Your Diet Sucks

Zoë Rom

Diet culture, you've met your scientific match. Hosted by an elite ultrarunner/journalist and a registered dietitian, Your Diet Sucks dismantles the myths, trends, and pseudoscience that screw up how we think about food, health, and fitness.

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Thursday · 1 hr 5 min
How Nicotine Got a Wellness Makeover, and What the Science Actually Says
Nicotine is having a moment. Again. This time it comes in a little pillow that tastes like coffee, sold by guys with podcasts who say it’ll help you crush your next deck at work. Zyn went from 50 million cans in 2019 to almost 800 million in 2025. Everyone's doing it. Joe Rogan swears by it. Tucker Carlson has his own brand. The Secretary of Health and Human Services may or may not have popped one during his confirmation hearing. So we had to ask: why, for the love of all things peer-reviewed, is this a thing again? Kylee and Zoë start with 400 years of tobacco marketing, from colonial cure-alls to “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet," and trace the history of how yesteryear's vice became today's biohack. Then, the gals get into the research behind the claims that nicotine is a cognitive enhancer that will help you crush your next presentation or athletic feat. They also unpack how nicotine impacts metabolic health, and why you might want to think twice before you pop that pouch. We also follow the money through the FDA, MAHA, and an industry where addiction isn’t so much a side effect as it is a business model. If you’re trying to quit or cut back, call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or text with Truth Initiative’s free This is Quitting program. rabbit: Running gear made by runners, for runners. Their Low Light collection has 360 degrees of reflective print, so you’re visible in the dark without looking like a traffic cone. Tailwind: Carbs, electrolytes, and fluid in one flask, and that’s it. Build your own bundle at tailwindnutrition.com with code YOURDIET20 Osmia: Physician-formulated skincare that won’t age-shame you into buying 19 serums. Get 20% off your first order at osmiaskincare.com with code YDS20 goodr: Fun, no-slip, no-bounce sunglasses starting at $30. Get $10 off your first order at goodr.com/YDS
October 28 · 1 hr
Does Alkaline Water Actually Do Anything? The Acid Myth, $8,000 Water Machines, and the pH Miracle That Wasn’t
Join the YDS community on Patreon for bonus episodes, weekly blog posts, live Q&As with Kylee and her nutrition masterclasses: patreon.com/YourDietSucks Your body isn’t too acidic, and a $12 bottle of alkaline water was never going to fix it anyway. This week, Zoë and Kylee dig into the alkaline diet: where it came from, what the science says, and why it keeps coming back. The story starts in 1912, when scientists set food on fire and sorted it by its ash. That’s how the lemon, a famously acidic fruit, ended up on every “alkaline foods” list. From there, a real question about kidney disease and acid-base balance got stretched into a wellness theory of everything, picked up a celebrity fan club, and ended at a “miracle” ranch where people got hurt. Then they get into how pH actually works in your body. Your lungs and kidneys keep your blood pH in a tight range whether you eat a kale salad or a meatball sub, and your stomach is acidic on purpose. Those urine pH test strips aren’t catching a problem. They’re watching your kidneys do their job. Kylee breaks down what the research says about acidic foods and bone health, plus the two buffering supplements with real evidence for athletes, sodium bicarbonate and beta alanine, and where that evidence stops. Finally, alkaline water itself: does it work, what does a $5,000 water ionizer actually do, and why does the sales pitch sound so much like an MLM? Spoiler: none of it survives stomach acid. Osmia makes physician-formulated skincare that actually works, right here in Colorado. Use code YDS20 for 20% off your first order at osmiaskincare.com. rabbit makes technical running gear that keeps up with you, pockets for all your snacks included. Shop at runinrabbit.com with the code you heard in this episode. Microcosm Coaching offers individualized endurance coaching from humans who know your life and your goals. Book a free consultation at microcosm-coaching.com.
October 14 · 1 hr 10 min
Do 95% of Diets Really Fail? The Zombie Statistic and What Long-Term Weight Loss Data Actually Says
You’ve heard it in diet ads, anti-diet infographics, gym locker rooms, and possibly from us. “95% of diets fail” is one of the most repeated statistics in nutrition, and it gets used by both sides. Diet culture uses it to say everyone else’s diet fails, so buy theirs. Anti-diet spaces use it to say nothing works. So we went looking for where it came from. The trail leads to a 1959 case series of 100 patients at a New York hospital. Each one got a diet sheet and one counseling visit, then never heard from anyone again. A quarter of them never came back. The number 95 doesn’t appear anywhere in the paper. When a reporter tracked down the lead author in 1999, he told her his data couldn’t support what people were doing with it. The statistic kept spreading anyway. In this episode, Zoë and Kylee look at what the long-term weight loss research actually shows. That includes the Look AHEAD trial, a meta-analysis of 80 trials and more than 26,000 people, the National Weight Control Registry, and Kevin Hall’s famous Biggest Loser study. They also get into why hunger hormones stay shifted for a year after dieting, why diet rigidity predicts failure better than any specific diet does, how dropout bias makes the published numbers look better than reality, and where GLP-1 medications fit in. Kylee talks about what metabolic adaptation looks like in her clinical practice. Both hosts explain why “define diet, define failure, define percent” is the only correct response at a bar. The bottom line: diets don’t fail 95% of the time. With a serious definition of success, the real failure rate is somewhere between two-thirds and 90%, and that’s with intensive professional support. The real number is still not encouraging. But a statistic you can’t source isn’t evidence. It’s a bumper sticker. Want more? Join the community on Patreon for monthly bonus episodes, weekly nutrition question threads with Kylee, and members-only posts.
September 30 · 59 min
Why Is Everyone Still Afraid of Gluten? Fads, Fiction, and Why Bread Hits Different In Europe
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?
September 16 · 1 hr 17 min
Diet Culture & Pyramid Schemes: MLMs, Herbalife, and the Vitamin That Started It All
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
September 2 · 1 hr 14 min
Is It Actually Your Cortisol? Cortisol Belly, Cortisol Face, and the Billion-Dollar Business of Blaming a Hormone
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
August 19 · 1 hr 15 min
Are You Addicted to Exercise?
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
August 5 · 1 hr 15 min
Why Is Everyone Scared of Microplastics?
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
July 22 · 1 hr 9 min
Why is Everyone Using Peptides?
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
July 8 · 1 hr 31 min
The Keto Diet
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
June 24 · 1 hr 9 min
Are Seed Oils Actually Bad For You?
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. WIUAl7uwQgh4J6imCoLv
June 10 · 1 hr 26 min
Why Am I So Hungry?
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
May 27 · 1 hr 25 min
Are Artificial Sweeteners Actually Bad For You?
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.
May 13 · 1 hr 29 min
Should You Count Calories? The Wild History and Questionable Science Behind Calorie Counting
Should you count calories? A century ago, a Los Angeles doctor named Lulu Hunt Peters sold two million copies of a book that taught American women to count calories as a patriotic duty during WWI. She invented the 100-calorie snack pack. She set the 1,200-calorie floor that still haunts diet apps in 2026. The framework she popularized is still running your relationship with food. This week, Zoë and Kylee dig into the question every active person has wondered about: should you be counting calories? They trace how a unit of heat invented to measure factory worker rations became the dominant logic of American eating. Where the 2,000-calorie label on every food package actually came from (it isn't science, it's a 1990 design choice). Why calorie counting is legally allowed to be 20 percent wrong before it ever reaches your plate. And why a framework with this many cracks has held on for a hundred years. Along the way: what calorie counting did to the American food supply during the low-fat era, what the Biggest Loser metabolic adaptation research actually showed, why even registered dietitians can't accurately track their own intake, what set point theory says about why restriction backfires, and whether calorie tracking apps are tools, traps, or both. For athletes, the questions that actually matter for performance, and what the research says about who calorie counting helps and who it harms. Plus: the early feminist origins of dieting (yes, really), why your microbiome is doing math your app can't see, and why this number keeps its grip on us even when the science says it shouldn't. 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/collections/womens-new. Use code YDSMAY10 for 10% off. Tailwind Nutrition — Real fuel that actually works for endurance athletes. Shop at tailwindnutrition.com and use code YOURDIET20 for 20% off. Osmia — Clean, 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 — Endurance coaching that meets you where you are. Book a free consultation call 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.
April 29 · 1 hr 21 min
Food Allergies, Intolerances, and Sensitivity Tests
This week, Zoë mailed a chunk of her hair to a stranger in Florida. For science. For journalism. For your benefit, really. The $60 hair sample test came back flagging her as "highly reactive" to 210 foods, including emu, ostrich egg, hot dog, and ground horse meat. Reader, she has not eaten ground horse meat in over a decade. The food sensitivity industry is a multi-billion-dollar grift built on real symptoms and fake frameworks. We trace it from 1906, when allergy was first defined as a real clinical thing, through the 1950s clinical ecology movement, through cytotoxic testing, IgG panels, electrodermal screening, and bio-resonance, and finally to the at-home hair test in your DMs. It's the same idea in different packaging every decade. Like a body-snatcher, but for grift. (We use a lot of John Carpenter references in this one.) Then Kylee walks through what the science actually says: the difference between IgE allergies, IgG sensitivities, and intolerances. What real diagnostic testing looks like (skin prick tests, blood panels, hydrogen breath tests, structured elimination diets with a professional). Why hair testing, IgG panels, and bio-resonance devices have no validated diagnostic mechanism. And why these tests disproportionately target women, who are statistically more likely to feel dismissed by their doctors and more likely to seek answers in the wellness market. We also get into why endurance athletes are uniquely vulnerable to this stuff. When your gut acts up during training, the wellness industry hands you a list of 210 foods to eliminate. Your sports dietitian hands you a fueling plan. Guess which one tends to lead to a stress fracture. The bottom line: your symptoms deserve a real answer. Don't let a hair test substitute for actual care. This episode is supported by: rabbit — Use code YOURDIETSUCKS10 for 10% off at runinrabbit.com Their trail line is genuinely the only running gear we actively look forward to wearing. Tailwind Nutrition — Use code YOURDIET20 for 20% off at tailwindnutrition.com. Endurance fuel that doesn't taste like a chemistry set. Try the Mandarin Orange or the Daily Hydration Strawberry Lemonade. Osmia Skincare — Use code YDS20 for 20% off at osmiaskincare.com. Clean, science-forward skincare from a real-deal physician-founder. The Himalayan Salt Scrub and Lavender Body Mousse are the post-long-run reset. Microcosm Coaching — Endurance coaching from people who know what they're doing. Free consultations at microcosm-coaching.com. Website: yourdietsuckspodcast.com — full episode pages, references, transcripts, and the blog. Patreon: patreon.com/YourDietSucks — bonus episodes, monthly Q&As with Kylee, and the community thread. $3/month keeps us independent and ad-manager-free. Merch: teepublic.com/user/your-diet-sucks — TeePublic shop. (Heads up: free Patreon members can win a YDS shirt by joining a paid tier between now and May 31. Drawing June 1.) If this episode helped, send it to a friend who's been thinking about mailing their hair somewhere. Word of mouth is how this show grows. SPONSORSMORE YDS
April 15 · 1 hr 23 min
Is Natural Food Actually Healthier?
In 1997, a 14-year-old named Nathan Zahner convinced 43 out of 50 classmates to sign a petition banning a dangerous chemical called dihydrogen monoxide. The chemical was water. This episode is everything that happened next, scaled up to a $50 billion industry and, eventually, federal food policy. Zoë and Kylee trace the naturalistic fallacy: the assumption that natural equals good and artificial equals bad. It's the implicit logic behind clean eating, anti-GMO panic, supplement marketing, anti-vaccine rhetoric, and a significant chunk of sports nutrition culture. This episode follows that logic from Sylvester Graham's Victorian theories about white flour and masturbation, through John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium, through the Make America Healthy Again commission's 2025 decision to replace heavily regulated synthetic dyes with natural alternatives that are, it turns out, subject to less FDA oversight than the dyes they replaced. Botulinum toxin is completely natural. Synthetic folic acid has prevented hundreds of thousands of neural tube defects. Nature is not a wellness coach. Your mitochondria are not reading the label. FREE T-SHIRT GIVEAWAY — ends April 19thTwo ways to enter: leave a review on Apple Podcasts and DM us a screenshot on Instagram @yourdietsuckspodcast, or share any episode to your Instagram stories and tag us. Do both for two entries. Winner announced Saturday April 19th. US residents only. SUPPORT THE SHOW: Join the Patreon at patreon.com/YourDietSucks — bonus episodes, Kylee's Q&As, Zoë's monthly blog, and a community of people who find this stuff as interesting as you do. Starting at $3/month. Merch at teepublic.com/user/your-diet-sucks. THIS EPISODE IS SUPPORTED BY rabbit — 10% off at runinrabbit.com/collections/womens-new with code YOURDIETSUCKS10 Tailwind Nutrition — 20% off at tailwindnutrition.com with code YOURDIET20 Osmia — 20% off at osmiaskincare.com with code YDS20 Microcosm Coaching — Free consultation at microcosm-coaching.com
April 1 · 1 hr 24 min
The Caffeine Episode
Find full episode transcripts, show notes, and research at yourdietsuckspodcast.com. Grab merch at teepublic.com/user/your-diet-sucks. And if you want bonus episodes, early access, and our eternal gratitude, support us on Patreon at patreon.com/YourDietSucks. Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive substance on earth — and somehow it's still got two extremely loud camps screaming past each other. On one side: the wellness-bro "caffeine destroys your adrenals, drink my mushroom latte" crowd. On the other: the guy on TikTok who takes 800 milligrams a day and wants you to up your dose. Both of them are wrong. Both of them are extremely entertaining. In this episode, Zoë and Kylee dig into how caffeine actually works, the adenosine receptor science, the performance research, the optimal dosing for endurance athletes, and what it's actually doing to your sleep, hormones, and anxiety levels (spoiler: more than you think, less than the fear-mongers claim). They trace the history of human caffeine consumption from ancient China to Sufi monks using coffee as a pre-workout for night prayer, through the Enlightenment coffee houses that accidentally invented capitalism, all the way to a 300-milligram neon energy drink with a skull on it. There's also a full breakdown of the pre-workout industry's stimulant escalation problem, why adrenal fatigue isn't a real diagnosis, how your menstrual cycle affects caffeine metabolism, and whether the caffeine taper before a race is actually worth the two weeks of misery. Plus: the 1904 Olympic Marathon featured rat poison, brandy, and a man who hitched a ride in a car for 11 miles. Dry scooping sent multiple people to the hospital. And "energy is a choice" is not a peer-reviewed finding. We cover it all. This episode is supported by rabbit — use code YOURDIETSUCKS10 at runinrabbit.com/collections/womens-new for a discount on their trail line. By Osmia Skincare — use code YDS20 at osmiaskincare.com for 20% off. By Tailwind Nutrition at tailwindnutrition.com. And by Microcosm Coaching at microcosm-coaching.com.
March 18 · 1 hr 20 min
God, Guilt, and the Gospel of Clean Eating
Get "Carb Slut" and "Petty and Scientifically Literate" merch here! Check out our website for references, transcripts, and more! Diet culture is really good at one thing: finding the places people go to belong, and nesting inside them. This episode follows that instinct back to one of its oldest sources, the American evangelical church. Zoë and Kylee are joined by Leslie Schilling, RDN, CSSD, sports dietitian, eating disorder specialist, and author of Feed Yourself, to trace how food, bodies, and spiritual worthiness got so tangled together, and what it costs the people caught inside that tangle. From Pope Gregory's taxonomy of gluttony in the sixth century to Rick Warren's Daniel Plan weigh-ins, "your body is a temple" taken wildly out of context, and why eating disorders tied to religious identity are among the hardest to treat. You don't have to have ever set foot in a church to have received this transmission. Support Your Diet Sucks on Patreon for bonus episodes, weekly threads, recipes, and AMA access: patreon.com/yourdietsucks. This episode is brought to you by rabbit — use code YDSMARCH10 for 10% off at rabbit.com. Osmia Skincare — code YDS20 for 20% off at osmiaskincare.com. Tailwind Nutrition — code YOURDIET20 for 20% off at tailwindnutrition.com. And Microcosm Coaching — book a free consultation at microcosm-coaching.com.
March 4 · 1 hr 21 min
How Whole30 Became a Diet Empire Without a Single Study
Get "Carb Slut" and "Petty and Scientifically Literate" merch here! Whole30 has sold millions of books, built a coaching empire, and partnered with Chipotle and Walmart — all without a single peer-reviewed clinical trial. In this episode, Zoë traces the program from its origin on a CrossFit blog in 2009 to its multi-million dollar licensing ecosystem, digs into the loaded vocabulary (sugar dragons, tiger blood, sex with your pants on), and examines what happened when a nutrition science student fact-checked all 450 citations in It Starts With Food. Kylee breaks down how real elimination diets work, why this one poses specific risks for athletes, and what the plant-based Whole30 contradiction reveals about whether the rules were ever based on science at all. Support Your Diet Sucks on Patreon for bonus episodes, weekly threads, recipes, and AMA access: patreon.com/yourdietsucks. This episode is brought to you by rabbit — use code YDSMARCH10 for 10% off at rabbit.com. Osmia Skincare — code YDS20 for 20% off at osmiaskincare.com. Tailwind Nutrition — code YOURDIET20 for 20% off at tailwindnutrition.com. And Microcosm Coaching — book a free consultation at microcosm-coaching.com.
February 18 · 1 hr 21 min
Does Intermittent Fasting Actually Do Anything?
Intermittent fasting is the most Googled diet-related term on the planet, except everyone who does it will tell you it's not a diet. It's a protocol. An eating window. A lifestyle. An optimization hack. Definitely, absolutely, under no circumstances a diet. You just don't eat for sixteen hours. Totally different. In this episode, we trace IF from ancient religious fasting traditions through its secularization and commodification, afrom Martin Berkhan's Leangains forum and its tagline ("fuck breakfast") to Michael Mosley's BBC documentary, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine physique, and Jack Dorsey describing his weekend-long fasts as "hallucinating" like that's a selling point. We walk through how a Nobel Prize in yeast biology became a justification for skipping breakfast, why Jason Fung's The Obesity Code scored 31% on scientific accuracy and still became the IF bible, and how the fasting app market turned one simple rule into a multimillion-dollar industry. Then we get into what the science actually says. We break down the claimed mechanisms — metabolic switching, autophagy, insulin sensitivity — and look honestly at where the evidence lands. Spoiler: the mechanisms are real, but the confidence far outpaces the human data. The first direct measurement of autophagy in humans was published in 2025. Mouse metabolism runs seven times faster than ours. And the landmark Liu et al. trial in the New England Journal of Medicine found that time-restricted eating is no better than regular caloric restriction for weight loss. You're not metabolic switching. You're just eating less. We also dig into what IF means for active people (no performance benefit across any exercise type, real risk of under-fueling and RED-S, and a protein distribution problem that no eight-hour window can solve), what the AHA, ADA, NIA, and ISSN actually say about it, and the robust research linking IF to eating disorder behaviors across all genders — including a landmark study showing that fasting was a stronger predictor of binge eating disorder than any other form of dietary restraint. Fasting is listed in the DSM-5 as a compensatory behavior. Just because you give it a different vocabulary doesn't mean your body experiences it differently. Your body is smarter than any fasting app. Also, breakfast slaps.. This Episode's Sponsors: rabbit — Code YDSFEB for 10% off Osmia — Code YDS20 for 20% off Tailwind — Code YOURDIET20 for 20% off Microcosm Coaching — Book a free consultation Full references, episode archive, and our advertising ethics policy at yourdietsuckspodcast.com Hosted by: Zoë Rom & Kylee Van Horn, RDN

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