Do and Don't Resolve To:

A comprehensive list of lies the internet will tell you and truths to keep close to the heart

Greetings, my friends! Happy New Year - perhaps the most apocalyptic feeling one yet, but a new one nonetheless - my resolution is to write more, and what better topic to set off my first annual rant than the damaging, evil, and downright false weight loss and fitness industrial complex that is the fucking internet this week?

Now, I, too, love a resolution. It’s actually hard wired into all of us to love them - setting a goal, checking off a task, and joining into community around an objective are scientifically linked to dopamine releases. So don’t fret - this isn’t an anti fresh start, new year rant - it’s a dissolution of the marketing efforts pushed into the universe this week, backed by billions of dollars, AI, and reptilian goblins preying on your googled insecurities to make you think that one specific diet, workout plan, chin strap, mouth tape, collagen mask, silk pillowcase, AI trainer, juice cleanse, colon cleanse, toxin cleanse, any cleanse, is going to transform your life. As you may recall, the cornerstone of my nutrition business, and what I tell every single person who asks me for advice, is this: if it takes no time at all, it will not greatly impact your health for the better.

The areas I’d like to deinfluence you the most today will be: weight loss plans, fitness plans, supplements, and diet plans. I will do my best to provide a resolution that is actually sustainable, inexpensive, and not harmful - my suggestions are certainly not the world standard, but this is my substack, so… you can beat your skulls together in the comments if you’d like.

Let’s start with the number one goal in this country when it comes to the new year - the eponymous ‘getting in shape.’ Naturally, the weight loss component is linked to the fitness component, but the weight loss zone is where I see some of the most damaging and toxic promises made by the most evil of marketing campaigns. Weight loss has long been associated with the signs of getting healthy, and I would like to bang the drum to the contrary in many, many rhythms for you today.

How Much You Eat vs. What You Eat:

When we think of malnutrition, we think about starvation, but in the bones-through-the-skin-showing sense, not the body-begging-for-nutrients sense. The definition of malnutrition varies depending on where you are in the world, but generally can encompass both of these variants. This is my favorite place to start when explaining that factors like weight, BMI, or physical appearance / body composition cannot be the only metric for making an adjustment to your diet. You can be a malnourished and underweight person while consuming all of your vitamins and just not eating enough, you can be a malnourished overweight person while eating more calories than required but eating too many processed foods and not enough nutrients. It is helpful in the scope of fighting the weight dementor to see them as the same thing.

This week, you’ve been blasted with promises from a variety of companies involving losing inches, pounds, belly fat, underarm fat, double chins, all of the things we hate about ourselves but love in the bodies of Renaissance paintings. I really, really encourage you to take a look at what you’re eating and rather than ask yourself from a position of “what can I lose?”, instead ask yourself, “am I nourished? What can I gain? What is missing from my diet that could help my body be healthier?”

My recommendations to this end which I feel are accessible to all people reading this article are as follows:

• Write down everything you eat for the next few days. Not your ideal self, not your ashamed self, just yourself, every single thing. Include take out, snacks, the jolly rancher at the bank, whatever. After a few days, organize each day’s list into three categories: whole, meaning, made with or just a whole food, like a fruit, vegetable, a piece of meat you cooked, etc., processed, i.e, snacks, candy, frozen entrees, that sort of thing, and take-out, which should be self explanatory. Write down tally marks for how many of each you’re consuming per day.

• Armed with data, which is the foundation of all discovery, ask yourself these questions: What am I eating for convenience? What am I eating for satisfaction/cravings? What am I eating for nourishment?

• There’s a good chance that if you’re seeking to use the beginning of a new year to mentally project a possible weight loss or lifestyle change that your nourishment answers will be fewer. That’s a great place to start. Any diet started with subtraction sets you up for failure, but a diet started with addition sets you up for success. If you aren’t eating enough fruits, vegetables, protein, etc., add one easy to eat, low prep, inexpensive thing to your diet every single day. It will greatly impact your life. This could be a bowl of carrots, blueberries, a cheese stick, a cup of yoghurt. One single commitment to fulfilling your nourishment need per day can add up to viewing your consumption as nourishment first. I promise, it works.

• If you’re looking for a more granular understanding of what you are and aren’t getting enough of, tools like Cronometer, a free (do not buy any upgrades, you don’t need them) are an excellent resource for tracking your meals and gathering data about nutrition.

• The road to health for many begins with weight gain. Understand that if you have been malnourished, whether it’s two iced coffees no breakfast malnourished, or all carb no protein malnourished, your body composition will shift according to your improving diet. Remember that while diet marketing campaigns promise you shedding pounds, you’re smarter than them - and you know that rapid, malnutrition based weight loss can often lead to loss of muscle mass and bone density, and not just fat.

• I know we’re all screaming fuck the healthcare system, but please listen to this: unless a medical professional has given you concrete evidence that your weight is impacting your body or its systems in a negative way, or you have felt a significant connection to the worsening of your quality of life following a recent weight loss or gain, please avoid classifying yourself as overweight or underweight. The beauty standards (I almost want to call them ugly standards now that the internet shows us people who don’t look like people) we compare ourselves to are evil. I assure you that while I feel on top of my game twenty pounds lighter and like Moo Deng right now, my overall health and wellness are not impacted. Most likely, neither are yours.

• An important conversation to have with yourself could start with the simple question - why, over setting a goal to read more, see more, help more, love more, learn more, laugh more, etc., is my primary goal for the next 365 days to lose weight? This might sound judgy, but not all judgements are bad - it’s an honest question. If reading that pisses you off, I encourage you to journal your way to the root.

• Another question to ask yourself is how do I feel when I eat? It’s no secret that many snacking habits and binge eating episodes, as well as many fasts, crash diets and eating disorders, stem from a greater mental health picture, desire for dopamine and a litany of other variables. You deserve to explore this possibility and you deserve the opportunity to receive help as you navigate it. I lost a lot of weight when I got got on medication to help with my clinical depression, and I would not say it happened in a way that led to any sort of malnourishment - just a decrease in habitual feelings-eating. Just an idea. I’ll leave it there!

• Finally, on the weight vs. nourishment part of this rant, if there is one thing to save your money for and do for yourself this year, it is to get your bloodwork done, and women, get your thyroid tested. I know for a fact many women who have read the above bullet points are thinking, “I’ve done all of that, and I still can’t lose the weight which is negatively impacting my quality of life.” If you haven’t tested your thyroid, do it. A lot lies within.

On to the fitness component, which registers just barely lower on the evil-powers-at-be scale. I’ll leave this area brief as it is truly as simple as this for me:

• If you are not currently in a fitness routine, you can start one for free by just incorporating walks, jogs, or at home workouts into your life. You do not need to spend money, buy clothing, buy a pilates kit, buy a membership, buy a yoga ball, buy anything at all to make a serious change in your life. You certainly can - this is not to poo poo any of the above - but it’s not necessary, especially if sticking to a fitness routine has been hard for you in the past.

• There is absolutely no exercise, diet plan, supplement, or witch doctor that will target body fat in one area of your body. It’s an all in thing, baby. And understanding the relationship between muscle gain and fat loss is the most important part of starting your body composition changing journey.

• If you aren’t sure, you can scroll back to my article about clean gains and creatine, or just google weight class differences in the UFC. Nutrition is the swing in what your body will look like as it pertains to fitness - how much you consume, and again, what you consume, is the single biggest influence on your entire body, whether it’s aesthetic or internal. Quality over quantity.

• If you do have the means, financially and mentally, to join some sort of fitness club, gym, or studio, and if staying consistent with fitness routines has proven impossible in the past, it is of my personal recommendation that you join one with group classes. There is a lot of community around sweating, struggling, and succeeding, and it is categorically easier to reach your goals with other people relating to you while cheering for you. This can be true of finding a walking partner, an at home workout buddy, or even joining fitness classes virtually online and interacting with the other participants. If you aren’t sure where to start, please, please do not give any more money to a snake oil booty boot camp fraud online for an e-book that will ultimately get deleted when you need more gigabytes. There are real people in your real communities than can help you achieve your goals.

• If you’re lone wolfing it, track your progress. Humans experience a dopamine release when checking off a task or completing a goal. Track your steps (lots of apps for that), your reps, and set slightly more challenging goals for yourself as time goes on. Another half mile, another ten pounds, whatever it is - the subconscious is extraordinarily powerful.

• Finally, the elephant in the room - the image of Homer Simpson after a workout - still himself in real life, but a bodybuilder in the mirror. We all know that feeling, and rather than dismiss it, consider this: positive expectations are the reason placebo effects often beat out medications in clinical trials when it comes to mental health related medications. In fact, many studies have been conducted over placebo being more or just as effective in trials for antidepressants and anti anxiety medications. How you feel and more importantly how you believe you can feel are paramount to you reaching your goals. So yeah, lean into that. You totally are ripped after one class. ;)

Finally, the fucking weight loss supplements, cleanses, and collagen mushroom whatever the fuck lattes. First of all, if you read through the diet portion of this article and can’t immediately tell me what nutrients you are and are not getting, you are not qualified to buy yourself a supplement. I’m sorry, maybe that’s harsh, but step one is getting a handle on your diet that’s not in pill form. I am also a true believer that unless blood work confirms a deficiency, a supplement should be viewed as potentially more harmful than helpful, and only after confirmation of existing deficiencies should any supplementation outside of whole and natural foods be added to your life. You can re-read ‘Why Is Wellness So Fucking Annoying?’ if you have any questions to that end.

On the ‘nature’s ozempic’, ‘seven day cleanse’, ‘only drink carrot juice for a week five times a day and watch your belly fat melt off’ shit, let me ask you this - if that’s all it took, what would these companies do after all of us were skinny mini health gods? Go bankrupt? Fuck no. They would lie to you in another flavor the next year and laugh when nothing about your body changed. Your body contains organs, channels and pathways which detox for you every single day. Unless you have been exposed to a toxin and a medical professional has put you on a detox protocol, delete that word from your vocabulary.

Now, if you want to get your bowels moving in a positive direction because you’ve read all of my articles and understand that motility and intestinal permeability is the key to absorbing nutrition and maintaining the body’s naturally beneficial detoxification process, you can re-read the fiber article and incorporate natural fiber or natural probiotics into your diet. Taking something for a week that makes you explosively shit yourself is going to more than likely damage your gut biome, irritate your bowels, and move food through your body way too fast. If you aren’t already eating multiple servings of vegetables daily, start there and not the juice cleanse. Start with one serving. Build your way up. There is no benefit to an extreme. Read that again.

You know what’s a really good appetite suppressor? A diet high in natural fiber and protein and low in processed foods and simple carbs. A cup of green tea and a cheese stick. Not another $40 supplement borne out of an unregulated, billion dollar industry. I promise.

I hope this article has quieted your mind about the six million options for self betterment the internet has given you this week. I hope you read this and thought, you know what, I can eat more vegetables and go for more walks. I hope you ask yourself the questions I have suggested and reach those breakthroughs for yourself. By the way, knowledge is free, and knowledge is power - and you are totally allowed to hit ‘not interested’ on the ads designed to make you question yourself, your health and your body.

I encourage you to approach every future wellness temptation with the question - ‘will this make me healthier than consistency and investment in the understanding of natural foods and my own body? Or will this make me feel better for a short time, faster, which I know is not the key to a sustainably healthy life?’

I love you! Look out for some recipes for affordably healthy food this week.

In Health,
A