Feb. 23, 2026
Why Do You Still Look Like You Never Work Out? - 76
This episode is for the business owner or executive who goes to the gym, eats reasonably well, and still can't figure out why his body won't change. If that's you, this one is going to hit close to home.
Coach Brian walks through the 3 areas where driven men consistently come up short, even when they're putting in real time and effort. The problem is almost never how hard they're working. We have to look deeper by how they're working.
You'll learn:
- Why going to the gym four days a week means nothing without a progressive plan behind it
- How most men over 40 are approaching cardio in a way that produces almost nothing
- A simple two-week process that will tell you more about your nutrition than years of guessing
If your energy has been inconsistent, your focus has dropped, and your body is not reflecting the effort you're putting in, there are specific reasons for that. This episode walks through each one.
The Call To Rise is a 100-day fat loss transformation program built for driven men who are ready to get their health back, rebuild their energy, and show up stronger at home and at work.
If you are managing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or Type 2 Diabetes, this program was designed with your situation in mind.
The program combines strength training, personalized nutrition, and weekly accountability inside a small group of men who are serious about the process.
Men in this program consistently drop 20 to 30 pounds, see real improvements in their health markers, and carry themselves differently when it's done.
If you have been putting this off, now is a good time to stop doing that.
Want to be a guest on Driven For Health?
Send Brian Parana a message on PodMatch, here:
https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/brianparana
Want help applying this to your own health, weight, energy, or lab numbers?
Coach Brian Parana offers Health Hot Seat coaching segments for men who want a clear next step with nutrition, fitness, weight loss, blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, or daily consistency.
Learn more about The Call To Rise, a 100-day coaching program for driven men over 40 who want to lose weight, improve their health, and rebuild confidence:
To connect with Coach Brian:
brian@brianparana.com
Disclaimer: This podcast is for education and coaching support only. It is not medical advice. Always work with your physician before changing medication, treatment, or medical care.
- Picture this. You're at your kids's birthday party. Whether it's the first, 6th, 16th, doesn't matter. Someone takes a group photo of you and they text it to your family chat a little bit later. You open it and for a second you don't recognize the guy standing next to your wife. That's you.
- That's what you look like now. You go to the gym four days a week. You eat healthy, clean, you don't eat desserts, you don't drink a lot of alcohol, you don't do a lot of sugar, and you still look like that. Today, I want to tell you why. My name is Coach Brian Piranha, and I am a certified health wellness coach with a 23-year-old history in the industry, a exercise, science, and nutrition degree.
- And this is Driven for Health episode 76. I want to start this out with someone of one of my clients who said this to me a few months ago. He's an executive at a construction firm, manages big teams, travels consistently, has three kids at home. A guy who every measure has life together on paper.
- That is when he first reached out to me, he had been carrying an extra 50 plus pounds for the better part of 5 years. It's a growing phase of business and trying to manage how to grow and expand, grow the team, get new business, you know the deal. Feels like 247. Then you had three kids to it. It just relentless. He knew it.
- He wasn't trying to hide from it. He tried a couple things under the zone, keto, working out [clears throat] at the gym eight days a week, excessive calorie restrictions, only to find the weight would come back. He would have success. It wasn't even necessarily a weight loss problem, but it was a weight maintenance. How do I get the weight off and keep it off? And that's where I spend a significant amount of my time helping clients every day.
- Now over the course of the time that we worked together in the call to rise, he dropped the weight and got his labs back as well. We spent a lot of time focused on that area and he was able to get a lot of numbers back into the normal range. His triglycerides, his cholesterol numbers, certainly his BMI was back down into a healthier range and his doctor was thrilled.
- Okay, now this took more than just the 100 days to get 50 pounds off. Let's not joke there. About one to two pounds a week is sustainable. Three is amazing and four or more is overreaching. We'd have a couple two and three pound weeks mixed in with one pound week, but he consistently lost weight and [clears throat] that was a game changer for him.
- And the biggest difference for him is he got locked in. That's what my oldest would say, Levi, get locked in. Well, how did he do that? He focused that that time, effort, attention that he put into his business for those 5 years, he put into his health. So, he'd been telling his wife and his family and his team, everyone, that he was fine.
- But none of that was true. Getting his health sorted out was just more than the weight. had a lot about being honest with himself for the first time in a long time. Actually, when he saw that group picture, the the group family picture, he was able to sit back and and really soak in what he actually saw because he sees himself every day and oh, my pants are getting bigger, my jacket gets a little bit bigger.
- but it didn't have a lot of impact until he saw that you are doing everything right. So, let's walk through that. All right. Alarm goes off at 5:30 in the morning. You're running on six hours of sleep trying to finishing up a bunch of work late last night. You get your coffee in, skip breakfast because there's no time. There's never any time.
- It feels like you get yourself to the gym by 6:15 because you have to do it in the morning or it doesn't get done. Work responsibility stacks as the day goes on. Family responsibility stacks as the evening goes on and therefore you're left with no time at all. Today's chest day feels like everyday's chest day. If you're a guy, you know what I mean.
- You go in, you're like, "Well, let's let's hit some bench." You do three sets of 10 on the bench press, three sets of 10 on the cables, some curls and abs, and you're out the door by 7:15 and at the desk at 8. You do it. And most guys your age don't. A good job for going to the gym, but you do it four days a week, maybe sometimes five, hitting those row splits, chest back, shorter leg days.
- But during the day, you think you're making some good choices. No drinking soda. Try to avoid any food that comes in from outside vendors or clients or client meetings. You manage those. You're not hitting the drive-thru on the way home. Uh, honestly, a lot of guys do that.
- And you try and get all the sleep, but Saturday morning, you pull on your jeans and they're still tight around the waist and it doesn't feel good. It doesn't work. You get to the mirror and just like this is what am I doing here? So, fast forward, talked to a guy recently. Coach, I put in way too much work to look like I do now. And that's the challenge.
- So, what does he do? And this is what most guys aren't willing to be open about is that you do want to be available to yourself and be honest with yourself because it's about your identity. It's the one thing that your body is a representation of to the world. And if you unfortunately as humans we are very at first glance we judge we assess we understand where this person fits in our timeline or in our world in terms of being a productive leader or not or are they a success or are they not? And we need to make sure that everything lines up congruently. The
- business, the family most importantly, and your health. So, what's the gap? Gap number one, you're training. We should say more like you're you're exercising. You're checking the box, but you're not actually training. And we don't need to go back to training like you're 20 again. Okay? Imagine you are the guy.
- This is a good analogy here. Imagine you're a guy on the sales team. You hired him. You've been paying him full salary. He shows up every day. He gets his desk, makes his phone calls. He's always busy, but his numbers haven't really moved in the last two years. Quarter after quarter, same results. Well, at what point do you stop blaming the market and start asking what the heck is going on during these phone calls and the work in the day? That's a question that you need to ask yourself about your workouts and your eating healthy.
- I remember I stayed at a hotel. I've stayed at many hotels, but hanging out in in hotel gyms and you can see guys going to the gym and check the box, right? They they don't really do much. They they move their arms. They got their headphones in and they got their gym clothes on, but that's about it. They go in, they work out.
- and then 30 minutes later they're done. And not to say that you have to work out hardcore every time you go to a gym, but it's important that especially at home you're you're really putting in the work. That's very important. Make sure that you are doing it and at the le very least when you do go on travel then you can actually still check the box.
- Keep up the consistency. Chances are if the guy that I see in the gym, they have bellies on them and that means that they're really not pushing themselves. They're just going through the motions, putting in the time, checking the box. But training is different. Training, we're pushing our body.
- We're pushing it past where it's already comfortable at. Again, you do that with work. You do that with your family. You push, you drive, but it's not relevant in the gym. So, the end of the hard sets, you really want to feel tired. You do not want to necessarily be pushing an extra five reps. If I were to be standing right next to you, calling you out, say, "Let's go another one.
- And another one. You still got some go in the tank. Let's do another one." Okay? We really want to push. And I'm a big fan of doing multiple sets, four, five, even six sets on a particular exercise to really work that muscle out. Now, when we put when I put my guys on strength training, we're going to do a chunk of effort for a specific amount of time.
- Call them say a block of time where they're working specifically on the reps, the sets, the exercises that really transform their body. And then I have something called the mission brief workout. This is all in the second pillar in my call to rise program, the forge. That's the exercise piece. We need to move our bodies every day, 10k steps with or without exercise.
- We need to lift weights three days a week, possibly more. We have a mission brief workout which is a full body think of a a boot camp style a crossfit style workout that really creates a lot of effort oomph and you are tired when you are done. Now we'll undulate the amount of volume of the exercise that you're doing.
- We'll work on the making sure that we're maintaining as much muscle in a fat loss phase. And majority of guys that I've ever worked with are coming to me in a fat loss phase. It's not like they're already lean at 10 to 15%. They're usually 20 or more percent 15 20 and they don't see any abs at all. They're not even remotely close to abs.
- All right? And and I'm going to give you a really strong workout. Now, if you want a four-week rotation that I put my guys on, then you can just email me, brianbrianpirana.com. You can send that there and I will give you the four-week rotation that I have that's it's pretty advanced, but it's manageable.
- It's doable for you to go into any gym and be able to work out. So, we need to push yourself. Do you actually have a training program or do you just wander around the gym thinking I'm going to do this exercise or that one? Because that's not training. A structured plan will follow you around and make it very easy to track and understand how much volume, how much strength, how much effort that you need to keep putting in to be able to create the muscle gains and the fat loss that you are wanting.
- Gap number two, your cardio is not what you think it is. Okay, now I have a lot of guys who think about this. We don't have to go crazy hardcore intervals with a minute all out and you can't barely breathe and then you're laying on the ground after your workouts. Yeah, you can do that, but that's not necessarily the focal point.
- The the main focal point is going to be around make sure we get our movement in and then we can start adding in cardio depending on what your fitness and cardiovascular fitness is and your body's ability. We can't send you for a marathon program if you have haven't been walking 5,000 steps in the day. And that's progressive overload for exercise, for cardio.
- All right. One thing we have to think about is that we build up our body over time. A simple way to think is your heart is a muscle and just like that muscle you're training in the gym, it gets stronger and more efficient and you can actually challenge it even more. So throughout those 100 days, we're building up your resistance, your resiliency, and your ability to work harder, carry more weight to be able to push through some of the harder, more challenging efforts that you have.
- So 10,000 steps is totally something that you need to do. And if you are only at 5,000, you are not moving enough in the day and not seeking out opportunity to be able to do that either. So we got to find small chunks of time that we can sneak in to at least get the 10K in a day.
- And then we can also plan in some cardio workouts at the appropriate times in the gym and all that stuff. When you are doing cardio, we're looking for about 130 to 150 beats per minute and chunks to get started with are going to be about 20 to 30 minutes at a time. If you're actually training for something, I have a gentleman doing a ruck marathon.
- I have another gentleman that is doing marathon. I have a couple other people that are looking to do some 5ks. The reason being is they haven't done them and we're challenging them to do something a little bit bigger. another guy doing the high rocks. That's a 10 event. A lot of running, a lot of cardiovascular metabolic conditioning that he needs to happen.
- And I have him on an appropriate workout as well. So, we build intensity and effort as we go throughout this. And then we will have a total number of the American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes of activity in a week. I I always like to round up more, but that can be a minimum amount for busy guys juggling a lot of things.
- We don't have to actually stay focus on doing more. More isn't always better. So, let's ask you something here. Take a quick pause. And I already know the answer to this. You run the business, your team, you're you're doing the things. You got your numbers. You're looking at your expenses and your revenue coming in, expenses going out, and maybe that sales pipeline, a headcount, a margin you're responsible for hitting, you know, those numbers.
- You look at them regularly because if you stop looking at them, things would go sideways fast. Do I feel that? I'm self-employed. I'm constantly looking at the income and the outgoing expenses of what's happening in my business and making sure I can pay my bills and put a little aside for later and do some fun.
- In April, March, April, my family is actually we're going to Machu Picchu and going to go hunt for piranhas in the Amazon up the Amazon River. I'm really excited about that. And I've shared a bit that we love to travel. I'm also conditioning myself right now for that because we'll be up way high in the mountains and I'm doing marathon training too.
- I've shared some of those things throughout this process, but I'm I'm looking forward to that. So going back to the analogy here is that you understand these things but if you're not tracking what you're doing in your your day-to-day life with your activities say 10k steps as a minimum two to three workouts in a week and have any relevant understanding of what your nutrition is then you are going to just be guesstimating eyeballing and not actually having a real true answer.
- If you want to go back to episode five, that's the start of the nutrition pyramid, 5 through 11. The strength pyramid is 17 through 23. Those are easy places to pick up in the actual chronological order of how you manage your nutrition and your fitness. And there's plenty of other things scattered out that I give throughout the last what 75 plus episodes on specific advice on how to lose fat, how fast you can lose fat. That's episode two.
- So, there's a lot of good stuff in here and I'll keep loading it up for you. But what we want to make sure is that we need to keep a the average is a 500 calorie deficit going in and out of your day through food, through exercise. And it doesn't have to be with just doing a calorie deficit. Okay? Most guys will want to move some more to be able to burn body fat off and not just weigh less because so many guys will lose weight, but they also lose muscle and they're processed because they do weird restricted diets and it causes a
- problem. Now, if you're even 200 calories off, these extra calories will add up and it will cause you, and we could think of this in a coffee drink, a drive by hand into the candy dish at work, the break room cause your tension, you end up eating, your kids leftovers at dinner, and these things could be some of the other reasons why you're not looking the way you do because you're just eating too much.
- So, we start off with the exercise piece, but then we come back to the actual calories. Or if every night you you just grab a handful of almonds to try and hold you over, but then an hour later you're back in there, or after you get down the kids to bed, you ended up pouring some bourbon at 9:30 just to watch and relax.
- Uh catch up on email, start, maybe spend some time with your wife. I I find that is an ongoing challenge for me as well to manage that time. Third issue is if you are almost certainly not in a calorie deficit, if you're not losing weight, that's a simple hard truth. Okay? If you're not losing weight, you're not in a calorie deficit and you're not doing it long enough.
- Calorie deficits, think about this again. 50 pounds, one to two [clears throat] pounds a week. Divide 50 by two, you're talking about 25 weeks. That is what five to six months of time to lose 50 pounds. Yes, maybe you actually need to consider eight months of time to lose 50 pounds so that you get it off and you can keep it off. This is the reality.
- And all the things of calories and movement and what you're eating, the composition of your food, the sleep, the type of training that you're doing, these all sum up to the outcome of the goal. But it has to be a calorie deficit. Okay? 500 calories is the average a day. Through exercise and diet, you will do well. And you just have to watch out for any hidden calories from coffee to a bag at the vending machine.
- All the other example, the beers on Friday night or the late night bourbons, the pizza that pops up because the kids swamp pizza, the the list goes on. The weekend birthday parties that show up all the time. If you have I have four kids. It's like when are we not celebrating a birthday for someone and a family? it gets really busy.
- Of course, we can use apps like My Fitness Pal. I like chronometer quite a bit to log it. And we want to be as approximately close as we can. We don't necessarily have to weigh and measure every little thing, but if you do, you will learn very quickly how much food is in what you are eating. And if you do this for 14 days, the simple formula I have for most guys is I move this much, I eat this much, and this is what my body does.
- That formula will tell you if you're making progress over 7 to 10 days. And yes, that's how long it takes. Just like the business, it's it doesn't go one day to the next. It goes week in and week out or month in and month out or quarter in and quarter out is how you're actually assessing the business and the success of it itself. Okay, these are the the truths.
- This is the information that you need to hear and these are the things that allow you to change your body and ultimately your confidence. If you're 50 pounds of overweight, you're not as confident as you would be if you didn't have that weight on you in the first place. I promise you and guarantee that. As we before we start wrapping, I want to tell you something is like sit with this.
- Uh think about another 12 months of the same thing. What it looks like daytoday. If you're going to the gym, you're eating healthy, you're trying your best, but nothing is you're waiting for for work to slow down, the kids schedule to ease up or you'll start again in a couple months. Like, good luck. So many people just wait. They just wait for a better time.
- And there really isn't there. You almost have to force this transition and prioritize it in the busyiness of all the other things that you're doing. Neil, there's a gentleman Neil that I'm working with. He has an endless stream of work that he has to do and he is challenged with keeping up with managing all the busyiness of work.
- And that's just his life. It's his daytoday. And so he thinks that he gets reprieve or he's not as busy, but he's been busier than ever and he can lose weight. Six months are going to pass one way or another. Are you going to change, stay the same, or get worse? This is where it is. So, our three takeaways from this episode.
- To look like you work out, look at your training program. Are you just working out, going to the gym, and say scratching the itch, checking the box, or are you actually leaving your body sore enough that you feel change? Secondly, is doing cardio. Are you pushing yourself, getting your heart rate up, or even getting the total amount of steps? Because you could still go to the gym and get cardio and not move enough.
- It's that what happens in the other 23 hours of the day. and track your food. Literally, that's the first point of contact that I have with anyone I ever work with is are you paying attention to your food? And I even usually start with pictures. Okay, these things will change. Now, I hope that this is a reality call to you to help you change to look like you work out to feel some of your best that you have.
- And soon as you get the weight off, you don't have to worry about losing weight anymore because you can maintain it doing simple day-to-day sustainable processes. That's what I teach in my call to rise program. We have five pillars that we work off of and we just keep going from there. We do the call which is your identity showing up as that person you are.
- We have the forge which is the exercise movement component. We have the fuel nutrition sciencebacked nutrition implementing the busy crazy day. Fourth one is the code the way you think about and your mindset around how you look and feel and hold yourself. And the brotherhood doing it with likeminded men.
- That's so important and critical so that you can lose average. I have episode 34, Lucas lost 30 pounds. Episode 43, Mike lost 30 lbs. And episode 53, Andy lost 38 pounds. And I go through testimonies and I have a lot of others. Even the last one, Eric lost 15 pounds while training for 24-hour mountain bike race. So, it legit works.
- I hope that these gaps are a call out for you to pay more attention to what you're actually doing and using your time to the utmost fullest. And I will catch you in the next few episodes because I'm going to keep releasing them. And I hope that you gain a lot of value and information here. Thanks.
