Why Men Over 40 Need Other Men In The Room
Men in their 40s and 50s are more disconnected than ever, and most of them have nowhere to say so out loud. Coach Brian Parana recorded a men's coaching round table and released it whole to show what happens when they do. Three men, one hour, and live answers on winter routines, meal prep, and a scale that would not move.
Episode 63 is a full Call To Rise round table with three men on the call. It opens with a question that has nothing to do with health, moves into wins, and then runs on live coaching about winter, meal prep, a stalled scale, and how to plan a year. Listen to Episode 63 for the whole hour.
Why Coach Brian Published This One
He gave the reason at the end of the recording. Men in their 40s and 50s are more disconnected than ever. Their heads are buried in work and family life and they have nowhere to put what is going on with them.
That is the whole argument for recording a coaching call and releasing it. A man can find a training plan anywhere. What he cannot find on his own is three other men who notice when he goes missing for a week.
Winter Was the First Thing on the Table
One of the men had moved from Tennessee to Cleveland for work, and the snow had flattened everything he likes to do. He is outdoors by nature. He runs. A blizzard leaves him bored and stuck inside.
Coach Brian told him to go look at a frozen waterfall. He went on Sunday during a break in the snow with a couple of buddies from work. He has also joined a running club and is falling in love with it.
Coach Brian's own weekend was 13 inches of snow, two hours of shoveling with his boys, and a strained glute from getting dragged down a sledding hill.
The forecast talk was honest. There were about five weeks of 20 degree weather left. March gets better and April is shorts and a t-shirt. Coach Brian has 43 years of Ohio winters behind him and says it passes every time.
Three Men and Three Different Numbers
The wins went around the table one at a time.
One man came in at 249 pounds and stood at 218 on the night of the call. His pants no longer need a belt and people at work have started calling him skinny. He did not want to go to the gym that day. He did not want to walk. He went anyway, and he has a ruck on Friday he does not want to do either.
Another man was down 31 pounds inside his 100 days and had put some of it back on over the holidays. He spent the winter working it back off.
The newest man in the group was a week in and down right at two pounds. Coach Brian called that an easy win and meant it. He calls the effect ignition momentum. A fast early result is what keeps a man going, because people abandon anything that does not move.
Coach Brian also pulled up before and after photos of a client who had finally sent them in. That man lost 38 pounds in the 100 days, and his full story is episode 53.
The Whoosh Effect and the Seven to Ten Day Window
Two of the men brought the same complaint. Same food, same training, and the scale does something different every week. One week is four pounds down and the next is half a pound on identical habits.
One of them weighs in every Friday with his measurements. This past Friday the scale read half a pound down. He went to the bathroom, got back on, and it read three pounds down.
Coach Brian's answer has a name in bodybuilding. The whoosh effect.
Bodybuilders eat the same food on repeat because a fixed diet is easy to read and easy to adjust. Chicken, broccoli, and rice in set portions for a week. No loss that week? Pull a half cup of rice out of every meal, which is 100 to 150 calories, and the deficit is built.
Even with perfect inputs the weight can sit for seven or 10 days and then three pounds fall off at once. Hormones, sleep cycles, stress, and water sit underneath the number and none of them run on a weekly schedule.
So seven to 10 days is the window Coach Brian uses to judge progress. If the weight has not moved inside that window, there are breadcrumbs behind it. Go find them.
Inputs You Control and Outcomes You Do Not
He drew a hard line between the two. Your actions are inputs. The scale is an outcome. You own the inputs and you take full responsibility for those.
Then he put himself on the same standard. He admitted he had spent the year chasing an outcome on a large pile of inputs and is still not happy with where one part of it sits. His answer was to keep going.
The Coach Got Called Out
One of the men told him it sounded like a pile of excuses.
He took it. Coach Brian has ADHD and leans on what he calls body doubling. With a training partner in the room or even on a screen, the workout happens. Without one it does not cross his mind. His workout partner was out and the podcast had taken over his calendar.
The rest of the year looked different. He trained 14 to 18 times a month at an hour to 75 minutes a session and ran on the same or alternate days. His long term step average sits near 12 to 13 thousand a day.
The point he made out of his own week is the one worth keeping. He knows exactly which input is missing and why. That is different from being confused about why nothing is happening.
Accountability Was the Answer Every Man Gave
One of the men said accountability is what helps him more than anything else on the call. He writes down what he plans to eat at the start of the day, and his wife cooks at home consistently. That morning he had eaten breakfast with his son at a local diner and gone back into the kitchen to photograph the box of turkey sausages, so the macros were on file from then on.
Big names in nutrition had come up on the call too. Lane Norton was one of them, and with him came the question of where a regular guy fits into any of that. Coach Brian was blunt about it. Lane Norton is not going to work with you. You go under his app and his people and his team. You are not getting Lane himself unless you are paying thousands of dollars or some other crazy amount of money.
The Fridge Test
Coach Brian put one of the men on the spot and asked him to open his fridge on camera. It was full of meal prep in containers.
The part worth copying is the backup. He cooks extra and freezes it, so a week where he has no appetite for prepping still has food in it. He microwaves one of those or drops the sealed container in hot water for 10 minutes to thaw it. The same trick works on a frozen pound of ground beef.
He Stopped Counting Calories on Purpose
He tracked hard for the first month or two. Then he stopped, because by then he knew what his plates look like.
His plate now runs on a fixed build. Three cups of fibrous carbs from fruit or vegetables. Protein. Starchy carbs. A small amount of fat. He says that plate takes weight off him every time without any arithmetic.
Coach Brian added the piece that makes it work. The food was already portioned into a container, so the container makes the decision. You eat what is in there and nothing else. The wanting passes within a couple of hours and you are fine until the next meal.
The Man Who Lost 110 Pounds One Pound at a Time
Coach Brian told the group about a former client named Henry. Henry lost 110 pounds while carrying a full school load, and the two of them worked together for two years.
The change that did it was the size of the box he used at lunch. He had been filling the large one. He moved to the small one and that was the whole edit.
Their Saturday morning calls were the same conversation for a long stretch. How did you do this week? Lost a pound. One pound a week was the pace that fit the life he had, and it added up to 110.
Coach Brian was candid about what a number that size takes. When a man arrives with that much to lose it is not a slam dunk. There are reasons he is where he is, and those get worked through one at a time.
Two Meals or Three
One of the men had moved his wake time later for a heavy work stretch and started skipping breakfast. His question was practical. More snacks through the day, or one large lunch?
Coach Brian is a three meal coach for most men, for two reasons.
The first is protein. Say the target is 150 grams. That is two servings of 75 grams or three of 50. Three doses land better across a day than two heavy ones, and smaller doses are easier to hit and keep hitting.
The second is vegetables. You are not eating 10 cups of vegetables across two meals. Three plates give you three runs at fiber and volume, and you finish each one at a moderate level of full instead of stuffed.
He also explained why the huge lunch backfires. A large amount of food takes energy to digest and pulls blood into your stomach and away from your muscles. That is the Thanksgiving feeling. Two meals is a tool for a catch up day after you went over, not a default setting.
Breakfast Is the First Meal, Not a Clock Time
Coach Brian broke the word down on the call. Breakfast breaks the fast. It is your first meal, whatever the clock says.
So the fix for a later wake time is a later day. Wake at eight and eat at eight. Lunch lands near noon or one. Dinner lands at eight or nine if you are up late. The man who asked said he likes his omelets and his turkey sausage and had no reason to give either up.
Coach Brian eats a large amount of food right before bed on a regular basis. It sits in his digestive tract overnight and comes out the other end. A higher number the next morning is food in transit and not fat gained. What decides fat is whether the calories added up across the day.
One more note on eating out. He told the group that one or two swaps at a restaurant can be a 300 calorie difference on the same meal.
The Air Fryer Rules
One of the men called an air fryer his best Christmas gift and asked how to use it. Coach Brian gave him the settings.
Frozen vegetables go in straight from the bag for about 10 minutes. If you are in a hurry, microwave them for two or three minutes first and then finish them in the fryer.
Until you know your machine, set it for four minutes and shake it before you check it. Eight minutes is the longest you should go without a look, because it will burn.
Frozen chicken breast has its own method. Parchment paper on the bottom so nothing sticks. Eight minutes to soften it enough to cut. Cut it into squares for more surface area, season it, and run it another four to eight minutes. Chicken nuggets out of a frozen breast in about 15 minutes.
The Bingo Card of Success
One of the men had named his year the year of intentionality. He sat down, looked at the goals he had already written, and built them into a bingo card he keeps on his phone lock screen.
Every square is something he wants to do this year. A ruck he is training for. A tattoo. Bingo takes five squares. He is going for the whole card.
The card does a second job. He is a fast starter who scatters across ten things at once and finishes none of them. Coach Brian narrowed him to two for the first stretch of the year. Losing weight and training for his marathon. That is it until April.
Seeing the rest of the card sitting there is what makes the narrowing tolerable. Nothing on it is cancelled. It is queued.
This is the same reason New Year's resolutions die by March. Men load the plate with everything at once and burn out. Coach Brian pointed the group at episode 54 for the long version.
He runs two exercises with clients on this. The Vision Cast takes two undistracted hours. You go back over the last 12 months across health, finances, and relationships. Then you decide what you want to create in the next 12, because you are at your best when you are building a life that fills you up.
The second exercise is a 45 minute video on the tools that keep a man steady once the plan exists.
Do not break either one into pieces. You lose the flow and you will not get what you need out of it. One of the men on the call took two weeks to finish the first one because he kept trying to run it in the background at work.
We Do the Right Thing Once
The best line of the night came out of a fight about a driveway.
Coach Brian's son kept leaving the garage door open in zero degree weather, which can freeze a pipe. He made him drive back and close it, because a consequence is what makes a lesson land. The same son did not want to shovel the whole driveway.
Coach Brian's reason was mechanical. Move the snow while it is powder. Leave it, and the sun melts it, tires pack it down, and it freezes into a rink that sits there for weeks. Move it once and it is gone.
Then he tied it back to the men on the call. We do the right thing once. Pick the few things that produce the result and do them properly the first time. The consequence of not doing the thing is that you are not at your goal yet, so go do the thing one way or another.
If that means walking out to look at a frozen waterfall, fine. If it means the gym, go get a Planet Fitness membership and run on the treadmill for a couple of weeks. You pay 10 bucks a month or whatever. Not a big deal. And when the weather turns nice you stop going back.
Brotherhood Is the Fifth Pillar
Coach Brian named all five pillars at the end of the episode.
Identity is who you decide to be, and whether your physical body reflects it.
Forge is the training. Exercise and movement.
Fuel is nutrition. The right foods at the right times in the right amounts.
Code is mindset. The lens you look at your day through.
Brotherhood is the fifth. Like minded men who are driven to perform, together in one room every week.
That fifth pillar is why this episode exists at all. Three men on a Thursday night talking about frozen waterfalls, air fryers, and a scale that would not move is what the other four pillars run on.
Common Mistakes This Call Exposed
Reading one weigh in as a verdict. Give it seven to 10 days before you decide anything is wrong.
Dropping a meal because your schedule moved. Move the meal instead and keep the protein.
Prepping with no backup. Cook extra and freeze it for the week you have no appetite for cooking.
Loading the whole year onto January. Pick one or two things and let the rest wait in the queue.
Training only when a partner is around. Know that about yourself and book it, or find another way to move.
Action Steps for This Week
- Weigh in on one fixed day of the week and take your measurements with it.
- Judge that number across seven to 10 days rather than one morning at a time.
- Cook one extra batch this week and freeze it.
- Put a bag of frozen vegetables in an air fryer for 10 minutes tonight.
- Write down the two things you want between now and April. Nothing else goes on the list.
- Get in a room with other men who are working on the same thing.
More From Driven For Health
- Episode 53: 38 lbs Lost in a 100 Day Challenge
- Episode 54: New Year's Resolution Fail After 3 Weeks, Here's How To Keep Going
- Episode 57: Food Noise, Why Men Over 40 Think About Food All Day
Call to Action
Bring a question of your own to the Health Hot Seat and Coach Brian will answer it live at brianparana.short.gy/healthhotseatform.
The Call To Rise is a 100-day Fat Loss Challenge 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 real accountability, most men lose 20 plus pounds and rebuild the confidence that comes with it and even improve chronic illness issues. It's more than a fitness program, it's a 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
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens on a Call To Rise round table call?
The call opens with a question that has nothing to do with health, then moves to wins from every man on it. Coach Brian coaches live from there. Episode 63 covers winter routines, meal prep, a stalled scale, and how to pick goals for a year.
Why did the scale not move when nothing else changed?
Bodybuilders call it the whoosh effect. Water, hormones, sleep, and stress sit underneath the number and none of them run on a weekly schedule. The weight can hold for seven or 10 days and then drop three pounds at once.
How long should you wait before judging your weight loss?
Coach Brian uses a seven to 10 day window. If the weight has not moved inside that window, go looking for the reason behind it. There are breadcrumbs behind every stall.
Should men eat two meals a day or three?
Coach Brian prefers three for most men. If the protein target is 150 grams, three servings of 50 grams are easier to hit and to use than two servings of 75. Three plates also give you three runs at vegetables, and you are not eating 10 cups of them across two meals.
Do you have to skip breakfast to lose fat?
No. Breakfast means breaking the fast, so it is your first meal whatever time you wake up. If your day now starts at eight, move the whole day back rather than dropping a meal and the protein that came with it.
What is the Bingo Card of Success?
One of the men on episode 63 built a bingo card of everything he wants to do this year and keeps it on his phone lock screen. Bingo takes five squares and he is going for the whole card. Seeing the rest of the card there makes it easier to work on one or two things at a time.
How do you cook fat loss meals in an air fryer?
Frozen vegetables go in straight from the bag for about 10 minutes. Set it for four minutes and shake it before you check it. Eight minutes without a look will burn food. A frozen chicken breast on parchment paper takes eight minutes to soften, then cuts into squares and finishes in another four to eight.
What is The Call To Rise?
The Call To Rise is Coach Brian Parana's 100 day fat loss challenge for driven men who want a healthy body and better energy. It runs on five pillars: identity, forge, fuel, code, and brotherhood. Most men lose 20 plus pounds.
