What to Order at Panera Bread for Fat Loss (Men Over 40) - 147

Coach Brian Parana (0:1.538) Panera bread. Most people think it's healthy. Panera's Mac and Cheese Bread Bowl runs 1140 calories and carries almost 2500 milligrams of sodium. That's like a full daily limit in one bowl for your sodium, especially. Most of the time it's recommended by the everything is it's 2000 milligrams in a day. Coach Brian Parana (0:44.312) Panera is known to be healthy. Think about it. If I say the word Panera, what's the first word that you would think? Is it a healthy restaurant? Well, let's throw this out there for you. Panera's mac and cheese bread bowl has 1,140 calories per their menu and almost 2,500 milligrams of sodium. That's over your full day's limit of sodium that's recommended for Americans. As before you Coach Brian Parana (1:12.502) Drink the drink and eat the cookie. That is again coming straight from the nutrition guide itself. Here's what makes Panera different from every other restaurant in this series. Nobody thinks they're taking a risk here when it comes to healthy options. Panera has built a reputation on purpose. It's marketing one-on-one. It's genius actually. Coach Brian Parana (1:39.981) The green signs, wood counters, the word fresh is on every single sign that you walk past. None of that tells you actually what's inside the food. And most people and guys especially definitely don't look at the menu or any calories that are listed anywhere that backs this up for the brand. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly which orders back up being actually fresh and healthy and which ones don't. Coach Brian Parana (2:9.370) This will be across the whole menu. Breakfast, the bakery, soup, salads, sandwiches, all of it. This is Driven for Health, episode 147. I'm Coach Brian Parana. I hope that you're enjoying the series so far. I'm gonna keep making it better and better. I've got at least 15 restaurants that are gonna be coming to you back to back to back. And let's get to it. Panera is a safe pick for half the office. Coach Brian Parana (2:36.184) People order it on repeat without a second thought. Hey, what do you want for lunch today? I'll have Panera bread. It's the spot that both guys cutting carbs and the guys who can agree on eating something healthier, at least in their own head. It's what almost nobody checks the menu once they've picked a place. It's just like, I'm gonna go with this sandwich, the panini, or whatnot. But here's the challenge. The danger that Panera. Coach Brian Parana (3:4.394) Has is one bad item hiding on the menu? No, it's a lot more. Most of the normal orders are gonna run 700 to 1100 calories. This is something I'm going to be sharing a lot. Is that most of the restaurants are going to serve you a thousand plus calories on the plate? Why they want the food to taste good? And if you just basically think about what the food is, it's bread, it's carbs, it's fat. Coach Brian Parana (3:34.347) And that's what makes it taste so good for humans. When it comes to breakfast, the lunch, or the bakery case, that's right next to the register. Panera doesn't hide a single one of their numbers either. It's just you're not paying attention to them. And they do have it in the store and online. We're not talking about anything that's relevant toward exercise or blood panels today. We're just obviously talking about making sure that you Coach Brian Parana (4:3.754) Eat and pick healthy options when you go out to eat. We're gonna open up with a tiered list. It's a popular thing on YouTube. I figured I'd bring it here to the podcast. So very good to not so good. And we'll even share some story about how Panera runs its own business. Let's jump into the tiered list. Let's rank eight real orders, one to ten. Ten meaning right on. Let's get that ordered on repeat. Coach Brian Parana (4:31.798) And one means walk away, look the other direction, do not look back. Every one of these is a real menu item. And we want to rank them so that when you go, you can identify with it's it quality or not. So watch out for the patterns on the misses. What are they calling it? What are the it's the marketing? What are the ingredients actually in there? Usually bread, cheese, sugar. Coach Brian Parana (5:1.474) Which is what ends up being the challenge. So on the top of the list, I already referenced it to the mac and cheese bread bowl. Man, it sounds so good, right? Just mac and cheese bread, tasty, giant serving of food. Why would you not want anything else than that? That is ideal, right? It it hits all the things that humans want to have in their taste buds, is carbs. Coach Brian Parana (5:31.085) Fats and tastiness. The whole bowl again runs just over eleven hundred calories per the menu nutrition guide and it carries 2,500 milligrams of sugar [as spoken — the 2,500 mg figure is sodium, per his own statement at 0:01 and 0:44; treat the word "sugar" here as a slip, not a second claim]. This is the bread roll, isn't even the main event. The mac and cheese comes inside it, and that's what does the most damage. The second layer of this is the actual bowl that adds carbs to it. Now, certainly you could just not. Coach Brian Parana (6:0.544) Eat all of the bowl, but once that bread is soaked in with that delicious goodness of the mac and cheese, why would you not eat it? If you order this twice a week, you spend close to 2300 calories on just two lunches. That's basically one full day's worth of food for most guys at a relatively active lifestyle. And that's maintenance calories. This isn't even all the things that you're eating in those other two days of the other meals. Coach Brian Parana (6:30.446) So and it's wouldn't even be considered what most people think as a cheat meal, right? Most cheat meals are sure this one's pretty tasty, but usually cheat meal is something bigger, more grandiose. And this is just Tuesday or Thursday afternoon and probably got it door-dashed in so you never even left the office and even walk. Now, let's flip it. Eight out of ten, the bacon, egg, cheese on Coach Brian Parana (6:59.956) Artisan Ciabatta. This can run for [unclear — audio reads "70 calories"; at 22:42 he gives this same sandwich as "400 calories, a little bit 70 calories," which sounds like 470. The real figure did not survive the recording — do not publish a calorie number for this item without checking Panera's guide] and 23 grams of protein. Certainly, it still falls a little shy of most recommended amounts of meals, around 40 to 50 grams of protein, but you get the gist. We can certainly make sure that you are able to eat that and make it still work in your day without a big problem. Now, this could be a real breakfast that can start and not end up Coach Brian Parana (7:28.578) Being a pastry wearing a breakfast costume, right? We don't want that. It's got real eggs, real bacon, and the protein number backs up the name. Grab this on your way into the office and you're set until lunch. Again, just don't grab anything else and make sure that next meal is high protein because 23 grams of protein is good, but it's not enough. Coach Brian Parana (7:54.979) Sufficiently to carry you through the rest of the day. We need a lot more food, a lot more calories, and definitely more protein to get to lunch. Now, most breakfast orders on this menu are a dessert wearing disguise. This one is it. We can order it and it could be a reliable go-to when in a pinch. Personally, I'd probably say this more than once, I'm not going to Panera for breakfast. Coach Brian Parana (8:24.256) If anything, coffee, but then I'd probably just go to the last episode here of Driven for Health, which was Starbucks. I'd rather just get a Starbucks Americano with heavy cream or dark roast with some heavy cream. That'd be the way it is. And I'm just gonna eat a home because it's simpler, easier, and I can get my needs met faster. And what about I'm too busy in the morning? Well, we have to plan and prepare for that. If you have a very on the go morning, we have to figure out what could you make this sandwich Coach Brian Parana (8:53.012) On your own. I've had so many guys make breakfast sandwiches that have 50 grams of protein and are significantly less. But so that one can work. Now back to the the miss column, the Chipotle chicken avocado melt. It sounds delicious, right? Who wouldn't want all of that creamy, delicious avocado and cheese? Because that's what usually the melt word means here. And then the Chipotle. Coach Brian Parana (9:20.478) That sure it's got some flavor and seasoning to it, but it might have a lot of extra calories added to it because sauces can do that because it's an easy way to get something to taste good. This sandwich can run a thousand calories and carry 52 grams of fat, mainly because of the avocado, but they're not putting that much avocado, and so there's some cheese on it too. Coach Brian Parana (9:44.591) 2500 milligrams of sodium and basic recommendations are 2,000 for the day, not in one serving at lunch. Again, we're looking at Panera's own guide here. Avocado is the healthiest thing here in this whole and chicken, of course, but the the melted cheese and the [unclear — bread type, sounds like "pacaca"; likely focaccia] bread, the chipotle mayo all give. Coach Brian Parana (10:14.026) A lot of the calories here. And it's almost like the avocado is along for the ride because they're not going to give you that much. Maybe they're going to give you 100 calories worth of avocado, not what in full-size avocado is about 300. If we look at this 52 grams of fat in the sandwich, and we want to do some math, there are 9 calories and a gram of fat, 4 calories and a gram of protein and carbs. So let's do some quick math. Coach Brian Parana (10:42.520) 52 grams of fat times nine is four hundred and sixty-eight calories. That's almost half of the amount of calories in that sandwich. And now you see the big problem here. This ends up being a high fat one. And we told you why. It's the mayo, it's the cheese, it's the avocado, and even the bread might have a little bit of fat depending on how it was made and managed there. So that's something to really Coach Brian Parana (11:12.012) pay attention to. Two words in this one sandwich and the sandwich still outweighs most on the list. It's the marketing that is really tricky here that makes it seem appetizing and like something you should dr you should eat. Coach Brian Parana (11:30.625) Now we're going back down the list of another one out of 10, the broccoli cheddar soup bread bowl. This guy's a whopping 950 calories. Again, right from the nutrition data information on Panera. And that's before the drink or the cookie. Or ideally, I hope you grab the apple and not the cookie and swap it out or the chips. Let's not grab the chips. Chips are gonna be 150 calories that aren't very filling. Cookie probably is 150 to 200 calories. Coach Brian Parana (11:59.577) The apple is going be about a hundred calories. That would be the win. That would carry you and make you feel full. Or at the very least, you take it with you and have that only as an afternoon snack if this was lunchtime. Now, Panera sells it in the soup section, right next to the black bean soup. The two don't belong next to each other. Let's do some math here. We have 950 calories as close to the Coach Brian Parana (12:28.504) 50% of an ordinary guy's whole day calorie needs. And that's gone by lunch. And if you had a 400, 500 calorie breakfast, now we're basically three-quarters of the way done scooting into your dinner meal. And unless it's gonna be a massive chicken salad, in a sense, we're probably gonna go over. And you're gonna have way too many carbs and fats in the day. So here, of course, we can skip the bread bowl. That's gonna carry a heavy amount of weight. Coach Brian Parana (12:58.786) And we can just order the soup in a cup. That will drop the number by hundreds of calories in just one swap. Now we can't give a specific number to just what the bread would account for. It depends on how much you eat. But a bread bowl probably can run you three hundred to four hundred calories in this meal. So it's very challenging. Panera hollowed out the loaf of bread and then filled it with cheese soup. And then they named the whole thing after broccoli and Coach Brian Parana (13:28.098) That one ingredient that's in the bowl, but it does the least amount of work. When you look at how much broccoli is actually in there, it's maybe one cup of broccoli is 30 calories. One cup of broccoli would probably fill the whole bread bowl as well. So think about that. We don't have that much broccoli in there. We have cuts and pieces and and whatnot of the broccoli, and that's about it. So that's on the low end. Again, any cheese-based soup is not or cream-based soup. Coach Brian Parana (13:57.891) You're gonna want to avoid. If we go on to the other side, one of the best things to order is half an avocado sandwich with half an Asian sesame chicken salad. Both half orders together land you at about 400 to maybe 500 calories, depending on portions. Of course, everything's made on site and it might vary by degree. This has 21 grams of protein in the meal, and that's more protein than most guys get in an entire dinner. Coach Brian Parana (14:27.640) Especially when you come to say the bread bowl, the cheese bread bowl. Now this can help. Panera sells this exact combo as it's on its own menu called You Pick Two. The same format works for almost any two halves on the board. We wanna swap in a Caesar half with swap in the Caesar half or the the Napa almond half on a another day to create some variety and it Coach Brian Parana (14:57.516) Doesn't really cost a lot more calories or effort either. And the protein basically stays the same. Quick note here: we need to make sure we pay attention to the dressing. The dressing is probably not a vinaigrette, and with low calories, it ends up being a higher calorie. Most dressings are gonna call it fall between 50 to 100 calories in a serving. Very important to just make sure that you get the right amount of serving. Coach Brian Parana (15:27.470) So we swap out that mac and cheese bowl for this order twice a week, and that's close to 1500 calories. And we get back to the the You Pick Two, and we can be maybe 500 calories there. And that ends up being it. Now, three out of ten, even though this sounds amazing and heavenly, it's the cinnamon roll. Very good, but it's almost 600 calories. As listed, it's 580 from the guide, and that's more than the Fuji apple calories. Coach Brian Parana (15:56.591) Chicken salad itself. And we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. And that's just the pastry that you grabbed on your way to get your coffee. Tastes really good, just like say Cinnabon, but obviously packed with calories, carbs, sugars, fats. If you grab one of these with your coffee three mornings a week, that's 1700 calories spent on a side item, not even a meal that has any sort of protein in it. Coach Brian Parana (16:26.356) It's frosting wearing a bake in a in a bakery case as a disguise. Nobody's grabbed a cinnamon roll for the protein. They've gr got it because it looks amazing. And this reminds me of we were just recently in the Yukon up in Canada on our Alaska trip a couple weeks ago, about two, three weeks ago. We walked into this bakery and because it was just fresh bread made in Carcross in in Canada and Coach Brian Parana (16:55.838) They had these most amazing looking cinnamon rolls, and I really, really wanted one because they look so good. They're big, fluffy, sourdough based, tons of icing just dripping off of it. They were also nine dollars Canadian, so that that definitely squashed that as well, especially when you walk in with a family six. And the reason we were in the bakery in the first place, because we like to do fun, [unclear — sounds like "booty-like"; likely "foodie-like"] experiences when we go places, but Coach Brian Parana (17:24.578) That one just so I remembered. Coach Brian Parana (17:28.258) Alright, here's a tricky one. The tropical green smoothie, 16 ounces. Where do you think I'm going to land this one? Is it gonna be higher up? Is a thumbs up a green thumbs up or not so much? Well, it has 200 calories in it and 41 grams of sugar and one gram of protein. So it's gonna be in the bottom half thumbs down. This is not the one. The word green is. Coach Brian Parana (17:54.273) makes you think that it's healthy for you because that's what it says on the label or the marketing or whatnot or just literally the color. Green means goodness and health, usually. And so there's basically a can of Coke in that thing as far as sugar goes, 'cause a can of Coke is about forty grams of sugar. Not great. So just want to throw that out there. The smoothie is basically the same [unclear] . Coach Brian Parana (18:23.542) And it's we're calling it a health drink. Not good. It's green in color, not in the nutrition facts. We just want to make sure that we don't lean this way. In any place that you ever go, maybe I'll probably do something on Smoothie King or a smoothie shop in the future here as another option because a lot of people perceive smoothies to be healthy or açaí bowl to be healthy. And you do have to check the labels here. Coach Brian Parana (18:53.526) Last one on the list, a four out of ten, is the Fuji apple chicken salad, the full size. Now, unfortunately, there's seven hundred and ten calories in it with the pecan, the candy pecans, the dried apple chips, and the sweet dressing, which turns that bowl of lettuce, which is minimal amount of calories, into a a meal that costs more than the burgers on a a different menu. So a typical burger. Coach Brian Parana (19:20.482) Is gonna run they say Red Robin's or any big one, it's even a Big Mac. It's gonna be about five to seven hundred calories depending on how much meat and toppings go on it. So the salad is almost similar to the the calories of a burger, but it's the the nuts, the apple chips, and the dressing that have probably so so nuts just in FYI, about a quarter cup of nuts is a hundred calories. We have the apple chips so Coach Brian Parana (19:50.729) Those are probably gonna be 50 to 100 calories there, and the dressings minimum gonna be 100, but more like 200. So if you just do simple math for our minimal nuts, the apple chips and the dressing, that's probably upwards of 50% of the calories there or more. Chicken's gonna make up the most there on the other side of those calories, and then the lettuce, which is minimal at best. None of these ingredients really. Coach Brian Parana (20:17.600) are going to show up in the name because they're they're not talking about these things. They want to highlight that that's the Fuji apple chicken salad. The not the apple slices but the apple chips. Those are different as well. They they're just more concentrated sugar balls in a sense because you're hydr you're taking out all the hydration when you d dehydrate chips. Coach Brian Parana (20:49.026) We always, always, always, no matter what, is order the dressing on the side. I'm a big fan of the dip method, dip and stab method of that. That will save lots of calories, but still get a good taste to it. Then we'd skip the candy pecan, just don't order them so you don't have to throw them away and waste food. Let someone else get them if they don't care so much. And that will help cut down on a lot of the calories there. Coach Brian Parana (21:16.566) It has an apple in the name, and also this chicken there, too, but it still costs more than cheeseburger, and that's the biggest challenge with this particular one. The same lesson is on episode 145, which [unclear — "potlay"; he means Chipotle, the subject of episode 145], the menu is what's selling the order and the items, not the ingredients of it, and how much the quantity of it is what decides the actual amount of calories that end up being it. So recapping. Coach Brian Parana (21:44.823) The mac and cheese, any of the bread bowls, not the best thing. The salad you can eat chicken salads you can at least save by decreasing the high calorie ingredients and actually making them less. That actually works better for you then. So that would if you decrease those higher calorie food items, then that becomes a a seven, eight, or nine out of ten option. The tropical green smoothies, unfortunate trick. Coach Brian Parana (22:13.226) The bacon egg cheese sandwich would be one of the top ones. And the Asian sesame combo is a good winner too. So if you pick those, that would be great. So what are we ordering when we go up? Half an avocado sandwich, the chicken avocado, and half the Asian sesame chicken salad with managing the toppings there. You could get out in four to five hundred calories and work to do Coach Brian Parana (22:42.126) 20 to 40 grams of protein, depending on what that particular order is. And again, the bacon egg cheese, Artisan Ciabatta, is a good one to start off with. It's gonna be 400 calories, a little bit 70 calories [as spoken — reads as "470"; see the flag at 6:59, the figure is not reliable from this audio]. It's gonna be a little bit more than say an egg, egg McMuffin, which we'll definitely cover in the McDonald's what to order series as well, because that can be a good option for you. Coach Brian Parana (23:7.832) Honestly, and you can even modify a little bit to add more egg and another slice of Canadian bacon, which is all protein and no fat. It's one of the probably the leanest low fat items on the the the whole menu from McDonald's. Now if you're in line here, we have to make sure that you look and make conscious decisions before you go in. Coach Brian Parana (23:34.603) One other thing I'm always interested in just sharing is back in 2016, Panera ran a twenty-five million dollar ad campaign built around cleaning up its own menu. But Ron [Shaich], the the the founder, put it plainly at the time. He's just like care, ask, demand transparency and cleaner menus. Panera published what it was called the no-no list. They pledged to strip every artificial color, sweetener, and preservative of Coach Brian Parana (24:4.288) Out of the food by the end of that year. Panera was also one of the first chains in the country to post calorie counts on the board. So kudos for being a bit more proactive. Years before a lot of states even required it. So again, kudos. Company o company's own marketing chief said it no one long no nobody wants to compromise on their health. And this is was important. So 2016 on. Coach Brian Parana (24:34.072) Part of this has changed a little bit. In twenty twenty six, Panera announced it's closing its remaining nine in-house fresh dough facilities over the next two years. Bread production is shifting to third party bakeries under the new CEO Paul [Carbone]. The company says quality standards aren't changing, but baking their bread in-house and buying it from the supplier are two different things that we have to consider here. Coach Brian Parana (25:4.262) And even if both loaves taste the same coming out of the oven, what's the quality of it or what's the ingredients that gonna be? So for for years, Baked Fresh in House was part of what customers were paying for and wanted, and that claim is changing as they shift some of their models. And most people aren't even gonna pay attention to this. So the point underneath all these facts is a healthy ingredient list. Coach Brian Parana (25:34.167) with a nine hundred and fifty calorie bread roll are not we have to really pay attention to what it is. And Panera is selling you a food that should taste good or you want it to taste good and that's why you end up buying it, but it might not be in consideration to what your overall health needs are. And I I even had guys in my program that we've talked about, but Ryan is in episode eighty six Coach Brian Parana (26:3.278) Seven, I think. Give me a second here real quick. I can find it. Eighty five. Where is Ryan at? Yeah, eighty seven. Episode eighty six. There we go. Episode eighty six. Ryan talks about how he travels a lot. And we had to figure out how to manage that. Episode eighty six. Just found it. We had to figure out how to he can manage eating on the go a lot while going Coach Brian Parana (26:32.698) to work travel and a simple suggestion and sh big shift was hey instead of going to Panera, let's go to the rest the the grocery store next to it. He'd grab a rotisserie chicken, two peppers, and that would and a piece of fruit and that would hold him over for hours and keep him really on track and cost about the same. But it would be moving toward his health goals and that's really important. So Coach Brian Parana (27:0.042) Wrapping up here, we have to pay attention to the ingredients and the calorie count and how these two add up and the marketing of how it shows up on the menu. The You Pick Two is going to be one of the bigger, better options here, along with that [unclear — "pig cheese bacon sandwich"; he means the bacon egg cheese sandwich] , and that helps a lot. And if you are stopping at Panera, then we have to pay attention to make sure you don't Coach Brian Parana (27:26.484) overeat calories and it really squashes your your day or week in a bunch. Now let's go shoot through some fast five and the questions is I want to keep those in the series and we'll wrap up. Number one is there a soup at Panera worth ordering. And yes the black bean soup real protein with fiber. Again black bean is a carb but it has it's protein fiber packed and it doesn't have a creamy base Coach Brian Parana (27:55.279) or a a brothy base. It has a broth base, so it can help you with cutting down a lot of extra calories. Number two, what happened to the charged lemonade? Well, Panera pulled it in 2024 after there was a lot of issues and lawsuits about how much caffeine was packed into one cup and it's off the menu now. I remember those. It's something that we do have to pay attention to of with caffeine. Coach Brian Parana (28:21.794) Four hundred milligrams in a day is a typical human being's ability to consume and we should be maybe a hundred is a typical cup of coffee. So maybe one hundred, two hundred a day, that makes a lot of sense. Coach Brian Parana (28:35.138) Fast five number three. What's the customization trick worth using on every order here? Of course, we need dressing on the side, dip and stab the food. Make sure you reduce some of the bread. You could literally just take half the bread off of a sandwich and that would probably reduce at least 100 calories. The bread bowl, maybe have a little bit of it, but not eat all of it. That could make a big difference. Coach Brian Parana (29:1.430) Number four, what's the real damage on a bagel with cream cheese? Since it sounds like a light breakfast. Well, a plain bagel, just to let you know, with two tablespoons of cream cheese, can be almost 400 calories, 300 and 400 calories, which is insane. The bagel itself can be 250, and then the cream cheese adds at least 100 calories. Plus, there is about 700 milligrams of sodium inside. Coach Brian Parana (29:29.366) That so that ends up being a challenge to [unclear] a day, and it's primarily carbs and fats, no protein. Number five, Panera markets a clean menu, free of long lists of artificial ingredients. Is that true? Yes, and it's real, it's verified back in 2016 and still stands. So it is a clean, healthier meal with higher quality food, but the calories are still gonna be the same. Coach Brian Parana (29:56.151) Well, closing out, I hope that the You Pick Two is something that you can find yourself doing more now than ever. And if you were to go there and and I hopefully called out a couple of different options that you may have thought about and why they are higher calories. Again, salads with additives. Every additive adds 50 to 100 calories, so it does multiply it as we go. So Coach Brian Parana (30:20.866) Pay attention here. If you want some help, we have the eating on the go guide. It's going to be the prevalent thing to go grab. You can get it at go.brianparana.com backslash eating on the go to download it. And this is the best place to do it. It's a very good resource for you to be able to get high quality information on and some of the literal tips, tricks, and habits that I share. It's very easy to understand. There's a table of contents, and you'll get a lot of value out of it. So Coach Brian Parana (30:50.808) Jump onto that website, it'll be in the show notes as well. So there it is. And again, if you need action to be held accountable, that's what the Call to Rise is. So I got this fancy app or is thecalltorise.com. Is our goal is to lose 20 plus pounds in the next hundred days, even improve blood panels as well in that time frame, and really get men to step up to be that leader in the legacy that they have for themselves. Most importantly, see Coach Brian Parana (31:18.262) The guy that they want to see reflecting back in the mirror, but also for their partner, spouse, kids, and even in the work situation. So super duper important there. That's thecalltorise.com. Check out a number of different episodes. So the last two recent ones were episode 140. Jamie lost 38 pounds in 100 days. Nate at 137. He lost 25 and was able to overcome blood sugar issues and diabetes. So there's that. Coach Brian Parana (31:47.266) Last up, share this with someone. I hope that you get a lot of enjoyment and understanding on how to manage eating at Panera Bread a lot better. Off we go. Have a wonderful one. We'll catch you in the next restaurant coming up. And I'm just gonna leave that one unknown for right now, but it's coming probably tomorrow.