I knew something was wrong when my mom swapped my Lucky Charms for Special K cereal.

I still visibly shudder when I wheel my grocery cart past the cereal aisle, remembering the taste of the artificial berry-tainted skim milk at the bottom of my bowl. But finishing your food was one of the few actions that generated praise from my parents, so morning after morning, I shoved spoonful after spoonful in my mouth, hoping—praying—that I would be thin enough to gain approval from my mother.

It took three decades for me to realize that it wasn’t my body, or my mother that was the problem—it was marketing.

Marketing, who promised liberation from our curves if we consumed aspartame-laced Yoplait and SnackWells cookies.

Marketing, who promised that olive oil was “good fat”, but blamed carbs for the obesity epidemic.

And don’t get me started on how many times I’ve considered starting a cleanse, or a detox, or a reset, which ranged from eating small, vegetable-based meals to the downright insane, where you only drink lemon cayenne water for ten days straight.

It’s only through multiple failed diets I’ve discovered every promise has a dark side, kind of like the side effects the announcer rattles off at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial while the fine print is scrolling against the B-roll footage of a smiling person doing some outdoorsy sport like whitewater river rafting.

Because who could have predicted that artificial sweeteners destroy your gut microbiome?

We probably knew excess fat puts us at risk for heart disease, but ignored it when keto became a thing in the mid-2010s. (When the Whole Foods employee complains how he can’t keep bacon stocked fast enough in the hot bar, you know there’s a problem.)

Don’t get me started on carbohydrates, which used to sit at the bottom of the food pyramid with a whopping recommendation of 6-11 servings per day ⁉️ before Atkins and Wheat Belly convinced us to wrap our burgers in lettuce…except nowadays commercial yeast is the problem, but sourdough starters are in.

And I have an alarming amount of gum recession for someone my age from…wait for it…drinking too much lemon cayenne water in my twenties.

If I, a native English speaker with a master’s degree, have trouble navigating which foods are good and bad and how much to eat and when…

How can I possibly blame my immigrant mother for believing what the labels claimed?

So finally, after a doctor-recommended elimination diet that did nothing to curb my eczema and everything to increase my rage, I made a list of rules that work for my body, regardless of what’s trending.

They are:

1. Eat your vegetables. Organic if you can afford it, but conventional produce is still better than an organic product manufactured in a plant.
2. Drink water.
3. There’s nothing great about refined sugar, minus the fact it tastes good.
4. Your daily protein intake widely varies, depending on your ethics and level of physical activity.
5. None of this actually tips the scale in the right direction unless you move your body

I’ve tried for two decades to fight my way out of the exercise conundrum and have learned the hard way that you can’t buy your way into being fit.

What you can buy is accountability, expertise and leverage.

But between booty boot camps, exercise equipment that gathers dust in the corner, and that friend of a friend who became a personal trainer and peddles Herbalife products on the side, it feels way easier to drown your sorrows in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream than sort through the mess that is the fitness industry.

I’ll share more about my #workoutfails next week, but til then, reply and let me know—what’s your favorite Ben & Jerry’s flavor?

Mine is Phish Food, followed by the always-classic Cherry Garcia.

(I know what I said about refined sugar, but you know what? Sometimes you just want something that tastes good.)

Talk soon,

Sophia :)