Bill Sias MPHC, Pn1, SFMA, FMSC2, YBT, FCS, QS, M-CPT
Vice President J.D. Vance has lost enough weight that reporters recently started asking him about it.
Naturally, this being America, we immediately needed to know the secret.
Ozempic?
A special supplement?
A celebrity trainer?
A metabolism hack known only to vice presidents?
Nope.
Apparently, there’s a lot of protein.
And a lot of sauerkraut.
Yes. Sauerkraut.
Before you race to Meijer and fill a shopping cart with fermented cabbage, however, there may be a much simpler explanation for what’s happening.
And it’s considerably less exciting.
Which usually means it’s probably closer to the truth.
How Vance Says He Changed His Diet
During a White House press briefing on September 3, 2026, Vance was asked about his noticeably slimmer appearance.
He explained that before Lent he had planned to give up sugar. Then he called Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for advice.
Kennedy apparently had something more ambitious in mind.
Vance described the resulting diet pretty simply:
Lots of high-protein foods.
Lots of sauerkraut.
He even joked that if you want to lose weight, Kennedy might be the guy to call—but perhaps not if enjoying every meal is your highest priority.
The diet appears to be influenced by physician Sean O’Mara, who has advocated a meat-heavy eating pattern built around ruminant meat and fermented foods while removing sugar, alcohol and ultra-processed foods. O’Mara has gone so far as to recommend that clients “never eat meat without a ferment.”
That’s where things get interesting.
Because parts of this approach make quite a bit of sense.
Other parts require a larger leap of faith.
First: Protein Really Does Matter
If I wanted to make fat loss unnecessarily difficult, I’d start someone’s day with foods that contain very little protein.
Cereal.
Toast.
Pastries.
Maybe a coffee drink containing enough sugar to qualify as dessert.
Then I’d wonder why they’re hungry again at 10:30.
Protein changes that equation.
Research consistently suggests that higher-protein meals tend to produce greater fullness than lower-protein meals. Protein also has a relatively high thermic effect, meaning your body uses more energy digesting and processing it than it does with fat or carbohydrate.
Higher-protein diets during calorie restriction can also provide modest advantages for fat loss while helping preserve lean mass.
None of this means protein magically melts fat.
It means something much more useful:
Protein can make eating less easier.
That’s a big deal.
Because losing weight isn’t particularly mysterious.
Maintaining the behaviors required to lose weight is the hard part.
Then There Are the Foods He Stopped Eating
This may be the least glamorous, and most important, part of the entire story.
Vance originally intended to give up sugar.
The broader diet he’s been associated with also removes or sharply limits ultra-processed foods.
That alone can make an enormous difference.
In a tightly controlled NIH study, researchers gave participants either an ultra-processed or minimally processed diet and allowed them to eat as much as they wanted.
When people ate the ultra-processed diet, they spontaneously consumed more calories and gained weight.
When they ate minimally processed food, calorie intake fell, and weight moved the other direction.
Nobody had to explain thermodynamics to them.
Their food changed.
Their eating behavior changed with it.
That’s an important lesson.
Try overeating steak, eggs, vegetables, and sauerkraut.
Now try overeating pizza, potato chips, cookies, and ice cream.
One of those is considerably easier.
Food manufacturers have spent decades becoming exceptionally good at creating foods that are easy to eat when you’re not hungry.
Your grandmother’s pot roast never stood a chance.
So What About the Sauerkraut?
Here’s where we need to pump the brakes.
Fermented foods are genuinely interesting.
A Stanford randomized trial assigned healthy adults to either a diet high in fermented foods or one high in fiber. During the fermented-food intervention, researchers observed increased microbiome diversity along with reductions in several inflammatory markers.
That’s worth paying attention to.
Sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, yogurt, and other traditionally fermented foods may be useful additions to a healthy diet.
But notice what that study did not demonstrate.
It didn’t show that sauerkraut melts belly fat.
It didn’t show that fermented cabbage specifically targets visceral fat.
And it certainly didn’t establish that steak and sauerkraut must be eaten together to unlock some metabolic cheat code.
There’s a big gap between:
“Fermented foods may beneficially affect the gut microbiome.”
and:
“Sauerkraut makes body fat disappear.”
That’s the gap where diet marketing usually sets up shop.
I Think the Real Secret Is Satiety
Suppose someone changes from this:
Breakfast pastry and sweetened coffee.
Fast-food lunch.
Afternoon chips.
Restaurant dinner.
A few drinks at night.
Dessert.
To this:
Eggs.
Steak.
Chicken.
Fish.
Vegetables.
Fermented foods.
Very little sugar.
Very little processed food.
Maybe no alcohol.
Would we really be surprised if that person lost weight?
You don’t need a microbiome theory to explain most of it.
You’ve replaced foods that are extremely easy to overeat with foods that tend to shut down hunger.
Calories still matter.
But instead of white-knuckling your way through a tiny-calorie diet while thinking about food every seven minutes, you’ve changed the foods controlling those calories.
That’s a very different experience.
Where I Part Ways With the Extreme Version
This is where I wouldn’t copy the diet exactly.
I see no compelling reason most healthy people need to eliminate vegetables, fruit, or every source of carbohydrate in order to get the benefits.
Blueberries didn’t make America obese.
Neither did broccoli.
And while meat can be an exceptionally nutrient-dense source of protein, building an entire diet almost exclusively around red meat and fermented vegetables introduces questions about dietary variety, fiber intake, and how the person’s lipid profile responds.
You also don’t need grass-fed elk harvested during a full moon while a fermented cabbage watches nearby.
Keep it simpler.
The useful parts are hiding in plain sight.
The Bar & Plate Version
For most people trying to lose body fat while maintaining muscle, I’d rather build meals around a few basic principles:
Protein first. Whole foods most of the time. Vegetables and some fruit. Fermented foods if you tolerate and enjoy them. Fewer refined carbohydrates, fewer liquid calories, less sugar, and far fewer ultra-processed foods.
For example:
A six-ounce sirloin with roasted vegetables, a small baked potato, and some sauerkraut.
Three eggs with leftover beef, vegetables, and a little kimchi.
Burger patties with a large salad and fermented pickles.
Chicken thighs with roasted vegetables and a serving of fermented cabbage.
Nothing magical.
That’s the point.
The meal contains plenty of protein.
It’s nutrient dense.
It’s difficult to inhale in three minutes.
And you’re probably not rummaging through the pantry looking for Oreos 45 minutes later.
Don’t Turn Sauerkraut Into a Supplement
There’s one other trap worth avoiding.
Whenever we discover that a food may be healthy, humans have an impressive ability to assume that eating twelve times more of it must therefore be twelve times healthier.
That’s not how nutrition works.
You don’t need half a gallon of sauerkraut every day.
Start with a small serving.
Fermented foods can cause bloating and digestive discomfort in some people, particularly when they’re introduced quickly. Sauerkraut can also contain substantial sodium, which may matter for certain individuals.
Think condiment.
Not competitive eating event.
One Important Warning
People taking insulin or other glucose-lowering medication should be especially careful about dramatically reducing carbohydrate intake.
A major dietary change can alter glucose levels and medication requirements.
That’s a situation where the prescribing clinician needs to be involved.
Changing someone’s diet is one thing.
Accidentally leaving their medication matched to the diet they stopped eating is another.
The Lesson Isn’t Sauerkraut
This is what I hope people take away from Vance’s weight-loss story.
The nutrition world loves secret ingredients.
We want cinnamon to fix our blood sugar.
Apple cider vinegar to melt our belly fat.
A supplement to boost our metabolism.
And now perhaps sauerkraut to eliminate visceral fat.
But successful nutrition usually looks disappointingly ordinary.
Eat enough protein.
Lift weights.
Eat mostly real food.
Stop drinking a bunch of calories.
Reduce foods engineered to make you want another handful.
Eat when you’re hungry.
Learn the difference between hunger and habit.
Repeat that long enough for something to happen.
Not terribly sexy.
But neither is brushing your teeth.
We still recommend doing it every day.
Vance may indeed be benefiting from eating fermented foods. There is legitimate research suggesting they can influence the microbiome and some markers of inflammation.
But I’d bet the bigger story is considerably simpler.
More protein.
Less sugar.
Less ultra-processed food.
Fewer opportunities to overeat.
Better satiety.
And consistency.
So if you’d like to experiment with sauerkraut, have at it.
Just don’t forget the steak.
And more importantly, don’t forget why the steak is there.
The Bar & Plate
We don’t believe in quick fixes, magic foods, or six-week transformations that disappear in week seven.
We help people build strength, improve movement, and develop eating habits they can actually live with.
Because the best diet isn’t the one getting attention this week.
It’s the one you can still follow next year.