Jan. 1, 2026
How Men Will Win Big With Their Health and Waistline in 2026 - 39
Most men don’t lose control of their health overnight. It happens slowly as work gets heavier, stress builds, and health keeps getting pushed down the list.
In this New Year 2026 episode of the Driven For Health Podcast, Coach Brian Parana speaks directly to men over 40 who are doing well in life but know their body is not keeping up. Weight keeps creeping up. Energy is lower than it used to be. Blood work is starting to raise concerns. Starting over every January is getting old.
This episode is about a clear 6 step strategy for you to Win Big with your Health.
Coach Brian breaks down 6 practical strategies to help men take control of their health in a way that fits real life.
The conversation covers sustainable weight loss, improving blood panels, simple nutrition, strength training, daily movement, sleep, stress, and the habits that actually matter. Real stories are shared from men who reached a point where drifting was no longer an option.
If you are a man over 40 looking for:
- Sustainable weight loss
- Better energy and focus
- Healthier cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood work
- Nutrition and fitness that fit a busy schedule
- A lifestyle you can maintain without burning out
This episode is for you...
If you are ready to stop starting over and want structure and accountability, learn more about The Call To Rise, Coach Brian’s coaching program for men over 40, at thecalltorise.com.
2026 is about finally following through on your long-term health goals
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:
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 win big with your health and your waistline in 2026. Let's face it, 2025 may or may not have been a great year for you, but 2026 is here. Today, I'm recording this on New Year's Eve. This is episode 39 of Driven for Health podcast. Now, we don't want to focus on just because the calendar flipped that it's a good time to jump into the New Year's resolutions.
- It's not because you finally want it bad enough. Certainly, a number of people out there do. They say 10% of anyone who follows me wants it really bad. It's not because this time you promise yourself that you'll do better. When you rely on those type of things for your health, your nutrition, your fitness, your lifestyle, it's not going to work.
- Will only be your year if you decide that your health is no longer something that you work on when life allows it. Cuz I'm 43 now. It's busier than ever. Builds a body that you can function in. builds a life that's worth living and you're excited to do things in. Hope has never lowered cholesterol. Hope has never fixed your bad blood work that your doctor wants to put you on meds.
- Hope has never gotten your stomach flat, your energy up. It's not a game plan to focus on. Welcome to Driven for Health podcast. I'm Coach Brian Pano. This episode came from a post I shared recently that reached a lot of men more than I actually expected. It was being proactive, but it really focused on some of the words that connected with guys and what they truly felt.
- Life is working in a lot of different directions. Career is moving pretty quickly. Your family is growing and the responsibilities are more than ever and your body doesn't look the way you want it. Your energy isn't where it needs to be. Your focus and abilities to get things done just take longer. If you're listening to this and think, I cannot let another year pass like the last one, this episode is for you.
- In the post, I described a man who was focused on living by standards. He was disciplined. He didn't do weird crazy hacks, fads, extremes, or anything like that. He was focused on being productive. He was focused on his what in my world we call the most common constraint, the thing that keeps getting in the way of you making big progress.
- the even your thinking. He was focused on his thoughts. He was grounded in every day with what his day-to-day activities needed to look like so that he could stay focused with his clarity, with direction, with clarity on making things happen. And this is where the line gets drawn for a lot of people, a lot of men.
- You have to focus on these things because when it comes to your health, a lot of people wait. they push it off. Unfortunately, I have a a buddy who his father-in-law had a heart attack and it has not gone well. It's been very more than disruptive is a very light way to put it. The impact that has had on his family, on him, on his time, on the extended family as well. You can't wait.
- Please don't wait for the right time. Don't wait until things get slower. Don't wait until you have motivation. Don't wait till you have more discipline or willpower or someone else can help you or any of this stuff. You're responsible for taking care of yourself. And that's when you're able to be focused and driven toward your own health.
- Now, most men listening to this have never felt what it is to operate with consistent energy, at least not in the last 5 to 10 years. and they have adjusted to what fatigue looks like and how running a step behind so to speak looks like what it feels like. Even if you have bad blood bad blood bad blood panels, you still aren't it's just becoming the norm.
- Oh, I just take this medicine. I just do this thing. This is not how we want it to go. And if you're again looking at 2025 and reflection and coming up to now 2026 and you want to feel energized and it's more like say Groundhog's Day, then we we need to change and I'm going to give you some strategies today on how to do that.
- how to manage the work, manage the kids, how to travel, how to live a day-to-day life that is full of energy, experience, and excitement. Now, before we get into the episode, let me say this. If if you are a guy that's listening to this 39, so if you listen to a couple of them, you understand what the purpose is of this whole message is to get you healthier.
- And if you are juggling all the responsibilities of family, you've been waiting too long and you don't want to wait any longer to change your body to lose some weight to improve your blood panels. That's what the call to rise program is. It's a 100 day fat loss challenge. 20 pounds or more or I keep working with you until you lose those pounds.
- The last three guys that I worked with lost 30 pounds each doing simple daily stats that we agreed on that would work best for them. Not everyone tracks calories. Not everyone. We're not taking shots. We're not doing peptides. We're just juggling life. for learning how to maximize your strengths, understand what your weaknesses are, and then create a sustainable lifestyle through consistency, through work, and some radical support from not only myself, but the other men that are in the program.
- That's that the call to we don't want to start over in February again. For the love, let's not into the episode we go. There are six strategies. Strategy number one is stop preparing and start acting. There has never been more health information available. So much happening right now. I even just opened up to go live on Instagram and the Adam Mosery who's the head of Instagram was talking about how connection and how real is going to be so much more important moving into 2026 when we have infinite synthetic content.
- That's one of the reasons why I'm going live on these podcast recordings and doing video so you can see me, you can hear me, you can understand who I am and actually like learn something, be a part of something bigger, more information, more podcasts, more books, social media like crazy. There's studies, there's everything everywhere.
- And it's not be guys aren't confused about how to say take better care of themselves. We generally have to do two things. Move up more, eat less. That's a general undertone for most people. They they over consume calories and they don't realize it. And this is why they end up not making progress. It's this analysis paralysis type thing.
- I I once worked with an executive business owner and he could explain all sorts of things about insulin resistance. He could talk about blood panel numbers. He could talk about exercise routines, but it didn't matter because he wasn't even walking. He wasn't drinking water. He knew what he was supposed to do, but he didn't do it.
- And there in lies the crux of the issues that we have. There wasn't a routine. There wasn't a a structure around which he was able to create a something that made him be successful. When I asked him what his week week looked like, he just didn't really have an answer because it was dictated by work, dictated by family, and there was not even an ounce a tread of time dictated toward himself.
- And that's where the problem lies. He was treating everything else like a doctor's appointment in a sense where he wouldn't miss anything and he was not focused on taking care of his actual personal health. He didn't keep it in the same priority level that he should have. And he it was more like he was preparing to be healthy instead of actually living a healthy lifestyle.
- Preparation feels responsible. It feels safe. It's a place where we can actually hide doing stuff. It's a level of procrastination. I'm preparing to go do the thing, but you're never going to do the thing. We need a ready, a fire, aim type situation where we take action immediately to make things happen.
- And when we do that, we start to actually learn from bio feedback on what's happening, what's going on in your body, in your energy, and how your body responds, which is so, so important in 2026. Action matters more than being precise. It matters more than thinking too much. It matters more than just waiting.
- A good plan gets done and it's consistent over time. Build momentum one step at a time. Learn from your actions one step at a time. Tweak and adjust as we go so you can point yourself in a better direction for long-term health. Strategy number two, health becomes meaningful when the responsibility actually kicks in. Purpose. Purpose isn't something you find, guys.
- Purpose is something that lives inside you and something that you have to grow. It has to be nurtured. It has to be watered. It has to be fed in a sense. And that's when a big shift happens for anyone when their health actually they find purpose in the things that they do every day.
- And there's a bigger reason why taking care of themsel is important. For me, I have four kids, 16 to 10, three boys and a girl, Levi, Everett, Maxwell, Emiline, my wife, Amber. It's incredibly important that I take care of myself to be there and function. I just even yesterday I spent what felt like four hours cleaning out a dish, a garbage disposal and pipe only to have to call in reinforcements.
- Anyways, I ended up having to call in a plumber. I had gotten I've done all the things. I alured the thing. I I snaked it. I put stuff down the pipes and it still didn't work. And after about three hours bending over in weird positions, I decided to actually call plumber. And I'm a pretty resourceful person. My purpose or my meaning or like my ability to get this done was a little was a little sad about not being able to problem solve and troubleshoot.
- But when the guy came in, he said that the issues started about feet 20. That's a long way to get my little Walmart augur to actually do work. He came in, did the work. 30 minutes later, I have a fully functioning kitchen sink. And that's where finding the right type of help and strategies are important.
- So, back to purpose and making sure that we stay focused on what your purpose is and it it goes it gets built one step at a time. I I remember this gentleman, Bill, we call him, he was in his late 40s. He told me early on in the program that he really didn't care about what he looked like, but he wanted to feel less tired.
- He would always wake up wanting to take a nap. That's not the best way to start your day. But he had a calendar full of appointments of things that he wanted to do. And oftent times he would give all his energy toward work and not toward his family, which is stressful. Nothing makes you feel worse than going home and not being able to give to those people that are closest to you and are most important to you.
- That is so important to be able to show up for them. with Bill when he realized that he needed to have consistent energy and he had to stop waiting for the perfect time because his calendar was always full. That's when health started becoming really important and he changed his perspective. He changed his priority and he started finding purpose in the workouts that were challenging in the time that he spent walking in the time he spent with his family as well.
- Number three, the third strategy, identity changes everything. This is part of my first pillar in the call to rise is the call. It's about the identity. Uh the second pillar is the forge. It's about physical exercise and activity. The third pillar is the fuel, which is nutrition and feeding yourself the right foods.
- The fourth pillar is the code. It's mindset. It's finding purpose. It's finding the right things up here to drive you to making the right decisions for yourself. And the fifth pillar is the brotherhood, the community, the communal aspect of doing this with other people and not just trying to do it on your own because the people you surround yourself with are super important to drive who you are becoming.
- Going back to identity, we don't focus on tactics. We don't focus on meal plans or specific workouts or supplements or any of that stuff. Those those are ways to go about executing on a plan, but those are not the plan itself. The core foundations based on science that then get applied into the tactics or the strategies and skills are what's most important for you to be able to push through.
- And once we do that and understand that, then we can actually get real change. But the identity of who you are inside and what 2026 should mean to you as far as your health goes is significant. And we want to make sure that you have the right focus on who it is that you want to become. Think of it like this.
- If you can envision yourself at the end of 2026 happy, satisfied, joyfilled with the things that you've done with your health, your energy, and the more important things that that result in your family life and your productivity, then that is so important to to focus and and feel that because then we can shift that identity to from where you're at now, feeling overweight or sad, no energy, lack a purpose especially around your health.
- Then we have a map a massive action plan that we can start to plan out. Now one thing in this is that by doing the work that's where the identity shifts by putting your your boots on the ground in a sense rubber meets the road that's where it is and we have to take actions. I implore you to figure out what it is that you want to create as your identity as a person of how people see you on a day-to-day basis to then to let that be that fire inside that that drives that motivation that drives that purpose that drives that ability to be
- self-sacrificing in a way that produces a healthy happy body. G4. Health is discipline. It's focus. It's energy. It's not just another phase. It's not a midlife crisis for the love. Please don't melt down at 44 when your doctor has medicine waiting for you at your next doctor's appointment. This taking care of yourself isn't seasonal.
- It's not, oh, now I have this thing in my I'm just going to wait till my kids graduate or I'm just going to wait until I have this much money in the bank or I'm just going to wait until I have this home or this car or whatever could fill your your buckets of feeling satisfied in life. But what's so important is to make sure that we focus on it being an ongoing thing.
- There's no falling off the wagons because there is no wagon. There is no way that we are going to get off and then start on Monday again. Today is Wednesday. Good luck because we have New Year's Eve, New Year's Day. Then the after effect of all that and the sadness of January, right? Jane two, you say, "Oh, wow. This is sad.
- This is not exciting." Because now we're in a boring January. But again, that's one reason why people start these resolutions. But if your lifestyle is a healthy lifestyle, there's that resolution doesn't fit into this part. Okay? Your health, your body, your energy, it's all an asset for you to leverage in other areas of life, and you're going to need it.
- 2026 is going to be a wild roller coaster with AI, with all sorts of different things. We have the GLP1s. Those are the two pre premonition things that are in my world that I see are having a an interesting impact on people. Strategy five, emotional regulation is a missing skill for you. The health journey is exactly that. It's a journey and it can have emotional setbacks, especially going to a doctor and seeing the scale at a certain point or seeing that your A1C is up and now you're a type 2 diabetic or you're flirting with a heart attack because you
- have high cholesterol and you're 40 pounds overweight. That's real. That will impact you on a huge level and you do not want it to impact you the way that it could. like my buddy's father-in-law. It literally is debilitating him in this season of his life and a lot of things. Sure, there are genetics, right? But there is a lot of environment.
- If you've been eating fried foods for the last 10 years, there's no wonder why your blood panels look the way they do. If you've been drinking soda or eating sugar, highly processed foods and packages that have shiny marketing all over them, and no wonder your blood sugar levels are up and your A1C is screaming high. No wonder your doctor wants to put you on meds.
- No wonder your waistline is stretching past. You have to keep buying bigger and bigger clothes. Health can be an emotional roller coaster. Life is a journey and the health journey is the same way. Now, I I would work with I see this pattern a lot. I work with guys who who focus so much on the week.
- They they're just dialed in to the day-to-day life. That's very structured for them. And for a lot of people, Monday through Friday, you go to work at certain times, you eat dinner at certain times, but the weekend is where things change. And this every single weekend, he would let it loose in a sense.
- and completely erase all of his progress or his gains in a sense of progress toward what his goals were and it would just unravel and come Monday we'd always have a setback and then he'd charge through the week and then come back and this guy's name was John and I actually talked with him recently and he'd been doing this pattern of behavior for years which got him significantly overweight he was drinking and eating and abundance and having a really good time in life.
- But he finally got called out. I called him out and said, "Hey, you really need to do something about this. You cannot just keep having this waffling, this flip-flop, this uh fish out of water sensation where you make progress, but then you fall back and then you're emotionally distraught come Monday and you don't want to put in the effort again.
- " And each time that you do that, you weaken your energy. You pull away from what your identity is, what your goals are, what your discipline is, what your motivation is because there's never any progress for weeks, weeks, months, even years. Now, the last there's two hands on this one. Episode six, right? Or strategy six.
- Your environment is helping you or it's hurting you. This is a huge reason why I'm focused so much so on community in 2026 for myself and business. Surrounding yourself with the right people, the right environment, it shapes your behaviors. It creates a standard of who you are and what you can do for yourself. What food is around? What is available? What is inside your fridge? What do you do when you go out to lunch with a client? How do you order? How do you treat dinner nights with family? How do you react with pizza night on a Friday?
- What do you do when you go to the movies? What do you do when someone hands you something at the office? What do you do when you go by the breakroom and there's a pile of carbs and sugar? What do you do when you're rushing around in the morning and you have a choice? Do I grab something or do I just rush out and push on with the day? These are all parts of just basic things that happen in everyday life that I rattle off the top of my head because I talk about these things so much with people finding real solutions.
- How is your time structured? Do you look at a calendar? Do you look at who you spend your time with? What are you consuming? Are you on your phone randomly scrolling through content? Are you doing things that have some sort of purpose and an outcome that shape your identity or are you just wasting time? Because a lot of people wasted a lot of time in 2025.
- I'm even on my kids, especially my oldest two, they have phones now. We don't give phones before high school, which I think is a right move for people to do. And this is personal parenting, but also they're going to be glued to the screen the rest of their life. Why give it to them earlier? Because it creates a lot of challenge for them to navigate this world that we're living in.
- Especially again with AI and all the things that are going on. What we want to do is for them, I'm saying, "Hey guys, do not live your life 10 seconds at a time." And I hope that by them being in my environment and guiding them as the father that I think I should be and tell them the things that I think they need to hear that they are living going to live a more purposeful life that they actually get value out of their screen time.
- They get something back from the attention that they are giving and you are just the same. Don't live your life in 10 seconds at a time and scroll and scroll and and just you will wake up five years from now sadder, unhappy, overweight, depressed with how your health and your life is going if that's how you spend your free time because it's not free.
- It costs you a lot. 2026 needs to be different. I gave you six things to focus on there and I want you to be as successful as possible going into this. If you want some more help and you need some clear standards, some ways to execute daily, then that's what I do for a living. That's what the Call to Rise is about.
- A men's 100 day fat loss challenge. and call it out. It's a self-improvement challenge in and of itself for you to rise up and become your best self. Let's not start New Year's resolutions. Let's not start over in January, February, or March or whatever that let's get past that stuff. Use sciencebacked information applied and implemented into your everyday life in the easiest way possible that maximizes your strengths, minimizes your weaknesses or build, better yet redefineses what your weaknesses are and plays to them in a good way so that you actually get
- results. There's 20 to 30 pounds that could be lost in the next couple weeks. There's so much better blood panel levels that could come as a result of it. And there's so much more purpose and identity that can come more importantly spending around your family, around the people that you love and you like and you want to be around and at work that you show up and you're productive more than ever and people notice.
- And not only does it give you that self-satisfaction that you're working hard, but also that you are making more money. That's it for episode 39. I hope that these six strategies were helpful for you to start to rethink. Biggest thing I could say is do not wait. Don't call it a New Year's resolution. You need to change your lifestyle if you're not happy with how your health is.
- That's it for Coach Brian and episode 39 of Driven for Health. Catch you in the big episode 40 coming
