Why Successful Men Keep Failing at Their Health - 134

Coach Brian Parana (0:52.014) I'm gonna ask you something, and I want you to actually answer it. How long have you been telling yourself you're going to get your health together? Has it been six months, a year, five years? Most guys I talk to, and I've been doing this for 23 years. I've worked with thousands of people. Most of them have been saying the same thing to themselves for years. Coach Brian Parana (1:20.106) Every Monday it's gonna be different. Every January it's gonna be different. And it ultimately never is. Today I'm gonna tell you exactly why that is. It's in here in your head. It has nothing to do with your diet, nothing with your exercise routine. What's going on in your mind? What are you thinking and how are you relating to your physical health on any level? You're gonna walk away with three tools I use with my clients to fix this, so stick with me here. Coach Brian Parana (1:50.146) Welcome to Driven for Health, episode 134. Coach Brian Parana here, and we're gonna talk about a guy named Marcus. Marcus is a marketing director at a SaaS company. He's been in the field for 25 some years. He worked his way up to senior leadership, the kind of guy that other people come to when they need to figure something out. He's really sharp, he's capable, he's got agency, meaning he can self-solve. Coach Brian Parana (2:18.635) A lot of challenges and problems that come up, and he's trusted like with his colleagues, with leadership, with the clients. So he manages a lot. He's really good at it. But for about the last five years, he's also been carrying an extra 35 pounds and just living with it, telling himself we'll get to it whenever he has more time. And it just isn't that bad. He's just busy. He's playing all these things off and not actually taking true ownership of. Coach Brian Parana (2:48.193) What it is. His wife Sarah had been after him to go to the doctor for a while. She's not nagging him in a sense, but she's certainly concerned. Think about this, guys. If this is your situation, is your wife, did she sign up for you to be a type 2 diabetic in 20 years of marriage or something and have to take care of you? Probably not what she was going for and what she was hoping that you would be at a level of standard to be at. Coach Brian Parana (3:16.897) But she's concerned, obviously. And we talk about this episode 117, Chris. He had a poke from his wife. Jeremy, the prior conversation here in the last episode, his wife poked at him and gave him pushes buttons to take charge and do something about his health. What had happened changed the conversation entirely. He was taking a picture with his family at a gathering that they had this past Fourth of July. Coach Brian Parana (3:47.018) And Marcus looked at the photo, he didn't recognize himself. And he said, Brian, I looked at the picture and I generally don't know who was standing next to my wife. He was talking about himself. He didn't recognize his face in the family photo. And that's what has hit him. And finally got him to do something to go to the doctor and start changing this. Now the doctor Coach Brian Parana (4:15.015) runs labs and his cholesterol comes back at 222. His A1C is a 6.7. That means he's a type 2 diabetic. He and 6.4 is the range. That number there is classified as a type 2 diabetic. 5.7 to 6.4 is the pre-diabetic range. So you want to be low fives. So this is an actual problem that he can control and do and change if he lost weight, controlled his food. And that's a big thing. Coach Brian Parana (4:42.945) He'd been sitting on being in a pre-diabetic state for years and he didn't even know it. Marcus called me a week after this appointment. And now I want to use Marcus's story because that happened to him. What was going on in his brain, his patterns of life and behavior that kept him stuck in this loop, and the changes that we need for him to be able to shift. Coach Brian Parana (5:13.011) out of that before anything else could change. It's constant. You aren't going to do the actions that you need to do if you aren't squared up in your head and your brain. And I have to understand where someone is at in their journey and their process to actually starting and doing and taking committed action toward it. And then we're off to the races. This is literally what 23 plus years has been doing of talking to people every day, working with thousands. And sure we've got the physical stuff. We got a Coach Brian Parana (5:42.818) Burn some calories. We have to consider the labs. We gotta understand the energy that he has, the time that he has, and figure out what's the easiest part to fix all of his stuff, but it all gets sorted out in the head first. And that's what this episode is about. I'm gonna walk you through the three tools that I use, the same tools that I worked Marcus through. And if you're a guy sitting on Coach Brian Parana (6:9.319) Any type of situation that's similar or familiar to this, and your weight is just carrying it around for years, and it's not a good look on you, and your blood panels are going up, your energy is gone by the end of the day, you're not interacting and showing up in front of the people that you matter the most in a good positive energy state. We have to do something about it. Tool number one is negative visualization. When Marcus Coach Brian Parana (6:39.649) gets on a call with me or anyone, the first question I need to ask said, Marcus, if nothing changes, same job, same schedule, same habits, where are you at in five years? This is a very powerful question. And it's a question that I will ask you if you ever book a call for the Call to Rise, the 100 day fat loss challenge, I'm gonna call you out and ask what happens. This is the say understanding what the trajectory is of the future. Because if Coach Brian Parana (7:9.325) Past history predicts future history and behavior, it can get at the very least stay the same, but actually probably get worse. So if he has got an A1C is 6.7, his cholesterol is 222, and he's been gaining a few pounds every year without realizing it, just think of this on that particular note. A quarter pound a week gained is one pound a month gained is Coach Brian Parana (7:38.573) 12 pounds a year. Two years, that's almost 25 with basic math. That's just you not managing a quarter pound a week and letting it just slowly add to your waistline. Coach Brian Parana (7:53.794) That's how subtle it can be. And if you don't have a course correcting plan of action, besides just avoiding food, avoiding food groups, just not eating, doing really hard workouts and such in the gym and going all or nothing. Chandler did that for years. He's 129 episode, and we figured out middle gear mentality for him, how to balance an active really busy life and being able to lose weight. Now, also with Marcus, a family history of heart disease on the father's side. Coach Brian Parana (8:24.185) And his dad actually had a cardiac event in his early 60s. All right, guys, if you're in your 40s or 50s, 60s is unfortunately closer than you want it to be. And I'm 43. I feel this a lot now. I do not want to have some sort of a life-altering situation that shows up. I am a very capable person. I want to maintain capable and functional as much as possible in Coach Brian Parana (8:52.267) This life experience and definitely not to put burdens on my family if I can avoid it by what I put in my mouth and how much water I drink and when do I sleep and how do I manage stress? So he goes through all that math to figure out that the outcome that he ends up getting is not good. A1C going up, diabetics, they lose limbs because of poor circulation over a long time. Coach Brian Parana (9:18.613) My grandmother had done that. I've talked about that on episode 89. I just got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Now what? And I shared my story. My grandmother lost both legs from the knee down. And it was traumatic for her most importantly, but the rest of the family. And the life experience that she had from what she could have had if she didn't have that deadly disease, then would have been wildly different. She would have been able to participate. Coach Brian Parana (9:46.078) and enjoy it for [unclear] at a significant more amount. So if we look through this, medication's definitely gonna go and when you have one medication, you literally get more and more as you go because we have to counteract different signs and symptoms and problems that show up. Coach Brian Parana (10:7.297) Now in diabetes, we're talking about insulin, metformin, maybe even if it's worse enough, a GLP-1. And I just went over in episode 131 on reasons why people would be taking a GLP-1 for medical reasons. And even in episode 121, the good, the bad, the ugly of GLP-1. So check that out. 123 was on muscle and its impact from GLP-1s. Coach Brian Parana (10:36.525) So we got diabetes with Marcus. Cholesterol going untreated can become a walking heart attack like situation that could have been the challenge with his father. By the time we finished that conversation, Marcus wasn't thinking about losing just 35 pounds anymore. He was thinking about his kids, thinking about whether he could be functional in his 60s. He was thinking about Sarah watching him decline in the same way that he watched his dad. And that is negative. Coach Brian Parana (11:2.337) Visualization. It's a very powerful tool that a lot of humans want to keep their head in the sand and they do not want to think about it because it's challenging. It hurts. It's painful to think about yourself in a very negative experience because things can get worse. I have talked to thousands of people where things have gotten worse. They come their weights the heaviest they've ever been. They're on more medication than they've ever been. Literally, it can get worse. So you have to do something. Coach Brian Parana (11:31.798) We're not fear mongering. It's just a reality about understanding what the true reality, the potential of this situation is. I'm not trying to make them feel bad or anyone feel bad, but honestly, if you stop and think, if the trajectory of what you've been experiencing in the last five years quickens, because life usually quickens up and the trajectory stays moving in the same direction, what happens to you? Really sit with that in a moment and think while you're on this podcast, pause. Coach Brian Parana (12:1.461) Spend a minute self-thinking of what the negative outcomes are when you do not take care of yourself. It can be bad. And I'm never gonna let that happen. Well, if you're sitting on listening to this podcast and you're in way heavier than you ever had, then bro, as my kids would say, bro, you're on your way. The check engine light has been on in a while and you haven't got it turned off. Coach Brian Parana (12:29.869) Your engine is wearing down over time. Coach Brian Parana (12:34.613) A lot of coaching and self-help content tells you to focus on what you want. Of course, we have to have deadlines and goals to facilitate growth because Pareto's rule is we allow as much time as we need to accomplish tasks. That's why I have a hundred day program in my men's group. It's a hundred days to focus on losing 20 plus pounds and start to overcome chronic illness. And that you can lose one to even one and a half percent. Coach Brian Parana (13:5.226) one point on your A1C dropping. I literally had a client just the other day I posted in my stories on Instagram of them dropping almost two points in their A1C because they're doing the things that we talked about consistently over time, implemented into their everyday life. So it's a real thing and it can change. Your cholesterol and your high blood pressure can come down quite a bit. Coach Brian Parana (13:32.522) As well, when you start losing 20 plus pounds. And I have multiple episodes throughout the podcast that you can find where guys lost a lot of weight and started to ease their challenge around poor health situations. So we run toward deposit, of course, and that definitely works from people. And we're a as Tony Robbins would say, it's either a push motivation or a pull motivation. We're either doing one or the other. And Coach Brian Parana (14:1.685) I have to understand, is someone more apt to going toward six pack abs on the beach? Or are they more apt to go away from watching and experiencing the same thing that happened to their father or in this situation or any other person of close proximity to them and experiencing that situation where, my gosh, the scale hit 300? My cholesterol is over 240, my waist size is over. Coach Brian Parana (14:30.625) 40, my neck size is over 17. My BMI is over 20 or even definitely 30, you're in trouble. That's just a height to weight ratio that you can do real quick. Coach Brian Parana (14:44.129) figure out if you're at risk. Those are chronic if you're in an XL to an XXL and trending that way or even to XXXL, you bro, things aren't going well. I'm gonna bro you a bunch maybe on this call, I don't know. In this conversation is my kids, everyone in my house is a bro. If you have kids right now in 2026, everyone's a bro. It's just the way it is. My daughter calls me bro. Okay. Even my sons call my daughter bro. Coach Brian Parana (15:13.813) Like, why don't you just call her sis? But it's not the thing. So, bro, let's wake up. So, push or pull. Quick check-in with yourself. Which one are you more likely to be? Do you drive toward goals or away from pain? For me, say I'm running a marathon. I'm driving toward beating my son. I don't know if that's gonna be possible because he ran a 3:32 last year. Levi at age 16. Coach Brian Parana (15:42.166) And I'm over here at 43 trying to rekindle my marathon running days. I've had two 16 miles that I ran this month so far in July. I've got a third one coming up on in three days. So today's gonna be a no run day. Tomorrow I'll run five. Friday's a no run day, but I'll do some bicycling and I've talked about that a little bit. But I'm a toward a person. My goal is to look and feel the way I do now when I'm 50. Coach Brian Parana (16:11.179) I'm 43. And I've literally said this for three to four years now. When I was 38, 39, said, Hey, it'd be really cool if I look and feel the way I do when I'm 50. Okay, awesome. I'm a toward person, but you might be in a way. So you just have to understand that about yourself to then again the inner workings of your mind to facilitate what the capacity is. Coach Brian Parana (16:37.579) Marcus said to me, I don't want to be my dad is 62. That sentence is way more powerful than any vision board I could have had him draw up. And when he sits and experiencing what his father had gone through and he had gone through as a result of it, that it has impact. So the coaching prompt for this tool tonight, even right now. Coach Brian Parana (17:4.275) sit down and I want you to not in journal or plan. Just in your head answer the question. If nothing changes in the next three to five years, what does that actually look like for me? Pause right now, come back in a minute and think through this question. No bro, do not vague me. Like I want to look better, feel better. That is garbage. That is not an actual Coach Brian Parana (17:31.916) response that you should be even thinking. Very specifically when you can understand like for me saying with the looking and feeling the way I do when I'm 50, I want to be able to run and keep up with my kids. I want to be still lifting most days of the week. I want to be able to lift things up that I can move stuff around and not just like, hey Levi, can you open this jar for me? Like there's very physical context to what that represents. Coach Brian Parana (18:0.393) my the look of my body. I want to look and feel athletic and youthful my whole life. I do not want to just slowly get out of shape and in quotations dad bod or something. Not interested. I want to be lean, strong, muscular, and I want to maintain this look as long as I can so that when I'm 50, people are confused because they think I'm 40. To me, that I get kicks out of that and that's a driver for me. So pause it, think about it again. I'll say it one more time. Coach Brian Parana (18:29.631) If nothing changes in the next three to five years, what does that actually look like? Coach Brian Parana (18:35.101) All right. Next up, build frustration tolerance. Huge thing here. Marcus made the decision. He filled out the form and the application to the Call to Rise program. He joins, and we get into this process of week one going well, week two going well, week three, we hit a wall. And with this, we've got all sorts of different things coming up from kid issues to Coach Brian Parana (19:2.827) work issues to time issues to whatever. I mean, literally, if you're waiting for a good time to do something, then you're always gonna be waiting. Life's always throwing curveballs. There's always something that's coming down the pipeline that you do not know about that may be good or bad or indifferent, but it's gonna challenge you one way or another. You have to be responsive to this stuff. So that's the whole part of what I do is MBF: moderation, balance, flexibility, and the 2-2-2 rule. Coach Brian Parana (19:32.353) What we do in two weeks, we do in two months, we do in two years. It's a long-term bias approach around how you manage yourself, your life, your health, your wealth, all these things. We want to stack real habits so that the outcome in the future is an actual ROI of the effort, the return on investment of you picking better food choices today, drinking water here, if you can see the video. Coach Brian Parana (19:57.952) All this stuff matters. It matters a lot when this is all said and done. Coach Brian Parana (20:5.351) And what happens in for most guys, and this is this rat race hamster wheel that they get in, that the work gets heavy in long hours, you start missing workouts. I've been talking on a lot of podcasts, but you take the example is you take your gym bag into the car with you, put it in the backseat or the trunk, whatever's the place you put it, and it realizes when you get home that night that it just weeps. Coach Brian Parana (20:35.275) Because it longingly wanted to go to the gym with you all day and get you pumped up for that workout when it just cries sadly to itself all night because it just sits and sits and sits unused and unwanted, even though you drag it around, teasing it that you're gonna go to the gym today. So these are the real life situations that we actually have to plan for and oftentimes people blow it. Today's a Wednesday. I mean, let's start just start over on Monday, guys. Forget it. Coach Brian Parana (21:5.485) You got four days just rest and reset and do whatever you need to there. But that turns into two and half weeks, and then we're way off track and we have just set ourselves back. And I call this the it's the rule of thumb, the get back on it rule. This however many days you're off is about however many days it takes to get back on. Meaning if you take a week off of anything, say even a week vacation. Coach Brian Parana (21:35.096) Perfectly fine. I'm gonna be going on one here in a little bit to Alaska with my family. And I'm not stepping on the scale a week after. We'll get home on a Sunday and I'll probably step on the scale the next Sunday if I even do at all. I will just get right back into normal everyday behavior and that's it. Exactly it. But having the right expectations of however many days you're off is about however many days to get back on. This is a ground rule that I've been telling clients for the 10 plus years because I see these patterned behavior. Coach Brian Parana (22:4.695) So we can't build up this frustration of lack of progress because everyone that I'm working with is a driven person. I mean, you should see the brotherhood in the group. These guys are high flyers. They are moving and shaking, especially in the career and making things happen or heavily involved in their families, but they're just out of shape and overweight. Now, Marcus in this situation has a low frustration tolerance. And that's just it. That's the thing. Coach Brian Parana (22:33.185) What I mean by that is the moment something got uncomfortable, a missed workout, the plan got a wrench thrown it for the food, you skipped a meal because it was so busy at work, you just didn't plan well, stressful week that it threw the routine off the brain and your brain just checks out. This isn't working. I ruined it. I'll restart on Monday. That pattern is constantly playing in your head for years. It's very strong. Coach Brian Parana (23:2.389) Once you hit the friction in life, then you quit. So we can't do that. We definitely can't have this strong start in a program or a process. Once things get challenging or tough, then you stop doing it. There's a gentleman just joined the other day, too, Eric. He is in this rat race and he's 47. He's got two, a 14 and 11-year-old. And he's been trying to go to the gym forever, and he never goes. Well, Coach Brian Parana (23:29.259) I've literally gotten him to go to the gym twice in the last week, which is way better than he's done in months, because he literally hasn't done it and it's in his work. Why? Because we do the do what by when approach standard that I have with my guys, and we do what by when. We agreed that he was gonna go to the gym, even if it was just a walk. But the point was he's gonna put his feet into that gym. Now, the guys I've worked with who get Coach Brian Parana (23:57.602) The long term bias and the process of the results that we want are and they're not necessarily super athletic, they're not necessarily super disciplined, they have rough weeks, and but they found a way to bounce back. When life knocks you down, you do a burpee. Just missing two workouts isn't a big deal if you're still getting twelve in the month. Why does it matter? You're gonna have planned time off anyways. Coach Brian Parana (24:27.629) All right. That's frustration tolerance and understand what where your level of frustration tolerance is with anything in life. There's probably some areas in your life that you're a superstar in managing frustration and overcoming it and keep coming. I'll just share a little bit, just even this podcast. I am trying to get out there and have people know more about who I am and what I do. I've spoken 6,000 minutes. I just had 10,000 downloads of this podcast. Coach Brian Parana (24:57.163) I had 200 views on my YouTube channel. And it's just I gotta keep doing more. Volume, doing more of the things at work and get myself out there to have people gain, know like, and trust and understand who I am and what I do and how it can impact their everyday life is vitally important, but I have to keep showing up. One way or another, it's just keep showing up, keep doing the work. That's what it is. The first thing I told Marcus was accept happened. Coach Brian Parana (25:26.483) It is what it is. It's a tough week. The launch is a big time commitment. Dinners were missed. Workouts were missed. These things are gonna happen and it's just part of life. But if you're spending your time arguing with yourself or feeling guilty about it, you're donezo, as Levi would say. Donezo. Not gonna happen. Again, if you have a teenager, you probably hear this language all the time because even their kids say it all the time too. Coach Brian Parana (25:56.524) The third thing, and what really connected with Marcus, I told him is stop saying I blew it. Language is powerful. I believe it was one episode 126. I had Pat Smith on, wholeheartedly agree with everything he we talked about. It's the power of language. And we talked a lot about the words that you use, the phrasing, the body language that you do it with has a strong impact on. Coach Brian Parana (26:24.567) Who you are, how you show up, and what your body and energy are. Now I blew it. How about we just and we don't need fake affirmations either? I'm crushing it. And we certainly affirmations are super powerful and when well placed, like in the morning, to help build the belief around actually doing it, overcoming frustration and building that tolerance around that. That's super important. So that's just something to make sure that you're highly aware of here. Okay. Coach Brian Parana (26:54.707) Is this is real? Now I was here. Marcus committed. Do what by when? In a hundred days, I want to accomplish this goal. So we onward we go and we just get back up and get moving because that's the only thing that you can do in this situation. So the coaching prompt I want you to do, it's like coach GPT Brian over here. I want you to prompt yourself this. When something gets hard or challenging, throws you off your game. Coach Brian Parana (27:23.595) And your brain's telling you you blew it or it's not working. I want you to pause right before you do something. Understand what that feeling is, whether it's frustration, you're tired, you're behind. You have to pause. This is so powerful. And that's one thing that I do really well in is get people to slow down to think through what the next best choice is. I call it the AIM principle. Coach Brian Parana (27:53.076) Am I moving toward my health goals or away from them? And that's exactly what you want to think. Is the next decision that I'm going to do move me toward my goals or away from them? And when we understand and realize that, then we are able to empower ourselves to be able to move in the right direction because we just stopped and we didn't just react. Now, the tool we'll get to, just want to throw out if you've been listening to Marcus. Coach Brian Parana (28:21.037) The story here or any of the things that I've ever said, and you've been overweight for longer than you can imagine. If it's been over 10 years, bro, again, we're gonna pull out a bro, you have to do something about it because it will get worse. Okay. Even if carrying 20, 30, 40 pounds and you're healthy now, it's gonna catch up to you. But also the missed opportunities cost here on you feeling your best version of yourself. Coach Brian Parana (28:49.045) And the people around you living that is significant. And that's what the Call to Rise does. It's a hundred-day fat loss challenge where I have men step up, rise up to the standard that they do. And we have five pillars. The first one is the call, it's your identity. Be the man that you want to be seen as for yourself, most importantly, but then other people can see you as this leader. Health as a leadership strategy. It's so important. Coach Brian Parana (29:16.599) Pillar number two is the forge. This is the exercise component. Moving your body, having an individualized exercise approach that works for you and your schedule, regardless of where you're at, how busy you are, or whatever. We're gonna burn fat and build muscle. Number three is the fuel. Eat the right foods at the right times in the right amount. So important to be able to understand nutrition, science-backed nutrition implemented into the easiest way possible for you to be able to implement in the busy life that you have. Coach Brian Parana (29:46.388) Every client that I work with is capital B-U-S-Y. That's why you get radical accountability to get things shifted into gear. Pillar four is the code, the mindset piece of this. Thinking differently. That's what we're talking about today. If you never had anyone ask you real serious questions, you've never had a conversation that's serious about your health. And oftentimes the people that I just talked to, they've never openly admitted. Coach Brian Parana (30:13.505) To the things that they share on even the very first call, because the space that I create for people is open, it's honest, and it's the truth to help them empower themselves to make better choices for themselves, to be there for themselves and for others. So the mindset we have to think differently, and that's what we're doing in this episode. The fifth one is the brotherhood. You have me as a team lead. I try aspire. I'm a human, so I need to be humble and say that I don't always make the best. Coach Brian Parana (30:43.403) decisions and I eat pizza and all this stuff, whatever. Like it's just part of life. I get grumpy sometimes. You're never gonna hear it on these podcasts, but the brotherhood is about rising up and being around people that are striving toward bigger goals. So it's a collective community of high achieving guys that are struggling with the weight one way or another. But I promise you, y'all are about the same. You're very busy, you have lots of responsibility, you're Coach Brian Parana (31:10.891) Have had success in the past, but you still weigh more than you want to, and you haven't actually had a long-term success. And by being in the group and being around more committed people, because Tony Robbins will say it, the five closest people that you're around impact you and your actions and the way you think and feel and process and all. And that's what it is. So the goal is lose 20 plus pounds in the a hundred day time frame, or I'll keep working with you until you do. Coach Brian Parana (31:38.038) It's a simple guarantee that I can have because if we're working together, we're winning. And any guy that's been graduating wins. They get over twenty pounds. And there's countless episodes in this podcast that do it. So we've got episode 117, 113, we have 93, 86, we've got 53, 43, 34, 21, 29, just to name a few that you could listen to and hear their processing and all. Coach Brian Parana (32:7.191) So that's it about that. So thecalltorise.com. If this is something that is up your alley and all this is resonating with you, then jump in, man. Let's go. Let's go. All right. That's another Leviism. Let's go. And he flexes, and when he's super excited, it's awesome to see as a father. All right, tool number three, back into the conversation. Stopping the thought spiral. Marcus is in week eight of the program, waits Coach Brian Parana (32:34.807) Going down, his energy is up, he's managing his food better than ever. He's hitting his step goals, getting the workouts, and things are working. Then there's one check-in and tells me he doesn't think he can maintain this once the program ends. And he's convinced that as soon as the structure of the process goes away, then I've done this before and I lose weight, but then it comes back. I don't. Coach Brian Parana (33:4.085) trust myself to keep it off and keep the process going. Well in general, I'm gonna tell you the 2-2-2 rule. What we do in two weeks, we do in two months, we do in two years. And that's the conversation that I have with him of like bro, you were doing it. My thing here, if you're looking on the video here, let's pull this up real quick. Joe, which we talked about in episode 126 Coach Brian Parana (33:31.384) He was going away to Tennessee over the Fourth of July holiday. And he, if you can see it here, I'm reading what he said in our message app. So if you see it on the video, there it is. So I'm gonna read it out loud. Yes, in all capital letters, four S's, exclamation point. I did it, exclamation point. I weighed the exact same this morning as I did the Friday morning before I left for Tennessee. 210.4, nine days of traveling, and then my first two days back. Coach Brian Parana (34:1.345) weren't exactly A-plus from the nutritional standpoint. And these are things this is called life, but these are things that we talked about to make sure they had food, resources, time to go to the grocery store to have these things or have food there. But this is again life. But I weigh 210.4 this morning. Thanks for all your help and support. And honestly, for the last three days, I've been looking forward to Wednesday morning so that I could weigh myself. This is fire. This is Coach Brian Parana (34:28.477) why I do what it is. And the reason why he's so happy is that we set the goal for him to maintain weight while he went away on a nine day Fourth of July experience. And that's Joe's experience. And that's what I challenged with. Hey, Joe, what are your goals over this next time frame of what it is? The do what by when process. I want to have a really good time, but I also don't want to self sacrifice and gain five extra pounds around my waist just because I'm Coach Brian Parana (34:57.557) acting like a little kid and I can't control my food. And he was worried about it. I said, dude, I'm a text away. But the goal is that you said you're gonna do this. I'm gonna hold you to it. And we're gonna do it. And now he has more trust in himself that he can do this. And we're still on our journey and that's fine. We're gonna get under two hundred and it's gonna come in the next couple of weeks because he's doing the work and he didn't have a massive setback of gaining more weight and just having a two week timeout, basically three week timeout from nine days. So Coach Brian Parana (35:26.477) However many days you're off, nine days. How many days you get back on, nine more days, that's 18 days out of a 30-day month. Okay. If you gain 10 pounds and had to lose 10 pounds or five pounds and lose it, you're not able to make progress. And weight maintenance is an awesome thing when you have somewhat to little control over the food choices that you have. Coach Brian Parana (35:49.888) So we walk through. I've been talking a lot. Hopefully you're picking up what we're selling here. And we have to start with the long-term approach to get to a five-pound weight range that I want you to be able to maintain and say in the rest of your life. That is a very standard that I have for all the guys. What's our five pound weight range? What's our five-pound weight range? Because we can maintain that for years. No, no, no human weighs the exact same amount one day to the next. Coach Brian Parana (36:19.637) It's impossible unless you're just neurotic about tracking your food. So what I've learned for working with guys and gals over 23 years, your brain is very good at pattern recognition, very bad at distinguishing between a pattern that's fixed and a pattern that can change. Marcus's brain had logged five plus years of inconsistency and decided that it was just who he was. He was someone that Coach Brian Parana (36:44.449) wasn't able to maintain weight, this identity piece around just being overweight, fat, dad bod type look feel, and never feel comfortable with the shirt off at the pool. So we walked through four questions I use a lot with my clients when they're thinking this way and their brain is running against them. Question number one, again you can pause this to write these down. Question number one is is that actually true? Is it true that you can't maintain results? Well he says probably. Coach Brian Parana (37:12.981) Second question is, is it absolutely true? Have you ever actually been in a structured program with real accountability and coaching and followed it through completely and then not been able to maintain it? We thought about it and he hadn't. He'd not been through a program. He'd done apps, he'd done fads, he's done the keto or the fasting thing or whatever. These just aren't generally, they're not good food behaviors. Hey, I'm just not gonna eat all day long. Or Coach Brian Parana (37:42.072) Hey, I'm just gonna avoid a whole food group. That's not good food behaviors at all. I'm just gonna eat one meal a day. Not a good food behavior. You're not gonna get adequate amounts of protein or vegetables in that time frame. And it unfortunately, I think it's just lazy and poor planning around being able to maintain a proper nutrition and healthy energy because you can do this a thousand different ways and be successful without it costing you a lot of time and energy. So Coach Brian Parana (38:10.141) He thought about it every time before, as he said, he'd quit because there's no real system, there's no process to lose the weight, but that then transitioned easily into a maintenance phase. So he didn't have belief around whatever he tried in the past to actually being able to maintain. Question three. How does thinking that way make you feel? When you think like this and you don't believe in yourself, you feel frustrated. You're defeated. You're challenged and you're checked out. Coach Brian Parana (38:39.819) Because that ends up being a really big challenge for you to be able to manage in this life situation of feeling down on yourself. Is it useful to feel that way, Marcus? No. Does that feeling lead to anything that helps him? No. Going back to the AIM principle. You can do this literally every single point of the day when you make a choice. Am I moving toward my health goals? Question number four. Coach Brian Parana (39:8.961) What would you do differently if you didn't believe that thought? I'd probably actually finish strong. I'd pay attention to the maintenance piece. I would trust the process and my abilities longer term, which is great because then for every other area of his life, then he can have even more confidence and trust going into because he is a powerful person that can maintain goals and trust in himself. Coach Brian Parana (39:36.790) That's the exercise, those four questions. You're not trying to convince yourself of something that's fake. You're just examining whether that thought you're running in your head is actually based on actual solid evidence, or it's just a story you've been telling yourself that doesn't have a full set of accurate data. In Marcus's case, the story was built around years of quitting before the finish line. He had never actually stayed in long enough to find out what maintenance looked like. Coach Brian Parana (40:6.049) That had an actual lifestyle attached to it. He finishes the program, down 28 pounds, A1C is a 5.9, still in a prediabetic range, but we're moving the right direction. Cholesterol dropped to 194. And Sarah noticed, yeah, hey, I can get my arms around you now and squeeze you. I can trust you more because you actually took action. I'm literally having this with the Eric gentleman. He came in and it's like, hey. Coach Brian Parana (40:34.017) Get into the kitchen, start participating with food preparation because you do not have a clue. Your wife will appreciate you and this will pull you closer. Plus, there's a heavy amount of building trust in this process that we need to establish with yourself most importantly, Eric, but also with your wife too, that she needs to be able to trust you when it comes to you taking care of yourself. And then the kids notice and people at work notice. And people are like, hey, you look so great. And it's awesome. Coach Brian Parana (41:2.263) The coaching prompt for this tool, the next time a thought comes in that's gonna derail you, is just go back to these four questions. Is it true? Is it absolutely true? How does it make me feel? What would I do if I didn't believe it? If you stop and take two minutes to do that, again, I'll read it one more time. Is it true? Is it absolutely true? How does it make me feel? Coach Brian Parana (41:30.539) What would I do if I didn't believe it? Coach Brian Parana (41:34.806) Zooming out now. What Marcus is dealing with is the pattern of ignoring poor health as it multiplies over years. Because yes, it will multiply. It's like the seven-year cycle of investing, of compounding. You staying overweight will compound into a poor disease at some point in your life. That is true. And I've seen this consistently throughout the 23 years I've been doing this. Coach Brian Parana (42:2.645) It's a common thread that we need to get unstuck in your head, most importantly. Of course, the physical stuff, exercise, movement matters. That's one of the three lever system that I have. We have movement, we have nutrition, which has food choice and portion control, and other things that are important, like your blood work and how this all fits into a normal life, time management, stress management, these are all things that are super duper important in this process. But the reason most guys Coach Brian Parana (42:31.255) don't get the results is not because of the eating or the exercise because they will have bouts in series of doing it. Coach Brian Parana (42:44.225) How do they think? What is the messages that they're sending in their head? Super duper important. Now Marcus can operate at a high level and trust himself around his health and more importantly, be able to leverage that trust into bigger, more productivity things around business, around relationships, and important things that matter. If this episode gave you something useful, please share with a guy in your life that needs to hear it. Coach Brian Parana (43:13.345) This is super important that we can pass the word around. Give me a like, review, send me an email, brian@brianparana.com, and I can answer a question that you have, or even have you on as a health hot seat and talk to you through a live coaching call to give you a blueprint of what a real life lifestyle could look like for you. That's it for Coach Brian. If any of this resonated, like I said, share, like, email. Coach Brian Parana (43:42.455) Check out my program, The Call to Rise. Off we go.