The Anti-Wellness Diet

How Trump Won

Oh, come on—you picked up this book hoping for yet another “magic bullet” that lets you binge on nachos while simultaneously melting fat like butter in a hot pan. Maybe it’s a secret combo of “bad” foods and “good” foods on alternating days or some mystical algorithm like: Column A on Mondays, Column B on Tuesdays, but only if it’s sunny in Seattle and Mercury isn’t in retrograde.

If it’s convoluted enough to fail, we’ll try it, because failure breeds more schemes. That is, until real disruption happened: GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro messed with the diet industry’s cash cow. For context, Weight Watchers’ stock plummeted from $103 a share in 2018 to a buck. A dollar.

So here we are: 75% of Americans feel like absolute garbage. Why is everyone shocked when frustration boils over? The New York Times’ Wellness Team—masters of “just eat kale, do yoga, and breathe deeply”—just admitted that the nation’s health is a mess.

But let’s not blame them for decades of failed advice. Nah, let’s blame Healthcare CEOs and move along. Here’s the reality: there is no magic formula. No woo-woo mix of raw milk, processed food avoidance, fasting at the new moon, or soaking in essential oil-infused tubs will fix this. America is lugging around 12 BILLION EXTRA POUNDS. That’s the conservative estimate. BMI? A joke. The fastest-growing weight category? Morbid obesity—and it’s worse than it sounds.

Meanwhile, politicians still promise to lower food prices to keep us overfed and blissfully in denial, ignoring that the $1.5 TRILLION food business is at stake. But there’s a brutal truth no one wants to admit: the less QUANTITY, aka BITES we consume, the smaller that food industry becomes.

It’s gluttony, folks. Not exactly a headline grabber—especially when it comes with guilt and the whiff of religion. But will we ever connect the dots? Or will we keep hoping that some flashy combo of nutrient hacks will save us after only 60 years into this fiasco?

It’s as absurd as asking someone in a wheelchair if they’ll run the New York Marathon. Yet here we are waiting for the next miracle while Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar laughs from the wings:

“Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep-a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.”

Good luck, lean Cassius. Good luck, us.

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My latest book The Anti-Wellness Diet: Why Trump Won is now on Amazon Kindle. It's only $0.99, but you can read it for free if you order between Jan 1 and Jan 3rd. It takes only 1 hour to read, but you'll be laughing the whole time.

You can get it here. If you don't have an actual Kindle, download the Kindle App for free and read on your phone or tablet. Click here for iphone or here for android.