bars just in case he needs to be more full or eat, he gets hungry or something, then he can manage that again. If we're strategic about it, he can eat something before he gets off the plane so he's prepared and ready to eat. All right? This is important because planning and preparing, he's done it for the work and that's something that you do, too.
You are well planned out for the meeting schedule on the day, but you have no idea what you're going to eat. And there's the disconnect. So, this is an airport strategy that works really well for him and I'll also have it in the eating on the go guide. Tuesday, mid-morning and the diner situation. All right, we're on a Tuesday. This one is worth spending some time on because it comes up more than other scenarios for guys that are out in the field all day.
You're driving on the road and here's a place to eat. You can sit down. You got a minute to spare. All right, let's do it. It's Tuesday and he's got this gap. It's about 45 minutes from one client visit to the next client one and he's driving around in between offices. He's in an unfamiliar area. He spots a diner. He pulls in and sits down.
Hostess so nice, sits him a real nice spot and he's actually going to eat a real meal, not just protein supplements. I Actually, I discourage protein supplements quite a bit as being something that or is eaten on a regular basis. We want to make them supplemental and we want to find real food as much as possible because that is what makes you full longer and we want to be always in the practice of eating whole foods.
All right. He's there. He's sitting down and he gets that big giant laminated page. There's 50 items on it. Holy cow, it's a breakfast all day. There's a lunch, dinner section. There's special inserts tucked inside. There's a board on the wall that he walks past that has other daily specials. Eggs Benedict, three ways.
We've got short rib hash, stuffed French toast with powdered sugar syrup in the photo. Shoot, I would go with for that. I love I I'd actually go for the pancakes. You give me a triple stacker of dinner plate pancake size, I'm all in. That's the the thing that's going to get me. So, all with all the photos, with all the options that are in front of him and they're designed to make you want everything.
And even the way the waitress and and waiter come up and ask you, they're going to prompt you to get a lot of the good stuff. They want your dining experience to be really good. The Reuben is a mountain of pastrami, dripping cheese, Thousand Island dressing, piled next to a heap of fries. That's then there's a picture of a loaded burger that probably weighs a pound, all right? It's the full pounder.
And there's a chicken fried steak and again pancakes. Old Ryan would have totally fell for the Reuben. I would, too. I love Reubens. That that toasted rye bread and the thousand island dressing with the Swiss cheese and the the sauerkraut. That's a good sandwich and I you know, put it in the comments if you don't like that.
This is like come on. This is delicious. And then he'd would have definitely had the fries and then even added a bag of chips to the order, too, cuz they go really well with the sandwich, right? Well, why not? Uh works paying. So, he didn't have to worry about it. Now, what happens he didn't have a meeting for another 2 hours.
So, he stacks a tall boy Coors Light in there, too. He's a big fan of the silver bullet. I enjoy the silver bullet, too. And he just wanted a little chill relaxed time. So, he's got a couple hours before his next meeting. It's not really a big of a deal. Now, it's not an outrageous thought. He'd been on his feet since 6:00 a.m.
The client visit went well and he feels like reward, right? He'd moved the sale along in the process. The problem is what comes after. The Reuben, fries, chips, a beer in the middle of the day is a significant calorie load on top of the amount of sodium, alcohol, carbs, and his energy is going to plummet by 2:00 3:00.
He's going to be ready for a nap and he's trying to go into some of these other client meetings and calls that he has. And oh, yeah. Let's not forget at the end of the day he's entertaining another client at a steakhouse. Nice fine dining experience, which means that in this situation there's likely to be more alcohol. There's going to be a large rib eye steak, potato, butter, and some veggies maybe that are sitting inside some some butter.
Now, Ryan sits down in the exact same diner, the new Ryan. He looks at the same menu and he definitely feels that pull toward the Reuben, but because he's human, but he thinks about his day. He reassess and he remembers that he's got that meeting in the evening and he knows that's going to be a large meal. So, he navigates the menu.
He ends up going to the egg section and he gets the all day breakfast. He orders a three egg omelet loaded with extra veggies. Yeah, that's a key tip. Can I have more vegetables than you give me? Peppers, onions, spinach, and a side of sliced tomatoes instead of toast and home fries. Yes, for the cheese on the side so you can just sprinkle it on.
It's shredded cheese, not chunks of cheese or slices. And he just drinks coffee. It's not as exciting as a Reuben, right? But he doesn't leave the diner feeling crashed out as Levi would say, my oldest. He is clear, he's focused, he's satisfied, and has enough food in the tank. And then when he sits down at the steakhouse in the evening, he can be engaged.
He's got a little more calories to spend at that meal and it actually works really well. He's not just eating 3,000 plus calories while he's sitting or driving in a car all day. And this is important to find this balance and this moderation and that's a skill set that you can have and you don't have to just like not eat all day because of the meal at night.
You can just make a decision that works for you. Next up is Wednesday. It's fast casual rotation midweek. He's bouncing around between client meetings. No time to sit down this way. He's driving through Chipotle. There's Panera and Subway and that type of a spot, right? Let's go through some of these scenarios.
At Chipotle, old Ryan walks in and gets the burrito loaded with rice, beans, queso, sour cream, guacamole, chips on the side with some salsa. Now, the tortilla alone is 250 calories and by the time you add the chips, each chip a tortilla chip is about 10 to 15 calories per chip depending on the size. Those bags are going to have more than 10 chips in them.
So, we can estimate those being an extra two or 300 calories as well. Between the wrap and the chips you have 500 calories, all right? And you aren't eating anything else. All right? When you add the queso and the sour cream, those are easily 150 to probably 200 calories cuz if you've seen how they serve up that sour cream, they scoop it up and they slop it off onto the the burrito.
And he's eating basically twice as many calories as he needs there. New Ryan has two go-to orders. All right? If it's a lighter day and he just he just goes with a salad bowl. Double the steak or double the chicken. He doubles the fajita peppers, light on the black beans cuz there's protein and fiber there.
He goes with the red the hot red salsa because it's I like it. I and then I always add a little bit of the Chipotle Tabasco. That stuff is amazing. But he skips the chips, sour cream, and queso and it holds him over for a couple hours. If it's a more active day and he actually worked out and he's moving, then he can do a regular bowl.
He's going to do a split of small serving of rice, beans, double chicken, double fajitas, the tomato pico, and salsa. All right? We're still going to pass on the queso and the chips. Those just multiply calories. Either way he's going to get easily 50 or 60 g of protein. There is a calculator on chipotle.
com that you can find and manipulate the calories and macros or it's even in the app and it'll help you understand what the impacts are of the food choices that you have. Now, let's think about Panera. We go to Panera can be tricky because in general it's been marketed to you as being healthy. Panera and healthy are in link because they've done a great job marketing it.
Sure they have salads and it's clean design, but there's words like whole grain or artisan and that makes you think that it's healthy, but they ultimately serve lots of carbs and fats. That's Panera. If you if you zoom out and just look at it, yeah. Lots of carbs, lots of fats. Old Ryan he'd pick the the pick two, half sandwich and a creamy soup.
Get the baguette on the side, a sweet tea, and a cookie because why not? I got a busy hard day ahead, right? Again, we can justify all that. And it's the upsell right at the end. Would you like a cookie with that? And then you Well, sure. Or you should eat a cookie with that. And then then yeah, sure I will. But that is going to be a a heavy heavy amount of food and calories.
Now, new Ryan he's going to order half a sandwich, half a salad and instead of the soup and dressing on side so he can control how much of that goes in. He's skipping the bread. He'll grab the apple and go with unsweetened tea. All right? That's really important here. Subway. Subway feels like a safe choice again. It has been connected that Subway is healthy the way they market and advertise it.
But it can be done really wrong. And of course it's a lot of processed food. Just going to throw that out there. But old Ryan grabs a footlong with the meatballs and the cheese. Unfortunately, the meatballs there aren't a lot of protein. They are a lot of fat. Even the steak is going to have a lot of fat in it.
Chips, cookie, a sugary Coke to go with that. Why not? And it's just a sandwich made by the local sandwich artist. The reality is that the bread alone will have almost 300 calories in that meal. You add bag of chips is 150 and the cookie is over 100. So, do simple math. 300, 100 with cookie that's 400 and chips is that's 550 calories just in straight up carbs.
New Ryan is going to grab a footlong, but only eat 6 in of the bread. Eat all of the insides of a double chicken and as many tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, onions that he can get on that 6 in sub. He might even eat some of it with a fork. All right? That is how we do that. Next is the best way to then go into a road day.
Thursday, gas stations and long road trips. If you're driving around a lot, you've you're driving from one office to another or you have just literally one office is hours away, you're going to spend obviously a ton of time in the car and not move a lot. And this is gas station territory. Old Ryan grabs energy drinks, he grabs large bags of chips, sure he'll grab a Reese's or some something else there as well.
Uh in the the check out there with the candy. And if he's daring enough, might something from the roller grill. All right, if he's desperate. Okay. He'll eat in the car. He'll get a huge energy spike and then when that caffeine and sugar runs out, he'll come crashing down hard and wondering why he's feeling terrible.
Wants to take a nap while he's driving. All right, it's hard to drive long hours if you're blood sugar levels in the gutter. New Ryan, one simple rule. We're going to go for a protein first, then fruit second. Beef jerky or hard-boiled eggs, a Greek yogurt, ready-to-drink protein shake, small bag of nuts. Those are easily the first things that he should grab and try and keep it under 500 calories in total.
Everything is packaged so he can actually read it and actually understand all of it. Now, he also will bring snacks in his car. I always always always suggest heavy vegetables, heavy protein uh fruits. Apples, oranges, bananas, carrots, cucumber, peppers, cherry tomatoes. Those you can almost endlessly snack on and it not cause a lot of damage or a lot of calories added to your day.
Whereas I remember this one road trip we go went down as a family to Florida and I got my my travel snack, which was Doritos, and we drive overnight cuz the kids could sleep for 8 9 10 hours and get pretty darn far. We go from Ohio and I could make it all the way down to Florida and the kids were generally quiet and reserved.
They would start waking up when we hit Georgia, the Florida-Georgia line, and cuz I'd have to pee and I'm tired at that point. I'd open up a bag of Doritos at midnight and I see no, my hands hitting the bottom of the bag by the time the sun comes up. Shoot, I've just eaten 1,500 calories overnight to stay awake.
That's that's not a good strategy. After I realized that I did it one time, I stopped buying those. Okay, not not a good thing. Next up is Friday night, the fine dining client or maybe a date night with with uh with the lady. Most of the guys in Ryan's position are stuck in this. And I've even had tons of clients where fine dining isn't even exciting cuz they've gone so much.
All right. Now, Ryan at a steakhouse with the right type of clientele, he's going Tomahawk, he's going huge ribeye, porterhouse, those gigantic things. We got the bread basket within hands reach. Again, we're getting a tall boy, of course, light cuz that's his chosen beverage. And they're ordering sides family style as well.
There's endless [clears throat] amounts of calories. He can easily walk out of there at 2,000 plus calories and depending on how heavy the guys drink, he might end up having two or three course as well. Sometimes that's the environment situations that Ryan is in. Important to know and if that's your situation, you have to be careful. Now, new Ryan, he goes in with a loose plan, protein double vegetables always a clear winner.
A filet, sirloin, you can always joke around with the guys like, "Yeah, I'm trying to keep my waistline slim." Or "I just really like filets. I'm just going to eat this thing here and and I'm saving some room for the beer, guys. So I'm not having the giant potato with the the with the butter and the bread basket.
All right, that's going to be the biggest win. All right, and also, you can always make fun of yourself, something that that makes it easy to kind of get things settled. We certainly don't want you to go in and order a chicken salad if everyone's ordering steak. Then the rest of his day he's played and planned around what he needs to do or how it needs to work as well so he can be successful.
He can be very fully present at the dinner. He can entertain and engage with the clients and he can make sure he stays on track. I always joke, but no one none of those guys are going to be in in in your room at 3:00 a.m. in a hotel holding your hair back if you're throwing up because you had too many of beer alcohol or hard drinks or you ended up with too much just literally too much.
Uh lastly is the conference in Vegas. This is industry standard. He goes multiple times a year and in the time he's going there, he's there for three or four days. They're long days, they have a buffet in the morning, there's receptions, there's free drinks in the evening, there's a snack cart that walks around, late nights and then he's back at it waking up at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning to get back to it.
Old Ryan gains 5 lb coming from those environments because he's just inundated with food opportunities and works buying and when you start off this way, it's actually fun and engaging. But when you have done it a couple times, it's actually and you and you're trying to lose weight, it's frustrating. New Ryan goes in with a simple framework.
He's always going to go right to the protein, >> [clears throat] >> eggs, Greek yogurt, even if he has to eat on his own. He'll grab something from a See, even the local convenience store or a gas station. If lunch is a buffet, he goes protein vegetables only. Okay, he's saving calories to spare. He's not just going up for seconds or thirds.
And in the evenings, he's going to go again with that protein double vegetable type option. If he's in a appetizer situation, he understands that appetizers are roughly about a five uh 50 calories per bite. That's a really easy way to assess. He'll have one or two drinks uh cans and then he's good. He makes it out alive.
Family dinners, we got Ryan back at home, he's got his two kids and his wife, they're traveling and if there's Chinese, there's going out to the local restaurant, there's the Applebee's or something and and again, old Ryan goes in and just ends up ordering just like the diner situation, whatever he gets his hands on or whatever sounds great.
But new Ryan respects himself. He orders a protein double vegetables, he skips on the big entrees. He looks at the menu to notice how many calories are in these dishes and he makes it out. Same thing at say Mexican, he's going for fajitas and he's bringing half of it home. Or at an Italian place, he's looking for a grilled or baked protein not loaded up with heavy amounts of pasta or cheese and he's sparing himself from the mountains of bread that are there.
And he's not lecturing his kids not to eat this or that or his wife or whatever. He just makes these decisions himself and leads. What's changed for Ryan? He's down lose lost like 30 plus pounds because of this. He has consistent energy, his blood work has improved, he feels better than he has in uh probably since his kids were born.
Yeah, five six years. And this is important because he likes to win with business, with his family, and take care of himself because that's his identity. If anything that you do looks like what Ryan does, eating on the go, uh family life, travel, back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back commitments, I want you to hear this.
You just need to balance. You need general rules. Go back to the beginning with the five rules of thinking about where you're going to go in the day, have an idea what's available, look at calories on a menu, do basic math so that you don't end up always coming back with two or three more pounds in the situation.
Now, as I mentioned, wrapping this up, I do have an eating on the go guide. You can grab that in the show notes and grab that. It's free copy. Just drop your email and it'll get sent right over. I look forward to you looking through that. I've spent probably about 10 hours scouring the internet and then my my brain for all the tips, tricks, hacks.
It's very easy to understand. It has table of contents for different places to go to and you will be successful looking at that before you go into a restaurant and feel good about your choices. And lastly, if you are looking to get coached, I have a free health hot seat coaching session on this podcast.
All I need you to do, if you've been listening in, this is 79th episode already, and you're you would love to get some coaching feedback and some guidance on where you're at, what's going on, I'd love to help. All you got to do is email me at Brian@brianaprana.com, and then I can talk to you about the health hot seat.
We will you'll tell me all your information, then we'll show up live on a call and go over everything, giving you exact strategies free blueprint for you to take it and run with it. So, that is the health hot seat as well. That's it for this episode of Driven for Health. Thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate you, and next time is episode 80.
I'm interviewing a busy father of four, self-employed, juggling all the things while trying to keep himself fit. His name's Chris. We'll catch you in the next episode.