What to Order at Sports Bars for Fat Loss - 164

Coach Brian Parana (0:6.348) Picture the scene. It's super loud. TVs everywhere. You're hanging out with your buddies at the sports bar. A couple come to mind we'll be going over today, but BW3s or Dave & Buster's, or at least local to us, the Winking Lizard. So with this, we end up having a lot of opportunity for you to be able to enjoy yourself and really be excited about Coach Brian Parana (0:35.970) What the heck are you eating there? And when you go in, you're so distracted by all the noise and the talking and the gameplay and the loudspeakers, and no one's paying attention to the menu. And someone's already sliding a nacho tray down the middle of the table. So we're just gonna split it, right? Well, just one appetizer, this particular one, comes in at 2600 calories. Coach Brian Parana (1:3.550) And that is more than you should be eating for anyone listening in in a day. For a lot of guys, that's close to almost one and not one and a half, but close to it in the amount of calories that most should be eating. So if you split it three ways between buddies, that's still 850 calories apiece, and that's before anything else is ordered. And of course, you've eaten a third of the nachos, you're still hungry. Coach Brian Parana (1:31.498) Sports bars have a way of doing this to you. Because they're fun, they're exciting, they're engaging, and they are distracting, right? Lots of energy there. Today we're going to go over three real sports bars, how to manage them, a single framework that works every single time for every one of them. This is Driven for Health. I'm Coach Brian, and this is episode 164. Here's the real problem with sports bar food. Coach Brian Parana (2:0.670) It isn't necessarily -- it's the stack. That's the biggest challenge here. It's the stack of the food that keeps coming down the pipe onto the table. And so you split an appetizer, you have a couple beers, you order some wings, dip them in ranch, eat some fries, and all of a sudden, man, you have eaten a lot of calories at this place. Coach Brian Parana (2:30.136) We have to find a balance here. We want to have fun hanging out, but we have to make sure that we're paying attention to what is getting ordered and how much of it is getting consumed. And you're not just there having it in quotations a good time, but it's gaining weight on your belly. Nobody wants that. Before we're done, we'll have a three-part rule that you'll be able to order at any bar. Right now, football season is upon us. We got NFL. Coach Brian Parana (2:59.682) We've got NCAA college football. And even I was in a sports bar, Panini's the other night, Friday. I didn't drink any beer, but we were doing a pickup order for my son Everett. He had his first cross-country meet. It started at 9:45. And our family loves Panini's. Actually, Panini's has been a family favorite of ours, my wife and I. Coach Brian Parana (3:27.672) We've gone to it since college days. We'd get the bacon, egg, and ham panini on fresh Italian white bread, stacked with fries, with bacon, ham, egg, and some coleslaw. Oh my gosh, this sandwich is amazing. But I probably can guarantee it's well over a thousand calories. So that's a fan favorite, and we do that. Coach Brian Parana (3:57.494) When we're in the area and we're traveling, usually with family, with doing some sort of a sport activity, soccer, swimming, those have been two places that we have gone. And that ends up being the go-to meal there. So let's go through some typical options. We're gonna go with the assumption award here Buffalo Wild Wings. Boneless versus traditional wings. Take a quick Coach Brian Parana (4:26.722) Guess before I tell you, 10 boneless wings or 10 traditional wings. Which one has more protein in it? Well, 10 plain traditional wings can run about 720 calories with 88 grams of protein. Pretty sizable for the protein at least. And the boneless 10 come in about 610, so almost 100 calories less, but almost Coach Brian Parana (4:55.352) 50% less protein. So 48 grams from 88 grams to 48 because of the breading that's there and the frying process. So you still get a lot of calories, but less protein. Boneless doesn't automatically mean lighter, healthier, or higher protein. It's literally different. It's like chicken tenders versus actual chicken off the bone in a sense. So we have to be conscious of that. Coach Brian Parana (5:25.290) Now I always tell guys for simple math, just count wings as 100 calories because you might have more sauce on them or something. And it becomes really easy math for you to then guesstimate within a fair reason of how many calories are there. So one wing, 100 calories, simple math, off we go. If you really wanted to, I guess you could round down to 75, but then you're dealing with trying to figure out what is Coach Brian Parana (5:54.794) 75 times two, three, four, five, stuff like that. It ends up just being hard to manage and the math on it is just not gonna work. So that's a super hack that I have for my clients and would encourage you to do that too. So moving on. Coach Brian Parana (6:19.436) Before we touch the sauces, the original buffalo sauce can be a hundred and seventy calories to a ten wing order. The honey barbecue adds only about a hundred. So we have to figure out having the sauce on that then there makes it the extra hundred whatever calories to make it a hundred per. So that is really important to know. Coach Brian Parana (6:49.568) Next up on this list is sure, let's eat the one quarter piece of celery that they give you and two baby carrots. For sure, you gotta have this. But watch out for the ranch dressing as well, or the blue cheese that will multiply calories as well. Ranch and blue cheese end up being some of the highest, heaviest calories for any type of dressing. Dipping it would be Coach Brian Parana (7:18.138) Dab, more like dabbing. Now let's not even dip. Let's just dab if you were to do that. And that will help at least at the very minimum keep calories within reason and not blow things off the world here for you. All right. The second award is the splurge trap of the night award, and that's going to Dave & Buster's Mountain O Nachos. This one shareable app is the one I referenced earlier in the Coach Brian Parana (7:46.616) conversation was 2600 calories. It's got about 100 grams of protein in it, but man, 100, if we do, let's do some quick math. 100 grams, sorry, 100 calories times four calories per gram. That's the calorie multiplier for protein. That would be 400 calories out of the 2600. So we're looking at an eighth of the calories is coming from protein. Coach Brian Parana (8:16.106) Not a good deal there. That ends up being a challenge, right? So that's a huge amount more than we should be having, even off of just making nachos at home, where you can control the quality of the meat, how much cheese, how many chips, how much vegetables go on top of it as well. If the nachos are the thing that you want most, then we need to make sure that Coach Brian Parana (8:45.238) You don't eat all of them, that probably you should be splitting them and you should move a lot more that day. Probably not eat a lot of other calories either. Here's the no extra charge swap award, and that's Winking Lizard steak fries versus steamed broccoli. Steak fries run about 350 on the menu. Steamed broccoli runs about 350 on the menu. It's the same price. Now these may or may not be with inflation. Coach Brian Parana (9:14.422) And may or may not change in the future, but let's just say it as it is. They're the same price. And what happens here is that we can make a better choice at this particular meal to have, say, the sandwich or the wings with the broccoli on the side, not the steak fries, which will add hundreds of calories. Even a McDonald's French fry for context has over 300 calories in it, a small fry. Coach Brian Parana (9:42.528) A large one has six hundred, so steak fries are pretty large. They could easily come at four hundred plus calories, depending on how many you eat. Coach Brian Parana (9:52.878) So you do want to make sure that you are looking for opportunities to change. And the big thing here is like no one's gaining weight because broccoli costs too much at Winking Lizard. It's the same price. Between me and you, paying $3.50 for fries or broccoli is too much. You can get a bag of frozen broccoli at the store for a dollar, dollar fifty, a potato. Coach Brian Parana (10:20.750) You can get five pounds or 10 pounds of potatoes for $5. So you can make your own and stay in way more control over the amount of calories and everything that you have. Another award that we're going to throw out today, high protein pub award, Winking Lizard's BBQ chicken club sandwich. This guy is coming at 660 calories roughly with about 50, 55 grams of protein. Coach Brian Parana (10:49.914) The guide's own general burger with fries estimate runs about 1200. And that's the big difference here. Is by getting this BBQ chicken, you're basically cutting your calorie opportunity in half from the burger fry combo that most do. That is huge, and there's plenty of protein to help with that. Next one is at Dave & Buster's, the full meal. This is going to be the Coach Brian Parana (11:19.362) Fire grilled salmon. It comes complete as one plate. You have salmon, green beans, rice pilaf, about six hundred and fifty calories and forty grams of protein. That is a winning combo to fill you up and to enjoy it and not worry about it impacting your waistline so much. Now, certainly we haven't talked about sodium at all. Just literally eating out, you're getting a lot more sodium. And again, you're always going to get a lot more protein calories, carbs, Coach Brian Parana (11:49.186) Fats, sugar, and sodium. That's what restaurants are serving when you eat out. Just a helpful tip to do that. So here's that three-part rule that I was talking about. We need to pick a protein, pick one side and pick an extra. Well, for proteins, we're looking for keywords: grilled, charbroiled, over breaded and fried, if you have these on the menu. Coach Brian Parana (12:20.052) One side that is free and that isn't as free in terms of the calories is what we talked about earlier. This the fries versus broccoli or similar. So you have to look for the say vegetable options as you can. And then one extra, if we're doing appetizers, we're gonna want to look for Coach Brian Parana (12:44.222) Another vegetable-based one, not a calorie-dense carb, fat dense one, say like the nachos. That's not gonna work. And if you're having a beer and a tall boy, we can almost always guarantee you're gonna be at 200 to 300 calories for sure, at minimum, added onto whatever it is that you eat. Now, it's usually not necessarily the alcohol that causes a big problem. What does Coach Brian Parana (13:12.910) cause a lot of problems is just the extra food you put on top of those. So if you just had a burger and a beer, you could get away from under a thousand calories. Or you had that BBQ chicken sandwich from Winking Lizard, then again, we're gonna be at say eight hundred, nine hundred calories for that meal. And that's something that you can manage. Again, that's probably about 50% of your calories for the day, 40, 50%. So you'd have to Coach Brian Parana (13:42.402) Do some work in other ways to do it. Now, at some of these, we already went through what you should get at these restaurants, a low-calorie chicken type option, and get rid of the fries if possible. This will definitely keep you out of trouble. And we're in our 40s, not our 20s, so three IPAs, Coach Brian Parana (14:10.902) Wings, fries, ranch is gonna be more than just calories on your body. It's gonna end up being cholesterol in your heart, pounds on your waistline as well. Just think about IPAs. Those can range from anywhere from 200 to 300 calories for a 12 ounce serving of it. And just going through alcohol here, just so you have a good idea, alcohol can range from a variety of different Coach Brian Parana (14:40.898) Calories. I like to account for shots just being a hundred calories for again simple math. Yeah, if you look at technically, they can be sixty, seventy, eighty calories depending on what type of alcohol it is. But again, we want simple. Simple is easy, and then easy is you can understand and start applying it. So shots are about a hundred, light beers a hundred and beers are two hundred, then Coach Brian Parana (15:7.562) It keeps moving up. You have cocktails, two to four or five hundred calories. The Mexican margarita is gonna be possibly 500 calories. So you have to pay attention to how the IPAs are about 300. So these all add up there. If you're doing a glass of wine, we're just talking about like beer, but wine that's a serving could be four ounces, about 150 calories. Again, we have to add these onto it. Now Coach Brian Parana (15:37.354) You also have to understand who you are going with. Is this a burger with the beer with the boys? Or are you going like Panini's with my family? And I always get water. Sometimes occasionally I'll get a beer, but not usually. I'll end up just drinking water and I will have the panini sandwich because ultimately for the five or eight dollar beer that I'm gonna buy, I can buy a six pack at home in a sense, it almost feels like. But Coach Brian Parana (16:7.768) drinking out occasionally can work, but I just want to maintain my calories and not have to work so hard as a result of it. A couple things to think about, just looking at different company angles. So BW3s, a quick story here before we wrap up. Back in 2023, a guy in Chicago sued Buffalo Wild Wings. His claim Coach Brian Parana (16:33.804) was boneless wings are false advertising because they're breaded fried chicken breasts, not actual cut wings. Well, Buffalo Wild Wings' response on social media: it's true, our boneless wings are all white meat chicken. Our hamburgers contain no ham. Our buffalo wings are 0% buffalo. The federal judge dismissed the complaint. That's a silly story Coach Brian Parana (17:3.242) about boneless versus traditional. I don't know what this guy was trying to pull off here. People, it's like the McDonald's coffee incident where they got sued because the coffee was hot. Yes, it's coffee, it's gonna be hot. All right, moving into the fast five to wrap things up. Number one, here's one that will maybe upset some of you. The Buffalo Wild Wings large ranch is Coach Brian Parana (17:31.406) 1200 calories, the ranch, not the wings. So when I tell you that sauces matter, we're not talking about a 30 calorie dish. We're talking about a lot of calories. Number two, something interesting about alcohol. You don't usually drink 300 calories and then automatically eat 300 fewer calories. Research shows that alcohol can make people eat more food on top of the calories they're drinking. Coach Brian Parana (18:1.134) All right, that is roughly about 80 calories more worth of food. That's not a lot, but it does add up over time. And again, you're still adding all of these components because when you drink alcohol, you are less likely to pay attention or care about total calories. Number three, when you're watching the game, you're talking, you're grabbing whatever, you're not paying attention. Coach Brian Parana (18:27.938) In a 2026 review of about 50 studies found -- that's a meta study, where it's a big umbrella over a bunch of different smaller studies to analyze the findings. They found that eating while distracted can increase how much people eat later, even at your next meal. So watching something passively or Netflix and chill, you will eat more. Number four, the nachos aren't even the biggest shareable item. Coach Brian Parana (18:57.954) Dave & Buster's has one that's called the 515. That's 360 calories. 3,600 calories, excuse me. That's a lot. That is a crazy amount. And we'd have to go look and see there's a lot of food on that plate that comes out. And you'd want to share that with the whole table, like eight people, to make that worth it. Let's just do quick math. Eight divided by 3,600, it's like 450 calories. Coach Brian Parana (19:25.998) Per person if you split it eight ways. That's crazy. Number five, the guide's own numbers. A light beer runs about 100 calories. IPAs, as I said, run up, but when you have five IPAs, that's an extra 500 to 700 calories over a light beer or even like a Michelob Ultra. So five Michelob Ultras, 500 calories. Five IPAs could be 1500 calories. Coach Brian Parana (19:54.136) Depending on how much ABV and the alcohol content there. So in closing, if you don't remember one single number from the episode, remember this. We're picking a protein, picking a vegetable. And if we pick a side, we have to be calorie conscious. At the end of the day, you just can walk in, have a blast, and not over consume calories. Coach Brian Parana (20:20.258) While you're there, just realize that you're not going to be eating a lot of calories because that's what they're serving in a sports bar. Game days come and go, and you'll be back again next season. But we don't want to be bringing extra weight on your belly next season. So to help you understand this, we have the eating on the go guide. Head over to go.brianparana.com backslash eating on the go. All one word. Download it, it's free. Coach Brian Parana (20:48.416) It has all sorts of actionable hacks, tricks, tips, and stuff for you to know and understand around nutrition in these places from fine dining, fast casual, for the whole series I've been doing. This is 164. We started at episode 145. So I've been going at it for what almost 20 days in a row here. Literally, I've released them one day at a time. One Coach Brian Parana (21:18.220) Day after another. So there's a lot of content here for you to get some real actionable resources there. So go check that out. If you need a deeper dive and need help actually putting this into an actionable, individualized plan so that you can lose the weight and keep it off. That's what the Call To Rise is. I've got a five-pillar system that works around your identity, around exercise, nutrition, your mindset, and brotherhood doing it around people that are motivated, driven to being successful as well. Coach Brian Parana (21:48.338) I lead you all the way through and help. There's a series of episodes that are coming up. There's at least three right now in the bank that are going to talk about Joe, how he lost 20 plus pounds in his hundred days while traveling more than twice. So he probably traveled for about three weeks out of the hundred days and still had really great success. We have got Pablo. This guy's pants falling down. Coach Brian Parana (22:15.922) and then he also was able to fit into a college graduation gift to himself, a leather jacket. He hadn't been in this thing in like 10 years. So you can hear about how he has been melting away well over 30 pounds now. And then John is gonna talk about he's lost over 40 and he's in his sixties. So we've had some wild success with a lot of guys. So look forward to those. Coach Brian Parana (22:45.910) So pass this on, share it to the next one, and we're gonna go over Mediterranean and Greek style food next. Looking forward to that episode coming up tomorrow. That's it for this episode of Driven for Health. Train hard, eat smart, and I'll catch you in the next one.