Annoucer: 0:00

You're listening to Shut Up and Choose. The no bullshit, no excuses podcast for people who swear they wanna lose weight, but keep choosing everything that stops them. And before we continue, if you're gonna bitch and moan and act like a fucking pussy the entire time, skip this one. Listed by Jonathan Wrestler. This dude dropped 140 pounds with no shots, no diamonds, no pills, and not one single fucking membership swipe at the gym. Just real choices that fit real life. If you're tired of gimmicks, tired of the bullshitting, and ready for somebody to finally call you out and tell you the truth, you are in the right place. This show punches all of them right in its fat face. Stop coming in, start choosing this. Now here's Jonathan. Hey, welcome back to Show and Choose.

Jonathan Ressler: 1:15

Instagram. What can you do? That's what they're there for. But today, first thing let me say happy new year to everybody. We're in the first week of 2026, and I'm sure your diet frenzy and the diet fanatics are absolutely losing their shit. I think you're gonna hear a lot of nonsense over the next 12 months, probably more than any year in the past, but who knows? Um maybe I say that every year. But today I want to talk about the top eight bullshit diet trends that you need to watch out for in 2026. Because it's the start of 2026, and people are already acting like the calendar flipped and turned them into a brand new human being. People walk around like the date itself has some magical powers, and they talk about their new mindset and the fresh start and all your big goals, like something changed while you slept. Truth is nothing changed. You woke up with the same habits, the same patterns, the same choices, same thinking. If you spent last year lying to yourself, you carried all those bullshit lies straight into this year without hesitation. And here's the part that you keep dodging. You don't need more rules. You need fewer lies. January hits and the diet industry rolls out the usual parade of garbage. New plans, new challenges, new breakthroughs. Same nonsense. They know this is the month that you're most desperate for a shortcut, and they know that you want to feel disciplined without doing the work. They also know you want something to blame when you fall apart again. So they hand you structure you did not create, and you grab it because it feels easier than being honest about your choices. People like to cling to rules because rules let them avoid responsibility. You pretend discipline comes from checklists and a plan that will carry you. You pretend following instructions is the same as changing your life. But we all know better, you know better, you've lived it. You follow the rules until your real life shows up. You get stressed or tired or annoyed or one thing goes wrong, and you tell yourself the entire day is ruined. Then the week is ruined. Then the plan is ruined, and you're back at square one searching for the next system to hide behind, and another year wasted. Well, hopefully that ends today. I'm not here to motivate you, I'm not here to flatter you, I'm here to stop you from burning another 12 months chasing bullshit solutions you already know do nothing. Diets fail, challenges collapse, all or nothing rules guarantee that you quit. You don't need new hype. You need honesty and responsibility. You need to stop acting confused about why nothing sticks. This is 2026. It's not your practice year, it's not your warm up year. It's not the year you repeat the same cycle and pretend it's progress. This, 2026, is the year you stop performing effort and start choosing behavior. Because your life will not shift because it's January. It will only shift when you stop lying to yourself about what real change requires. So let's set the tone for the year right now. No more fantasies, no rescuing Mondays, no diet theater. If you want 2026 to look different, you start with one thing: stop lying and start choosing. Because 2026 is not going to magically fix you. If anything, this year will hit you harder if you keep sleepwalking through the same thinking that wrecked every January you lived through before. People love to believe the new year brings better options. It doesn't. It brings the same recycled bullshit with better marketing. The industry knows that you're going to show up every January desperate and hopeful, and they polish that same old turd, those failures, and slap a new label on it and sell them back to you as if something revolutionary happened. Here's the news flash. Nothing did. The diet industry survives for one reason. You keep believing the repackaged version is different from the last one. They don't evolve, they mutate. Less carbs, more carbs. No sugar, all protein, intermittent fasting, longer fasting, microfasting, whatever sounds scientific enough to distract you from the fact that none of it works in real life. They dress up old failure with new words because they know you won't notice. You'll call it fresh, you'll call it promising, you'll call it my year. And by February, you'll be searching again. The trends change, but the trap stays the same. Every January, you get the same setup. Some rigid plan with a set of rules and the promise of control. And a structure that collapses the second your real life interrupts it. You start strong and then you lose steam. You blame yourself. Then you look for the next trend because it feels easier than admitting the truth. The problem isn't the plans, the problem is the thinking behind them. You keep handing your life to some system that wasn't engineered for you and was engineered to fall apart. So if you walk into 2026 without waking up to this pattern, you're signing up for just another year of false starts and self-blame and wasted efforts. Nothing changes until you stop chasing trends and start choosing decisions. This year will not be better until you are. So now I want to go through a couple trends, a couple bullshit trends that I think we're going to see this year because I think this is uh well, we're already starting to see it. So the bullshit trend number one for 2026 is fasting worship 2.0. Fasting has turned into a religion, and 2026 is about to crank it up even further. The new trend is fasting worship 2.0, which means longer windows, longer hunger periods, dopamine fasting, metabolic resets. People talk about it like it's a spiritual cleanse when it's nothing more than starving yourself and pretending the suffering is discipline. It's not discipline, it's instability dressed up as a strategy. Now I'll tell you, I you know, if you've listened to my podcast, you know that I like to do a 72-hour water fast once every month or so. And there's nothing wrong with fasting, but when it comes a way of life, when it becomes something that you hang your hat on, you're in trouble because skipping food doesn't create control. Skipping food actually destroys control because your body's not a machine that gets sharper when you deprive it. You skip meals and your energy crashes. You skip meals and your cravings roar. You skip meals and you walk into the night ready to enhance anything within reach. Then you call the collapse a slip instead of what it is, a predictable reaction to starving yourself all day. Fasting worship 2.0 sells the fantasy that less food equals more progress. The truth is just the opposite. You think fasting makes you strong, but it makes you fragile. You think that it builds discipline, but the reality is it builds desperation. And you think you're controlling your hunger, but the truth is you're poking at it until it explodes. People pretend they're calm while fasting. Then dinner hits and they binge like they've been locked in the basement all day. They call it re-feeding, they call it balance. It's binge eating with a fucking cute name. The trend is brutal because it feels noble. You starve, you feel lightheaded, you get a rush from the suffering, you mistake that rush for progress, and then the cycle repeats. You starve, you binge, you feel guilty, you restart to fast. You call the loop normal, but it's not fucking normal. It's a trap, a trap that guarantees chaos in your day and zero stability in your life. So fasting worship 2.0 isn't a strategy, it's avoidance. It's people trying to outrun their habits by skipping food. You want results, you need stability, you need structure you can repeat, you need choices that you can make on any day, in any schedule, in any mood. Starving yourself doesn't build that. It fucking breaks it. The second trend that I want you to look out for this year is hyper-processed protein, everything. Protein is about to be the new Halo food in 2026. Everything will have it: cookies, cupcakes, ice cream, bars pretending to be meals, chips pretending to be nutrition. The industry will slap high protein on junk, and people are gonna lose their shit thinking they found a loophole. They'll convince themselves that it's healthy because the label says protein. They'll forget that it's still dessert with a fucking costume. I'm seeing it now all over TV. All these restaurants coming out with their high protein recipes and high protein. It's crazy. But here's the truth that no one wants it here. Protein junk food destroys your hunger cues. Real protein keeps you stable because it comes in real meals that digest like normal food. Protein cookies and candy pack bars definitely don't. They spike you, they crash you, and they confuse your appetite. You eat them because they feel allowed. Then you get hungry again because your body knows the difference between food and engineered dog shit. And this is where the trap really tightens. The second something gets labeled high protein, people think it's a free pass. They overeat it, they snack on that all day, they eat double because it feels virtuous. You actually convince yourself that you're fueling when all you're doing is inhaling expensive junk under a health disguise. High protein ice cream is still ice cream. High protein cookies are still fucking cookies. Adding protein doesn't make something supportive, it makes it slightly less empty. So 2026 is gonna be packed with protein desserts, marketed as wellness. They're not gonna make you full, they're not gonna teach you control, they're not gonna stabilize anything. They will tempt you into overeating because they feel safe. And that's the lie. If you want real stability, you need real meals, you need structure, and you need decisions, not some dessert pretending to be disciplined. So keep your eyes out for the super high protein everything. The next bullshit trend is AI generated diet plans. AI personalized nutrition is going to be everywhere in 2026. TikTok, Instagram, every wellness jerk off with a ring light will swear that these precision plans of the future. You'll see apps that scan your face, analyze your microbiome in a mail-in box, run your meals through an algorithm, and spit out the perfect plan built just for you. People are gonna eat that shit up because it sounds so advanced. Anything AI sounds like, hey, it's it's gotta be it sounds like finally someone else can tell them what to do. Here's the truth: an algorithm does not fix behavior, it doesn't fix your nighttime eating, it doesn't fix your stress habits, it doesn't fix the way you negotiate with yourself when you're tired, annoyed, or overwhelmed. An app can organize your food, but it can't organize your choices. It can't step in when you want to raid the kitchen, and it can't override the habits you've been rehearsing for fucking years. It has no power over the moments where you actually fail. I mean, I get it, these systems look impressive because they remove one thing people want to avoid most: responsibility. They give you a set of AI-generated rules so you can follow them blindly and pretend the plan failed instead of you avoiding ownership again. Same behavior, same pattern, same collapse. The only difference is the tech branding makes it feel legitimate. AI nutrition is the new version of old diet thinking. Outsource your choices, follow a structure you didn't build, blame the structure when you quit. People will call it innovation. It's avoidance wrapped in fancy software. If you don't take responsibilities for the decisions you make in real life, no algorithm on earth will save you. So keep your eyes open for the AI bullshit. Bullshit trend number four, the hormone fix craze. I'm seeing this everywhere right now in week one of the new year. Hormone hysteria is about to own 2026. Every influence with a ring light will square. Your weight is the fault of cortisol spikes, which there's some truth to that. Insulin surges, estrogen dominance, thyroid whispers, or whatever new buzzword they can pull out of their ass. Supplements will explode. Powders, drops, gummies, pills. Every one of them is promising to calm, balance, reset, regulate, or fix your hormone so the fat magically melts off. Here's the part no one wants to hear. Most of that shit is distraction. It's easier to blame hormones and admit your choice has built the problem. People love saying my cortisol is high. Well, they skip breakfast, binge at night, live on caffeine, avoid meals, snack all night, and call it stress. They love blaming insulin spikes when inhaling half their calories after dark. They love chanting about metabolism while refusing to look at the habits they repeat on a day-to-day basis. Hormones definitely influence your body, but they don't override your decisions. They react how you eat, how you sleep, how you move, and how you handle stress. They respond to your choices. They don't control them. The idea that hormones are stronger than your behavior is a comforting lie people cling to because it removes responsibility. It lets them pretend they're victims of their biology instead of participants in their own outcome. I mean, I've seen it already, but the influences, they're gonna sell panic, they're gonna sell fear, they sell formulas, a promise, a balance, everything. None of it replaces inconsistent eating, reasonable portions, steady habits, or the kind of daily choices that keep a body stable. Hormones are not the villain people want them to be. Avoidances. And until people face their behavior instead of chasing supplements, nothing's gonna change. So I guarantee you, if you look at your social media, you're gonna find 10 hormone balancing resets out there. It's all bullshit. Speaking of bullshit, here's bullshit trend number five: revival of the all-or-nothing challenges. The punishment plans are coming back in 2026. Hard 75 clones are everywhere. 90-day reinvention, project discipline, reborn in 12 weeks, new names, same stupidity. These programs always show it when people feel guilty and want to punish themselves into change. That makes sense, right? Punish yourself. They stack rules on top of rules. Two workouts a day, planned food, daily progress pictures, mandatory reading, perfect compliance, or you start over from zero, and people fall for it because the structure feels powerful. It feels hardcore, it gives them a sense of control they haven't felt in years. Again, then real life shows up. I don't know, a sick kid, a late meeting, you're traveling, who knows? One missed task, one imperfect day, and the whole system fucking detonates. The plan collapses, their confidence collapses, and they blame themselves instead of the ridiculous framework built to break them. These programs do not build discipline. They build shame. They teach you nothing about your behavior. They teach you nothing about how to adjust. They teach you nothing about how to stay steady in chaos. They give you rules so rigid that failure is basically guaranteed. Then they convince you that your failure is your fault. People quit by week three and walk away thinking they're weak. They're not weak. They picked a system that required robotic perfection while living a human life. These plans do not create transformation, they create fucking burnout, they create resentment, and they create the illusion of progress without a single skill that lasts longer than the challenge itself. In 2026, these punishment plans will flood your feed. I'm begging you, ignore them. They're noise. You don't need suffering. You need choices you can repeat on real days in real life. That's the only thing that works. You're starting to see a pattern here, right? Choices. The next bullshit trend, trend number six, is fake healthy gut reset programs. The gut health trend is about to explode in 2020. In fact, it has exploded. It started in the end of 2025, and it's only gaining more momentum in 2026. You're gonna see, if you haven't seen them already, things like the three-day gut reset, the microbiome detox kits,$300 powders with mystical promises, and influences swearing your entire life will change if you avoid 17 food groups and think they're fermented shit sludge twice a day. It will look scientific. It'll sound impressive, it'll be fucking nonsense. These trends work for one reason: they scare the shit out of you. They convince you that your gut is broken or inflamed or toxic, suffering, or on the brink of collapse. I saw one that shows you all these worms that are living in your gut because you're not eating right. They turn normal human digestion into a medical emergency so you panic byproducts instead of taking responsibility for your behavior. The kits come with rules that are so fucked up and extreme you can't live with them for more than a week. No sugar, no grains, no fruit, no dairy, no anything that resembles real food. You survive on powders, then you call it healing. Restricting food groups, and I know you've heard me say this many times, restricting food groups does not fix your gut. It destroys your consistency, wrecks your confidence, and it creates fear around. And the moment you go back to normal meals, everything snaps right back because it never built a single habit. It built anxiety and dependence, it built fantasy that you can buy your way out of choices. And choosing, as you know, does the opposite. Choosing gives you stability, it teaches you how to eat like a sane person, and it teaches you how to respond to hunger instead of panicking. Choosing keeps your days steady so your gut calms down naturally. No detox, no kit, no cult language, no fear. I'm begging you in 2026, avoid the gut reset panic industry. You don't need powders or protocols, you need steady meals, real food, and decisions you can repeat without. Losing your mind. Kits build panic. Choosing builds stability. And that's the big difference. The next bullshit trend, number seven, are these magic food lists. Eat these 20 foods and lose weight lists are going to be everywhere in 26. Magazines, TikTok, creators, wellness newsletters written by people who haven't cooked a real meal since college. They'll swear the secret to weight loss is blueberries, chia seeds, salmon, quinoa, and some other obscure root powder that no one can pronounce. It'll feel simple and doable. It'll feel like a shortcut, but it will also be completely useless. These lists fail for one major reason. They ignore behavior and pretend that weight loss comes from ingredients instead of decisions. You don't struggle because you picked the wrong vegetable. You struggle because your choices swing with your emotions, your stress, your schedule, and honestly your excuses. You skip meals and you binge at night, you eat reactively, you let your environment run your day. None of that gets fixed because you added broccoli to your dinner twice a week. People love to cling to foodless because they feel safe and structured and they feel like progress without requiring responsibility. You can tell yourself you're being healthy while ignoring the patterns that keep you stuck. And you know, those that's nighttime eating and travel, not that you can avoid travel, but the chaos around travel. The weekend collapse, hey, it's a weekend fucking, I can eat whatever I want. The complete lack of planning, your emotional decisions, and none of that shit disappears because someone on Instagram told you blueberries burn fat. Food lists don't change lives. Choices do. You can lose weight in normal food if you stop negotiating with yourself. You can say steady eating meals that fit your real life and you can build control without memorizing a single superfood chart. The list is not the solution. You are in 2026 and beyond, ignore those lists, fix your decisions, because that's where every result you want actually comes from. And last but not least, bullshit trend number eight, mindful eating theater. And you know I've talked about mindful eating, but in a totally different way than they're talking about it today. For me, mindful eating is just being present and thinking, is this choice going to move me toward my goal or move me away from it? Influencers are gearing up now to sell you mindful indulgence, intuitive holidays, and eating rituals in 2026. They're wrapping overeating into soft language and turn impulsive choices into spiritual practice. They'll tell you that as long as you light a candle, breathe deeply, and chew slowly, you're honoring your body. While inhaling food you already know leaves you feeling like shit. This is the new wellness scam. Make bad decisions, sound enlightened. Here's the truth mindfulness gets abused when people use it to justify what they already plan to do. You don't suddenly become more intentional because you put a buzzword on the behavior, and you don't magically build control because you ate cake with your fucking eyes closed. Calling overeating a ritual doesn't make it less destructive, it makes it easier to ignore the pattern. Mindfulness works when it interrupts chaos. These trends are mindfulness used to decorate the chaos. Influencers are going to preach, honor your cravings. You know I say feed your soul as long as you do it intentionally, but influencers are gonna say, honor your cravings. The translation is eat whatever you want and pretend it's self-care. They'll preach intuitive indulgence. Translation, give yourself permission to lose control and call it an emotional alignment. And they'll preach this ritual eating bullshit. The translation, add a five-second breathing exercise before you do exactly what you always do. This is how people slide without noticing. They take a word that should build awareness and twist it into a permission slip. They call it healing and grounded and balanced. But all they're doing is avoiding responsibility in prettier language. Mindfulness is valuable when you use it to choose. Like I said before, when you stop and think and you're present when you eat and you say, is this going to move me closer to my goal or further from my goal? It becomes manipulation when you use it to excuse. This year, watch how the language gets softer while the habits get worse. Your body doesn't give a shit if the indulgence was mindful. It responds to choices. Always has, always will. So every one of these trends coming this year has one purpose to remove your responsibility. Each one gives you a script so you never have to look at your choices. It hands you a structure so you have something to blame when everything falls apart. Each one sounds easier than honesty because honesty forces you to confront the patterns you've spent years avoiding. This is why you keep chasing distraction. Feel safe from the ownership, right? Diets, challenges, resets, detox, kits, fasting windows, hormone theories, gut protocol, I mean you name it, high protein shit, AI meal planners, mindful indulgence rituals, different language, same shit. They let you feel busy without facing the truth. They let you say you're working on it while doing nothing that builds control. And they give you the illusion of progress so you never have to deal with the discomfort that creates real change. Every trend is built on the same design. Remove your judgment, remove your decisions, remove your agency, and replace all of it with rules, rituals, and stories. Then when you fail, you get to blame the system instead of looking at your behavior. It keeps you stuck. More importantly, it keeps the fucking industry alive. It keeps you cycling through the same patterns every year while convincing yourself you're trying. If you want 2026 to look different, you have to stop reaching for the distractions. You have to start jumping from trend to trend like each one holds a secret, and stop outsourcing your choices and start owning them. Trends won't save you. Structure honestly won't save you. New rules definitely won't save you. Ownership will. Choices will. And you will. So I told you everything that doesn't work, but let me tell you what worked before and will work forever, and what actually works in 2026. Stop dieting, start choosing is the only philosophy that survives real life. It's not a plan or a protocol or a challenge. It's not a routine that you follow until something goes wrong. It's a way of living where every decision comes from you instead of a list. One choice at a time without any theatrics, punishment, or pretending. Choosing works because it's built for stress. Stress destroys every planet and fat on the diet. The moment your day gets messy, the rules crack, and you collapse with them. Choosing keeps you steady because it never asks you to be perfect, it asks you to make the next smart decision. That's it. People underestimate how powerful that is. One decision is manageable, one decision is doable, one decision is always in your control, no matter how fucked up and chaotic your day becomes. Choosing works if you're in a restaurant. Diets fall apart the second you sit down at a table you didn't control. The menu triggers panic, the rules get blurry, and the guilt sets in. Then the old pattern repeats choose whatever. Start over tomorrow. Choosing ends that entire cycle. You walk into a restaurant and you pick one thing that keeps you steady. You eat like a human instead of a panicked dieter. You get to enjoy the food without blowing up your progress, and you stay in control because you never surrendered it to begin with. Choosing works during the holidays. Holidays are where the diets go to die. December exposes every diet like people cling to. They slide, they binge, they stress eat, then they swear January is going to save them. Choosing cuts through all that bullshit. You can be surrounded by food and still make one strong decision. You can be wiped out and still pick a meal that stabilizes you, and you can enjoy the holiday without detonating your fucking goals. Choosing gives you power in moments when most people collapse. That is real transformation. Choosing also works when you travel. I don't care if you're in an airport or hotel, a conference, or road trip. Diets can't survive any of that. Choosing does. You make one decision. You eat something predictable. You stop the slide before it starts. You avoid that binge cycle that always shows up when you skip meals and rely on luck. One steady choice keeps your brain calm and stops the nighttime overeating that destroys people on the road. And speaking of nighttime eating, choosing works at night. That's where every dieter loses. Nighttime eating is the wrecking ball of progress. Diets shame you into thinking the day is ruined. Choosing gives you clarity. You decide what boundary you want after dinner. You follow it. You stop the crash. You wake up without guilt, and you wake up already in control. You wake up knowing you can repeat it because it came from you, not somebody else's plan. Choosing works everywhere your real life exists. Not one environment, not a perfect day. Every environment, every day. It works because it builds stability instead of fantasy. It builds judgment instead of dependence, and it builds confidence instead of fear. You stop outsourcing your power and you start owning it. Stop dieting and start choosing is the only system built for the life you actually live. Stress, schedule, restaurants, travel, holidays, nights, real challenges, real cravings, real emotions. It works because you work. Your choices drive everything. And once you understand that, nothing can derail you again. Look, you have two options in 2026. You can fall for all the new bullshit, or you can finally lead your life. That's it. Every trend coming your way will promise shortcuts and hacks and resets and reinvention. None of that shit's gonna save you, and none of it's gonna stick, and none of it will matter by the time February comes around. You already know this because you've lived it. New Year energy fades, motivation collapses, and rules fall apart. Then you end up back in the same cycle wondering why nothing changed. But here's the truth you keep avoiding. 2026 won't save you. The calendar does nothing, the date does nothing, the marketing does nothing. Your choices will. Your decisions are the only thing shaping your health, your weight, and your confidence. And of course, your life. Not the trends, not the programs, not the fucking influencers. If you want a year that finally feels different, you need support that's grounded in real life, not fantasy, and not hype. If you want to start out, check out my free weekly tips. They take under a minute to read and they'll land exactly when you need them most. One sharp, useful takeaway every Wednesday that keeps you steady while everything else is sliding. No fluff, no sales bullshit, just clarity you can use the same day. Go to my website, jonathanrussell.com and get on the list with the thousands of other people that get them every week. You can also read my book, Shut Up and Choose. And just to be clear, in case this is the first time you're here, it's not a diet plan. I won't tell you what to eat. I won't give you rules to follow. It shows you how to take control of your choices so you can finally live in a body and a life that you actually want. It breaks down your patterns and your excuses and your habits and all the bullshit that's kept you stuck for years. If you want a system that works in real life instead of some perfect fantasy world, I suggest that's where you start. You can get that on Amazon. Again, it's called Shut Up and Choose, same as the podcast. And if you're done dabbling and ready for real transformation, work with me one-on-one. I promise you, no diets, no starvation, no gym requirements, and you don't even have to go to the gym. I didn't. And no drama. You and I build a plan around your life instead of forcing your life into a plan. More than 300 people have already changed their lives with that exact approach and working with me one-on-one. They didn't need perfection, they needed to understand ownership. So here's your decision. You can walk into 2026 chasing trends again, or you can walk into it choosing differently. One path gives you another wasted year, the other gives you your life back. Take it from me. I know I got my life back. So in 2026, you can fall for the bullshit trends, you can keep making excuses, or you can finally decide to shut up and choose.

Annoucer: 32:50

Thanks for listening to Shut Up and Choose. If today's episode slapped you with some truth, good. That means it worked, and you've dropped the pussy attitude. Make sure to like, rate, and review, and connect with Jonathan on Instagram at JonathanWrestlerFat Law, on YouTube at Jonathan Wrestler, and online at JonathanWrestler.com. No gimmicks, no excuses, no bullshit. Smarter choices. Starting the second unit on this episode. Shut up and choose. Now, go make a better fucking choice.