What to Order at Smoothie King, Jamba, and Robeks for Fat Loss - 160

Coach Brian Parana (0:17.518) Tropical Smoothie's Mocha Madness is about 24 ounces and 810 calories. Kabam! You didn't hear or see that one coming, right? Huge amount of calories. And 185 carbs. 163 grams of total sugar. 185 grams of carbs and Coach Brian Parana (0:42.706) Of that 163 grams of sugar, I just wanted to reiterate it, it's like 95% sugar. That's about two and a half times the total sugar in a 20-ounce Coke. And that's about two cans worth of cola, of coke, of soda. Wow, that is a big whammy against you when you're walking in thinking you're going to have a health smoothie, and it just doesn't go that way. Coach Brian Parana (1:10.296) Nobody walks up to the counter thinking they're about to drink more sugar than one and a half Cokes in a coffee smoothie. And it sounds like a pick-me-up, right? Without the workout and not a dessert. But it will lend you to come crashing down later on, and that's a big problem. Smoothie shops today, a food drink, a real protein shake, a dessert in a cup. Coach Brian Parana (1:38.009) However, you want to think about it, we're going to get to the middle of what is actually on these restaurant menus and how to actually make sure that you're definitely looking at a nutrition label to get to the outcome that you want, which is to not walk out there with basically 30, 40% of your calories gone in a drink that has almost as many carbs as most of you listening probably should be eating in a full day. Welcome back to Driven for Health. Coach Brian Parana (2:7.212) I'm Coach Brian Parana, episode 160. Holy cow. This is our, I think our 15th. We start at 145. I hope that everyone listening in is enjoying the What to Order series. There's so many different restaurants out there. People keep emailing me about what other ones I should do episodes on because they've been enjoying it. And I'm thankful, grateful. So keep listening, keep emailing me. And if you want to get the skinny on this, just jump to the show notes, grab the Coach Brian Parana (2:36.448) Eating on the go guide. The link is there. It has over 25 pages. Really simple to easy understand. Table contents goes fast food, fast casual, fine dining on the go at the gas station in an airport. That was episode the the last two at one fifty. Let me look here real quick because I've been doing them so fast, almost don't remember. Coach Brian Parana (3:4.024) 156 is the gas station. 157 is the airport. So really important ones to manage and check out, especially if you travel a lot for work or for anything else in your life. Today we're gonna hit on three things. How to tell what type of smoothie you're ordering, what a big hit of carbs like that, the 185 carbs will do to your blood sugar. Coach Brian Parana (3:30.126) I wanted to throw that in there, your hunger, your energy level a few hours later, and exactly what to say at the counter at Smoothie King, Jamba Juice, Robeks, Tropical Smoothie, any place that has smoothie type things that they do. I think we're even going to do açaí bowls too. So you're in for a treat. Every smoothie shop sells three different products out of the same size cup. A fruit heavy drink that almost has no protein in it. Coach Brian Parana (4:0.564) A protein shake that could work as a meal replacement, and a high calorie dessert that is served with a straw that has a spoon on it at the end of it, basically. It's just a crazy amount of calories. So you have to pay attention to what it is that you actually order. Now you don't have to quit smoothies. In fact, I even have a super shake guide that talks about how to make smoothies at home. Again, email me Brian at brianparana.com and I'll send it Coach Brian Parana (4:29.164) Yeah, brian@brianparana.com. I'll send it over to you straight away and you'll get my Super Shake guide too on how to build healthy smoothies at home for not nine dollars a a pop. Well, not a pop, you know what I mean, but yeah, like kind of like a pop because it has so many sugar in it, and we don't want to do that. So we have to figure out what how to spot these things and what you're paying attention to. And it doesn't matter if at their different chain restaurants or not. Now what Coach Brian Parana (4:59.106) Did I used to do with these smoothie point joints and stuff? Well, I just never went to them because it was just too expensive. I was just going to do it on my own, honestly. I that ends up being the easiest way that I've always done it. Ends up doing a that my super shake guide has you start with the a protein. So think of it like we've got Coach Brian Parana (5:28.522) A a dairy based protein usually. Coach Brian Parana (5:32.719) Could be Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, a protein powder of sort. Then we can add fruit, of course, one serving, not five. We can then add the next part being some vegetable. I've tried all sorts of different things in the vegetable category to make it really enjoyable. I've frozen broccoli, spinach, kale. I've enjoyed those colored peppers, carrots. Coach Brian Parana (6:2.294) I've enjoyed those. I don't quite enjoy peas. I've done peas, those are okay. Frozen peas. And then green peppers, no thank you. Cucumber, no thank you. So I've tried a bunch of them, but that ends up being my shake with a a little like a cup of a milk. Like I like oat milk preferably, or almond milk has the least amount of calories. That could be a big win. And then you fill the rest with water. And if you're using a frozen fruit, that acts as the ice and it blends up, or the frozen vegetable. Coach Brian Parana (6:30.188) And you have yourself like a four or five hundred calorie Vitamix full drink that will keep you running and gunning with 40-50 grams of protein, 40 to 60 carbs, and 10 grams of fat, something like that. So it's super duper healthy and can really keep you on track. That's why I just don't end up doing the shakes because I'm not interested in paying nine dollars for a Jamba Juice monster sugar load. All right, so let's go through start at Smoothie King. Coach Brian Parana (6:59.150) Because it serves the split the the what each of these type of smoothies that we have on the menu. So the Hulk strawberry, which runs about 820 calories. It has 134 carbs, so not only the 180 is the first one, the Mocha Madness. It has 120 grams of sugar, still a lot. 85 of it is added sugar of some sort. Coach Brian Parana (7:28.160) And then this sits under the Smoothie Kings get fit section. 85 grams of sugar. I don't know if the American Heart Association is going to agree on that one, right? That's more than double the amount of daily limit from men, which is 36. I'll even allow guys to be 50 to 60 if they have other say forms of sugar like fruit. But we don't want to have added sugar, the white stuff in some form, whether it's a syrup or Coach Brian Parana (7:57.983) A sugar, a sweetener of anything like that. So that's the Hulk. Recap the Hulk was 820 calories with 134 grams of carbs. Slim and trim strawberry sits right next to it, and it's about 160 calories, way significantly lower. 28 carbs, 13 sugar, and zero added sugar with 13 grams of protein. Coach Brian Parana (8:26.348) That's a slam dunk there. You can have that and it work out for you. And it's not going to keep you full too long, guys, because it's only 160 calories, but it could hold you over in a pinch. Robeks can run the same type of split here. They have the peanut power at the large contains 1,130 calories. That's 1,130 calories, 129 grams of carbs. Coach Brian Parana (8:53.738) 73 grams of sugar and 46 grams of protein. Still, that's gonna be about double the amount of carbs that you want in any type of serving, unless you got done. Like I just got done biking on my watch there, a three-hour bike ride because I'm preparing for my Akron marathon here in 29 days. Yeah, 28 days, excuse me. I just checked my countdown app that I have on my desktop here. Coach Brian Parana (9:22.848) If I did that, then I could afford to have 130 carbs and seventy-three sugar. But if you're just coming out of a workout, you definitely not burn that many calories. I promise you, and you do not want this to be your protein recovery drink. All right. It's just gonna end up sitting on your stomach more than filling up your muscles to get bigger. So you have to check the total calories first. That will quantify if you should even have it or not. Now there's another one. Coach Brian Parana (9:52.295) At Robeks Mahalo Mango, a medium is 350 calories, more reasonable. It's got 85 grams of carbs, 74 grams of sugar, and two grams of protein. So it's like a mango inside that thing, probably with some other something to sweeten it up and stuff. And so this is a fruit heavy drink, and most fruit and sugar. Coach Brian Parana (10:21.000) are going to have nothing else with say car or just protein and fat, meaning that because when you just have carbs, they're not gonna hold you over very long. So it's lower in calories, but it's the not the right type of calories that we're looking for for you to eat. Coach Brian Parana (10:42.598) Now, Jamba Juice does the same thing, just a different name. It's PB Moo'd. All right. Like moo the cow. A large runs about 965 calories. About 150 carbs. 123 grams of sugar. Holy moly, that is a lot of sugar for the carbs that are in there. 31 grams of protein. Again, that's just not gonna do it for me. Right? You'd have to do a big Coach Brian Parana (11:12.468) run or a bike or some form of a a workout to make that viable for you, especially with the sugar. In comparison, they have the apple and greens, also a large contains four hundred calories. So that's about sixty percent less roughly calories there. Ninety six carbs, so a lot. Seventy four car grams of sugar, a lot, six grams of protein. So this is basically the the Coach Brian Parana (11:40.597) Apple in greens. The greens they're putting there to disguise it as a health drink, but this is just an awful lot of sugar. Now, for context, an apple is a hundred calories, it has roughly 25 grams of carbs, roughly. So it's like almost four apples in that shake, as an example for you to picture. Would you ever eat four apples in one sitting? Coach Brian Parana (12:10.136) Probably not. And that's why you would think that you wouldn't think that this would have so much in it. And that's why we probably wouldn't want to do this, 'cause it does sound healthy with apple and greens the way it's described there, portrayed, and it might have apples and lots of greens and a an ad picture image of it as well, but that's not gonna share what it is that we need to look for. So words like greens Coach Brian Parana (12:38.828) Wellness, get fit, performance, they're just marketing. Protein, ad type things, they they're just again marketing. Going to Tropical Smoothie, a lighter one that's actually worth its naming, Detox Island Green, which is it's kind of like an odd name, just an FYI. You're you don't need to detox your body. Your body does an amazing job of doing it on its own. Coach Brian Parana (13:7.842) So, any type of detox powder, detox pads that you put on your feet or whatever, or these potions or whatever, you really, really need to look at what is on the ingredients list to make sure that it is even worth the time or the money, especially to use it, because oftentimes it's not worth the money either, and you're just wasting it. Or I'm gonna have this seven day smoothie detox thing. Please don't save your. Coach Brian Parana (13:36.097) 150-200 and get my super shake guide and you'll be healthier and happier, I promise. So this one, Detox Island Green, is 24 ounces, so it's like two cans of pop or soda, however you want to say it. So it's it's a large drink, but it only has 210 calories. That's that's a win, right? Next up is we've got the 53 grams of carbs. Coach Brian Parana (14:5.282) 39 sugar, so it's still carrying a fair amount of sugar. Remember, this is more than American Heart Association would recommend for a whole day. And six grams of fiber with four grams of protein. So it's still a carb heavy drink, but it's only 200 calories. So this you could make it work. It's one of the smoothies on the menu that is made without turbinado sugar, and every other smoothie gets it by default. Coach Brian Parana (14:33.622) It's a lighter choice with real fiber. And yeah, it's light on the protein. You could add a protein injection or a boost or whatever they call it at that to get a say 20 to 30 grams of protein added to that. And that could actually be a win for this to balance it out a little bit better. So we went through a couple chains, six drinks, and you can start to see the pattern of you have to look at what. Coach Brian Parana (15:2.828) The substance is, even what its name is. Is it a marketing name? Is it not? Is it a dessert? Or is this something that can actually do your body good and not throw you off? I wanted to also incorporate talking about blood sugar, hunger, and energy into this conversation, since there's such a massive amount of carbs and people need to know this stuff. Coach Brian Parana (15:30.168) Total carbs matter more here than total sugar alone. Because carbs over they cover your sugar and the starch together. So it's the combination of how much sugar is in this thing and how much other like starchy carb components are there. And that's what your body has to process after you drink it. The CDC, that national branch. Coach Brian Parana (15:57.151) Uses 15 grams of carbs as one serving size, and it's a teaching tool for diabetics to help plan meals. So 15 grams. All right, we want to pay attention to that as a unit of carbohydrates. It's not a limit, but it's just a unit. So if you're a diabetic and you're following this process, you can say, all right, I have three units or forty-five grams of carbs allotted in this one meal. Coach Brian Parana (16:23.502) So, useful way to think about this using this as a measuring tool. The Hulk strawberry runs about nine servings. The peanut power runs about nine servings. The PB Moo'd runs closer to 10. Mocha madness is closer to 12. Now, a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce runs only about four to five. So there's a good comparison. Again, remember four times. Coach Brian Parana (16:52.514) 15 would be 60 carbs, whereas four times 10, or excuse me, 15 times 10 is 150 carbs. So that's why those are madness. It's just crazy. So the comparison that shows on the scale, we have to pay attention here. Doctors test how the body handles sugar with a glucose tolerance test. The patient will drink 75 grams of pure glucose, basically sugar. Coach Brian Parana (17:22.698) On an empty stomach, then checks the blood sugar two hours later. Several of these smoothies carry more total carbs than that test does. That doesn't mean a smoothie is exactly like a test, but the test uses pure glucose and nothing else. And a smoothie has some fiber, some fat, some protein mixed in, so it won't produce the same exact curve. But the comparison shows is the size of the load of the carbohydrates. Coach Brian Parana (17:52.749) That's really important. So going through this again is doctors would test your blood your fasting blood sugar levels and response with 75 grams. And these ones have basically double the bigger ones. Now people respond differently to the same drink. they have regardless of their health, their fitness level, how much activity they have in a day. Coach Brian Parana (18:16.994) How well they eat in a day, their chronic illnesses if they have any, diabetes, medications, how much fiber you've eaten, how much protein you pair with it. Any and all these things can constitute, and it all affects the change in the results that you experience from these. And I'm not saying that a mocha madness will push your blood sugar to a specific number because we don't know what your body would do. A continuous glucose monitor would. Coach Brian Parana (18:46.166) I actually did one on glucose monitors. Let's see what episode was that? That was episode it was in the 90s, so 91 maybe. Let's reference some of these guys. Put them back, put these things back to work. Yeah, episode 89 was I just got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Episode Coach Brian Parana (19:14.772) 91 was type 2 diabetes and erectile dysfunction. So that that does happen. And episode 98: what a continuous glucose monitor can teach you about your type 2 diabetes. So there you go, some other resources in this podcast for you to check out and reference here. So a continuous glucose monitor is those little dots that you might see on someone's tricep. Coach Brian Parana (19:43.990) As they're walking around this in the summertime. Coach Brian Parana (19:48.655) And what it does, it'll it'll manage your blood sugar levels on a DEXCOM or some sort of a thing on your app, a device that is linked to an app on your phone. There we go. So that'll be the fastest, easiest way to see how sugar does. Now you could totally do this test yourself with just honey or literally sugar water. You could put that much sugar into a little bit of water and dilute it and sip it down and see what happens and watch. Coach Brian Parana (20:18.282) As your body, you can test it to see what happens there. Now, here's a research says about how you feel a couple hours after. In a 2019 study pooled in 31 separate studies and 120 excuse me, 1200 participants. So this is a meta study. This is it takes a meta study takes a lot of studies and then a lot of people, and it looks at all the findings that's important. So it looked at carbs and mood. Coach Brian Parana (20:48.160) It found no positive mood effect from carbs in any of the study. What it did find in the first hour after eating was more fatigue, less alertness compared to people who didn't get the carbs. Meaning the sugar rush that a lot of guys experience isn't just the research. It's literally you feel awful. Why? Because your blood sugar goes up, your body releases insulin. Coach Brian Parana (21:16.268) To then pull that blood sugar back down to normal. And that's the dip in the energy. All right. So we have to be paying attention to that situation here so that you can make sure that you do not eat too much of the stuff because it will have a lasting impact. So that the dip is it's not the same thing as a real blood sugar crash. Your body would be doing something. Coach Brian Parana (21:43.609) Different there, a a true low number would be is under 70. And if you have diabetes, your app and phone will start beeping at you. But you would feel a lot of fatigue, feel foggy, brain fog, stuff like that. it's just like after eating a large meal at a holiday, you just don't feel well, right? You just want to lay on the couch and basically fall asleep, and you're so tired and exhausted from the day-to-day life that you end up falling asleep and passing out, anyways. Coach Brian Parana (22:13.954) Now, a second piece of research, and I'll put these in the show notes. Knowing on hunger specifically, a study published in Nature Metabolism tracked real meals and looked at what happened after a bigger dip in blood sugar following a meal. In the main study of the group, the guys with bigger dips ate their next meal within 24 minutes sooner and ate around 312 more. Coach Brian Parana (22:40.738) Calories across the whole day compared to guys that had a lower dip. So, what does that mean? If you eat a lot of food, then your body and blood sugar will go up and it'll come down and you will get hungrier faster. So you're basically self-sabotaging to the tune of 24 minutes and 312 calories. Now, if you just did that every day and you had 312 more calories a day times seven. Coach Brian Parana (23:9.650) Is gonna be 20 like 2200 calories. That's a lot. A 500 calorie surplus every day is theoretical to a pound of body fat gained. So to give you some perspective. So basically 10 to 12 days, you'd be putting on a pound of fat. So basically, every month you're gonna go up one to two pounds because you keep gorging yourself, having too many calories and and getting too much. So a the Coach Brian Parana (23:38.039) That's really important to understand. This for the study isn't done on smoothies, but you get the gist. You have a huge intake of smoothie and that many carbs and calories, and your body's still gonna fall into that same basic pattern. And it's gonna end up leaving you wanting more food because you self-sabotage with so much food and split sugar spike that it doesn't work for you. Coach Brian Parana (24:4.152) When we put these two pieces together, and here's a real coaching point for you: a drink like this can eat up a big chunk of your daily calorie target, obviously. It'll leave you looking for more food sooner. It will give you less energy and more fatigue. This is just a horrible trade-off. And you end up wanting more calories because you're not full. Your body will process liquid calories faster than food calories. Coach Brian Parana (24:33.910) All right, now for the longer view, long-term view, because a smoothie you have once a month is a different question than having it a couple times a week. So we have to pay attention to the frequency. But even a one-off, this is almost worse than a milkshake or an ice cream cone. Yeah, an ice cream cone, you could get maybe 400 calories and totally fit that into the day. Now for the long-term risk, and even talking about açaí bowls here, too. Coach Brian Parana (25:2.986) A major analysis published in the medical journal BMJ had pulled seventeen long term studies and found that drinking one additional sugar sweetened beverage a day was tied to an eighteen percent greater rate of type two diabetes. Coach Brian Parana (25:24.086) Greater, 18% greater. Okay, that's huge. Just having one sugar sweetened beverage. Adjust for body fat, and the number was still 13% higher, depending on how much body fat you do or don't have. People who drink more of these also tend to carry more weight. Go figure. There is, it's not causality, causation, but this could be an obvious. Coach Brian Parana (25:52.215) Situation when we start to line all these up, there's good reason to be is you drink a high sugary beverage, it spikes your blood sugar level, come crashing down. You want food sooner, you want to eat more, and you end up gaining more weight. So there's some more extra risks that we have to share here, too. The research applies most directly to drinks made with added sugar, the turbinado sweetened kind. And most of the chains use this as a default. It doesn't Coach Brian Parana (26:22.056) hand the same risk number to a whole fruit s smoothie like you wouldn't make at home that doesn't have any added sweetener in it. So we just want to be straight up here about what the research is saying. It says that it's associated with higher risk. It doesn't mean one smoothie gives you diabetes, an occasional smoothie won't either, but a daily 800 calorie hit that's lopsided in crazy amount of carbs and low protein, low fiber, Coach Brian Parana (26:51.362) Is not gonna work for you. Let's touch on açaí bowls here because those are usually sold as well. It's basically a smoothie in a bowl. So we end up falling into the same trap. It's served with a spoon instead of a straw. Smoothie Kings açaí cocoa haze bowl has about 630 calories, 125 grams of straw. Coach Brian Parana (27:20.526) Carbs, sixty-three grams of sugar and four grams of protein. So it is lopsided. in your head, just want to throw this out here before we keep throwing out more numbers, but an açaí bowl is probably going to have at least 500 calories in it, unless you made it. Just for simple math. All right. Jamba juice, Jamba's açaí primo bowl runs about five ten, a hundred grams of carbs, sixty-five sugar, and eight grams of protein. This isn't Coach Brian Parana (27:50.191) Good thing. The base is already sweetened. Then you add granola, honey, the agave drizzle, a scoop of nut butter, dried fruit, and all on top. And this is what really adds a significant amount of impact to the calorie multipliers here. So the whole bowl can land between 600 and 800 calories, depending on how much topping is in it. So they add up. Coach Brian Parana (28:19.544) quickly. You could even just think of it like this. Every topping is going to add minimum 50 calories, but closer to 75 to 100. Say granola. A quarter cup of granola is basically a hundred calories. It's a lot. It's like 80 to 100 calories. Look at most granolas and you'll be shocked. So we want to make sure that you are paying attention to these different things. I just want to make you aware of that you may not have known Coach Brian Parana (28:49.034) in a past. The underlying rule is look at the nutrition facts on the website. Most of the chains will have these things on their website, easily searchable by Google or even AI, to give you at least an approximate amount of what is in there. Then we would always want to pick the lowest calorie one and maybe add a protein scoop to it, but also you're going to pay eight dollars for that too. And it's just not worth it. Coach Brian Parana (29:18.008) 300 calorie smoothie for $9, I just don't think, with 20 grams of protein. Just not the best move there. All right. So how do we arrive at the best type of smoothie from these places? We're gonna pick the smallest practical size. Smaller cup means that we don't have a portion issue, right? We're not having thousand calories in a small cup. We're gonna go with no turbinado. Coach Brian Parana (29:47.691) No sweetener, no type of things that are in there by default. You're gonna check the total calories, carbs, and sugars before you order so that you make sure that you don't oops, I didn't realize this is what was going on here. Number four is replacing a meal with what looks like a 20 gram boost of protein. Yeah, we can add that to be helpful, like the strawberry. Coach Brian Parana (30:16.794) One that we said earlier that had about 210 calories. We could add a scoop of protein and make it like 300, 350, and that's reasonable. And watch for the extras. Any type of sherbet, frozen yogurt, any nuts, nut butters, sweeteners, coconut, anything, granola that gets added to the top of things will multiply your calories. All right. Coach Brian Parana (30:44.972) So we went over a large number of drinks that you should most likely stay away from. At the very least, I would just send you next door to the gas station to have a Core Power, strawberry, [unclear] shake, and a piece of fruit, banana, or an apple. That will give you about 320 calories with roughly 30-ish grams of protein on average, and then maybe 40 carbs. Coach Brian Parana (31:14.424) completely reasonable have a couple grams of fiber as well. And this is way cheaper too. And keep you on track. So check if it's a fruit in a cup, an actual protein con shake thing that will help fill you up, or it's dessert in a cup like a w this would be worse than a milkshake even, because the milk would have protein in it. And so Coach Brian Parana (31:43.587) You just would have l and fat. So there'd be less calories and a little more balance there from a milkshake compared to a fruit smoothie. So the challenge is check the nutrition label next time you go in there. If you need help, we've got the eating on the go guide, something super helpful. It's go.brianparana.com/eatingonthego. All one word. Check the show notes for that and grab it. Then if guys need help. Coach Brian Parana (32:12.758) With actually implementing this stuff, that's what the call to rises. Today I just posted on my stories. I had a guy's down from 267 to 260 here in the last seven to ten days since starting. He made a decision. We have a clear plan, and he's been executing on it in the last four to five days. And he already feels better. Go figure. I I keep posting in my stories on my Instagram and and on my socials. Coach Brian Parana (32:39.618) That you can see these updates regularly. So follow me at Coach Brian Parana and see what the magic is. The magic is I actually get you to do the things eating the right foods at the right times and the right amounts, working out to help build muscle, burn fat, and doing it in a way that matches your lifestyle, regardless of how busy you are, how much you travel and how many kids you have, whatever your life is. I've had thousands of clients, so I it's very rare that I come across someone that I haven't seen their situation before in the past. Coach Brian Parana (33:10.094) All right, pass this on. I'd love for you to share this to someone else. Leave a review if it makes sense. I love reading them and and keep encourages me to keep going for these. That's it for this episode of Driven for Health. Train hard, eat smart, and I'll catch you in the next one.