In The Kitchen With Dan

Hi, everybody. You're in the kitchen with Dan. I love Sundays, so we're back on schedule. Every Sunday at 03:00 I'm gonna be hanging out here on Cadre, and I hope you will hang out with me. I love this. In the kitchen with Dan thing that we've got going on, I realized that it may have. It may be a while. It may be a while. It has been a while. I realize that it's been a while since I've really talked about my journey, my mental health journey, and kind of my life journey and where and how. How I became a coach.

And so, anyway, it may have been a while since. Since I've gone through that and shared that. So I want to do it just for a little bit and give you a little bit of history. About me, Dan Cunningham, the coach and the organizer man, the business that I. That I founded and the brand that I created for myself. So let's start at the beginning. As a child, I was in a household with three other brothers, and it was pretty chaotic. We were all really involved. My parents were extremely social, grew up in the sixties and seventies, and there was just so much chaos, and I was a nervous wreck as a little kid.

I was adopted. My parents had adopted my older brother. Three years later, they adopted me. And three years after me, my mom got pregnant, and then she had two kids. So I was from a blended family. They were very vocal about our adoption, which a lot of families in our neighborhood were and were at that time, and how I dealt with the chaos and my anxiety was by keeping my things organized. And in my baby book that my mom so kindly filled out for all of us, there's a little excerpt and a section about habits and.

And tidiness. And she said that I was extremely tidy and not only put away my things, but also put away my brother's things. So I joke saying, you know, what kind of parents wouldn't dig a kid that was cleaning up the house all the time? So funny. But, you know, seriously, I would escape in organization and cleaning. I would be in the basement for hours, just down there organizing. And it's where I found calm, and especially in my room. If I knew where everything was and there was some order in my room that I could find calm in that.

So that's how I got my organizing groove on. And it happened very, very early. I think I was two or three years old when my mom wrote that in my baby book. So, more about me. I am gay. I'm a gay man. I'm married. To my husband, Brian. And life wasn't always like that. Being gay, coming out as a gay man in the early eighties was extremely traumatic. My family was homophobic and, you know, I grew up listening to awful comments about homosexuals and knew that nobody in my family was into it at all.

And I was a pretty feminine kid, so I was. My mom was really hard on me. She was extremely verbally abusive. My brother was beating me up. So, I mean, I had all this stuff going on in the house. I was trying to come out and deal with my sexuality. I was 14 or 15. I was being physically abused by my brother. My mom was emotionally and verbally abusive. My dad was pretty much absent. And so I turned to marijuana as a teen, as an early teen, and that's how I self medicated. I was suicidal, suicidal thoughts.

And ultimately what would happen was I would lose everything due to addiction and my addiction specifically to Valium. I lost my job, I got in a heaping pile of trouble, and I found myself in my late thirties just completely devastated in every sense of the word, suicidal in a psych ward and realizing that I had to start over and build my whole life over again. And I have, and my life is so awesome. I'm so glad that I went through everything that I went through because it's brought me to where I am now.

And I have all of these tools with me, you know, that I'll never be without. And I have those because I was coached, because I had mentors, I had people that had been there, like the people here on Cadre. There's so much life experience that people bring to this platform. So I didn't really even expect to go into that much detail, but that's what I bring to the table as a coach. You know, I have experience in so many different areas of mental health struggles, and I have come out the other side with amazing stories to tell, with battle scars, with experience, and a whole lot of love for myself and the other people around me.

Alright, so that's what Dan Cunningham, the coach and the organizer and the food enthusiast, brings to the table. Currently, I am on my own physical health journey and found myself at 60 years old, borderline diabetic, overweight, major overweight, 265 pounds. I haven't even weighed myself yet, but I have taken weight off. I talked last week on my live about being a contributor here in Cadre and what that's done for me personally. I explained to you where I've come from and what I've been through and where it's brought me, the one thing I didn't discuss is how my physical health always took the backseat to everything else going on.

And I think everything going on contributed to my yo yo weight and to my overall weight gain. So now I'm focusing major once again on getting my physical health back in order. And because I am such a food lover, I'm a home chef. I teach cooking classes here in my hometown, do demos on social media. I have learned so much. I'm really good at losing weight. I'm just really bad at keeping it off. So I talked last week about how it's different this time because I've got my Cadre family with me. I'm a member of this great community, and, you know, when we help others, we help ourselves, too.

And so this isn't 100% about giving, because I get a lot out of this, too. All right, so today, let's get into the kitchen a little bit. Oh, in this. On that topic, before I do, there's a book. Now, button up here if you want to schedule coaching with me or any of the other. The other coaches. Hey, Evan, you want to schedule with Evan? You're watching one of his lives or his videos. Hit the you can book now. You also can like the video. You can hit the thumbs down if you're not into it, and you can send feedback, and you can save a live or a video, and you can comment.

So there's all that stuff up there. We encourage you to interact with the platform here and let us know if you're liking what you're hearing, if you want more of one thing or less of another, we love getting feedback from our Cadre family of viewers, so we are really glad to have you here. We're here for you, and if you have any specific requests, especially here on Sunday at three, just leave them for me, and I will be happy to get back with you or somebody else here in Cadre can always address any concerns you have.

Okay, so in the kitchen, one of the things that I love to focus on when it comes to health and wellness. Evan, I'm so glad you're here. It's so funny doing these lives. It's great to see people pop in, especially ones that you know and love. So thanks for being here, Evan. All right, so one of the things that I love to do is run this formula that will give you the percentage of fat in any food. Okay? So the formula is you take the. We're looking at labels here, food labels. So you take the total grams of fat, and you multiply that by nine, and you multiply it by nine because there's nine calories in a gram of fat.

So total grams of fat times nine divided by the total calories. Okay. So one reason that people get upset about this, these kind of labels, is because they're deceiving. So the first one I want to show you is this coconut oil spray. Right? This is. It's Trader Joe's. I love it. I've used it for a long time. And this somebody I was listening to use this as an example of how deceiving our labels can be. So this is coconut oil spray. Right? So a serving size. Well, first, let's do the formula. They say zero fat, zero calories, so zero everything.

So this is just zero. They're saying by the label that it's basically nothing because the serving size is one third second of a spray. Really? Who uses one third of a second of a spray of cooking oil? So the beef is. This is 100% fat. It's oil. And, you know, why not just say it is? Just say what it is. It's a hundred percent fat. It doesn't have zero calories and zero fat or any of this. So that's how labels can trick us, because, you know, you need to kind of take the whole label into consideration in this formula here.

If you're looking at cutting down, you know, calories or focusing on trying to reduce the amount of fat that you're taking in, this is a great way to kind of just gauge what you're eating. So here is a product. I love this. It just took it out of the freezer, so it's all frosty. Maybe I should use it on my eyes, that puffiness. Oh, it feels good. It does feel good. Okay. I picked this because the label says this is 85% lean, and it says 15% fat. And then it says it contains up to 3% water. Blah, blah, blah.

Okay, so let's run the formula. Ready? We've got 17 grams of fat, so we're gonna do 17 times nine. Divide by the total calories per serving. 220 calories equals. This is 70% fat. Is it? Yeah, 70% fat in this, but they say it's 85% lean. They can say that because the actual meaning of the word lean in the food industry is different than what it, you know, what. What we think it is. So it really makes you think, like, wow, you know, the serving size. There's four servings in this. So what is this, a pound?

So a quarter pound of this is 70% fat. What you're eating. Interesting. So let's do, like. Let's do coconut milk. This is the light coconut milk. I love coconut milk. I use it a ton. And so let's do it five times nine, divided by total calories. 60, 75% fat. This is like fat. It's all fat. Well, not all, 75%. So when you run this formula, it really gives you a different idea. When you're grabbing this at the store, you think coconut milk, white. Oh, you know. All right, let's go for the light. It's still fat.

And, you know, it says you're gonna. It's 60 calories a one third cup. That's, you know, that's a pretty decent sized portion of this, but again, it gives you the realistic number of coconut milk and mashed potato. Mashed. Oh, yum. Really? That sounds delicious. All right, I'm trying that. I'll film it, too. All right, so, Evan, let's do this one. This is one of my favorites. It's a tiki masala sauce from aldi. It's so good. It's really good, and I recommend it a lot, and I've cooked with it online.

So let's do this. 3 grams of fat per serving. It's three times nine, divided by 50 calories. This is 50% fat. I never really paid attention. I just dumped it on my stuff. And actually, the last time I was on this health train and derailed, I don't even think this product was around. But, you know, I'll think about it now. Like, when I'm putting this on, I'll think about how much fat is in the bacon bits. Let's see what the bits do. 2 grams of fat times nine divided by 30 equals 60% fat. Bacon bits, canned chicken.

This is from sam's club or Costco. 5 times 990 calories, 15% fat. This is a wise choice. I do use this a lot. Don't tell Brian. He doesn't like that. If he knows what it is. All right, two more. I want to do two more. One is, you know, Campbell's soup. 5 grams of fat, and it's got 90 calories, 35% fat. Now, that's low. I mean, that's lower than I would have thought for a nacho cheese condensed soup. All right, Campbell's going with your little locale self. It's still two thirds fat. Wait, what did I just say?

One third fat. All right. And then this. I thought, man, this is. You've got to be, like, just 100% fat. Oh, the serving size, two tablespoons. Seriously? I mean, I can get more than that on one chip and probably always do. So we're gonna do a 3 grams and calories, 45, 60% fat. Wow. So I am a little surprised by these last two here. All right, so anyway, that gives you a good idea. Remember, look at these labels and remember, this is fat, no matter what they say on the label. Zero cat, you know, this is, you know, you're not going to use one, one three second spray.

These are great to use. I mean, I recommend these. These are great for weight loss. You're not dumping oil into the pan. But, you know, let's not fool ourselves, trader jurors. This is fat, 100%, but it's a great fat to use. All right, you guys, so I hope that helps. If you're on the physical health journey, you're looking at ways to cut down on fat calories, which I am. I encourage you to follow me along and join me here every Sunday at 03:00 we're back on schedule. I got a little off track late fall.

I had some. Some funeral services and traveling in late summer that got things a little off track. And so I apologize if you were here and I wasn't, but I'm gonna be here every Sunday this fall, 03:00 talking about health and wellness on Cadre and how organization and. And good nutrition all play a big part in our physical well being overall. All right, coming up tonight, we've got Jason Lennox, and he's doing recovery. Reinvented the beginning. So Jason Lennox is on tonight at eight. When you're on the homepage of Cadre, there's a calendar up in the corner.

Just hit the calendar. It'll give you all the information about who's coming up. Evans on the calendar. Check him out. He is so awesome to listen to. He has a wealth of knowledge, and yet you don't want to miss Evan. He just has so many good, good bits of content here on Cadre, and, you know, it's always really informative watching him. He's. Well, you just got to watch him. He's great. And I'm glad you were here, Evan. Okay, you guys, so that's it for now. Glad I could give you just a little bit of history about me.

I hadn't done that in a while and. And talk about, you know, food and how much fat is in what we're eating. And I hope I see you back here next Sunday. And many more to come. Thanks, Evan. Thanks, everybody. I love you guys, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye.