Your Diet Sucks

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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).
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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.
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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

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.

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.