Your Diet Sucks

Nearly a third of Americans say they're trying to avoid gluten. About 1% have celiac disease. That gap is worth billions of dollars. In this episode, Zoë and Kylee dig into who the gluten-free diet was actually designed for, how it became a wellness identity, and what the research says about the rest of us.

We start with the science: what gluten is, why no human fully digests it (and why that's fine), and what celiac disease does to the gut. It's a serious autoimmune condition, and about 70% of cases go undiagnosed. Then we trace the gluten-free diet from its unlikely origin in the Dutch famine of World War II to the bestseller shelf, where Wheat Belly and Grain Brain blamed wheat for everything from belly fat to Alzheimer's. Along the way we ask whether modern wheat is really different, whether non-celiac gluten sensitivity is real, and why the culprit is often FODMAPs, not gluten. We also look at the blinded studies showing how powerfully expectation shapes symptoms.

Plus: why gluten-free labels make food seem healthier than it is, what that does to people who actually need the label, whether gluten-digesting enzyme pills work, what happened when cyclists were blinded to their diets, and the question everyone asks. Why can you eat all the bread you want in Italy and feel fine?

Multi-level marketing was invented to sell vitamins. Not adjacent to vitamins, not eventually pivoted to vitamins: the first MLM in America was a 1945 alfalfa-pill company that got raided by the FDA within two years, and everything since (Amway, Herbalife, the friend from high school who wants you to try a shake) is running the same play. In this episode, Zoë and Kylee trace how diet culture and direct selling grew up as one machine: the Nutrilite origin story, why supplements are the perfect MLM product, Herbalife's unmarked nutrition clubs and the mystery of why the shake tastes better in the store than at home, the billionaire slap fight that ended in a $200 million FTC settlement, and what the independent numbers say about who actually makes money (almost no one). Plus: Betsy DeVos's grandfather, the Tupperware party as feminist history, and why "boss babe" is doing unpaid PR for a system built to move money out of women's pockets.

If you got pulled in, or watched someone you love get pulled in, the math was rigged before anyone signed up. That's the whole point.

Full transcript, references, and research at yourdietsuckspodcast.com.

Support Your Diet Sucks on Patreon for monthly bonus episodes, weekly nutrition question threads with Kylee, members-only recipes and posts, and the archive: patreon.com/YourDietSucks

This episode is supported by:

• rabbit: our title sponsor and the run apparel we actually wear. Use code SUMMERSNACKS10 for 10% off at runinrabbit.com
• Tailwind Nutrition: endurance fuel and hydration that won't wreck your gut. Use code YOURDIET20 for 20% off at tailwindnutrition.com
• Microcosm Coaching: evidence-based run coaching from humans, not algorithms. Book a free consultation at microcosm-coaching.com

Support us on Patreon!

Somewhere in the last few years, cortisol became the answer to everything. Tired? Cortisol. Puffy? Cortisol. Gained weight, lost sleep, can't stop scrolling? Cortisol. A hormone you would die without got recast as the thing wrecking your face, and a $4.8 billion supplement economy showed up to fix it. This episode asks how that happened, and whether any of it is new.

It isn't. Zoë traces the lineage: Hans Selye, the self-described father of stress, who built the modern idea of stress from rat experiments in the 1930s and then quietly took tobacco industry money for decades while his research was used in court to argue that stress, not cigarettes, was making people sick. Then the 1998 arrival of "adrenal fatigue," a diagnosis coined by a naturopath in a self-published book, dismissed by the Endocrine Society, and treated with ground-up cow adrenal glands that are still on Amazon today. Cortisol panic is adrenal fatigue with a real hormone bolted on.

Kylee handles the real hormone. What the HPA axis actually does, why the morning spike is a sign your system works, why a cortisone shot and "the stress hormone" are the same molecule, and what a proper cortisol test looks like versus a $500 saliva kit with poor day-to-day reliability. We take on cortisol face (the clinical version is Cushing's, and you'd know), cortisol belly (the mechanism is real at pathological levels and unsupported for a stressed person with a normal curve), and the cortisol cocktail (orange juice and salt, which is an electrolyte drink in a wine glass).

For athletes, the internet has it backwards. A hard workout can briefly push cortisol into Cushing's range, then it's gone in hours. Real overtraining blunts the stress response rather than flooding it, and under-fueling raises baseline cortisol because your body reads a chronic deficit as an ongoing threat. Skipping intensity to protect your hormones protects nothing.

If cortisol is where a structural problem gets relocated onto an individual body, the gummy can't fix the job, the rent, or the toddler. Sleep, carbohydrates, and recovery still can.

• rabbit: our title sponsor and the run apparel we actually wear. Use code SUMMERSNACKS10 for 10% off at runinrabbit.com
• goodr: $25 polarized sunglasses that don't bounce, don't slip, and don't cost a race entry. Use code YDS at goodr.com/YDS for $10 off.
• Tailwind Nutrition: endurance fuel and hydration that won't wreck your gut. Use code YOURDIET20 for 20% off at tailwindnutrition.com
• Microcosm Coaching: evidence-based run coaching from humans, not algorithms. Book a consultation at microcosm-coaching.com

Support the show at Patreon.com/yourdietsucks

"No days off" is a slogan, a t-shirt, and a diagnostic criterion, depending on who's reading it.

This week: exercise addiction. Whether it's real, whether "addiction" is even the right word, and why the whole concept was popularized by a psychiatrist who also thought clinical depression was a choice you could simply make differently.

We trace it from a 1970 sleep study that fell apart because the researcher couldn't find enough people willing to stop exercising for thirty days, to the 1976 book that told a generation being hooked on running was a personality upgrade, to the 1983 paper that could only make men's version legible by borrowing the vocabulary of anorexia.

Plus: what the prevalence research actually shows, why the brain-imaging literature fits in a three-ring binder, and four ways to tell dedication from compulsion that have nothing to do with your weekly mileage.

Sponsors

This episode is brought to you by rabbit, whose new women's collection is built for people who actually run in it. ⁠runinrabbit.com/collections/womens-new⁠, code SUMMERSNACKS10 for 10% off.

Tailwind Nutrition got us through this one. ⁠tailwindnutrition.com⁠, code YOURDIET20 for 20% off.

Microcosm Coaching works with athletes who want to train and fuel without the shame spiral. ⁠microcosm-coaching.com⁠

Links

Every episode and full transcripts: ⁠yourdietsuckspodcast.com/your-diet-sucks-podcast⁠

Bonus episodes, Kylee's weekly nutrition question thread, and a group chat that will never try to sell you a binder: ⁠patreon.com/YourDietSucks⁠

Support the show at Patreon.com/yourdietsucks

There is no plastic spoon in your brain (unless you put one there). There is no credit card in your diet. We regret to inform you that this does not mean everything is fine.

Both of those numbers came from real studies, and both got mangled somewhere between the paper and your feed. Kylee walks through what actually survives scrutiny, where the fertility conversation outruns its evidence, and why the BPA-free sticker on your Nalgene is not the reassurance you think it is.

Zoë traces the whole mess from exploding celluloid billiard balls to Life magazine throwing a party for disposability in 1955. We get into why humans are catastrophically bad at judging exactly this kind of risk, how much you should actually be thinking about it, and the one exposure source that matters more than anything in your kitchen drawer.

Nobody needs to panic about their hydration strategy. Maybe buy new spatulas. Definitely don't buy the $300 filter from the guy who could be regulating this instead.

Sponsors

This episode is brought to you by rabbit, whose new women's collection is built for people who actually run in it. runinrabbit.com/collections/womens-new, code SUMMERSNACKS10 for 10% off.

Tailwind Nutrition got us through this one. tailwindnutrition.com, code YOURDIET20 for 20% off.

Microcosm Coaching works with athletes who want to train and fuel without the shame spiral. microcosm-coaching.com

Links

Every episode and full transcripts: yourdietsuckspodcast.com/your-diet-sucks-podcast

Bonus episodes, Kylee's weekly nutrition question thread, and a group chat that will never try to sell you a binder: patreon.com/YourDietSucks

BPC-157. TB-500. MOTs-C. If those sound like droids from a Star Wars spinoff, congratulations on your healthy relationship with the internet. For everyone else: peptides are the injectable wellness trend that jumped from bodybuilding forums to med spas to your feed, promoted for healing, muscle, fat loss, and living forever. But what does the science say, and what are peptides, actually?

Some of them became legitimate blockbuster drugs: insulin is a peptide, and so are the GLP-1s. But the ones flooding your feed never went through human trials. They went from lab animal studies straight to "research chemical" websites, and from there to longevity clinics charging four figures for injections of compounds nobody has proven do anything in people.

This week, Zoë traces how we got from insulin to Instagram: the bodybuilding underground, the anti-aging clinics, and the influencer economy that turned unproven injectables into a billion-dollar category. Kylee breaks down what the research actually shows for the big-name peptides, why "thousands of patients swear by it" is not evidence, and what she tells athletes who ask whether BPC-157 will fix their tendons faster. Plus: what to know about anything sold in a vial labeled "for research purposes only."

rabbit: our title sponsor and the run apparel we actually wear. Use code SUMMERSNACKS10 for 10% off at runinrabbit.com

Tailwind Nutrition: endurance fuel and hydration that won't wreck your gut. Use code YOURDIET20 for 20% off at tailwindnutrition.com

Osmia: small-batch skincare made by a former ER doctor. Use code YDS20 for 20% off at osmiaskincare.com

Microcosm Coaching: evidence-based run coaching from humans, not algorithms. microcosm-coaching.com

Support us on Patreon!

Keto promised something no other diet could: cut the carbs, flip a metabolic switch, and burn fat without counting a single calorie. A magic loophole in human physiology. So does it actually work?

This week we trace keto from a deaf Victorian undertaker who accidentally invented the first diet book, to a 1920s epilepsy clinic that turned fasting into medicine, to the bankrupt Atkins empire, to the shirtless guys on TikTok insisting grains ruined their lives. Then we get into the science: what ketosis actually is, why the carb-insulin hypothesis doesn't survive a metabolic ward, what Kevin Hall's lockdown studies really found, and why you should treat "it worked for me" with a grain of ketogenic salt.

We also get specific about athletes: what fat adaptation can and can't do and who might genuinely benefit from a low-carb approach versus who's just going to get slower and crankier (Zoë, for sure).

• rabbit: 10% off with code SUMMERSNACKS10 at runinrabbit.com
• Tailwind Nutrition: 20% off with code YOURDIET20 at tailwindnutrition.com
• Osmia Skincare: 20% off with code YDS20 at osmiaskincare.com
• Microcosm Coaching: work with a real human coach at every level at microcosm-coaching.com

Join our Patreon!

This is the most requested episode in two years, and the one strangers corner Zoë about the second they find out she hosts a nutrition podcast. Seed oils. Did they secretly poison the country, or did the internet just find a new villain with a great backstory?

We go claim by claim through the anti-seed-oil case. The omega-6 inflammation pathway. The omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, which turns out to matter more for some people than the internet's loudest voices would ever admit. Oxidation when you heat polyunsaturated fat. And the chart that maps seed oil consumption onto every chronic disease in America.

Zoë and Kylee dive into how a cooking fat became a one-word loyalty test that Mobile, Alabama and Marin County somehow agree on. RFK Jr. is out there RFK-ing the fries. Sweetgreen ran a seed-oil-free menu. And every influencer swearing canola oil is killing you has a thirty-dollar meat stick to sell you.

rabbit: Our title sponsor, and the kit we actually run in. Shop the latest at runinrabbit.com with code JUNEFOOD10 for 10% off.

Osmia: Skincare that survives the same scrutiny we apply to everything else. Code YDS20 at osmiaskincare.com.

Tailwind Nutrition: Fuel and electrolytes for long days out. Code YOURDIET20 at tailwindnutrition.com.

Microcosm Coaching: Coaching that meets you where you are, at microcosm-coaching.com.

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You were taught that hunger is a trick question. Before you're allowed to eat, you have to clear the suspects: you're bored, you're thirsty, you're emotional, you're just not disciplined enough. Somewhere at the bottom of that list, if it makes the list at all, sits the radical possibility that you might simply need food.

This episode is about where that interrogation came from and why most of it is nonsense. Hunger isn't one thing. It's three or four separate biological systems wearing a single word, and the cultural reflex to distrust all of them runs about 800 years deep. We go from fasting saints starving themselves toward God, to a Columbia psychologist in the 1960s who built a whole career on the idea that some people's hunger was simply broken. The belief refused to die, and you can still hear it in every diet app, every set of smaller plates, every stranger telling you to drink more water and wait for the feeling to pass.

Plus why some of us really do run hungrier than the people around us, and what quietly moves the signal.

By the end, the question stops being "am I actually hungry" and turns into something more useful: who convinced you that you shouldn't be?

Links

New episodes every other Wednesday at yourdietsuckspodcast.com. Come hang out on Patreon for Kylee's weekly nutrition Q&A, bonus episodes, and the group chat: patreon.com/YourDietSucks

Brought to you by:

rabbit: code JUNEFOOD10 for 10% off at runinrabbit.com/collections/womens-newTailwind Nutrition: code YOURDIET20 for 20% off at tailwindnutrition.comOsmia: code YDS20 for 20% off at osmiaskincare.comMicrocosm Coaching: microcosm-coaching.com

In 1879, a chemist named Constantin Fahlberg sat down to dinner without washing his hands after a day spent handling coal tar. His bread tasted strangely sweet. So he went back to the lab and started tasting everything on his bench until he found the source. That was saccharin, the first artificial sweetener, discovered because a man would not wash his hands before dinner. Nearly 150 years later, we are still arguing about whether the stuff is going to kill us.

This week, Zoë and Kylee dig into the question every diet-soda lover has had to defend at a gas station: are artificial sweeteners actually bad for you? They trace how a coal-tar accident became a billion-dollar industry, why the WHO's "possibly carcinogenic" label on aspartame puts it in the same risk tier as pickled vegetables and working as a carpenter, and how Donald Rumsfeld personally muscled aspartame through the FDA. The saccharin cancer scare that haunted a generation came from male rats dosed with the equivalent of hundreds of sodas a day, through a mechanism human bodies do not even have.

Along the way: the wartime rationing that built the sweetener industry, the cyclamate the US banned and never reinstated while the rest of the world kept drinking it, the every-fifteen-years villain cycle that has run through fat, high-fructose corn syrup, gluten, and seed oils, the genuinely fascinating Suez microbiome research where scientists grew human gut bacteria in mice, the stevia-in-a-petri-dish problem, and the erythritol heart-attack headline that fell apart the moment anyone read the study.

Plus: why these things were always sold to women as a permission structure, the one category athletes actually need to watch (sugar alcohols, and the osmotic chaos they bring to a long run), the client drinking ten Liquid IVs a day, and a hot-takes round that settles Diet Coke versus Coke Zero once and for all.

Listen for the full story.

This episode is brought to you by:

rabbit: Built by runners, for runners. Shop the women's collection at runinrabbit.com. Use code YDSMAY10 for 10% off, new code each month, check most recent show notes for updates.

Tailwind Nutrition: Real fuel that actually works for endurance athletes. Shop at tailwindnutrition.com and use code YOURDIET20 for 20% off.

Osmia: Simple, evidence-based skincare from a real doctor (and one of the few wellness brands we actually trust). Shop at osmiaskincare.com and use code YDS20 for 20% off.

Microcosm Coaching: Human-first coaching for athletes of every level and every sport. Come to our virtual open house on June 11 at 5:30 MT. Register with this link or at microcosm-coaching.com.

Want more? Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/YourDietSucks for weekly nutrition Q&As with Kylee, bonus deep dives, and community discussions on the topics that are too niche or too spicy for the main feed.

Grab merch at teepublic.com/user/your-diet-sucks.

Resources, citations, and studies discussed in this episode are available at yourdietsuckspodcast.com.