SPEAKER_01 0:00

It’s very easy to have 200 to 400 calories and chips in one go. And then if you dip, you’re getting 20 to 40 or even more calories depending on what’s on that. Queso or guac or all those fun things to the spinach dip. And they multiply the calories. So you have five tortilla chips with scoop something that could be 250 calories real fast.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hello everyone. How are you guys doing? Today we are talking about a topic that a lot of my clients and patients we this is a topic we’ve been discussing for a while. And I was like, okay, you know what? I have this amazing coach and friend, Brian Piranha, who is a coach for men’s health. And he has been coaching for over 23 years. So much experience he brings to us. And he’s the host of the Driven for Health podcast. And I am going to explore this topic with him. And you know what the topic is? It’s midnight munchies. We have all been there, including me. Yes, yes, yes. Even I tend to do it every now and then. I try to limit it. Okay. And the reason I think we have midnight munchies, which is something that I’ve been exploring again with my clients. And the more I dig into it, into their nutrition and what’s going on during the day and all you know why it is? Because we tend to eat meals on the move. Or and or we’re just too busy and we are moving around, and food is the last thing we think about. So, Coach Brian, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I’m doing so well. Aisha, thanks for having me. And yeah, so many people struggle with this. This is definitely on the top of the list of people that always come in. I eat too, I eat junk food and cheats at night, and how do I stop that?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah. So exactly. That’s what I want to talk to you about because it’s something almost every busy professional listening to us today knows so well. And it is something that keeps coming back, keep coming back. And I don’t blame them because they’re getting through a packed work day, sitting down, you know, on the computer all day long. And then after that 12-hour day, they get home and they’re like, Can I just sit down on the couch and maybe watch Eagles play? Go, Eagles, right? Like glass night.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I’m a Browns in the Browns. I don’t really recommend now.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

But anyways, yesterday that was happening to me because Eagles were playing at 8 p.m. and I’m like, I’m so tired. You know what? I’m gonna play Eagles, I’m gonna grab the bag of chips and salsa, and you know what? This is what I wanna do. So you tell me what’s actually driving late-night cravings for busy professionals, which I end up being many days of the week. Yeah. And I can tell you that, you know, as much as I want to say that, oh, I was so hungry, I had my meals during the day. I don’t think so. It was hunger. So what’s going on?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Guilt by association, association with the people that you’re around, but even more importantly, the environment, the setting was football and tailgating and chips and salsa. And I mean, uh, what do we have? Doritos and uh all the late tostitos and and all those are massive supporters. No matter what, you’re getting a mega amount of advertising even from them during these games. So there’s this association tied to it. When I watch football, I am putting food in my mouth. There you go. And it just so happened to be the game started at eight o’clock. And there you go. You sat down and got into the football gear and and an action plan and off you went. How many did you have though? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Nip nip nip. Let’s not go there. And that’s another thing I’ve noticed. I’m gonna tell you right now, that’s such a great comment you made. Because when I tend to eat out of the bag, I end up eating a lot more than if I was to just put them in a bowl. Then I can restrict myself to like one serving. However, if I’m reaching into the bag, it’s a different story.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Half the bag is gone.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah, chips, chips, chips. I’ve got a text that I send to my clients about chips because they’re just unaware. And if we look at the label, a typical potato chip or any type of chip, it could be Doritos or a veggie straw, everyone, they’re not vegetables, they’re just chips. Okay. That’s marketing. And so they’re about 10 calories per chip. And then we’ve got tortilla chips, are more like 15 because they’re larger, obviously. And when we just do basic math, if we have who has just five or 10, they they more have 20 or something. And a really good reference for this is the the fun-sized bag of Lay’s Doritos and whatnot, those are about 150 calories there for reference. And those don’t last very long. It’s very easy to have 200 to 400 calories of chips in one go. And then if you dip, you’re getting 20 to 40 or even more calories, depending on what’s on there queso, or guac or all those fun things. So the spinach dip, and they multiply the calories. So you have five tortilla chips with scoop something that could be 250 calories real fast.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

I love the way you just explained that you know what, it’s the environment you’re in. And and it’s a good way to look at it because a lot of times people, including me, we blame ourselves. We’re like, you know, we didn’t have the willpower. So it’s not a willpower problem. Let’s go beyond that though, because I believe I tend to snack more like that when I am short on sleep and tired. Totally. So, what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01 6:45

We’ve got that. We even have under the influence, say alcohol, when that comes into play. And it’s not even alcohol, the calories per se, but it’s the influence or the the like, hey, let’s have a good time. Your inhibitions lower, and then it’s a great idea to have that cheeseburger and fries that are 1200 calories, and it’s at associated calories that end up becoming the biggest challenge there. So we have stress, we have sleep. We know that if you’re tired, you don’t even remember what happened in the beginning of the day, let alone what happened an hour ago or what you ate last. You just exactly you’re hungry, and most of the time, the learned behaviors of the environment of I sit down at night and I Netflix and chill, and Ben and Jerry’s hangs out with me too, or toasty does, or any what a baby Ruth. So that’s I would I wouldn’t mind hanging out with baby Ruth a little bit more frequently. That’s one of my favorites, but I can’t because it it costs too much energy and time and challenge if I’m not careful, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yes. And just to put all of this in perspective, you just mentioned that a small bag of Lay’s has 150 calories. A single chip can have up to 10 calories. And we don’t like uh place the calories in those terms. So that was such a good pointer that you just shared with us. And today, this morning, like I went to CrossFit and we had our workout had assault bike. Oh and it was like Amrapped for a circuit, but but the last 30 seconds of it was on the bike, right? I was pumping 350 watts and above to burn calories on the assault bike in 30 seconds. Yes, I was dying at the end of every interval, just to give you a perspective of like what that chip costs you.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Yes, yes, yes, exactly. And I just want to reference this since we’re throwing out calories per time. 10 and a half a minute calories burn is exponentially a lot of effort. Most calories burned in one minute can range from 10 to maybe 15, depending on intensity and duration. But then, say walking, you might only burn five depending on pace. So that just helps with perspective of people of I ate 200 calorie, whatever fell in my mouth. There should be two to three or four bites of something. Now I need to walk 20, 30, 40 minutes, depending on how fast I want to go. And they don’t realize that. But 10, if you just thought, okay, I’m gonna burn on average 10 calories per minute at a good, moderate to higher intensity, that definitely helps you understand a bit more the context of what this thing is actually gonna cost in the reality of it.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Absolutely. So I think, I personally think, and this is what I tell my clients, that at the base of all of this is that busy professionals don’t have a meal time. They have a calendar that’s booked solid from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., a commute on either end, right? So we are also taking that into account. Maybe a flight or two a month, which we are gonna get into a little later. In that kind of schedule, food is an afterthought. Oh, totally. So, you know, they’re just picking up something from the vending machine, going to the cafeteria again, making some poor choice of meal, you know, burger fries, just so that you know they feel like, okay, they got something in. So what what do we do?

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Uh what gets scheduled gets done. It’s classic, right? There’s intention behind it, which is purpose, which is has to happen. You have to feed yourself every day. Usually most humans will eat three times a day the majority of their life. And to defy those general three meals is to ultimately put a big giant roadblock in your way and a tripping hazard, in a sense, because sometimes a uh a late-night craving or just craving in general could be a oh, I see this thing here, I’m gonna walk around and no big deal. Or, oh, I did catch my toe on it, I stumbled a little bit, or I actually tripped, or I fell, or I base planted, and to the degree and depths of maybe that base plant is a whole row of Oreos or a Ben and Jerry consultation with and then you just put down 1500 calories in a in quotations binge. And I just want to clear that word up. Usually people say, Oh, I binge food. Please define that for me so that I help I understand what that actually means. I’m like, Oh, I ate six Oreos. Oh, so you didn’t eat the whole thing. Okay, so we’re okay. Because a very big in quotations binge would be I ate a whole row of Oreos, I had a couple small, fun-sized bags of chips, I had a pint of ice cream, I had dinner three hours ago, and you just cleared out 3,000 calories or something. That’s a big challenge and a problem that we need to find corrective behavior. But oh, occasionally I ate some ice cream. Okay, that’s not really that big of a deal because a lot of people want to make it into something bigger than it actually is. Can we just fit that into our day somehow or whatnot? And so those are some of the challenges that people have when it comes to managing a busy schedule or managing stress. And there’s a lot of uh skills that might need to be developed or coping mechanisms that need developed as well to help someone actually manage their food behaviors.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love just how you put it that oh, busy schedules, busy day, right? And it’s so funny that we are willing to, and I say this to my clients, I’m like, I’m unfiltered. So you know, I’m gonna just say it as it is. You are willing to put all of these like 10 or 12 meetings during the day on your schedule and your calendar, you can schedule a 20-minute lunch.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

If that is on your calendar, you’re gonna make time for it. Another thing I tell them, you can also schedule an hour on Sunday nights. So you have healthy lunches ready to go in the fridge. You grab them and go with them, have plenty of fruit sitting in your fridge so that you have some Greek yogurt along with that lunchbox that you take to work and then you make some time, which is only 15 to 20 minutes, to eat it away from your desk.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yes. And how about we actually buffer in some debrief or downtime after a series of meetings and not just stack them one after another and then feel overwhelmed with all the information that you had or did or whatever, and then you weren’t able to do anything about it until later and you forgot about half the stuff, anyways, because humans actually need time, rest, energy apart from intensity to be able to have low effort or energy, and you can’t just go, go, go, go. That will in and of itself cause a stress response, and your coping mechanism is probably poor, especially if you’re overwhelmed and underfed and don’t have any food plans for the day, then yeah, you’re gonna crash and burn. And again, we go back to Ben and Jerry being your your counsel at night every day.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Absolutely, and I couldn’t agree more with you. And I think we need the break and we need fueling. Fueling your body is part of you doing your job well. Be productive, focused, energetic, a lie. Yes. A lot of times I talk to my clients, my patients, and they’re telling me how they’re having these two, 3 p.m. crashes where they’re actually hypoglycemic at that point where you know all they had was coffee throughout the day.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yep. Great strategy. You’ve already been up for seven or eight hours, but just go off coffee. Yeah, and you didn’t eat from the overnight fast of sleeping. So let’s stack another eight hours, hopefully, right? More like five in most people’s cases, right? So we’ve got 12 hours without food, which is a natural time frame that you should be eating anyway. So I I love the 12-hour rule from eating to not not eating to eating again. And I think of the 1950s. When were we supposed to not eat after dinner? Well, if dinner’s at six or seven o’clock, and you wake up at six or seven o’clock and you breakfast because it’s in quotations, the most important meal of the day, that’s a 12-hour fast. I don’t think we need to necessarily go longer than that, like say the traditional intermittent fasting of 16, because people just get hungry and they’re poorly planned and they don’t execute on it well. So they just crash into the next day. So somewhere between 12, 13, possibly 14 hours without food is a reasonable expectation for you. And then you can get to it.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Absolutely. Absolutely. So the next question that I have, it’s actually from one of my clients I’ve been coaching, and I want your take on it. Um, she’s Rachel, and I’ve been coaching Rachel for the last three months. She travels a lot for work. Yeah. So one of her obstacles uh to getting healthier and eating healthier food is that every week, at least two to three days a week, I’m traveling. I’m at different airports. And let me tell you, my experience with airport food, not so good.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Expensive at the very least.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

And in many different ways, not only money-wise, expensive for your health too, because almost it’s it’s almost like very, very hard, if not impossible, to find something healthy at the airport. Agreed. So, what are your go-to and best strategies for people who travel a lot for eating well?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Yeah, well, I do have an eating on the go guide. I’ve been running through that in my Driven for Health podcast series, 145 to one. I just posted 167 the other day, and I have about two more episodes. So that’s over 20 different ones. But the eating on the go guide has airport and guest station and all sorts of other themed restaurants or fast casual, fine dining, whatever, and there’s strategies in there. But ultimately, we have to again plan. Just think of this. We go back to the schedule and the planning piece of this, and how you stacked all these meetings and you’re spending X amount of money and have all these tickets, and you have all these things lined up for you to go travel for this many days to execute on whatever the business decisions are, to generally either fulfill on clients or generate new income for the business, right? But there’s again no forethought about food. How about we just pull up Apple Maps and see what’s available? Or how about we can literally look on in the terminals of what terminal you’re going to be in, because you’ll know from your flight and what options do they have there, or you literally could just pack food and carry it on a sandwich, piece of fruit, some vegetables that will give you 400, maybe 500 calories, and that will carry you three, four, five hours until you’re actually able to eat. You’ll save money, you’ll save calories for when you actually land and start to engage in that new environment. And we can also, of course, leverage protein bars and protein shakes and different things, but that ends up being a powerful and lastly, is always opt for the protein double vegetable option because there’s going to be hitting calories. And even if you do the protein double vegetable option, you’re still looking at least 500 calories as a minimum. But again, hitting calories could take it up to 800 or so with butter and oils and such. And it just helps give you a little buffer to get a lot of food or at least a reasonable amount of food without all the extra calories that will weigh you down. Say, let’s just avoid fries as a side when you go out.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Yeah, yeah. So I know you have done a lot of episodes I’ve noticed on Instagram about like eating where and what to order. So I just want some examples for our listeners here. I love the idea that okay, map out, map out the airport and which terminal you’re at. If there’s a salad place or a healthy food place, try to go there. What are your I love double protein and a carb option? Uh, what is your go-to if you’re at the airport?

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Well, again, I’m usually traveling with my family. There’s six of us, and automatically we’re spending $100 just on subway sandwiches or something, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Um, so I we do have to take that into consideration versus me flying by myself. So I’ll give two options. Or on a business travel, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I don’t really travel for business. I wouldn’t mind doing it, but with four kids at home, it’s hard to uh you know juggle all the moving pieces of kids being places and doing things and all that. But if I were traveling with my family, because we’ve traveled all 50 states, multiple countries, continents here in the last 10, 12 years or so, lots of it. We’re gonna go with probably a sandwich place and or Chick-fil-A or Chipotle, something, or like a food truck type situation. Those are gonna be places where we’re actually not sitting down. Uh, we learned a long time ago, if you have kids, you don’t really want to spend 150 bucks at a sit down restaurant for them to throw food or pout or fight or whatever, and you’re like, Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

I’m giving you like double high fives right now.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

So you you look for easier options that can be a little bit more controllable. And then we can always share. Oftentimes I’ll share with my wife. Say, my wife and I are just going to go out to a brewery. We enjoy having some craft beer. We’ll just split a meal. We’re going out to be entertained, to have connection, not to eat 2,000 calories each and drink it while we’re there. So we can find some options and opportunities there. If I was traveling by myself, then I would probably go very strategic protein vegetable type places. I would look around at what was available. I might just pick up an on the go sandwich with a protein shake or something at Hudson News or something like that, or similar like that, or a quote, health joint. And that’s going to be an option. Or I literally would just pack as much as I could or leverage gas station, convenience stores, a local grocery store in the area around whatever I could to be able to have food or necessary available options for a fraction of the cost and more efficiency, literally, more efficiency. So those could be some options. But if I was at a conference, I would be literally just picking out okay, what’s the highest amount of food volume I can eat at the lowest calories? I’m gonna pass on the breads, the cookies, the chips, because they’re just unfortunately just junk and garbage calories that will multiply my calories and cause me to come home with extra, extra pounds in my belly, not in my my suitcase. And I would rather come home with a uh a gift or some sort of travel fun thing and the weight be in my suitcase, not on my body, and and stuff. So there’ll be some ideas of this. And lastly, if you’re working with other people in actual client type situations, then we have to again understand the situation, the peer uh situation of do you are you gonna have peer pressure or there’s gonna be any type of friction? If I’m in oil, big oil down in Texas, and we’re going out to a steakhouse. I’m not gonna have a salmon salad in a sense when everyone else is having the biggest raybys. And I would just literally plan my day around that being what I ate in the day to accompany whatever else I had so that I could participate and connect with those people because that would be really weird if you show up in that type of environment and you don’t it’s not cohesive, it’s not an alignment. It’ll be like, this is weird. Like, why are you it’s like everyone’s in a a business suit and you’re in you know, beach casual and is is is is sure optional, like you’d be way out of place and you wouldn’t get what you needed out of that situation as a result.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Absolutely. Your last comment, I just want to underscore that how important it is because almost every client I talk to, they’re like, but we have that business meeting at night. Even if we did take care of all the other things you said at the airport, pack our lunch, pack our breakfast, whatever. Yeah, you know, we get hit by at the end of the day with that. And yeah, and I just love how you just said remember that the calories or the energy consumption that you have, it is per day, per day, per week, however you want to frame it. How does that meal fit into your week then? How does that meal fit into your day? Maybe you go lighter, lighter on your breakfast, lunch that day and leave it for that. The other thing, one of the tips that I’ve started doing if I’m at a work dinner at a conference where I’m speaking, is I pack half of it to go.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Oh yeah, easy. Pack half of it. Just like you said, you share half of it with your wife, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:21

When you’re out with her. I just pack half of it. I don’t feel deprived and I don’t feel out of place. Yeah. And then you can have a good side to go with it.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah. Okay, so we covered a lot today. What’s really behind late night cravings, what to eat when you get home after 8 p.m., how to stay fueled throughout the day, and put lunch as a meeting on your calendar. So I want to finish this up with one small habit that our listeners can start like this week to cut down on mindless late-night snacking and grab and go eating. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 27:04

I I love the aim principle. I’m gonna sit on that one quite a bit. The aim principle is a ask the question, am I moving toward my health goals or away from them? So it doesn’t matter what strategies you use or what could or couldn’t work, or how busier and not busy your schedules are, how things go awry or in complete alignment with what you wanted. You can always ask the question, am I making the right choice that moves me toward my health goals or away from them? So that every time that there’s food available, hey, there’s a cookie, or here’s this thing, or there’s that thing, or the the on-flight treat, snack, biscolf, whatever, you can decide in that moment, does this move me toward my goals or away from them? Then we have to eyes, identify what happens as a result of if we do the biscolf on the plane or we don’t, and understand what the consequences of those behaviors are, because that’s you I love saying this to my kids, but you choose your actions, not your consequences. And that biscolf has consequences to what else you do today, and that’s the M is make the move. Okay, we this we did not do the biscolf, so we’re good. But on the other end, we did the biscolf. Okay, now I’m minus 200 calories. And yes, people, the biscolf on the plane is about 200 calories for easy math, and then okay, what am I not eating at dinner tonight to cancel that out? Definitely pass it on the breadbasket, that’s for sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Awesome. That’s that’s such a great strategy. So it’s say that again. It’s A-I-N. A-I-N. I love that aim principle.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

I’m gonna actually keep that handy now for myself too. Yes, yes. And yes, I’m gonna start implementing it on my kids. I’ll tell them I have a friend, Coach Brian, he does that to his kids, so now it’s just getting implemented. Your actions are consequences. They’re gonna be like, mom, you need to stop podcasting now.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

It’s yes, my son is near me, and I’m sure he loves saying that, but I always reference a speeding ticket. It’s like, oh, because he drives now. It’s like you can speed, it’s it is technically against the law to go above the speed limit, and you’ll get a a nothing, nothing will happen. You’ll get by passed by a cop and nothing will happen. You’ll get pulled over and nothing will happen. You’ll get a warning, you’ll get a really hefty ticket, and you have to just live with the consequences of that choice that you chose to go even two miles over speed limit. You could still get a ticket for that.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

I love that. Love that. So, we are gonna end it on that note aim principle. Just follow that, you’re gonna be golden. Thank you so much for joining us today, Brian. And thank you, everybody, for listening to us and watching us. This is gonna go out in the podcast format in a couple of weeks. And if you’re listening in the podcast format, thank you again for listening and watching. Have a great one, guys. Bye.