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Dec. 8, 2025

Make Fat Loss Simple: Simple Phrases I Teach All My Clients - 30

In this episode of Driven For Health, Coach Brian Parana shares the simple phrases he teaches clients to make fat loss easier to understand and easier to follow.

Episode 30 is a milestone episode where Coach Brian reflects on the podcast, his coaching background, his family, his health journey, and the lessons he has learned from helping thousands of people improve their nutrition, fitness, habits, and health.

Coach Brian breaks down practical coaching phrases like plan, prepare, act, focus on overall calories, read nutrition labels, movement is energy, 10,000 steps a day, drink enough water, use the plate method, eat enough food to get to the next meal, and keep restaurant meals simple with protein and double vegetables.

This episode is a strong listen for men over 40 who want to lose fat, stop overcomplicating nutrition, improve consistency, make better food decisions, and build a healthier lifestyle without chasing another fad diet.

Show Notes
Transcript

In this milestone episode, Coach Brian opens up and shares the core non-negotiables he teaches every man inside The Call to Rise.

These are the daily habits that help busy men over forty lose weight, build strength, improve energy, and finally gain control over their health again.

After 23 years of coaching and helping thousands of clients, these principles remain the foundation of every long-term transformation.

Brian also shares more of his personal story, from childhood athletics to owning two CrossFit gyms to coaching a CrossFit World Champion. His journey shows why these non-negotiables matter and why they work for real men with real responsibilities.

You will learn simple and effective strategies for nutrition, portion control, hydration, movement, eating out, alcohol, and building a lifestyle that supports sustainable fat loss.

If you have been struggling with weight loss, low energy, or inconsistency, this episode gives you a clear path forward.

Ready to rebuild your health with structure and support?
Visit www.thecalltorise.com to learn more.

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.

Welcome back to Driven for Health. This is Coach Brian and today feels big. It's three zero episodes. Not only that, most people don't even make it past 10 episodes. I never thought I'd have a podcast, let alone be this far deep. But I see a huge need to provide for my guys to thrive. Today is December 2.
That's why you see me with Santa hat on. And this is also the first video that I'm going to be doing as well in terms of a podcast format. I started off the first 20 just going straight in trying to figure it out, find my voice and be able to create just focus on the actual content. On 20 to 30, I started adding music.
You might hear some of it. And now we're going to 30 on keep up with the video. Try and play with the big boys in the podcast space. Well, I hope that you, the listener, are getting a lot out of this. Obviously, I work with men, but there's so many applications if there are women listening in that I speak to humans.
I speak to people who want to live a healthier, happier life, that have kids, that have a career, that want to thrive and not just be stuck with a body and an energy, a look, a feel, an identity that they are stuck in. And when I first started the podcast, I wanted a place to just speak directly to these guys and remind them who they are on the inside.
And I also wanted to remind myself of how powerful of a leader I can be. And with having four kids and my wife Amber, being self-employed, life is crazy. It's busy. It's pulling me in every direction possible. I'm uh up late, I'm up early, right? I think you might know and understand that.
But I know I want to look and feel great. I want to look and feel the way I do now when I'm 50. That's really important to me. And being able to help others look and feel better in the next 5 10 years is going is is part of my say life mission. And that's what we're here to do. stronger for yourself but more impactful in your families and the people that you are around every single day.
And I want you to feel proud of that. This show is really a a space for guys to breathe for a moment to hear something that actually helps them. something that actually cuts through all the bit influencers, all the YouTubes, the googling, the people in the office that say, "Hey, you should try this thing or that thing," or, "Hey, everyone's sticking themselves with a shot.
" Maybe that's the only way I can find that I'm going to be successful in this is by taking a GOP one. I will assure you it's not true. Even in the last round of my call to rise program, I had multiple guys 25 to 30 lbs in 100 days lost through the four pillars of nutrition, fitness, hydration, sleep. These are the basis of what it is.
Plus time management, stress management, and creating [snorts] a better identity through the five pillars of the call is all about your identity, about who you are on the inside and how you show yourself on the out. The forge, the forge is your body, building it up to be able to put up with the strength, the demands of the world. We have the fuel, nutrition.
Nutrition is the key to this. I've been speaking on nutrition for the last 10 years or more specifically to help people. Some some clients just literally walk and they focus on food through practical sciencebacked nutrition and then kabam they are off to the races. The mindset is the fourth pillar about changing the way you think about not only yourself but about the other things that are happening around you and how to prioritize you as a person and really have a rock solid mindset and not let anything disrupt you. And the fifth
pillar is brotherhood. You do not have to do this alone. In fact, study after study show that if you do this with support, you're going to be that much more successful. And having a guide, a lead, someone who knows what they're doing, has been doing this their whole career will help you. Now, hitting the episode 30 feels like a moment to just slow down and talk about some of the things that matter most.
Some of the habits, the oneliners that I teach my clients every single day. These are phrases that I say off the cuff all the time and they just have been known for our coach Brianisms in a sense. Now, we really focus on habits, lifestyle, behavior change alongside the education and understanding of nutrition, but we need to to be able to have simple things to lock into your brain, your mind that allow you to be successful, to then be able to apply them, to stop and think about, hey, I can make a better choice here. And if I make a better choice,
then I will be able to have a better result, better impact, better energy in the next thing that happens for me. If you're a man in your 40s, then listen up here. I want to just call out the call to rise real quick. If you're carrying extra weight, doesn't matter if it's December or whenever you listen to this episode, that's what the call to rise is about.
It's a 100 day program that I built. 100 day challenge really to come in, lose 20 plus pounds, get a clear plan, weekly accountability, daily accountability, radical support from me, your coach, and the other guys who are rising up to a higher standard, a higher level. And if you want a system, a process, support, and other people to help guide you through it.
And there's a money back guarantee, consider looking for the cult.com and joining up with me. And shoot, I've had thousands of people in my career now helping and so I have a long track record. So visit the call torise.com and let's jump into our 30th episode. Now, I also want to get to know Coach Brian a little bit more.
The popular phrases are the main, say, meat and potatoes of our conversation, but I wanted to share a little bit more about who I am. I talked about it on the first episode, but then I went straight into the goods talking about the nutrition pyramid. That was episodes 5 through 11. I have some testimonials that I have built peppered in throughout.
I've got plenty more that I'm going to have on so you guys can hear real stories of real men transforming no matter how busy they are or how much responsibilities they have, whether it's a business, whether it's a family, whether it's demands of their career, whatnot. But I wanted to just talk about Coach Brian for a second.
Now, I've been pretty active my entire life. started back in high school or even before that playing basketball in my backyard with my best friend Gentry across the street. He come over Eugene Lowry. He was two doors down. guy had his parents built a concrete c basketball court in their backyard because this guy played basketball so much and he would have these these tournaments basically in his backyards come over three on three and people would be playing till 1 2 o'clock in the morning in the high school days. It was
it was hilarious and I I loved it. But I played basketball. I was okay at it. I played baseball okay at it. But my buddy Dan, he invited me back in it was freshman year to run track. I said, "Sure, I like you, Dan. I enjoy being around you." And then there's some other guys that I enjoyed being around as well.
Leo has been a lifelong friend as well. And off we went. I I joined in and I ended up running my whole time in high school, which then landed into college. I ran the first year and realized as much of a desire to be a pro alete or even a professional amateur, I just wasn't fast enough. These guys in college at the University of Akran, they were warming up at what felt like my race pace.
Holy moly, they were off to the races literally from the first step of practice. But that ultimately led me to running in marathons. I ran a 50-mi race. I had pleasure of running Boston on my second marathon. Akan Marathon was my first. I finished in 309 which is not too shabby. I wanted to break three hours of Boston.
I trained for eight months solid for that. No, actually over a year because I trained eight months for Akran. Then that was in September or so. And then I trained in through April. It was about what 18 19 months to Boston that I was consistently running and it was 80° coming out of the winter in Ohio.
If you've been training in 20 to 30°ree weather, you would understand you are acclimatized toward that weather. Running on a Monday at 80 degrees, clear blue skies. O, it was a survival of the fittest. People were dropping like flies. at Boston. But I was so happy to do it back in 2004 is when I ran Boston, which led me to all sorts of different things.
Again, a 50- mile race. And ultimately, I grew tired of running. You can only run. Hey, great. Yay. I get to run an hour today. That's only so fun for so long. Even if you have people. And then I transitioned into doing triathlons. I did that for about three or four years. Funny enough, I was able to actually see my son race at the same place that I raced at Portish Lakes and he did amazing.
He did a 242. My fastest was it was what do we look up? 206 I believe something like that back in the day 2005 2006 something around there. Uh so not too shabby. I was really good, but again, not an elite level athlete as much as I trained and wanted to to be, but had a blast. That led me through college that I was in the exercise science nutrition.
I didn't even know I was going to land there. I honestly thought that I was going to be I I just started Hey, I'm going to take all the cor the the the oh my gosh the general studies. That's what we're talking about. I took all the general studies that I could and then I stumbled into Memorial Hall.
Memorial Hall led me to this this uh display. The display had I don't 10 different careers in exercise or nutrition. Said I could do any one of these and sign me up and off we went. I was blessed to just find my passion and that was I graduated in 2004. I've been doing nutrition exercise this whole time. What really caught my attention was not only do I vanity sake of look good, feel good myself, but I'm able to help impart that idea of helping other people take care of themselves too and transform their bodies. But ultimately, as I had
grown into this, the lives, the confidence, the energy, the boldness that people get is amazing. I'm so blessed to be able to help so many experience that as as we go and and and shifting belief patterns, identity states and proving things that what they thought to be true to be actually false and just something made up in their heads.
And that empowerment of my clients is what's been my underlying reason why I that I keep doing this. Now, I graduated teaching group exercise classes and graduated the exercise science degree and I taught those classes. It was so cool. I could get paid to exercise. The best thing, especially when you're in your young 20s.
Oh my gosh, I can get on a bike and do teach a spin class for an hour and get paid 20 bucks. You sign me up. And that's exactly what I did, which then transitioned into my first job, which was at the wellness center. Before that, in my schooling, I was in the wellness suite, and that was a place where I did body fat tests, exercise prescriptions, bone density tests.
I can't tell you how many people I pinched for body fat. And uh they used to call me the Vulcan because I would just pinch an inch in a sense. People would be ow what are you doing? That's not that's muscle. No, sorry. That is body fat. Unfortunately, now I get into my fitness staff part of lifestyles in Akran and I was working the floor and then I saw that was okay.
use cleaning equipment and doing general exercise prescription for people and just making sure people are helped and happy in the gym. Uh that's fine. But I saw the personal trainers, they were making double the amount of money. Said shoot, let's get into this. [laughter] Why why not work for twice as much pay for the same amount? And within shoot about 3 months, I bec I was a full-time personal trainer, PT as they would call it.
And in that time, I was able to really grow my skills. I was of being personable, of being connected to people, of just being face to face, listening, hearing, understanding how to communicate and be personable. I did that for five straight years every single day having people in the gym all day long. So I moved on from the phenomenal dominal class Mondays at 5 to 5:30 to just personal training.
And a as I started to outgrow that space, I was constantly looking for what are the best solutions, what are the best way for me to elevate my education, my abilities, but also my results. I needed my clients to be successful, right? Because if I'm successful, I will attract more of what I want, which is to be more successful, have more clients, make more money, and provide for my family.
And at this point, we started having one child that's Levi. And then and I we're on to our second one. When I decided to move Everett, I decided to move in from the gym personal training space to a CrossFit gym. I had a passion, love for CrossFit as this was in 2007ish or 2008. started really falling in love with CrossFit and coaching my clients through that.
And it has been amazing and wildly successful for them to be able to learn that the that expression of exercise and in that expression. So I've watched so many coaching videos. How do you coach this technique in this form, in this position, in this movement to get someone to do it properly, correctly, without getting hurt? Most importantly, lesson number one in personal training is don't hurt your clients. Okay? Don't do it.
So, if you're a PT listening in here, that is rule number one because your paycheck is directly influenced. As I grew through CrossFit and a farther love, I I worked out with Travis and there's another gentleman that I had worked out and we just absolutely loved it. We would do two wads workout of the days a day.
And and when I had my kids, I had less time to go on an hour or twohour bike ride or a run. I I kind of burned that up in in my younger married years. Hey, Amber. I'm going to be gone for two hours, come back three after I did a long bike and chatted with someone. And she's like, I thought you were going to be back an hour earlier.
I got carried away. I was talking to someone. Go figure, right? But CrossFit really worked. Short highintensity workouts in my young 20s, mid20s that Yeah, let's go. And and that's what I did. I ended up moving into 2010 2011 this winter season just literally almost now what today's 2025 so about 10 years ago was no sorry uh 14 years ago excuse me 14 years ago because it was 2000 no 15 years ago math Brian 2025 minus 2010 that would be 15 years ago that's when I was sat in my gym helping people.
Now, fortunately, as we went through this in the first year, I had a personal training client, Betsy Finley. She came with me. I had been working with this woman for years. She came to my abdominal class, my spinning class, my shake and bake boot camp training class on that I do on Friday nights. It was awesome. I loved it.
And but and she enjoyed our work together and she came to the CrossFit. Now, there's this thing called the CrossFit Open. She said, "What is that?" I said, "We're going to do it. It's fun." And in CrossFit World, everything's fun, right? When you're enthusiastic about it. Well, we got her signed up and lo and behold, a couple workouts later, she's ranked number two in the world in her age group at age 60. Pretty wild.
Pretty special moment. All right. With CrossFit being so big now, it would be really slim chance to be able to recreate that. But we went three years in a row. We got first, second, and eighth place with Betsy as she could deadlift 250 lbs. She could rope climb, do pull-ups, lift 100 lbs overhead, and she had a six-pack or almost.
She was a fun loving grandma who just was passionate about taking care of herself and was able to express that through CrossFit. So CrossFit world champion under my belt. Well, as the years continued, I ended up leaving that gym and starting another one. And that was another about two-year process of just again helping people move their bodies, fall in love with exercise again and being healthy and happy.
And therefore, I ended up shifting out of CrossFit and being in a gym space to being in actually this barn where I'm at. This is my studio. And welcome to the barn, my my garage barn gym. I've got everything in here. One day, maybe we'll do a tour of it. But you get a lot of equipment when you own gyms.
And that's exactly what it was. Lots of gym, lots of equipment. I I left the gym space and went online. I did some personal training in this gym to buffer, but I've been solely online for the last 10 years talking about coaching people, shifting my abilities to actually make a big impact on someone from the very simple things of getting them to choose to eat healthier to then move into bigger things.
movement, of course, drinking water, getting enough sleep, managing their stress, coming up with solutions that actually made sense in their individual world. Now, my first wild success was Dana. This woman, the changes and transformation that she had in her life was incredible. And it she was a a young mother of [clears throat] two kids, and she wanted to be a better mother for her children, but also better for herself.
She was 40 lbs overweight and we were able to not only lose that but she reshaped some of her identity of what she thought and how she felt about who she was and what she did. It was amazing. These shifts in her lifestyle were tremendous. And I am so grateful for Dana allowing me to be able to coach and engage with her on a deeper level than just, hey, eat these type of foods or nutrition, but [snorts] make a really solid impact in her life.
And that's when I absolutely fell in love with coaching and having a deep impact. I've helped athletes, business owners, executives, people facing serious health challenges like cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure, PCOS, chronic stress, one kidney, uh lung challenges, fatty liver, you name it.
I have probably dealt with it on some relationship issues, career issues, all sorts of different things. But the the common takeaway here is that every single person had a desire to feel better for themselves and the people around them. And that's where I met them. Hey, what's one thing you can do that can better yourself today to be around longer for tomorrow? Take care of yourself. Have the energy.
And and that's what has fostered these last 10 years or so exclusively being uh online coaching. And that's what brings me to even this podcast. I said, "Hey, Brian, let's get your head out of the sand here. pop up and start sharing some of the valuable experiences that you had with thousands of people and then you can make an even bigger impact than just what I'm doing which again I've worked with thousands of people but it'd be awesome to work with even more now who am I outside of this I've talked about a
little bit but husband of almost 20 years to this date I love my wife Amber we are high school sweethearts I met her back when I was 11 pretty child. And we have four kids together. Levi 16, Everett going to be 15 here in about two weeks. Maxwell is 12 and Emiline is 10. Three boys and a girl. I am blessed beyond belief to be self-employed, to have a wonderful, amazing family, be able to provide and support them.
That is a strong, strong core [snorts] component of who Brian is. [clears throat] He is a provider and will do anything that he has to to make things work for his family. Now, outside of just the the craziness of four kids, and if you have even one kid, you totally get it. But two, three, four, or I've come across some clients of five, God love them for that, right? And so, what else do we do? We are world travelers. We've done all 50 states.
Our goal is to sleep in every state with the family. We've slept through 49. We've been to 50. Idaho is the one that got away from us. We planted feet in Idaho, but we didn't spend the night. We spent a night in every single other state. We actually have this this this old framed in garage sailed map that it's huge.
It's it's probably about 4 foot by six foot, something like that. Maybe maybe not that big, but maybe say 3 foot by 5 foot or four something like that. It's it's a pretty large map and we have pins in all the states of where we slept the first time and then subsequent nights as well. This thing looks like a pink cushion.
Last counted, it was almost 90 pins inside the states and Puerto Rico as well. And now we're on to all seven continents. Maxwell blew our minds coming back from the monument of the Utah license plate and arches monument in in Moab in in there in Utah. He came out of there. We were walking back said, "How about we do all seven continents?" I said, "Shoot.
" I I I looked back. I was just blown away. Oh my gosh, this could totally work. I'm I can't imagine the going to things like Antarctica, places there, or just seeing so many different things. I could go on and on for episodes about different places we've been. We've had the blessings of being in London, Costa Rica, Finland, Kenya, Egypt.
Uh where else? We just got back from Canada on a holiday weekend. We're going to Peru, Machu Picchu in April. We're gonna Japan is there. We've got some Thailand area, Australia, and yeah, those are the some of the other places that we need to check. Gopsagos. That one our family is definitely looking forward to looking.
It'll be a lot of fun there. Now, let's get into the oneliners. I hope that that gives you a little bit better idea who Brian is, what he's passionate about, just hearing some of the stories and the energy that I have for the clients that I engage with. All right? And maybe you I could help change your life just from even listening to this.
Or reach out and let's talk, have a conversation, see how it can impact your life. Because people helping people. My underlying goal is help the person leave the other person in a better spot than when I found them. Right? Treat others as you would like to be treated and help people live better lives. All right.
Into it now. Number one, PPA. Plan, prepare, act. This is the heartbeat of everything I teach. If you're not planned, you can't be prepared. and then you can't act on it. Those are all three really big challenges that end up getting thrown in your face if you aren't careful. I don't I don't go off of willpower, motivation, none of that stuff.
We So many guys will plan every area of their life out, but they won't even know what they're going to eat in a day. And not that you have to necessarily know what to eat, but you need to know how to be resourceful to be able to pick the right foods at the right times in the right amounts to be successful and eat healthy meals and keep the energy to keep up with your all the demands that you have.
Right now, often times perfect intentions will always go astray. And if someone is planned out, they will be at least have a process that they can even pivot if necessary. Say a plan B. So plan then prepare. If you're more prepared, I think life in and of itself is about preparation. Even getting this video podcast, I prepared about an hour before setting it up, testing it.
Uh, I've got a new little play toy here for my voice. So hopefully sound more like a radio voice, a bocastaster focus rate device that plugs into my computer to give my microphone a little more boost or gain they call it and give that nice rich voice sound. And preparation and planning is is again going back to the key of what is hopefully making this podcast a success as well. I have a structure.
I have a framework. I've listened to other podcast professionals. I've listened to so many different episodes on Apple Spotify or even YouTube shows on the podcast and see what they're doing and observe. And this is my creation and uh approach on how I do this right now as it evolves into something bigger as I grow personally and professionally.
We have to prepare. Then if you're planned and you're prepared, it's easy to act on it. You can just follow through. And if you get those first two out of the way, it's so much easier to just do the thing that you need to do to be successful. And then challenges are but steps that you have to step over, a rock instead of a boulder that you can just move out of the way because life will always give you challenges.
The next one is focus on overall calories. This is the first level. If you go back to episode five, I talk about the calories of the exercise pyramid and that is the very first part of this whole process. We go calories first and then the macros of protein, carbs, and fats. That's macronutrients. Then it goes into micros.
But if you you could all be macro down and have the best macro ratios, but if you're eating too many calories, you're eating too much clean, healthy food, you're still going to have challenges managing your body weight and your energy. We don't need crazy rules, fads, all these things. It's science, people. It's science. You need a certain amount of energy every day to give you the results that you want for yourself.
And once you manage your calories, everything else gets so much easier because you don't have to have perfect macros. You don't have to have perfect clean eating. You just don't. I have thousands and thousands of examples of proof over the years that people eat subtly different, but they follow the general premises of the things that we've talked about in all the episodes of five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 11 for the nutrition pyramid.
And there's constant reminders throughout these episodes of what the core main things that they are. And even this episode is reminding you what is most important. The next one, third, is going to be the reading nutrition labels. If you really want to know what is in the food you're eating, you flip it over.
You don't look at the front of it that is marketed to you. It's shiny. It's flashy. It has big words on it that make you feel happy and good inside when you pick it up and you go to buy it. But oftent times I use this example so many times when we pick up two items at the grocery store item on the left could be the the branded food item that says it's super healthy.
it's this that and the other and you've just always bought that because you have it's given the appearance that is healthier. You've assumed that it's the healthier version. But product B over here has a better nutrition label, has [clears throat] better label on it. It has better calories for the portion, better macros, less sugar, whatever to get you more successful there.
If you want help looking at nutrition labels, I will have an episode on that. I haven't I haven't done nutrition labels specifically just yet, but it's coming. All right, but you can even email me brianbrian.com or comment and ask a question about is this food product good or not? Share a nutrition label at Coach Brian Pirano on my Instagram.
great places to engage with me to learn more. And number four is movement is energy. No matter how tired you ever are, if you get up and start moving your body, you will get the blood flowing, the heart rate goes up, your endorphins go. Movement is energy. Mother nature's best remedy for a depressive low energetic state is movement.
is sunshine, is fresh air, is getting oxygen in to your lungs to move your body and your blood around. And people, we were meant to move. That's just part of our DNA. Our our literally thousands and thousands of years that we've been in existence, we've had to move to even just stay alive. It's only in the last 100 years or so that we have been blessed beyond measure to have a convenience driven life.
Movement is energy. Can't tell you how many times 10,000 steps a day has won the day to help you move and burn enough calories to be healthy and productive. And it gets you functional and fit. And of course, we can do exercise on a deeper level, but again, just walking and spending time with people is going to be it.
And again, being in December, we actually have a snow day today. I'm going to be moving with my kids out building snowmen and maybe trying to do a sled ride experience with at least my younger two, but I have to figure out if there's enough snow on the ground to be able to do that. It's close. I'm not sure if there is or isn't. Now standing is better than sitting and then moving and walking is better than just standing.
Say if you have a walking pad and then running if you can or getting your heart rate up. We do need to do that a little bit. Uh the next one is I already referenced it but 10k a day. I think that outlines what a healthy person is. A healthy active fit individual moves 10,000 steps on a regular everyday basa basis. It helps you just thrive and and be successful in everyday life.
It's will be a huge weight maintenance plan for you as well. You will not struggle with maintaining body weight if you keep that level of activity up. Does it always have to be consistent every day? No. It could be just average across the board based on what life has for you.
But 10k steps is so important and has been an undertone of the coaching that I've had people do. I like moving and I'm in a a better mood and better energy because of it. Drink plenty of water. Your body is a sponge. Don't be Spongebob in the Sahara. Do not walk around dehydrated. You will eat more calories. You will feel worse. You will be run down.
You'll be more likely to be sick, be injured, get hurt, have muscle pain, aches, cramps because you're just not hydrated enough. Okay? You don't want beef jerky in your ankle and calf muscle as you're trying to go for a walk or a jog. It's not going to work. Women, 80 ounces or more ideal. Men, 100 ounces or more.
And it doesn't have to just be plain water. We can flavor it. We can put sparkles in it. In fact, I have my coffee, which you might, if you're watching this video, you see me sipping it. But then here's my 40 ounces of water. And I actually have some salted water in here. We have a soda stream. And I pour it into the water. Here we go.
As I take a sip, I'm talking a lot, so I need to wet my whistle in a sense. But the seltered bubbliness carbonation makes it so much more enjoyable. I have less cravings. I less fatigue, less irritability, better bowel movements. I do pee a lot. I do drink more than 100 ounces. I I'll usually consume at least a gallon most days as one to keep make sure my body is in peak performance as best as I can cuz it's a free technique and and opportunity for you to be at your best.
Why not take it? [snorts] The next one, practice portion control around proteins, fibrous carbs, and starchy carbs. I love the plate method. If we take the plate, we have a quarter of the plate being a protein, quarter of the plate being a starch, and half the plate being vegetables. That's a really simplified way to do it.
Think of a tennis ball. A tennis ball size worth of a protein, tennis ball size worth of a starch carb, and three tennis ball size worth of a vegetable. If that's the typical plate that you eat, you will be very well off. Maybe for bigger guys, more active guys, we might have to get another tennis ball in the protein for sure in the protein.
We could always do tennis ball, two tennis ball size worth of protein in a sense to get adequate protein, but we might need a little more carbs as well. We could add another tennis ball, so to speak, for that. And I reference tennis balls because everyone knows what a tennis ball looks like, and it's really easy to see that visually on your plate.
Oh, this is a a roughly appropriate amount of food. And we want to make sure that it is balanced and it is portioned and it's roughly say 500 calories, maybe 600 at a time. You could do three or possibly four meals a day. And if you eat like that, you will never have body weight issues. You don't have to guess.
You don't have to be confused. You don't have to try whatever weird approach around food. Two shakes and a sensible dinner. you just eat those three squares a day, you'll be fine. Which then leads us into the the next two that piggyback on each other. But eat until you're full enough. Okay, 80%.
It usually takes 20 minutes for you to start feeling full. And once we can say push past that that that time frame and eat slowly enough and just be patient with hunger and not just gobble up every single bite in your mouth, then you will be that much better off. You will be content eating two, three, 400 less calories at a meal. You won't be stuffed. You won't be uncomfortable.
Your pants will fit. And you won't have that crashing energy because of just carb coma, the digestion process. Your body moves, shuttles blood into your belly to help with the digestion. And the more calories that are there, the slower that process will be. And unfortunately, guys get a lot out of eating as much food as possible, but if it's impacting your digestion, say acid reflux or your bowel movements, your plumbing is a little too fast or slow, if it's giving you bad energy throughout the day, if it's resulting in a chronic illness, a
digestive is issue like Crohn's or indigestion or getting into diabetes, cholesterol, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, then you're not winning any games by eating too much food. You're dying faster than you would like. The next one that I love to see, this will remind people, especially on the timing of food, is eat enough food until the next time you eat again.
It's so easy and critically important to to live and die by that. And just plan it out in your day. Hey, I'm going to be gone for 5 hours. If I eat a balanced meal before I leave, protein and vegetable heavy, I will have no problem getting through five hours without wanting to be famish or be craving something and fall victim to a fast food run that not only costs 10 plus dollars for junk food, but you get 1500 plus calories and it throws you off track.
eat enough food until the next time you're going to eat again. And that will help you plot and plan out your day. So, so well, eat clean and simple whenever it's the easiest. If you're by yourself, your meal should be balanced. It should be protein and vegetable heavy. Why? Because you have utmost control of that situation.
And it should be easiest to allow for the flexibility and moderation for balance at other meals in the day. So so so important to be able to manage that and have success that you have some wiggle room, extra calories at this or be able to enjoy a meal with a loved one. Those are it's so critically important to have that level of enjoyment there.
Be on point when it makes the most sense. I love this one. Your imagination and creativity are the biggest limiters to the meals you eat. If your food is boring, you're going to be bored of it. You're going to be eating the same foods on a regular basis. We just want to make sure that we spice them up in a sense.
A good example, say chicken. You're gonna have chicken a lot. Why? Because it's a high protein source. It's low fat and it fills you up for a long time. It's a good thing. Well, if you just have cold boiled chicken all the time, good luck. You're not going to win. You will crash and burn on eating chicken too much.
But if you get chicken in a variety of different ways, think of garlic chicken, but barbecue sauce chicken, BBQ with a low calorie barbecue, lemon pepper, salt and pepper, we can do dill, we can do tine, we can do there's so herb, Italian herb. There's so many different ways. Put it with marinara, salsa.
So many different ways to make chicken a little more lively and tasty so that you don't get tired and fatigued of it. If you are working with me, I'm going to force you to make sure that your food is good, enjoyable, and you can then be successful with the food. All right, we can also look at different cooking tools, different textures.
Maybe putting a little bit of po on your chicken breast might make it just different enough that it's even easier to eat more chicken, which is the win. We just have a little less starchy carb or fat on that meal, a little more vegetables, and you'll be plenty content, and you'll be really excited that you're able to control your food.
Remember, cooking is just a skill set. If you don't know how to cook, you can learn. Emerald Legosi, Gordon Ramsay, they weren't professional chefs until they were. But how many meals do you think they cooked? How many failed, not so good meals do you think they've made that didn't pass the test until they actually knew what they were doing? Next up is swap one alcohol beverage for serving of starchy carbs. So simple.
you going out to steakhouse, have a protein, double vegetable and the tall boy, you'll be successful. You you're trading those starchy carbs for the alcohol calories and you will have a reasonable plate, ideally 1,000 or less calories if you're going out to eat. If you're going over 1,000 calories, you better have it in your calorie budget.
And again, episode five goes over calories. Episode 28 goes over alcohol. So, you can listen to those and check back into that. uh of my detailed assessment of alcohol, how to use it, best, when and when not to, all the things to stay on track when it comes to drinking. Best choice when eating out is protein double vegetable.
This is another one. Okay, eat protein double vegetable when you go out. You will cut out 300 to 500 calories very quickly. If you could ask for no oil or butter, that'll cut down another 100 to 300 calories that are hidden that you do not even see on the plate. Okay. Protein double vegetables, no oil, no butter for the win.
If you get sauces, put them on the side. You could dip and stab and still have a wonderfully tasting meal and it fall right in line with what's important to you. >> [clears throat] >> Then we have the last one. The last oneliner I like to say is did you enjoy yourself episode 11 really all about lifestyle jumps all over this one? The holidays literally Thanksgiving was this last week and so many clients I just asked them did you enjoy yourself? Were your expectations in alignment with the type of experience that you had? And make sure that it was whether you ate all the
food or you you controlled yourself. Whatever your experience you wanted it to be was what we wanted that to be on the other end. So say Monday, Tuesday, Cyber Monday, we want to be, oh, I had a really good time. Because there's so many other things about that experience that go beyond just stuffing your mouth full of food and feeling bloated, just just overindulged and just basically the experience is ruined the next day.
So, did you enjoy yourself? There's the entertainment factor, the relationship factor, the just being in the moment and not falling asleep on the couch. Okay. I hope that you understand these. They're so simple because I've explained them so many thousands of times. And it all goes into more intentionality, living with a purpose, eating with a purpose, enjoying life, and pursuing progress on all at the same time.
And that's the entire point of my work that I do with anyone. Enjoy your life experience, get the results that you need, and be wildly successful. All right, let's move into the fast five and we'll start to wrap up here in this episode. It's been 48 minutes. Thanks so much for hanging on here and we'll be done in a little bit.
The fast five are supposed to be quick. Question one, what is one thing your clients might be surprised to know about you? The obvious. I eat pie, cake, ice cream, beer, pizza. I might even do it all in the same day. But I still abide by the rules of thermodynamics of the energy balance of my body. I make sure that I eat an appropriate amount of calories regardless of what those calories are.
And again, going back to some of these rules, I eat when I need to to give us give me the results that I'm after. And I'm a master manipulator around my calories and I can manage it no problem. Question number two, what recent moment with your kids reminds you of why your health matters? I'm going to go this weekend.
We are in Nigara Falls for two nights in Toronto for a night. We went to Canada Wonderland. I got 22,000 steps the first day in Niagara Falls. I need to keep up with my family. We are an active on the-go group of people here. We I walked to the balls three different times from the Hilton up on the hillside.
We toured around the place, did all the fun things. They had these awesome light up seesaws. If she happened to be on my socials, you might have saw me gliding up and down with my kids. I'd have Maxwell Mline on the other side for me with my big butt. But keeping up with my family is why my health matters.
and starting to get in shape for our Peru trip here in spring break. Machu Picchu at elevation. I want to be able to effortlessly climb the mountains as as much as you can living in northeast Ohio. This is Summit County, which is the highest point in in in the whole Ohio, but I think it's only 100 feet above sea level or something. It's not that high.
Maybe more, but you get my point. It's not a mountain. All right, next up is what meal could you eat every day and never tire of it? I've talked about this a lot. I love my cottage cheese mixtures with some protein powder, some berries, a little bit of cereal, some chia seed. That is a go-to. Takes under five minutes to prepare and usually even eat.
Put a little bit of Cool Whip on there and bam, I got 50 plus grams of protein, a little bit of starch, a little bit of healthy fat, tons of fiber, probably 10 plus grams of fiber in that combo. And I'm off to the races to be fooled, fueled, full and fueled for the next four or five plus hours if I need to, depending on the size of the food serving that I give myself.
Number four, what lesson about health did you learn the hard way? Uh, I would say it wasn't necessarily a a hard way. It was a long way. Nutrition. If you want to know how I understand nutrition so well. I spent four years tracking food, looking at nutrition labels, weighing and measuring. But then I spent even longer, 20 years talking to people about it every single day, helping them problem solve, troubleshoot how to manage it best.
And lastly, number five, what personal routine do you rely on when life gets busy? These days, it's just take a break, take a breath, take a moment of silence, and just take a just breathe in. Hold it because the holding is important. And then exhale. Attention. Bring down the levels of whatever is going on, the craziness, because life gets crazy with four kids, with being self-employed, with having many clients that I'm serving and just managing bills in life like every single other person here, [snorts] the ongoings of our
climate and and all that stuff. But I think that's the the one thing that I do. And then the second one is exercise. I do like working out and it is a huge stress relief for me as well and I think you should do it too. In closing, episode 30 means a lot. I hope that it means a lot to you as well if you've been on the journey here listening to all these.
Hope you get so much out of it and you have practical real inspiration, ideas, encouragement, energy, sciencebacked information to apply and remind you that it's a 1% better game. that small steps repeated consistently that move you in the direction that you want to go is going to create the outcome you're after. That is true for this show and is true for your health.
Most popular phrases are not complicated. They're honest. They're easy and individualized for you because you're going to think through what it looks like and feels like. Build them in your life. have these things start moving you in the right direction. And if you want help applying these habits, just reach out. There's structure, there's support, there's goal is a 100 day challenge, lose 20 plus pounds, be successful, and there's a money back guarantee.
You're going to get your life back. The call torise.com. Thanks for listening. Thanks for showing up. And thank you for always being part of Driven for Health and this journey to be a stronger, healthier, happier man for you yourself and those around you. See you in the next