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Feb. 11, 2026

Why You Can't Stop Eating at 9 PM (And How to Fix It) - 64

Show Notes
Transcript

Most guys sabotage their progress every night without even realizing it. Coach Brian Parana exposes the hidden cycles that keep you stuck in emotional eating, weight gain, and frustration, and shares exactly how to break free.

If you're over 40 and tired of feeling out of control around food, this episode is your blueprint to rewire your habits, rebuild your confidence, and finally get back in shape without restrictive diets or impossible rules.

You'll discover the moment when food stops being fuel and becomes your go-to coping tool, and how your brain unwittingly learned this behavior through a four-step emotional loop.

Coach Brian breaks down how triggers like stress or boredom ignite cravings, the cycle of immediate relief, and the guilt that drags you right back into overeating.

More importantly, he shares a simple, proven reset plan with 3 powerful strategies:

Mastering your triggers,
Building quick-pattern interrupts, and
Creating foolproof default routines that fit into real life.

This episode reveals how to identify your specific emotional triggers such as stressful nights, work pressures, or social setbacks and turn them into opportunities for control instead of chaos.

You’ll learn the powerful 10-minute interruption routine that shatters the cycle of emotional drinking or snacking, replacing impulsive cravings with mindful habits that restore your energy and self-respect.

With clear, actionable steps, you can stop chasing perfect and start building consistency, because lasting change comes from small, sustainable shifts, not all-or-nothing diets.

Whether you're battling late-night cravings, feelings of inadequacy, or just want to feel confident in your own skin again, this episode is your critical edge. If you're ready to ditch emotional eating and build a resilient, balanced approach to health that sticks, this is your turning point.

Perfect for guys in their 40s and 50s who crave real results, not quick fixes, this episode unlocks the mindset and systems you need for a healthier, more energized life.

Coach Brian Parana is a health strategist who specializes in helping busy men recondition their relationship with food and fitness, so they can lead with confidence and vitality. His no-nonsense approach and practical frameworks have transformed hundreds of lives now it’s your turn to break free from the cycle and step into your best second half.

Don’t let emotional eating rob you of your health and happiness. Tune in now and learn how to reset your habits, reclaim your energy, and finally feel in control again.

The Call To Rise is a 100-day Fat Loss Transformation Experience designed for driven men ready to get back to a healthy body, boost their energy, and lead as a powerful man.

If you are struggling with some form of chronic illness such as high blood pressure, cholesterol or even Type 2 Diabetes - this program is designed for you too.

Through a proven system of strength training, personalized nutrition, and radical accountability, you’ll drop 20–30 pounds and rebuild confidence from the inside out and even improve chronic illness issues. It’s more than a fitness program, it’s an body transformation experience with a Brotherhood of like-minded men committed to showing up, leveling up, and leading in a body they are excited about.

This is your wake-up call to rise.

www.thecalltorise.com

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:

www.thecalltorise.com

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.

I had a client tell me last month, "Coach, I used to be an athlete. [clears throat] Now I can't even walk past a pantry without grabbing something." He played college baseball, competed in triathlons in his 30s, and now he's 43, and works in finance. He's 35 lbs heavier than he wants to be. His pants size has grown a couple inches.
And if that's your story, too, listen up because today we're breaking down why this happens and what you actually can do about it. Welcome to Driven for Health. I'm Coach Brian Piranha and this show is for guys in their 40s and 50s who want to not only get back in shape, but actually live an exciting, thrilling life in their late second half of the life.
not to go through a midlife crisis or something, especially when it comes to your health, or even worse, have a chronic illness that sets you back for, you know, even worse, your life. Now, we don't want GLP1s, no peptides, weird 1990s diets, none of that. No lose 30 pounds in 30 days that you only gain more weight back once you get done.
just real strategies that work when you have a real job, a career, and a family with a life. Today's episode 64. We're talking about emotional eating. Why you can't stop thinking about food at night and it is 10:04 right now as I do a live stream podcast on all my socials. You might be scrolling.
Hopefully I stop you here and put up the hand. Stop putting something in your mouth. You don't need it. Maxwell, my third son, he always doesn't do anything at night and then he comes up from downstairs and he just wants to eat. It's a habitual thing. And he wants to eat dinner at bedtime. No, dude.
If you want anything, have an apple. And as I've gone over in other episodes, if you're not ready to eat an apple or chicken or something like that or say some carrots, you're not hungry. So why the fit, healthy body, and daily routine you used to have feels like it's vanished. Where did it go? And what to do about it starting today? Let's jump in.
The guy you used to be. I hear the same story at least three times a week. A guy calls me up, usually in his mid4s, maybe around 50, and he says something like this. Coach, I don't know what happened. I used to be disciplined. I used to go to the gym. I'd meal prep, or at least I have a good idea what I'm doing with my food.
I'd train five days a week. Now I can't even make it to Wednesday without falling off track. Then he starts every again on Monday. Just not good. Then he'll tell me how he played college soccer or football depending on where you're from. Or he was a wrestler in high school or he just used to be the guy that showed up at the gym before work to knock it out.
Then life happened. Maybe his mom got sick and he spent six months driving back and forth to help her. Maybe he switched jobs and is in a new role and has him on the road three weeks out of the month. Those are two guys that come to mind. One being first one is Bevon. The second one being coincidentally enough, but Devon.
So Bevon with a B and Devon with a D. Those are two guys that literally live those experiences. Or maybe his relationship has been strained and now he's trying to figure out how to split custody and living in an apartment that he doesn't want to be in eating takeout and last week's Chinese that's been sitting in the fridge too long and cold pizza in the morning four nights a week.
And somewhere in there the food changed for the worse. It went from fuel to the thing that helps you get through the day or finish it out. The thing that shuts off your brain at night after the kids finally go to bed. That's honestly why I'm here right now at 10:07. We got done reading with my daughter Emiline.
We're reading currently Norton Jesterers the Phantom Phantom Toll Booth. Absolutely love it. I would highly recommend anyone that's got kids even 12 or under. Oh, it's so good. I think my even my older teenagers, my upper older boys, Levi now, but Maxwell definitely I'm going to make sure Maxwell reads it. He's a reading machine.
But we just got done reading it and now it's time for this. Now, if any of this stuff resonates, you need it here. Let's make sure you pause and write. Take notes cuz I'm going to be laying it on pretty thick because life throws curveballs and you have to be ready to catch them. What happened is your brain found a tool that works.
Food gives you the relief and it's really fast. I mean, it hits hard quickly. You feel stressed, overwhelmed, and you put something in your mouth and kaboom, serotonin, dopamine, all sorts of different receptors are going off, and you feel better. Your brain and your body actually learn this behavior over time. It's really hard to unlearn it.
Tonight, or today, if you're listening or in the morning, whenever you're listening to this, I'm going to show you how to unlearn it. We're not restricting yourself into just misery and avoiding food like the plague. That's just not how I roll. We're not doing chicken, broccoli, and rice on repeat endlessly.
But by building a system that works in your life, we want to make sure that it fits and it doesn't get messy the longer that it goes. Messy meaning that it's going to unravel and you're going to falter. Here's what we're covering. burst. I'll explain the moment when food stops being fuel and becomes your coping tool.
Second, I'll break down the loop your brain runs when you emotionally eat. It's a four-step cycle and once you see it, you can interrupt it immediately. Okay? Soon as you start understanding patterns of behaviors, then you are now back in control. And third, I'll give you a reset plan, three parts, three triggers, interruption, and a default.
Back getting back to default to the basics. Let's start with how this switch happens in the first place. Part one. When food was simple back when you're shoot when I was 20 I the hardest question I had in my life was how far am I going to run today that was it even by 30 you're still just cranking away not a big deal you're active food was simple you just got hungry and you ate and you trained you recovered that was it maybe you have pizza on Friday nights maybe a sleeve of Oreos on the weekend But it didn't matter because
you were able to burn it off. Your body, your metabolism, everything was full tilt. I see it in my boys. They are m just eating machines. Bottomless pits. They don't stop eating. The sport and the exercise, the training gave you structure. It gave you guidelines. It gave you rules. gave you calories that you burned a lot.
Now, just the fact that you were young, your metabolism just didn't really care about how much food you put in your mouth. Something shifted. I'll give you an example from my own life. when we were going through our let's see in the last 10 years I have been shifting from one business to another business to being completely on my own.
I've been an entrepreneur since 2010, self-employed for it's been 16 years, built businesses. Uh I've collected well over seven figures now in the last 16 years. And that poses its strengths, but also challenges to keep up with business and grow and develop and have a team. And in my gyms, we had coaches. And what happened was in the last 10 years, I've I still work out most days every day, but I stopped running.
I I would walk and talk while I was on phone calls with clients, and that worked out amazing. It still does. Walking is a cheat code. But for example, I can't run as fast as I want to. My Levi and my two older kids are faster than me. And for whatever reason, I'm trying to run a marathon with Levi because he challenged me to and I'm just like that and now my butt hurts or my calves hurt or something else hurts.
I'm like, oh my gosh. In my brain, my identity says I'm that 20-year-old. How far am I going to run today? Okay, let's go six or eight or whatever. And my body's like, I don't think so. strain my glute and now I'm stuck on the aerodyine trying to not pull my my hammy or my my butt muscle again and that becomes a big issue.
Now, at night, I'll just be sometimes I'll I'll want to eat something and sometimes it might not be able to fit in my calories and sometimes a good example is even just earlier in the last seven days, my I got some RZY pizza. It's a local place. We get pizza. We get Jojo's. And I had three slices. This was at 10 or 11:00.
And I probably should have only had two or literally I should have only had one, but I had three and I had a Jojo and I definitely went over my calories the next day. It's like, hm, how long can I go without food? And that ends up being a challenge. So, this literally was within the last week. I just want to know that you're not alone.
I deal with this stuff, too. My clients deal with it every single day or week. And the challenge is at least for me the biggest shift came when I was able to understand calories and their impact on the day and the food that I have and how it plays a part in my overall lifestyle.
So here's an identity moment number one and this is the thought that probably runs through your head late at night when nobody's watching. I used to have control over this or I could just eat whatever I wanted. And what the hell happened? Why is my body doing this? What is going on? Now, this can be definitely an underlying frustration because every time that you go over the board and over the line, you end up adding an extra half a pound to your waist.
And if you don't do any set of course correction, half a pound, even a quarter pound a week is one pound a month is 12 pounds a year is 25 and two. It adds up quick and all of a sudden 5 years go by and you've just been on this trend. You're 40 lbs overweight and dealing with high cholesterol or high 181c and your doctor wants to put you on meds and call you a diabetic.
Probably not what you're after. So it gets frustrating because you don't look and feel the way you did of that old version. It is gone and you have no idea how to get it back. But we just need to do a different strategy. Part two, the tool your brain found. Let me tell you what happens after this shift.
Your brain starts learning a pattern. pattern is you have a you wake up early, you drop the kids off at school, that's what I do every day, and then you get to work. And for some, you might grab a candy bar, you might skip that and go with a Starbucks, and just work your way through the day. But then you end up grabbing bag of chips, candy bar.
There's It helps. It makes you feel better. and your brain unwinds for 20 minutes. Or maybe something else happened. You had a terrible meeting with your boss or you had to lay someone off or there was horrible traffic and it took so long to get home and you found your way through a drive-thru. That also feels better, right? you get this instant hit of dopamine and the taste and and just the enjoyment of that experience in the moment.
I remember I've had a lot of guys say that they would go to drive-thrus on their way home to eat dinner and then they'd be ashamed. They stuff the bag of McDonald's bag or Burger King or whatever it was deep into the trash can when they got home or they'd stop off somewhere a local convenience store and pitch it before they got home so no one would know and then they'd still eat dinner. This was this is a real thing.
So your brain learns this stuff. It connects the dots. Stress equals food. Sadness equals food. Anger equals food. Now, eating isn't about hunger anymore, okay? It's just it's irrelevant if you're hungry. How many people out here are listening to this and they end up overeing just because they're fool, but they keep putting food in their mouth because they totally checked out.
That is a real thing. Okay, this is the where people make the first mistake. They try to fix an emotional problem with food. They think I just need to and and then they go even beyond. Oh, I need to do a nutritional strategy to fix the emotional situation. I'll start counting calories or I'll have a restrictive food plan. I will start tracking macros.
I just need to have the right meal plan in the week or just cut out sugar or I'll go dry January. Let me save you some time. This isn't going to work. I have to be honest, recipes are everywhere. How many influencers online you see them doing their recipe hacks or try this or this is a high protein this or the cottage cheese that the egg fluff thing here.
I I watch a lot of those or I mean I observe them but I've never even stopped to cook them and so many people just collect recipes or recipe cookbooks and it just doesn't help. They do food swaps and Costco hauls and it doesn't it's not helpful. It's not solving the emotional coping problem that you're dealing with. And here's why most guys, what they do when they realize they're stuck, they just go all in. They go white knuckle.
They cut all carbs. They detox. And they try to be absolutely 100% perfect. That actually makes it worse. By the restriction, it adds more stress. More stress creates cravings. More cravings lead to overeating. Overeating leads to guilt or shame or blame. And stress compounds as cycle keeps going loop and loop and loop. The emotional eating isn't fixed with more rules.
It's fixed with a different approach that actually deals with the situation at hand. Number three, the fourstep loop. Let's show you the pattern your brain runs. It's just four steps. I had a client, Mike, who's a sales director. A lot of pressure, constantly had quotas, and he had to have his team hit quotas, and there a certain amount of money that need to be brought in every single month.
And then when he gets home, he's got three kids, his wife's a teacher, and every night at 8:30 after the kids go to bed, he finds himself in the pantry. Maybe a little bit of hanging out with Jack as well. And cereal always does a job. I think Captain Crunch or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. He told me, "Coach, I don't even know how I got here.
One minute I'm on a couch, next minute I'm pour myself Cinnamon Toast Crunch and eating it." Well, let's break it down. The four triggers here. The steps are number one is the trigger. Something set him off. It's It's usually a tiny tweak or stress. Uh, say for me, my daughter never wants to go to bed. Uh, I'm ready to bed.
I actually read myself to sleep a lot and then she is still up. It's like, girl, we got to go to bed. I'm done here. I am done. So, that could be a trigger. Maybe he got an email at 700 p.m. or even worse, a text because your boss text you or something or you're texting your employees or emailing them. And maybe the kids report card came back and the grades were lower than expected.
Maybe uh something happened last week with my two. They wanted to do a wrestling match in the dining room right at dinnertime because Levi threw Edward's backpack off the chair next to him as he was doing homework because Levi wouldn't just be patient. Or maybe he's scrolling through Instagram and he saw a guy from high school that just looks like he's just killing it.
And that's something the the Instagram life or the social media life is definitely up for interpretation. Number two, the second step is the emotion. Based on the trigger, he feels something uncomfortable, something brewing. This could be guilt, shame, blame. Let's say, let's go to the Instagram scroll for the example. He says his old body looking fit.
marathons are doing triathlons, doing CrossFits, working out, talking about how he's driving his new car because his business is doing well. And Mike feels inadequate, maybe anxious, maybe he feels like he's underperforming for his family or his wife, and that comparison game smacks him upside the back of the head.
That's the anger and the emotion that starts to trigger and work into the emotional part of this. Set three is the actual behavior. How does he actually respond to how that how he feels. He eats. And he wasn't planning on eating tonight. He was actually content with whatever dinner was, but he finds his way to the pantry, the freezer, or I've literally had people leave their house and go get stuff. Or they door dash.
I'll regularly ask clients how much they spend per week in Door Dash. And holy moly, it can be expensive quickly. I think the most I had someone spending was over $1,000 Door Dash in a month. Holy moly, what are you buying over there? You steak dinners at the most expensive place on town. My gosh. Then we have step four is the relief.
How do we just let go of this? Well, for 20 minutes, he feels better. The cereal works or the alcohol works. His brain numbs out. His body relaxes because it's got that carbohydrate high. And he feels at ease. And that's why he keeps doing it because his body is coped. He finds that relief. But here's what happens next.
The thing that we all always have to wake up to is the feelings of bloating. Some guys have high blood sugar from the high carb meal that they had the night before. All the extra snacks and treats. He's frustrated with himself. He feels heavier than ever. And the emotion he was running in his mind, it creates even more anger because he let himself and he's got guilt on top of it.
And the guilt is a trigger, too. So, the cycle keeps going. Part four, the truth about your plan. Let me tell you something that might hurt a little bit. I hope it didn't hurt your feelings, but here's an identity moment for you. It's the second one. If your plan only works when life is normal or easy, then you don't actually have a plan.
At least not a plan B, plan C, plan D. And those are regular things that I end up working with my guys to help solve because they need it. Life isn't ever going to go to plan. It never happens that way. Most guys can lock in, as my oldest would say, Levi loves that word, lock in on their nutrition and training until something else happens in their life.
Now, in fact, I was even talking to a guy, Robert, and he was talking about he was a lineman for electric companies and sometimes they'll have 16hour days. He said, "Brian, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to keep it up during that time." Said, "Robert, it's got nothing to do with that time.
Our our timeline is 20 weeks here, bro. I didn't call him bro, but that's Yeah, I'm a bro in my house. Maybe you're a bro in your house, too. You know what I mean? If you got kids, everyone's a bro. My daughter calls me a bro. Like, she's like, "Yay, bro." So, I just just laugh. But, dude, we've got 20 weeks of time to work together, not a couple high pressure days.
That's just part of your life. You have to be able to cope and deal with it. or when your kids get sick or two weeks ago they were home for five days in a row because it was so cold or you have such a brutal amount of work that's keeping you up so late and you're running on empty with sleep. Every time these situations show up, you fall off track and you stay off track for longer than you want.
Everybody wants to have life in a vacuum. They want to go away to, you know, The Biggest Loser Fat Farm or something like that and that's just not it. And even those people go watch the Netflix documentary. They weren't successful. Sure, the one guy lost 200 pounds or something ungodly and he gained it all back.
Why? Because he couldn't control the things that were going on in his normal every day life. He was able to have this extreme behavior at this at this particular point in life, but he wasn't able to figure out how to manage it across all. And you can't build strategy around hoping that every day is easy. It's not going to be.
Think about it like this. You wouldn't build a house on sand and then hope it never rains. That's why most guys do their health planning and programming wrong. They hope nothing goes wrong. And we always as leaders always have to be ready for something to get off. Think of Jaco Willick. Good. If you've ever heard that YouTube, that's where I found it.
It was on YouTube. Good. every problem that comes in your life. Good. You have to learn from it. You have to adjust. You have to pivot. These podcasts are pivots. I I didn't have to send one email. I never did a podcast ever until last two November ago. I did one with my really good friends, Leo, from high school.
And then I did one with one of my mentor coaches, Mike Milner, in it was about February. And then I went on about 80 guest episodes until September 27th, 23rd, excuse me, September 23rd. And that's when I launched Driven for Health, my very first podcast. And this is the 64th episode in about fourish to five months. January, I I did 18.
And February, I'm going to do I'm I'm pushing hard to do 18 again. That's why you hear me talking at 10:30 at night to knock these things out for you guys to get the most from part five. This is the three-part reset. Okay, let's get you back on track. Here's a framework I use with my clients all the time.
How we can break the cycle. There's three parts. Part number one, we have to identify the triggers. Not 20 of them, just three. Grab a piece of paper, pause this, and let's go get paper. And let's write down three things that throw you off track each and every week. Is it when your kids push your buttons at bedtime? I' I've had that.
or they wrestle at dinner time or you get criticized by your boss or your employees are are chattering about some of the decisions you made at work. You are scrolling on your phone to ignore your wife and not have to deal with her and whatever her whatever she's feeling or her emotions are. What are three moments where you consistently end up derailing yourself when it comes to food? Pause it. Write it down.
Now, I had a client who realized the biggest trigger was Sunday night. Every Sunday night, 8 to 9:00 start getting this anxious feeling because the week was getting started. His weekend was done. all the fun times that he had was over and he's going to go back to the grind, the deadlines, the emails, the texts, the constant calling and following up with people and trying to make money and collect and all these things.
That's when he'd pile through a half a bag of potato chips without even realizing it. Once he identified that trigger, he could plan for it. biggest thing was, hey, [clears throat] I stopped buying chips and having them in the house. That really helped out a lot and but it took an obvious conversation to identify that's what the problem was and issue and how we could start to move on from instead of saying I need to stop eating when I feel anxious or stressed on Sunday night because of what was going to happen come Monday.
He said, "When I feel anxious on Sunday, need a different tool. There's a different approach because fixing the emotional eating isn't about having more willpower, motivation to avoid the food in the first place because it's not going to be there at 900 p.m. at night. Most people, humans in general, don't do great things at nighttime.
" And history generally proves that. They they I mean people get in trouble when it's dark out. They should just go to bed and things would be better. It was about having something else that he could manage to stop, to slow down, to just take 10 minutes to breathe and actually assess if he even needed anything. You need to replace the food with a tool.
And at the very least here in the next couple weeks to start to get a handle. And maybe the tool is doing push-ups. Hey, when I feel this hunger, I'm going to stop and do some push-ups or squats. Maybe it's you need to pray. Dear baby Jesus, let's pull some Will Farrell out. I need you right now to help me from going in and stuffing my face.
Or maybe you need to go do something around the house. Do some dishes. Your wife will thank you and you'll thank yourself because it won't be piled up in the morning. Part two is building that 10-minute interruption routine. There has to be a pattern interrupt here so that you take the power back. When the emotion starts to build up, you have to avert your attention away from the outcome of eating food to finding the difference.
And I say here's an example a client off top of my head has he loved Reesei peanut butter cups. I mean, who doesn't, right? They're pretty good. The ratio of chocolate to peanut butter, they did a great job with a normal Reesei cup. Now there are nights when he has a craving for him and a strong wine and he used to tell himself, "Oh, you're not allowed to have those.
" And you know what happened? What? He thought about them even more because he wasn't in quotations allowed to have them. Now in this situation if you feel this urge just give yourself 10 minutes and reass the same question this 10 minutes maybe you could do something else some water maybe let's do an alternative chocolate protein thing maybe a protein shake with PB2 that in and of itself could be a huge alternative for you to be successful and after 10 minutes usually the craving goes away why because the immediate stress that caused
it in the first place isn't there anymore Okay. Why it works? Okay. The cravings come and go in waves and they peak and they pass and they go away and you even forget that you even wanted one by the time you go to bed. Then they're not going to last forever. And we just have to be able to push through that wave of desire, that wave of I feel good if I eat this thing.
And after 10 minutes goes away and you're still in 360, then go ahead and eat it. Okay. now, but at least you're in control. You didn't just react to it. The third step here, the third part is create a default day of eating. This is so important because you need structure. You need say simplicity line, easy gotos that work.
A good example, you know, Steve Jobs were the same thing every day. We talked about decision fatigue in episode 61 about around food. This is a piggyback on it. But because he just wore the same clothes, he didn't have to think so hard. And people would ask him, "Why are you always wearing the same stuff?" He said, "I don't want to waste mental energy deciding what to wear.
I have bigger decisions to make because all those wear down your willpower." Think of Mario playing a a game in a video game. You have this energy bar over you and it gets knocked down all the time. Okay? You are already making a thousand decisions at various times in your day to putting fires out, solving problems, and by the time you run home, there's no more reserve.
Your battery is gone. And if you haven't eaten well, then you end up tripling it. A lot of guys will, as we went through in some of those episodes, they'll just skip their breakfast, run on caffeine as and energy drinks as long as they can, have fast food for lunch, and hope and pray something's good for dinner. But that's not always the case.
A default day could look like this. All right, every day I'm gonna wake up and have a high protein Greek yogurt. Two good yogurt by Dan is my favorite. Tons of protein, low carbs. You're gonna have two cups of berries. You're gonna have a tablespoon of flax or chia, ground flax or chia seeds.
And then you're going to have a cup of Cheerios. Why? Because a cup of Cheerios is about 100ish calories or so. Whereas, say a cup of granola is going to be 250 calories, maybe even more. And that's what you're going to eat. For breakfast, lunch, it's going to be a grilled chicken sandwich. All right. You're gonna have a sandwich, about six ounces of chicken on there.
You're gonna have a fruit, piece of fruit, and baby carrots, two handfuls or peppers. Either way, Monday through Friday. This allows simplicity for you to not have to think. It allows for ease of just get up and go and eat. And most people are going to eat the same things all the time anyways.
And then dinner, make it as simple as possible. Protein, a vegetable, and a stretch carb just like grandma would have had you eat in a reasonable portion. If you need a snack for life, just have a piece of fruit. Or maybe if you need to have a protein shake. If you can do this 90% of the time, you'll be locked in like Levi says.
And even if you do have a night where you just go off the rails with food, then you can have the next morning dial back in. Maybe in the morning you skip the Cheerios. Maybe you just had the chicken breast with the fruit and the vegetable at lunch. That could be an easy way to balance out what you just got done eating. The truth that most people miss is you don't need a lot of variety.
You just don't need to wear yourself out with a lot of variety. Even if you added one recipe to your week after so many weeks, you're just like, "Brian, I'm done. I'm good. I don't need anymore. I'm I'm set." And also consider life has a lot of variety in it. And the food timings that you go on.
I have a gentleman that goes on dates a couple times a week, two, sometimes three times a week. Bro, I'm going to go back to the bro. Bro, you there's your variety. Let's eat healthy and clean and on point the rest of the time so you don't have to choose more. As we start to wrap up here, we got part six, the flexible dining rules.
Okay, let me give you the rules that make this sustainable because I'm not always going to I do not want you living like a robot. I'm having systems, processes, foundations, concepts. Rule number one is protein first. Eat 6 ounces of protein, ideally 40, 50, maybe even 60 grams at each meal. Two, plan your treats.
Allow for some things to sneak in, but make sure it's planned for the calories and the impact it's going to have on the day. Number three, some foods are harder to moderate. Okay, foods aren't good or bad. They're just have more calories or less calories. And say tortilla chips. If you can't just have say 10 10 regular sized tortilla chips, it's about 15 calories in a tortilla chip.
10 in a potato chip. Do qu some quick math and you get yourself 150 calories. If you can't control yourself beyond that, then you need to keep them out of the house. Rule four, don't start over tomorrow for the love. start over at the next opportunity that you eat. Okay? You're able to just get right back on to it and balance out the decision, the calories.
Maybe you blew your calories by 4 p.m. Well, then you're done eating for the day. It can be that simple. All right, part seven, the deeper issue. We'll get right back to sometimes emotional eating isn't just about food. It's about the grief that never got processed. think childhood trauma or something.
It's a stress that you learn to manage with it from maybe your parents or a bad relationship or loneliness that you're trying to avoid. These things are real, okay? They show up in people's lives and they impact them in a variety of different ways. And sometimes you might need to get this emotion out of you one way or another. And talk to a therapist, a counselor, someone who is trained in this to allow to manage the release of the stress, the grief, the shame, the blame, whatever it is that you have going on so you're not carrying it and you're not finding Jack
to do the talking for you. Part eight, what to do next. Let's bring it home. You can rebuild the old version of you, the younger version that you identify with yourself. And you want to think about the identity, the purpose, the goals that that person had, that version of yourself, why they were so they didn't have to rely on motivation or willpower. It's super important.
They relied on being consistent and having structure in their day and a routine that they always stuck to. our third identity moment of our conversation tonight. If you've been stuck in this loop for a year, two, five years. Let me tell you what happens if you do nothing. You're going to wake up next year in the same place, probably heavier, probably trending more towards chronic illness, and definitely more frustrated.
You were at a 38, now you're at a 41. And gentlemen, if you're over 40 inches in your waist, you're in big trouble. You will get chronic health issues showing up. Then the gap widens from you being where you're at to getting back to being back to where you were. Okay, this is the cost of inaction.
People don't understand this cost. Okay, so the the steps that I want you to do next, so you can pause this again as we go. Step number one, write down the top three triggers right now. What throws you off track immediately? Identify them. Give them a name so that you can think through and spot them when they show up. Step two is build a 10-minute interruption pan plan.
Just sit in the corner. Put your nose in the corner and just sit there. And you can pout like a tampering tantruming 2-year-old to all a balloon in the face, but it will work because then number three, you'll be able to have a default day with you push through those feelings and you won't eat the thing that you wanted to and you will get back to treating yourself with respect and vigor.
And we will get back to a default day where you have basic repetition of what you eat. And then number four for the love middle gear mentality. Stop being perfect. Just be consistent one day to the next. You will build a system that you will be rock solid on your relationship. Food doesn't have to be prepared. Mine is not. I regularly eat pizza or my daughter baked cookies this weekend or I'll have some alcohol or these things, but I fit it in in moderation and my day-to-day everyday life is pretty repetitive and boring and it makes it easy. I hope that these
tools help set you apart for getting out of this emotional eating trap. And if you need some help, I have a health hot seat. you and I live coaching on the podcast. The best part about this podcast is actually interacting with you, the listener, the one that wants some help, doesn't know where to go. This it's simple.
We're going to have a live conversation. We're going to build a custom plan as we go. Episode 35 is the health hot seat that I had and you can go back to that one and listen to it how it went. The guy's doing great. He messages me occasionally on how he's doing. We go over nutrition, fitness, lifestyle, accountability. We're not cookie cutting.
It's literally built for you. If you're interested in that, then send me over a an email brianbrian.com. Just say health hot seat and I will get in touch with you and we'll arrange a time to do this. So, you'll fill out a simple questionnaire and then off we go to schedule our live session and then you get the takeaway of a plan that fits you.
All right, thank you so much for joining me today. Emotional eating is a real thing that a lot of people struggle with and it's cost them a lot more than a big waistline, bigger pants. It's caused some maybe in their relationship or their work or their relationship with their kids and definitely a a loss of identity in who they are.
We found some different strategies in our conversation today that can help you become the better person for yourself. Please do that. Comment below. I'd love to hear. Send me an email. Brianbrian.com. I'd love to engage with you to see how I could help. Whether it is just giving you some advice or tips or tricks or even the call to rise 100 day fat loss challenge for you. All right.
Well, thanks for listening. I hope that this really got you thinking and if you love it, give me a like review on Apple Spotify pretty please. I've working pretty hard at this and want to make sure that you get tons of value at this. As Dr. Dre says, see you in the next episode.