Coach Brian Parana (0:8.760) Dave Thomas named this entire company after his daughter, Wendy Thomas. Yes, I'm talking about Wendy's. And she didn't ask for that. She was a real kid with freckles and pigtails, and her father put her face on thousands of restaurants. Way to go, Dad. Later in life, in his own words, I should have just named it after myself. He said it put a lot of real pressure on a kid that just Coach Brian Parana (0:38.794) had no idea what she was getting in for and would be the base of the company. That story is definitely behind the name on the building and the business. Here's the other story, the one that you would know Wendy's for. Wendy's supplier network can produce upwards of five million pounds of -- excuse me -- five million beef patties a day. Coach Brian Parana (1:6.902) None of it goes into the freezer. It's fresh, never frozen. Farm to grill. That's the promise that the chain wants to deliver to the public. And it's something that they do on a massive scale every single day. By the end of the episode, you'll know exactly what to order here to lose some belly fat, and what things to avoid as well. You'll also know some of the other things that I thought were Coach Brian Parana (1:32.577) interesting around Wendy's, because I just want to share some other unique things. That's it for Driven for Health. I'm Coach Brian Parana. This is episode 154. This is the 10th stop. We're gonna keep going here. We're gonna start to wind our way down on the fast food or fast casual joints, move into some fine dining restaurants and other on-the-go things like airports, gas stations, buffets, things like that. Maybe a little more generalized type Coach Brian Parana (2:2.144) menus, say Indian cuisine, Asian cuisine, Mexican cuisine in a sense. But we did lots of burgers. We just got done with Panda Express and we're back to burgers. We've done some chicken spots, coffee spots, and the like. We'll do a smoothie spot at some point too. Now, this is a menu with a real twist. Coach Brian Parana (2:30.484) The best real numbers here don't come from -- we're not cutting anything out here. A normal sandwich ordered exactly as it comes is going to be the biggest winner here. And that's where we get into the tier list. People have been messaging me about some of their favorites on the list that they do. I love the engagement. Thank you so much for joining me here in this experience that I'm having on my podcast. Coach Brian Parana (3:0.844) A lot of work, a lot of effort, and I hope that you're getting a lot out of it. Eight orders, worst to best. That's how we're stacking them. Number one is small fries. Two out of ten. There is 260 calories, four grams of protein, 12 fat. That's where the majority of the calories come from, and 35 carbs. It's just a lot of carbs and fats. Obviously, they're fries. Coach Brian Parana (3:28.462) Alright, so we just need to pass on the fries at any of these fast food joints. The next one's a small chocolate Frosty. Very tasty, but 350 calories. There is some protein because dairy has protein in it, about 10 grams, but there are nine grams of fat and 58 grams of carbs coming quite a bit from sugar. So this is a real dessert, but it's sugar loaded. And as much as Coach Brian Parana (3:57.283) people love to dip their fries in the Frosties, this is not a good idea. Number three, a classic Wendy's name, the Baconator. This is our four out of 10 on the scale. 920 calories. Whoa. That's a lot for one sandwich. This is more than say a Red Robin gourmet burger that typically comes in around 750 calories or so. Coach Brian Parana (4:25.218) 57 grams of protein, but man, it's got your day's worth of fat at 60. And as we've talked about it, we're generally trying to aim for 40 to 50 grams of protein in a meal, but your day limit, especially if you're trying to go for fat loss, is 50 to 60 grams, possibly 70, depending on how active you are. And then after that, maintenance can be anywhere from 60 to 80 grams of fat in a day, along with your protein and carbs. So Baconator Coach Brian Parana (4:52.404) at 60 grams and 1500 milligrams of sodium, which -- 2300 milligrams is the standard. That's a big challenge on what else am I going to eat today that has zero fat in it, basically. Number four, I found this one interesting. It's Dave's Single cheeseburger. It's a 570-calorie burger, 29 grams of protein with 34 grams of fat. Coach Brian Parana (5:19.180) That's -- and also 1,000 milligrams. Most of the ingredients at any place like this is gonna have a thousand or more, basically. This was the unique twist that I saw. A normal cheeseburger from McDonald's, the closest match by size, is the Quarter Pounder with cheese. So it's not a typical comparable to a cheeseburger or hamburger at McDonald's; those are smaller, maybe a third of a pound instead of a Coach Brian Parana (5:47.637) -- excuse me, it'd be a fifth of a pound instead of a quarter of a pound. The Quarter Pounder comes in at 540, and so it barely beats out Dave's cheeseburger. But at the end of the day, they're still going to have a lot of calories, a lot of fat, a lot of sodium, so there's no real trade-off one over the other. The small chili, number five. This is something I actually would consider eating there. Coach Brian Parana (6:17.068) This with the potato is a killer combo to hold you over for a while. 240 calories, 16 grams of protein, 11 grams of fat. So that's reasonable. The killer here, it's the sodium again. It comes in 900 to 1000. But if you're in a pinch, the small chili with a baked potato, that could be a winner. One thing that you probably don't want to waste a lot of time or money on is the garden side salad. Coach Brian Parana (6:45.836) Now it's got 25 calories in it. That's what makes it this far in the list at number six. But there's just barely anything there. Any salad you ever get, the lettuce is like three to five to seven calories in a cup, depending on what type of lettuce it is. I always share this with people, but a whole bag of spinach, Coach Brian Parana (7:10.772) the gallon bag ones you get at the store, those are 60 calories in the whole thing. And most people just grab a couple leaves and call it a salad. You'd be literally pouring that whole gallon bag into the bowl to start to chow down on it. And then you stack more vegetables on it with a lean protein and you've got yourself something. So a garden salad could make sense if you throw some chicken with it, the obvious, or even you could pour the chili over it as well. That could be a winner. Coach Brian Parana (7:39.979) And you throw that baked potato, you get yourself a little bit of a combo that'll last you three or four hours and allow you to not have a thousand calories in just a sandwich like the Baconator. Number seven, we're coming back on the junior chocolate Frosty. Frosty did make the list twice here. This one is 200 calories, so a lot less calories than the Coach Brian Parana (8:5.696) small Frosty, so you could somewhat get away with it. It's got six grams of protein and five grams of fat. The whammy here is 33 grams of carbs, right? That's still gonna be a big one. So we have to understand that a junior or a baby size is gonna be the big win. And whenever you're trying to be healthy, we need to make sure that we are not going over having say 100, 200, possibly 300 calories Coach Brian Parana (8:35.256) for you to be able to enjoy that experience around a dessert or a sweet treat or something. Now I did want to compare this, the same dessert as a small, at closer to half the damage of a regular McFlurry M&Ms. So I wanted to do some comparison there. That McFlurry, almost 600 calories, coming in at 570. So that's a big number with calories there. Coach Brian Parana (9:5.390) It's almost three times the small junior Frosty, which is why it's a big win here. Number eight, and probably the best one on the menu, is the grilled chicken sandwich. Nine out of 10. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Chicken obviously has literally less fat when it comes to a protein source. You end up with this sandwich being 34 grams of protein, 10 grams of fat. Coach Brian Parana (9:34.381) That's good enough to call. If you wanted to go big, you could order two of them, have a double chicken breast sandwich in a sense. It's still gonna give you a lot of sodium, like 800 for one. So you're stacking that up. But again, if you're eating at Wendy's or any fast food joint, you're already accepting that there is a lot of sodium in the food that you're eating because of the preservatives, the salt, the taste, the experience overall. Coach Brian Parana (10:4.536) So that is gonna be the best one, and that ends our tier list. When you show up, that's what you order: grilled chicken sandwich. Make sure it's grilled, not breaded, and you will end up with a reasonable amount of protein that will help you manage it. Alright. Now let's talk about Wendy's itself. I said it in the beginning, but five million patties are the number that come from Coach Brian Parana (10:33.772) the real operations at Wendy's to have that fresh, never frozen beef claim. And that is not just a line on the menu board. The company has worked with a select group of beef suppliers. Together, their patty production facilities can handle that large of a demand. Now, none of the beef ever sees a freezer, which is pretty wild. It's farm to local grill as much as possible. Coach Brian Parana (11:3.958) Here's how they pull it off. This was a very interesting one I was researching for this. Most of the oxygen is removed from the packaging. Bacteria just doesn't have an opportunity to grow. The beef stays cold, it's never frozen. The temperature gets tracked throughout the entire trip from start to in the Wendy's. Wendy's has a manager of quality assurance for the beef, Coach Brian Parana (11:29.662) and that person visits the supplier plants in person every quarter. So there's multiple checks happening, making sure that the quality of fresh never frozen stands on top of itself. The beef gets cut by the facilities in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Every patty served in the country comes from these places. Coach Brian Parana (11:58.191) So this is pretty interesting, I thought. So let's jump into the fast five as we start to wrap up this Wendy's show. Number one, why are Wendy's burgers square? Interesting fact, right? Most of them are round, they are square on purpose. Dave Thomas, the man, the originator -- I remember seeing him in all these commercials. He shaped the patty so that the corners would hang out past Coach Brian Parana (12:26.658) the edge of the round bun. That way, to literally prove the company doesn't cut corners on beef. It partially backfired -- some customers read square as processed instead of premium. So Wendy's had to figure out that situation back in 2011, but that was the gist. They wanted to have the burger stand outside of the bun. Coach Brian Parana (12:56.118) Number two, where did the real Wendy's nickname come from? Well, it was Dave Thomas's daughter, Melinda Lou Thomas, and she had a hard time pronouncing her name, and Wendy stuck, and it's been that way ever since. Number three of the fast five: was Dave Thomas ever on TV himself? Heck yeah, he was. I remember him a ton. 800 commercials Coach Brian Parana (13:26.050) for his company. That's the most that any founder in television history has ever been on. I remember seeing Dave. Number four, what's the real protein hack here? I already told you, we get that classic chicken sandwich, grilled chicken, and then we add a second patty there. Now, if you wanted another one, you take the classic chicken sandwich, the breaded one, add an extra chicken patty on top of that, Coach Brian Parana (13:54.957) then that ends up being 750 calories, 51 grams of protein. So basically, we've gotta stack chicken patties or fillets on top of each other to make it work. Number five, wrapping up the fast five. What was the first Wendy's menu back in 1969? The Frosty made it. It was one of the original items. Dave built it thick enough Coach Brian Parana (14:24.588) to need a spoon on purpose, modeled after a malt that he remembered from his own childhood. The chocolate flavor is blended with vanilla on purpose, so it won't be overpowering the burger eaten right alongside it. Because yeah, most people eat the Frosty with the fries or the burgers, and that's how it is. Wrapping up the fast five there, and closing out: if you enjoy Wendy's, okay, great. I would probably focus on the grilled Coach Brian Parana (14:54.616) chicken sandwich here, pass on the fries, maybe do the chili and the potato could be a good win. Now, to help understand other ways to manage Wendy's and a lot of others, I have the Eating On The Go Guide. You can head on over to go.brianparana.com/eatingonthego and you can download it for free. There's Chick-fil-A, McDonald's, Taco Bell, sit-down restaurants, on the go, in the airport, all sorts of different ones. Coach Brian Parana (15:24.362) Easy to understand. I just actually updated the website, so I'm pretty proud of that. So go check it out. It'll be in the show notes as well. And if you need help staying accountable, this whole thing is brought to you by my program, The Call To Rise. It's a hundred-day fat loss challenge. Guys, this gets you to step up to do the things that you need to do, to be that leader in your house, to have respect for yourself when you look in the mirror, to Coach Brian Parana (15:50.861) have energy in the day to just put out the fires, the demands, all the things that you have on your plate, to be able to make it happen. We have heavy focuses on fat burning workouts, muscle building workouts, heavy emphasis, even more so on nutrition, lots of lifestyle design nutrition approaches. Coach Brian Parana (16:14.764) I'm basically telling you exactly what to do. So I take all the guesswork out of everything. And this comes from 23 years of experience. We have a brotherhood of other motivated, driven guys that you'll hear throughout the podcast. I actually recorded two yesterday and the day before with Joe and Pablo. They're going to come out in future episodes. Joe lost over 20 pounds while traveling twice, for about 14 to 15 days at two different times. And then Pablo, Coach Brian Parana (16:44.660) we juggle his multifaceted career, postgraduate college and traveling multiple different times. He lost 27 pounds and is feeling leaner and meaner than ever. So that's thecalltorise.com. Check it out. Step up, be held accountable, and see the results happen like magic. As much as magic as we can. We're gonna make that work as easy as possible, but we're gonna be doing some work and make sure it's sustainable. Coach Brian Parana (17:14.060) Next up is Shake Shack. I hope that you enjoy that one too. It's such a tasty one. My wife, a little known fact, she actually opened up the one in Madison Garden in New York City, way back what, 20 years ago, when it opened there. She was on the front line of getting that place up and running. Two more things, guys. Pass this on if someone enjoys fast food Coach Brian Parana (17:38.802) or someone who travels for work -- that Eating On The Go Guide is amazing. From there, leave a review and share what you would like to hear on the next What To Order series. That's it for Driven for Health. Train hard, eat smart, and I'll catch you in the next one.
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