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Oct. 27, 2025

How To Make Science-Backed Nutrition Fit In Your Lifestyle - Top of The Nutrition Pyramid - 11

Show Notes
Transcript

If you’ve ever said, “I’ll start over Monday,” this episode might change the way you think about fat loss.

In today’s conversation, we dig into what real consistency looks like when it comes to your nutrition and how small daily choices add up over time.

I’ll share a story about one of my clients, Dennis, who thought he was stuck because the scale wasn’t moving, but was actually making huge progress in body composition and confidence.

We’ll cover key insights including:

• Why alcohol can slow your results and how to include it without derailing progress

• Multiple ways to measure success beyond the scale, like energy, strength, clothes, and compliments

• How to stay patient and consistent when progress feels slow

• Moving past all-or-nothing thinking and rigid “good vs. bad” food lists

• Strategies for staying on track while still enjoying life, family, and social events

If you’re a man over 40 looking to drop fat, build confidence, and create sustainable results using science-backed methods that actually fit your life, this one’s for you.

When you’re ready to find the true balance between taking care of yourself and everything you’re responsible for, visit www.thecalltorise.com.

Join The Call to Rise and start stepping up as a true leader in your own world in all the facets of physical, mental, and personal.

Coach Brian Parana

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.

If you've ever caught yourself saying, "I'll start over again Monday," this episode is for you. Because that one sentence, that mindset is the reason most guys stay stuck in that hamster wheel. It's a loop of perfection or fail, all or nothing, all out. And it just doesn't work. And until you break that pattern, it doesn't matter how good your plan is.
Today, we're going to change how you see nutrition, overall progress, and what consistency really means. Welcome to Driven for Health. I created this show for men over 40 who know they need to take better care of themselves but aren't sure where to start or how to keep continuing to break through any plateaus that are so stubborn and just hold you back.
Maybe you've been putting everyone and everything else first in your life. Say your family, business, career, all the responsibilities that stack every day. But your health is slipped, your belly's grown, you don't see the man you want to see in the mirror. Here we'll talk about real ways to get back in shape, drop some weight, and rebuild your energy without turning your life upside down.
Each episode, I share simple scienceback strategies to help you feel stronger, sharper, more focused, productive, and more control of your body's your nutrition, fitness, and overall lifestyle. I'm Coach Brian Prana and my goal is to help you take the guesswork out of your health so you can feel good and perform at your best.
This episode is brought to you by the Call to Rise, a 100 day fat loss challenge designed for men over 40. If you're a busy professional, a dad, a husband, a man that just doesn't see the same body, look, feel, energy in the mirror you once did, even five or 10 years ago, you're tired of running on empty and that belly is just not going anywhere. This is for you.
Through proven system of personalized nutrition, strength training, you'll drop 20 to 30 pounds of stubborn belly fat and boost your energy in just 100 days. We're not talking about fitness program or meal plan or this and eat this, not that type list. No, you're going to be part of a brotherhood of men of like-minded individuals.
You're going to have very specific, catered, individualized, custom programming that works for you and your specific lifestyle. Stop putting your health on the back burner. Go to the call to rise and get started today. Welcome back, gentlemen. This is episode 11, and we've reached the final layer of the nutrition pyramid.
Over the last few episodes, what it's been about five or so, we've built from the ground up. Energy balance, macronutrients, micronutrients, nutrient timing, like when should I eat in a day, and supplements. But today we're talking about how the glue that holds it all together. This is the binder. It's behavior and lifestyle.
This is the level that determines whether all that science, all that data, all the planning actually will lead to results. Because no matter how many nutrition facts you know, how many nutrition labels you look at, or how clean in quotations you think your food is, if you can't apply them consistently, none of it matters.
So today in our episode is about doing the real work, where the rubber meets the road, and how to turn knowledge into sustainable action. We'll be talking about one, the tools that help you track and measure progress. Number two, how to balance accuracy with having some moderation, balance, and flexibility.
Those are three key words I say all the time. Three, why consistency beats perfection every time. So many people ask me, what is it that works? Consistency over time works. Number four, the traps of all or nothing thinking. Five, how to navigate eating out in a social life. Six, the role of support and accountability.
How that one area you might really be left out in the the cold on that one if you're not paying attention. number seven and how helping others can actually strengthen your own discipline and focus and knowledge. Let's dive in. Number one, the tools that keep you honest and focused on track. You can't manage what you don't measure, right? you track and measure and stay focused on the things that you are paying attention to.
Where the money goes, attention flows. The more you pay, the more you pay attention. These are things I've heard in my career forever. And what is gets scheduled gets done. Easy example. If you don't have exercise scheduled on your day, on your calendar, good luck. It's just not going to happen.
If your goal isn't to improve your body composition, meaning dropping that stubborn belly fat, gain some lean muscle and keep your energy high and focused, productivity, all those things, so you can actually manage all day long and not want to take a break, a nap in the middle there. You need some solid feedback.
Two basic tools is a scale for your body and a scale for your food. Now, this the first one's obvious, right? We step on a scale and you can assess where your body weight is and how it's fluctuating. And guys, gravity's pull on your body. That is all the scale is measuring. That's it. How much do you weigh today? That doesn't give us the full picture on what body composition looks like.
Uh, I actually I'm 6 foot about say 190 on average around there. Sometimes a little lower, sometimes a little up, but it's like a 5 pound weight range with 190 being the average. I'm in the ob overweight category. If you go BMI 6 foot about 190, I'm overweight because I'm supposed to weigh 170 or something.
If you see me, I just don't know how I could weigh 170 pounds. I would I would be Skeletor from He-Man series, right? Goodness sakes. Now, the food scale certainly we do want to look at that cuz what you weigh and measure, you can then understand how to portion and combine food together. That isn't necessarily 100% of what you need to do straight from the get-go.
Just using a measuring cup works well. We'll go into it. Now, tracking food isn't that glorious, but if you haven't done it before or it's been a long time, its mechanism is awareness. Everyone I've ever talked to for 23 years underestimates how much food they eat by potentially even a couple hundred calories a day.
If we eyeball portions, that one cup of rice could maybe be a cup and a half. If you have 30 calories here, 25 there, 50 there, and maybe another 30 later, and you forgot or didn't realize it, that could be closer to 200 calories. And those 200 calories could actually put you toward calorie maintenance, not calorie deficit. Using a digital scale, just even for a couple weeks, really helps you say, calibrate your instincts and calibrate your eye.
calibrate your intuition toward proper portion control. Once you learn what portions look like, you can just take a breath. Take a breath with me. Right? You could then, oh, this is what real, say, 6 ounces of chicken or fish or any other meat protein source that you eat. Ah, that's what this is. Now, there's tracking apps. I prefer Chronometer.
that my fitness b used in the past personally and with clients, but chronometer wins. It's got a lot of free features. There's a barcode scanner. It's super helpful. It's really easy to set up. If you want, I do have a chronometer setup video. If you just email me at brianbrianprano.com, I'll happily send it over.
It's just a YouTube link to a video that kind of gives you the rundown on how I encourage my clients to use it. Macros Plus, there's so many. Basically, they all do the same thing. They count your calories and your macros and do it in a much easier way than you trying to put pen to paper. Please don't do that.
Now, don't pay for it either. I constantly tell people not to pay for it. It's just a tool in the nutrition toolbox. It just makes it easier to build logs, check progress, keep yourself accountable toward what your calories and macros are. In prior, I believe it was episode five, we went over calories. In episode six, we went over macros.
I told you exactly what to do. So, if you haven't heard those or heard them in a minute, maybe you could go back and go through some of those key areas. You don't need to obsess over every gram forever. You just [clears throat] need enough to build consistency and ultimately track piece that aligns with your body weight, the goal body weight for sure, and be able to keep you there.
weigh yourself daily is can be a really useful tool. Some people bring the data and not the drama. Other people's bring the drama when they step on the scale and they get all out of sorts. And this is important to know that the scale is just a reflection on how the body is pulling on you. It doesn't tell you how much water retention or carbohydrate is inside your muscle.
Don't lose your mind on [clears throat] the scales if you're doing all the things, but you could record it. And we're taking a weekly average. 7 to 10 days. I'll repeat that. 7 to 10 days is the average time we're looking for the body to manage this. Why? Your body weight fluctuates. There's sodium, carbs, water retention, sleep, stress.
These things can swing you by several pounds. The trend line matters more than any single day. We want the trend line to go down to the right, right? You start up high in the left, down and to the right. Now, as long as you're losing weight, we're good. So, obviously, everybody wants to lose weight faster, but that isn't always the case.
Now moving on to part two. Accuracy verse gueststimation. When how precise you are matters or accurate you are matters or can you just guesstimate them and approximate? You've got the tools. They're free. They walk around in your hand. It's the fastest, easiest way for you to learn actual real nutrition.
So many people just don't even know say what an [clears throat] egg is. Here's a great example and then we'll move in to the second part. An egg is 70 calories. Quickly, I'm going to ask you, is it a protein? Is it a fat? Does it have combination of both? So answer that in your head. Well, an egg is 70 calories. They are what I call a one:1 protein to fat ratio.
That means that protein and fat are the same. But the tricky part is this is back to the calories episode, episode 5. We've got nine calories per gram of fat and four grams per protein and carbs. And what that then says is going to be five grams of fat times 9 is 45 fat calories. And five protein * 4 is going to be 20 protein calories, right? 45 fat calories, 20 protein calories.
That approximates to 70ish calories. There you go. An egg is a fat source that has protein in it. Once you realize what some of the major foods and main foods you eat on a regular basis are, it becomes so much easier to manage this. All right, moving on with actually using the tools is not knowing macros and that is episode six.
All right, go back to that one and you will be all set. Okay. If you get overwhelmed, you can just pull back. You don't have to track. It's about just staying uh sane. It's about staying in control and not feeling overwhelmed and you don't have to hit them 100% accurate. The key is finding that sweet spot between that moderation, that balance, that flexibility to create more accurate and consistent measurements for you to then understand how your body trends toward what you're doing. I am a master of this because
I've done it with thousands of people. I can pretty quickly understand where someone needs to be at calorically, macro-wise around the foods that they enjoy so that it's a enjoyable experience. If you're too strict, chasing every single gram, every calorie down to the specific gram, it might be a bit too much.
Burnout maybe if you're too loosey goosey eyeballing everything. never even just use a simple measuring cup. You might run into a little bit of frustration and progress could stall. The right approach blends where you're at in your season of life, what your goals are, how much weight you have to lose, what's the overall body composition change that you want.
Now, if you're in a fat loss phase, you'll obviously need tighter control, maybe keeping protein and fats to 5 to 10 grams. Okay? And if you are maintaining, then maybe or even trying to build muscle, then we can give yourself a little bit more flexibility. Maybe 20ish to 25 grams of carbs and protein.
Now going back to the fat loss phase within say 5 gram of fat within 10 grams of protein and carbs because of the calorie difference the four calories verse 9 calories if you're in the maintaining eyeballing can be a little bit more you have a little more leeway maintain maintenance is so much fun you can get away with a lot more than when you're trying to lose weight and if you have 40 lbs to lose we went over it one to two possibly three pounds a week for 40 lb weight loss.
You're in it for at least 20 weeks up to 40 weeks guaranteed and then you might need another 5 to 10 on the backside to stay consistent. That's just the reality of this. But it's some clients track all their macros, some clients don't track at all. But they still need to be calorie aware and understand their overall calories, their protein source and how much they're doing and fiber goals.
Those are the huge three main that I like to focus on first that I call it the simple six. And we'll go over this in another episode, but simple six if you I'll I'll say it briefly. Calories are number one. Protein, eating enough protein for your needs. Number two. Number three is fill up on fiber. Number four is be you want to limit fat because it's calorie dense.
Number five is conscious of carbs because they're everywhere. Number six is eliminate simple sugars. So you can pause this rewind or write again. Write it down. I'll say it one more time. The simple six in this order of prioritization is calories first. Then eat enough protein, fill up on fiber, limit your fat, conscious of your carbs, and eliminate simple sugars like the white stuff.
You can have sugar and still maintain uh your goals for sure. You can't successfully just go out of your way to eat it. If you burn that ninja eyelids and that's how you think, you will be successful. Moving on, you don't have to be 100%. You just need to be in that 90ish. If you are really having to focus and really determined to lose a certain amount of weight in a certain time, that deadline, so to speak, for an event or a meeting.
I remember Devin, he wanted to lose weight to go to this national sales conference. We made sure that he lost two to three pounds a week and the appropriate calorie deficit around 750 or so a day. And he got there and he felt great and everyone was said would shower him with compliments. Dude, you look so good. And it was because of the things that he did, the folks that said he had.
Now, if you stay 1 to two pounds, you could be more like 80 to 90% accurate. That works. One of the questions I get all the time is, how precise do I need to be with tracking my food and hitting my macros? And we kind of going through this, but we're going to break it down a little more specific.
It's not one size fit all, and it depends on a couple factors, your current goal, how much weight you have to lose, and where you are in your dieting phase. Think about it this way. If you have 50 plus pounds to lose, you uh have a little bit of leeway. Your energy deficit is large. So being exact to the gram every single meal isn't as focused or say critical in this phase.
Tracking calories and macros as a general range is usually enough that I've seen. You're still going to see consistent weight loss even if you have the occasional oops or in quotations cheat meal or you overshoot or undershoot here and there. Flexibility is more important than being tracked specifically perfectly. You can make progress if you have 20 pounds to lose.
Now the same inaccuracy starts to matter more. Your deficit could be smaller, right? You might need less calories overall to maintain your body mass as you've lost say 30 pounds already. Your deficit is smaller. So estimating becomes a little bit riskier. You might make a wrong assumption of a food. It says healthy on the label.
I thought it was healthy, Brian. Well, that that doesn't work if the scale is not moving. May need to tighten those ranges up. And it goes from 80 to maybe 85 90% to 95. In that range, you definitely want to be focusing on keeping protein high, fat low to keep calorie consumption easier and staying full.
Lots of vegetables, some starch, small miscalculations. Uh, it's Easter. Easter. It's Halloween time. Easter's another tricky one, but just having candy around. Snickers bar for me, a baby Ruth might fall into my mouth. My kids, we went trick-or-treating yesterday. If you check out my Instagram, this is what, Saturday the 25th, you'll see Alphaba and the wizard fighting.
That was my daughter and I. And then we had two flying monkeys and the Dr. Dilund, I believe it was the the professor goat from Wicked. We were all walking around having a good time last night. Uh going back to this these at 20 pounds or less, some of the miscalculations will slow down progress and leaving you a little more, oh gosh, it was so easy earlier. Now it's not.
Third chunk is say five to seven pounds. This is where you have to be a lot more focused to get to the outcome that you want and you have to make sure that you are dialed in hopefully through this process. It gets easier and easier. That's the goal that I have for every single client that I do. Now, you want to have high accuracy using a food scale or using a measuring cup or having your eyeball really dialed into proper portions, especially if you've been doing it for a while, you can pretty much eyeball something. I
always train my clients as the ones that do track that the further on we go in the process I want you to guess how much this weighs before you put it on the scale that is a transferable skill for the rest of your life for you to be able to eyeball and guess how much something is you will be very successful now you can also look at different say phases depending on what some of your goals are maybe there three phases of offseason or bulk phase or cutting phase or beach ready phase in a sense if you're there and already at maintenance. Now in
the we'll we'll go with these three as examples. If you are in this specific phase, you you've already accomplished your weight body goals and body composition goals and want to change and influence say more muscle mass and better body composition. You will go through bulking phases and cutting phases to keep your metabolism high and keep your energy up and focus on constantly building a better body.
Now bulking phase you can or offseason or just not having to pay so much attention a lot more flexibility gueststimate a small surplus won't make or break progress and the focus on building muscle and developing these habits for long term is really easy. a cutting phase in the early stages. Say bulking could be November, December, might as well throw in the holidays into that.
January, February, March, then say March, April could be cutting phase early and then May, June be the final stages, leaving you beach ready. We need to increase that accuracy as you go toward the deadline of say June beach ready. you'll be a lot more fine-tuned and be able to get lean as you want. The main takeaway here, the more precise you need to be depends on the size of your goals and how to how close you are to achieving it.
If you're early in a big cut, then again, flexibility and consistency matter more than being 100% perfect. If you're in the final stretch, you need those dialed in. Takeaway. The goal is to match your effort to your needs, the season of life, all the responsibilities you have in order to be successful. Underdoing precision when you're close to your goals stalls progress.
All right. Balance, accuracy, flexibility are important. One of the more common questions I hear, how exact do I need to be with tracking my food and hitting my macros? And I've got an example of Will. He was in the call to rise. Will came needing 80 pounds to lose. At first, he felt overwhelmed. He'd been doing the low carb, the the keto, super rigid meal plans he found from 1990, the chicken, broccoli, rice, clean eating classic.
But he'd have a lot of progress in a short time, but crash and burn and gain more weight back. So we decided and figured out what be a most effective and sustainable route. Now early in his journey when we are in that say the initial first 30 pounds to lose I got him to practice portion control and food combinations so much better.
Yeah. He did some tracking to loosely start paying attention to calories and he was blown away by how many calories were in some of the foods that he ate on a regular basis. Guys, that in and of itself became eye openening. He became even more incredibly focused and determined because he realized that he didn't need to this certain food to say feel good or relieve stress when it had 600 calories in it wasn't good.
Now he'd use a measuring cup and and loosely track. He we focus on calories and protein first and foremost and then started working down that line of the simple six. It gave him some freedom, some confidence, reduced the stress because he was making better choices. And every time I worked with anyone, it's just the next step of things that need to happen.
Midway through the journey, we got down to about 40ish pounds loss, and we needed to make sure that we stayed more focused, more dialed in. [snorts] If he were to come upon a goose egg, I'll call it a zero weight loss in a week. And yeah, that sometimes happens or sometimes people gain weight in the process.
Even if they lost 80 pounds, it's not a linear process. Weight loss is not linear. It goes down, it goes up, goes down, goes up, goes down. We just want it trending down mostly. But we got more accurate and made sure that anytime he didn't lose as much as he wanted, we always looked back over the last week and assessed what his real progress looked like.
This made it incredibly eye openening and useful because I always say this, there's always breadcrumbs that are left by people to help understand or see what it is that they did or didn't possibly do. Now, the final 10 to 15 pounds, uh, just this is where we need to keep accuracy at its utmost. Now, at this point, too, realized that he'd been tracking for a while and paying attention to food for a while.
It was actually easier to be more focused. A lot of people would associate what I just said as being harder. That is inaccurate to assume. What do they say about assuming? Right? If you stack behaviors progress over time, things get so much easier. And and that's what we went with. Well, and you have to match your efforts to what your needs are.
The bigger the goals, the more flexibility, the finer the the the more refinement that we need. That's when you need to be dialed in. Segment three, eating out without derailing. Now, not a single person I've ever known lives in a vacuum. They don't just cook their own food 100%. There's dinners, there's Halloween, holidays, work events, birthdays.
Life is being lived. Travel for a lot of my clients. A ton of my clients travel for client meetings and business. And I'm a foodie as well. My family love we travel. We're trying to we're either throwing out Peru or Japan or somewhere Iceland. I think this the the three my wife has talked.
We're leaning towards Peru at the moment, Machu Picchu and some llamas and that'll be a lot of fun, but [clears throat] you have to be able to balance all that stuff and know that there's a lot of calories when you eat out. Take it. This last summer, my family and I, we went on a two week cruise and uh what in Paris, a European vacation.
And we had lots of food fun in Mkos. We had gyros or euros. In Athens, we had baklava. In Rome, we had gelato. In Naples, we had pizza. In Disneyland, Paris, we're a big Disney family. We've gone to Disney World a lot. And then uh we're working our way to other Disney lands and experiences as well. Mickey pretzels and Mickey ice cream bars.
Paris for croissants. Croissant. We enjoy those within reason. Now, you just can't pause your health goals every time life happens or you leave the state. And just think of this. If you for every business travel, I have guys that travel at least once a month, usually more than that. But say you only lo you gained one pound every time you left your home to go somewhere for a business meeting.
You would even once a month that's 12 pounds in a year. That's 25 in two years. All right. That's a lot. So that is not good uh to to be able to do at all. All right. Now the mindset of not letting one meal turn into another one is what we are really most importantly focused on. One imperfect choice or bad decision or I'm going to have some ice cream after the soccer game or I'm going to have again Halloween and have a Halloween treat is not going to derail it.
We'll be deep diving into more on the eating out. Just know there's a lot of calories when you let someone else prepare your food. If you're interested, I do have an eating onthe-go guide. Again, just shoot me an email, brianbrianprano.com. I'll send you over the link. You can go grab it.
It's got 28 pages of all sorts of different tips, tricks on all the major main places most people go all across the US and beyond. from traveling, say gas station and airports on the road or fast food, fast casual, say think of Chipotle like experiences and those type of similar restaurants, fine dining, all sorts of different things.
Again, just reach out and let me know, send it over. Part four, the weight of consistency and how progress, showing up every day, tracking, paying attention, focus, doing the work creates the habits, the real measurable progress you want over time. The great thing, progress isn't limited to just what the scale says.
I want to weigh in on that, okay? consistency and progress over time. And there's a lot of different ways. I'm going to give you 10 different ways to measure success. 10 different ways. Are you ready? You can again pause as you go to write them down. Number one, the scale weight. Yes, daily or weekly measurements make sense to pay attention to ensure that weight goes down.
If someone has 20, 30 pounds to lose, we do need the scale going down. No matter what, it has to go down. It may or may not go down linearly or the way you want to. It's just the way it is. Body measurements, okay? Waist, chest, arms, legs, belly button. If you were to measure guys, just measure certainly every all the guys want to measure their biceps, but unless you're doing a crazy amount of bicep, tricep, even more so tricep, your arms aren't going to change too much.
You might lose fat and start to go down, but you're not going to put an inch on your bicep unless you're doing a lot of bicep curls and tricep extensions. From there we have the big ones are definitely belly button around your belly button and around the your butt the biggest part of your hips. Those are going to be the most consistent ones that you could get the most return on effort.
Certainly you could measure around your chest. You say your nipple line or your middle of your thigh, middle of your bicep, middle of your calf. Those all are other ones too. Number two is body measure. Uh sorry, excuse me. Number three is energy levels, consistent nutrition, sleep, movement. When you do these things, you should feel better, more productive, less nappy in the middle of the day, improved mood.
People might say something, "Wow, you're nicer to be around." If that's the case, holy cow, let's let's perk up. Number four is clothing. feeling pants loose, your shirt's hanging better, you can button your jacket, right? You feel a little more confident going into some of these business meetings.
You're closing big deals on creating strong lasting relationships with other people in businesses. Pictures, progress [clears throat] pictures, front, side, back, in good lighting with shorts on for the love. I people send me pictures with the shirt, a black shirt and poor lighting. I This isn't helpful. [laughter] Guys, take your shirt off, take a picture, use that, and you will see it over time because you're not going to see it in the mirror.
You see yourself all the time. But when you do it that way, you will see it over time. Other people's feedback, you'll see that, right? They'll tell you, "Hey, you look better. Your face, hey, are you losing weight?" Wow, you just are you're perky. Your spouse might come home like, "Wow, it's actually nice to see you at home now.
You're not just in this hangry fatigue state." Number seven, performance in the gym, right? Strength gains, energy up. Eight is mood and clarity. You just feel better. There's maybe less brain fog. You can make choices better that support your goals. Recovery and sleep are nine. You just recover better. You're sleeping higher quality levels there.
And 10 is flexibility and here adherence being able to navigate these social situations, eating out, vacations, busy work weeks, whatever without derailing. Right? When you get those 10 areas, that's a very comprehensive framework on how to assess progress, not just the scale. And you can look beyond to keep making progress because the scale may or may not always tell you what it you want it to. Dennis is a good example.
He's been he was a client and the [clears throat] call to rise. He was doing everything right, at least what he thought was right. He was working out consistently, tracking his food, getting good sleep, managing stress, and making some of the best choices he had done in years. He was moving himself forward, but sometimes the scale wouldn't move to what he was accustomed to.
Brian, I I I cut out carbs and I'd lose 10 pounds in a week. Why is it why am I only lost two or three? Well, Dennis, that's the reality of science. Working on your body, doing it the right way. He's putting big efforts into everything. Tracking, weighing, measuring, reporting, turning everything in, moving, working out, all those things.
But the scale wasn't showing what he wanted. But then when we put on his say in quotation skinny jeans, he was actually down two pants sizes. and he lost multiple inches in his body. And we could see it in pictures from the first picture through the the other two. I usually have guys take pictures every quarter, every 25 days to assess and reflect and we saw visible changes.
What happened with Dennis, he reframed his thought process and he actually was super motivated when he saw that. It's like, "Oh, okay, Brian, I get it now. I can't lose 10 pounds on week. That's just not that's just a fat diet approach and nobody has success. We're able to keep them focused on track and keep making progress.
And number five is the mindset that makes it work. I love this phrase. I don't know if anyone's ever said it, but I like saying it. I think I've said it. I coined it maybe. Middle gear mentality. All or nothing is out the door. We have to find balance. Okay, [clears throat] find balance and manage perfection and doing everything.
People always get tripped up in rigid meal plans, whether they're just eating the exact same food every day or tracking to the gram or oh, I eat the wrong thing and I ruin the day. Strict macro rules, clean eating lists, eat this, that, not that. social comparison, seeing everyone else at the party eating whatever they want, drinking.
You go out and hang out at the bar, the guys, the boys at the bar with the burgers and the beers. [clears throat] That's a lot of bees. Then you see everyone just going in and well, they don't have the same goals as you. So, it really is irrelevant to what they are doing compared to you. Short-term fix marketed as solutions. We have so many influencers and pills and tricks and for the last what 30 40 years people have been doing this to you eat this way and this magical [clears throat] little known Amazon whatever. Yeah, let's not do that. It
already sounds markety. Here are five things people commonly tell themselves to reinforce this all or nothing thinking. I just wanted to throw some of these things. Maybe you think of this yourself. If I can't do this perfectly, I might as well not do it at all. Number two, I blew it already. So, the day the week is ruined.
I'm just going to fall off fall into my food into base later. The number three, everyone else is doing it this way, so must be the only way to succeed. Right? You see that you might look on the trend. Everyone's fasting or everyone's doing keto or everyone's doing this thing. I need to stick to a plan that's 100% or I'll never reach my goals.
I'll start over tomorrow and do it right again. Today just doesn't count. If you ever thought of those, those are definitely mental traps that'll keep you stuck and reinforce a negative situation for yourself. The key to learning is pause and take a moment to assess and then adjust. It's the scientific method.
We're going to test, observe, retest. We're going to keep working through a lot of this stuff. These are something you have to pay attention to. So, let's ditch the all or nothing. And success comes from consistency over time. And if you struggle with being consistent over time, then that's when finding support will help. Number part six, rethink good and bad foods.
Right? Again, going off behavior and lifestyle, we've been ingrained that this is a bad carb or this is a a bad choice or this is on the eat this, not this that list or something. And that's not it. I look at food and I always teach my guys to look at food as calories, protein, carbs, and fats. And when you look at the nutrition label rather than the front of the package that says this is healthy, then you will be in a better state.
On the good side, these are things that everyone categorize as clean eating. Chicken breast, turkey, lean, beef, 95 or leaner. Egg whites only, no yolks, brown rice, quinoa, never white rice or pasta, broccoli, spinach, kale, asparagus, those are the only ones you can eat. Almonds, walnuts, avocado, if any fat at all.
On the bad ones, the forbidden. I will say I had three of these last night. Am I doing something wrong? I don't know. Bread, bagels, pasta, pizza, burgers, fried foods, candy, cookies, cakes, ice cream, soda, pop, whatever you want to call it. Coke, not Pepsi. Coke Zero guy here. If you like Pepsi, I don't know.
[laughter] I'm joking. I'm joking. As science has proven that don't don't do regular Pepsi that or a regular Coke, that's criminal. But doing a zero version. Yeah, you can squeeze those in. All right. Alcohol, fruit juices, and then you definitely have to avoid the white carbs, potatoes, rice, things like that.
Well, last night I did candy, beer, pizza. I woke up to live another day. I I just had a reasonable amount. I got plenty of steps, plenty of activity. Move my body a lot. I'm We're doing round two tonight for another trick-or- treat experience and it'll be a lot of fun. Well, we can even go further, especially say the 2000s, 20110s especially.
This is when this craze started was no dairy, no gluten, no red meat, no sugar, processed foods, no carbs after 6 p.m. Some of those are older, say 1980s, 1990s. This is off limits, but it creates unnecessary guilt and shame around food. You, if you have kids, you will eat pizza or ice cream. They will come about.
Just make sure you do it in an enjoyable time. This reduces your flexibility to enjoy social situations because you're going to go to the fire situation and there's going to be a hot dog and a hot dog is just a fat in a tube there. Oftent times there's not a lot of protein in them, much less than you think. But also, if you're say eating only the good stuff and eating the same thing on repeat, then you could have your micronutrition, your vitamins, minerals, and gut health might not be great because you're just eating the same micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, cuz
say broccoli or spinach only going to offer so much. So, these are things to pay attention to. Yeah, I just want to throw this out there, too. white rice, if you've ever looked at it in comparison to brown rice, they're basically the same. There's subtle differences, but not enough to be like say, "Oh, I can't eat rice, white rice, ever again.
" Because billions of people are eating rice today and it's so important. All right, number two more and we'll start wrapping this up since uh I like to talk a little too long. Support and accountability. Of course, you need support. You can't just do this on your own. It takes a village in a sense. That's what the call to rise is all about.
High performing guys that are crushing it, but just feel like they have to they're in isolation. I literally had a guy the other day just tell me Neil say how alone he felt in this journey. He's success successful architect growing his company. He's got seven employees now and securing seven figure deals. So, he's doing just fine in business.
He's got three kids, young kids under eight spouse, and he's just scrambling. And if he didn't have the right accountability, then it's doesn't work. John John's another one. He I I literally have a picture a screenshot of him talking about how he thought he had it all figured out. He'd just go to the gym and work out and just nothing changed though.
He just had this huge belly and it nothing was happening when he found support, found guys, found the right guidance and he changed and he's bringing his family along. His daughter's doing personal training. His wife is working out with them. They take walks all the time. They're a lot more active. It's great. the the ditching these restrictive behaviors are a big thing.
Uh part eight, we're going to move on to alcohol and and go through this one quick, too. I will have a separate episode on alcohol. Everyone always asked, I'm just going to do January. Don't do that. If you drink alcohol, let's figure out a better way to have a better relationship with it. Don't just avoid it.
Avoiding doesn't solve problems, right? And take that in any type of relationship. If you avoid it, it doesn't go well. Big takeaways from alcohol is the frequency. You know, one two a week work. Portion one possibly two standard drinks. That's 12 ounces, not 25 ounces. Got to plan these calories in fit in your day.
We need to make sure that it's time smart. We don't want to have high calorie foods and alcohol together. It's a disaster to store body fat quickly. Hydration. You want to make sure that you are hydrated. I huge I have a friend Michelle and we'll we'll drink some really nice craft beers. She says, "Rehydrate, dehydrate, dehydrate, rehydrate.
" every time that we go over, which is maybe once a month at most, but we will she'll serve a beer, but also serve water. So, we drink water, drink beer, drink water, drink beer in that order. You chug the water, sip the beer, you stay hydrated, and keep yourself headache-free. That last one [clears throat] is bringing it all together.
We're wrapping this up. Nutrition pyramid starts with science, calories, macros, micros, but ends on behavior and lifestyle. Without this type of structure, flexibility, consistency, none of it matters. You can have all the science in the world. Doesn't it just literally doesn't matter. Here's your action plan.
But the biggest take here from this whole nutrition period, you have to track what matters. Track the calories first. Pay attention to getting at least 140, 150 grams of protein a day and getting ideally up to 30 grams of protein. Seeing body weight change go down and having progress. We want progress, not perfection. We want to stay consistent for weeks or months.
Again, 40 lbs loss is 20 to 40 weeks of effort. Just pay attention to that, guys. And if you're running a business and you want to make an extra zero on top of what you're already doing, it's not going to happen in a week or three. It's going to happen in months or even years depending on where you're at in the game.
How many relationships you need to build, how many units need sold, how many more employees do you need to be brought on the team, and how well are your systems and operations working for you. the men that I've seen who master their nutrition and do it in a one week, one choice, one week, one day, one choice type approach, always win. There you go.
That's behavior and lifestyle in a nutshell. Let's go through the fast five and wrap this show up. Question number one, what's one bad food you used to avoid but now enjoy guiltfree? You gosh, I remember in my high school days, no, not even high school, more going into college, like, oh, if I just had a gluten insensitivity, then I would not eat wheat and that would solve all my problems. That's not it.
I we eat pasta once a week and I'm able to maintain my body weight. That's that was definitely a in quotations a bad food that got beat into the head. I remember even back in the day, oh, don't eat carrots or peas because they have sugar in them. This is a load, people. Do not listen to it. A whole bag of carrots is 170ish calories.
The one that fits in your palm, that is a lot of chomping and crunching and a lot of fiber. And it doesn't even matter how much sugar is in the carrots. It's going to keep you full and keep your calories in check and keep you healthy. Question number two. If someone only tracked one thing for progress, what would you tell them to focus on? Calories first, guys.
I already told you in the simple six, then protein would be second. Question three, when it comes to being consistent, what do you personally track or monitor the most? Well, for me, I tracked for four years. And that was a big undertone to me being successful coaching other people because I just know food.
I understand nutrition just inherently. It's inside me and I can look at pictures or look at text or talk to people and understand what they're trying to communicate and then give them accurate feedback for them to make progress. I personally look in the mirror to help dictate what I need to do today. That's it. I don't even step on the scale.
I don't even remember the last time. It's been weeks since I stepped on the scale. It's It's underneath my wife's dresser. Not like hidden, per se, but definitely out of sight. And you know what they say, out of sight, out of mind. Number four. If you could eliminate one piece of bad dieting advice from the internet forever, what would it be? for the love.
You do not have to skip out on food groups. I definitely not partial or hate things like keto or low carb advice. They're just not sustainable for especially the type of person I work with. They've got family, they got kids, they got busy things. They have to eat out a lot. They are juggling a lot of responsibilities.
And doing a a 1990s play of no carbs is just not it. The 80s was no fat. And that's a horrible choice, too, because your body will get hormonally imbalanced. Number five, if you had to summarize fat loss success in three words, what would they be? Write it down here. Consistent calorie deficit. Bam. There you go. If this episode hit home, share with another guy who's serious about upgrading his health, his nutrition, his fitness, his performance overall, and his body.
And if you're ready to apply this level of structure, knowledge, and and and desire to actually learn something, then join me in the call to rise. It's not information. and we take all of this stuff turn into individualized transformation in a an amazing way. You can visit thecalterrise.com and we'll look to lose at least 20 pounds in the next 100 days with radical support, accountability, direction, nutrition, fitness for a busy lifestyle just for you.
And I put a money back guarantee on that. If you do the work, you don't get the results, then I'll give you your money back. That's how much I trust in what I do. Well, I appreciate you tuning in today. Kept it under an hour. I like to talk. [laughter] You'll see that consistently across our conversations episode.
But hopefully all the talking is insightful and valuable for you. Thanks for tuning in to Driven for Health. Keep showing up, keep leading yourself, and I'll see you on the next one.