Another day, another wellness guru telling us what to eat—this time, it’s Mel Robbins and Dr. Li, dishing out a shopping list of magic fat-burning foods. Apparently, there are thousands of these miracle edibles, and we’ve just been oblivious. Who knew?
Here’s your shopping list: Buy 7 apples, 7 kiwis, a week’s supply of pomegranate juice (8oz/day), matcha tea, and coffee. Oh, and 5 cans of beans (white ones, preferably). Dr. Li guzzles five cups of coffee daily—with dark chocolate (80–90%, of course). And just as I am writing this – some kind of telepathy for sure—I get an email from the great doctor about his favorite:
“Dark chocolate is often seen as a special treat, reserved for guilty pleasures or holidays. But when it comes to dark chocolate with 80% cacao or higher, the indulgent taste hides incredible health benefits. It’s so remarkable that it appears on my list of jaw-dropping foods in my book, Eat to Beat Disease. Now, even though you may not need more convincing, let us dive into the pleasantly surprising benefits of dark chocolate.”
Then he drops the ”science” on us
Moving along—before you complain about the sugar in pomegranate juice or the calorie bomb that is dark chocolate, just shut up. These foods are magical, okay? This list is only the beginning—there are at least 3,000 other superfoods you’ve never even heard of, like sunchoke, cardoon, oca, mangoeslean, durian, and ackee. Don’t question it. Just eat. Stuff you face with tasteless stuff you have never heard of.
The best part? You don’t need to suffer through another soul-crushing diet or torch those onboard calories at the gym. Forget exercise—it failed us. Turns out, hunger is the real villain. But no worries, because these magical foods activate brown fat (the good kind) to hunt down and destroy white fat (the bad kind). Yes, your fat is now in an action movie. Bonus: brown fat loves the cold which is why cold plunges are trending. So why aren’t Eskimos lean and sexy you ask? PLEASE, don’t start thinking too hard—science already proved this works, okay?
Speaking of science, ever notice how every day there’s a new “groundbreaking” study? Some researcher finds 12 men who run for three days, or 8 Scandinavian women who take calcium supplements and lose a microscopic amount of weight, and suddenly it’s a wellness revolution. This is the business model: repackage the same recycled nonsense to distract YOU the confused and damaged consumer.
And that, my friend, is the real problem: distraction. You don’t need another list of “magic” foods; you need to eat less. But that’s no fun to hear, is it? So instead, try tracking how many bites you take at a meal—because odds are, it’s way too many. There’s even a free app for that (80 Bites—it’s funny, too). Stop looking for the magic and start dealing with the real issue: massive, non-stop hunger from over eating.
Of course, if you have your chicken shit lens open, you know this food magic is 100% pure certified crap. So laugh at the phonies and then close your mouth. Experience an empty mouth. Even better, water pik, brush with minty fluoride tooth paste ( don’t tell Kennedy); Floss! Rinse with Mouth Wash. Massage your gums. Rince again. After all this dental hygiene effort, you won’t want to snack, not even the “healthy” snacks.
In my last podcast I said I would explain the 537 hack—an abbreviation to describe a mess you live with every day.
So, let’s talk about 537—the number that now haunts my office like a bad joke. Here’s the backstory: A couple of years ago, out of nowhere, my right eye starts itching like it’s hosting a flea circus. Naturally, I assume it’s allergies, except—fun fact—I don’t have allergies. But hey, I pop some pills anyway. Nothing. CVS eye drops? Also nothing. Fabulous.
Off to the ophthalmologist (or as we now call them, “healthcare providers” because apparently, we’re borrowing terminology from Nazi Germany since Hitler refused Jewish MDs their rightful title). So my first class Physician examines and declares, “You have blepharitis.” Some big, scary-sounding word. Prescription? Some sad excuse for an ointment that makes everything blurry, a fancy lid-cleaning routine, and—wait for it—a heated eye mask from Amazon. Because nothing says “modern medicine” like adding another gadget to my shopping cart.
For a hot second, this routine works. Then it doesn’t. My eyes are now a full-blown nightmare, and I’m ready to rip them out. Back to Dr. Eye Man. This time, he hits me with, “Here’s a steroid drop. It’ll fix everything... but only take it for seven days.” And guess what? It worked! And then the problem came roaring back like a sequel nobody asked for.
At this point, my Doctor decides it’s time for The Great State of Idaho to step in. No, not for a potato intervention—for a pharmaceutical lab that cooked up some parasite-killing eye drops. Oh yeah, turns out I’ve been hosting tiny little eyelid gremlins this whole time. MITES! Delightful. So desperate times call for desperate wallet-emptying measures. His office phones in the prescription, insurance does its insurance thing, and finally, the call comes:
“Your insurance approved this. We are ready to ship it. Your co-pay is $537.”
Excuse me, what now? But by this point, I’m basically ready to sell a kidney for relief, so I say, “Fine, overnight it.” The tiny half-inch bottle arrives, I start the drops, and... drumroll… NOTHING. Actually, scratch that—it gets worse. A week in, I’m fuming. I just paid $537 for the privilege of making my eyeballs feel extra miserable.
So, I do what any thinking person would: I call them up, speakerphone on, office audience listening. I tell them this is absurd, and just out of curiosity, I ask, “What if I didn’t have insurance?” And the rep—an actual human, not AI—responds:
“Oh, then it would be free.”
Come again? Two of my coworkers turn to look at me like they just witnessed a glitch in the Matrix. I repeat for clarity, “So, you’re telling me if I hadn’t given you my insurance info, I’d be paying a grand total of zero dollars?”
Awkward silence. Then, a quiet, defeated “Yes.”
At this point, a co-worker suggests the rep was probably shaking on the other end of the line, because seriously—how do you even justify this nonsense? But nope, no attempt at explanation. No “Yeah, I know, this sounds ridiculous.” Just pure, unfiltered absurdity.
And this, my friends, is just one of many daily encounters with systems that make absolutely no sense. Don’t even get me started on Meta’s “customer service,” where the reps seem blissfully unaware that their job is to solve problems, not just politely nod along.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering how this all ties into losing 40 to 100 pounds—trust me, it does. You start noticing patterns, and suddenly, it all connects. But that’s a rant for another day. BTW, I did some research and it turns out that these eye drops are free but only if we are in the middle of
World War 3.
Share this post