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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.

We’re back from Chicago, briefly unemployed as travelers, and sitting on roughly 200 listener questions. This month we start with an S!Caps ad in UltraRunning magazine claiming that carbohydrate fueling eventually damages athletes through “overexposure to insulin.” A listener with prediabetes who loves her carbs wants to know if she should worry. Kylee explains what prediabetes actually means, why exercise changes how your muscles take up glucose, and how to use carbs strategically instead of cutting them. Zoë asks why an electrolyte company woke up and picked a fight with bread. Then we go rapid-fire. We share our go-to pre-run fuel (air-fried waffles, Nutella toast, and an unapologetic Pop-Tart defense) and ask everyone to please stop eating apples before runs. We look at whether menopausal athletes should deload more often, where that idea comes from in lab research on estrogen, and why sleep and protein matter more than any one-size-fits-all rule. We dig into the tart cherry juice research, including the calorie-matched placebo studies a sharp listener asked about, and where the sleep claims fall short. Kylee walks through when to test iron during a training block, whether an infusion four weeks out can still help, and the annual blood panel she recommends for athletes. And for the gym-after-a-desk-job crowd: you’re an athlete, eat a balanced snack, and set your own terms of success instead of buying everything the optimization industry is selling. We close with a big one: what happens to your body and brain when you regain weight after an illness. We revisit the Minnesota Starvation Experiment and its refeeding phase, talk about why fat often comes back before muscle, how to spot body checking, and why Zoë credits finding her own style (shout out to Allison Bornstein) with doing more for her body image than she expected. Also, two Australian Shepherds get into a fight around minute 20. We kept it in. Kylee’s quarterly masterclasses and nutrition Q&As are coming to our new upper Patreon tier. Keep sending questions. We’ll see you in November.

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.

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.comTailwind Nutrition: endurance fuel and hydration that won't wreck your gut. Use code YOURDIET20 for 20% off at tailwindnutrition.comMicrocosm Coaching: evidence-based run coaching from humans, not algorithms. Book a free consultation at microcosm-coaching.com

It's a big week. Zoë is running Run Rabbit Run, Kylee is headed to Aussie Nationals (the dog kind, 500 Australian Shepherds in Greeley), and two emotional support Aussies are on mic to secure our status as the only nutrition science podcast with a 50/50 human-to-dog cohost ratio. Unverified. Before the questions, the full story of the YDS x rabbit collection: an Italian postcard mood board, a first draft that read as "too healthy," and the executive decision that the crop top needed more pizza. The collection is going fast and won't be restocked, because we don't make things to throw away. Then the questions, which were unusually good this month. Is there any data on training while sick or with a fever? (A fever is a hard no. We cover the below-the-neck rule, why exercise is a stress your body can't afford while it's catabolic, and why fueling comes before the workout when you're sick.) How does an ultrarunner distinguish perimenopause from RED-S from ordinary training stress when the symptoms overlap, and why doesn't a single hormone panel settle it? A 48-year-old with an eating disorder history was told by a nurse practitioner to cut carbohydrates for nighttime joint pain. Is there evidence carbs cause achy joints? (No. There is a bear metaphor.) When life makes progress unrealistic and the goal is maintenance, what does enough movement look like, and does walking count? Is there merit to women-specific running shoe design like Hettas, or is it marketing? And how does Zoë balance work, 100-mile training, and comedy? Saying no, the big-rocks jar, and headlining her first stand-up show at Trailfest. Links: https://www.runinrabbit.com/collections/your-diet-sucks Zoë's comedy: https://www.youtube.com/@ZoeRomComedyandRambling RED-S episode (Oct 2025): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relative-energy-deficiency-in-sport-explained-causes/id1758825060?i=1000731964516 The Female Athlete Nutrition Industrial Complex (June 2025): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-female-athlete-nutrition-industrial-complex/id1758825060?i=1000712392816

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.comgoodr: $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.comMicrocosm 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

In this month's bonus episode, we dive into the single 2008 case report that launched a thousand bad takes about tofu, and the truly deranged amount of soy milk it involved. What we get into is what phytoestrogens actually do in your body, and when you might actually want to think about your soy consumption. We also unpack why plant-based eating doesn't feel as trendy as it used to, the question we get at parties that Zoë hates most, and why we don't like to tell people what to eat. We chat through eating for pleasure vs. just fueling, and what Kylee listens for when a client says they don't like food. And why every woman on Instagram is scared of fructose and doing hyper-specific protocols to avoid becoming "frail". Related and references: YDS episodes mentioned: The Vegetarian Diet: What Athletes Need to Know — protein needs, iron, B12, and the link between plant-based eating and orthorexia What's the Best Diet for the Climate? — beef's carbon footprint, almond milk vs. oat milk, and why Fox News thinks burgers are freedom The Female Athlete Nutrition Complex — why nutrition advice fails women athletes, and what the research actually supports Your Nutrition Documentary Sucks — fact-checking The Game Changers in real time, and whether going plant-based is actually performance enhancing Cowley, E. S., Olenick, A. A., McNulty, K. L., & Ross, E. Z. (2021). "Invisible sportswomen": The sex data gap in sport and exercise science research. Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 29(2), 146–151. Martinez, J., & Lewi, J. E. (2008). An unusual case of gynecomastia associated with soy product consumption. Endocrine Practice, 14(4), 415–418. American Cancer Society. Soy and cancer risk: Our expert's advice. American Institute for Cancer Research. Soy and breast cancer: Myths and misconceptions. Wideman, L., et al. (2013). Accuracy of calendar-based methods for assigning menstrual cycle phase in women. Sports Health, 5(2), 143–149.

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

Join our Patreon here for even more bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/YourDietSucks You can submit questions for our next bonus episode here:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEp0TXOPsUUaJcK45LZjVPKIeMEIwRkW4i8ArsIDTIAO6uEg/viewform It's July, we're alive, and we're surrounded by wildfire smoke, so naturally we're answering your questions. We get into: How to talk to a friend when you're worried about their relationship with food. What's actually concerning, what's projection, and what's none of your business? Can you be consistently underfueling and still gaining weight? The answer has layers, and most of them aren't on the scale. Does the order you eat your food in actually change your blood sugar? Or is meal sequencing, as one listener put it, "anti-sandwich propaganda"? And nutrition periodization vs. nutrition timing: what these actually mean in practice, why the recovery window isn't a slamming door, and yes, you're allowed to eat before bed. Thanks for being here. Your support is literally what keeps this show going. Got a question for next month? The thread is always open, so drop it whenever it hits you instead of waiting for us to ask.

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.comTailwind Nutrition: 20% off with code YOURDIET20 at tailwindnutrition.comOsmia Skincare: 20% off with code YDS20 at osmiaskincare.comMicrocosm 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. WIUAl7uwQgh4J6imCoLv

This week, Kylee and Zoë are back on the couch, and in video! We're diving into our recent adventures, then tackling what happens when set point theory meets an industrial food system. We also unpack the science of cravings and what it means if you're craving specific foods. We also get into who might need to supplement with magnesium, and how you to make your own electrolyte mix - and when it might be easiest to just buy mix. We also talk about the idea of "looking like a runner," and cultural discussions of body image can hold people back. We chat about our own experiences with this idea, how we've both navigated those thoughts in our careers, and how Kylee works with clients to address body image issues so they can fuel better and thrive.