Why I’m Excited About the MAHA Movement (and You Should Be Too)

It’s Inauguration Day—the dawn of a new era in the United States. For better or for worse, the next four years in this country are going to look very different than the last four years.

And while the goal of today’s blog post isn’t to get all political on you, I did want to spend a little time talking about one particular aspect of the incoming administration that I’m pretty excited to see in action—the MAHA movement, also known as the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Because whether you love President Trump or can’t stand the guy, if you’re reading this blog I’m going to assume you care about health. And if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you probably already know that I’m not a huge fan of Big Food or Big Pharma, and that I firmly believe that the unchecked power and greed of those two mega industries is the primary cause of the current health and obesity epidemic in this country.

But MAHA is promising to change all that, and that gets me VERY fired up.

So let’s talk about it. And maybe by the end of this blog post, you’ll be fired up too.

Hey there, and welcome back to the Thinlicious blog! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ruth Soukup, and I am the founder of Thinlicious and the creator of the Thin Adapted System, as well as the New York Times bestselling author of 7 books.

And I am also a 46 old woman who struggled for almost TEN YEARS to lose weight and get healthy.

It’s a battle I fought for SO long, constantly trying everything I knew how to do to lose weight and get healthy, one diet after another, sometimes losing a few pounds than always gaining it right back.

The only thing I DIDN’T try was Ozempic, but that’s only because it didn’t exist yet! But believe me, had it been around I probably would have been first in line.

Because honestly, I was so desperate to fix that piece of my life. 

And if you’re reading this blog because you too are struggling with this, then I know you know exactly what I’m talking about. How not feeling good about your body and the way that you look and feel starts to impact everything else in your life.

It’s hard to feel good in your clothes, you’re always self-conscious and self critical. You start avoiding pictures or even wanting to look in the mirror. You start saying no. You start hiding. It basically starts eroding your confidence and your life.

And on top of that, you just don’t FEEL good. You’re tired all the time. You feel bloated and gassy. You struggle with heartburn and indigestion, or sometimes even chronic pain and headaches and inflammation.

It’s just this vicious cycle. It’s hard to get motivated to do something about it because you’re just exhausted all the time, but there’s no way to stop feeling exhausted unless something you actually change something.

Believe me, I GET it.

And for me, it wasn’t until I decided to take a totally different approach that things FINALLY turned around. The biggest thing was that I finally stopped looking for a quick fix, another crash diet, and instead decided to do some real research into the science of weight loss, and into why we gain weight in the first place.

And honestly, what I discovered SHOCKED me because it is SO different than everything we’ve ever been told about what’s healthy and not healthy, and what makes us lose weight and what makes us gain. Our whole lives we’ve been told to eat less and exercise more, and that weight loss is just calories in and calories out, but that’s not true. Not even a little bit. Especially for women, and ESPECIALLY for women over 40.

Because as it turns out, the thing that regulates our weight ISN’T calories, it’s hormones.

And so, as I started to change the way I eat in a way that restored balance to my hormones and reversed insulin resistance and healed my gut, the weight just started to come off.

Without dieting. Without drugs. And without making myself miserable.

I lost 40 pounds in six months, and for the first time EVER I didn’t just gain it all right back. I’ve easily maintained that weight loss for years now. In fact in the years since, even though I’ve technically been in maintenance mode, I’ve slowly dropped a few more pounds so that my total weight loss now, 4 years in is 49 pounds.

I look and feel better now, at 46—almost 47 years old—than I did at 36, or probably even 26. My skin is clearer and brighter. I have SO much energy. I sleep great. I don’t get daily headaches anymore. My joints don’t hurt.

And let me tell you friends, after struggling with this for SO LONG, it felt—and still does feel—like FREEDOM.

It’s why I’m SO freaking passionate about this work. It’s why I started Thinlicious and my podcast. Because I can’t help but want to share it, and to help other women find that same freedom.

But it has also unlocked a passion inside of me to really get to the TRUTH of what’s actually going on, and exactly WHY so many of us are struggling with this EXACT SAME THING.

And honestly it’s a little bit like going down the rabbit hole, you know? You just start to go deeper and deeper and you start seeing all these connections and you start to realize that it’s not just YOUR experience. 

There’s actually something much bigger going on.

YOUR struggle to lose weight and get healthy is a actually a result of forces in this country that have been conspiring against you for basically your WHOLE LIFE.

Namely, Big Food and Big Pharma.

And if you REALLY want to go down the rabbit whole further and get into the nitty gritty of the whole conspiracy, you should know that I’ve recorded a WHOLE podcast episode JUST on this topic—it’s called “How Big Food and Big Pharma Are Actively Keeping You Sick and Fat,” where I lay out exactly what they’ve done and how they’ve done it, and I cite all my sources.

But I’m not going to rehash all of that today.

Because today I’m feeling pretty optimistic and pretty fired up.

In fact, right now, at this very moment that this blog post goes live, I am in Washington DC for the Presidential Inauguration, and specifically to attend the MAHA ball that happens tonight. I’ve never been to a Presidential Inauguration before, but I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to be there for this moment in American history.

But really, I just want to cheer on the Make America Healthy Again movement, because it is LONG overdue. And honestly, I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would be AGAINST finding a way to reduce corporate corruption in the food and drug industries and help Americans get healthy again.

Because even if it’s not perfect, you can’t deny the fact that what we are doing right now ISN’T WORKING. Not even a little bit. Americans are sicker and fatter than we have ever been.

80% of the adult population in the US is now overweight. 90% of the population has some form of Insulin resistance. Over 50% of the population is diabetic or pre-diabetic. We are dying from preventable diseases that are a DIRECT RESULT of the greed and corruption of a system that wants to keep you sick and fat. And even if we’re NOT dying, we’re not LIVING.

Our best years are being STOLEN FROM US because we don’t feel good. And it’s time to do something about it.

What the MAHA Movement is all about

So let’s talk specifically for a few minutes about what parts of this movement I think we should all be most excited about.

Addressing the Root Causes of Chronic Disease & Obesity

The first big piece of the MAHA movement that I am SO excited about, because it’s literally what I talk about week in and week out on this blog, is the commitment to addressing the ROOT CAUSES of chronic disease, both in our food supply and our environment.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I often talk about the “Big Three” root causes that have wreaked havoc on our health, and that you need to fix if you want to get lose weight, get healthy, and reverse chronic disease. Insulin resistance, hormonal balance, and gut health.

And everything the MAHA movement wants to do and says they are going to do is right in line with that, from eliminating toxic ingredients from our food supply that right now are running rampant and totally out of control—the inflammatory seed oils, preservatives, and toxic dyes—to creating more transparency with food labels so that people can actually SEE what kind of choices we are making with our foods.

There are SO many ingredients currently allowed in American food that have literally been banned in almost every other country because they are KNOWN to be so dangerous and lethal. Friends, it’s CRAZY that we have allowed this, but again, it’s because Big Food has big power. They’ve bought off the media and they’ve bought off the government. And so they do what they want. Which is is fill our food with toxic crap, designed to make us sick and keep us addicted.

And on top of that, the way they MARKET all this toxic food makes us THINK we’re making good choices when we’re actually not. Imagine you’re a mom at the grocery store who buys a box of cereal or granola bars because it says things like “made with whole grains” and “heart healthy” so you think you’re getting something good for your kids. But now the label says “contains high levels of sugar and food dyes, which are known to cause ADHD in children.” Would you buy that? Probably not right? So that’s a good thing. Just force companies to be HONEST about what crap they are putting in our food.

Because it’s not a coincidence that the steep rise in disease and obesity has coincided with the increase of toxic chemicals in our food. And getting that crap OUT of our diets WILL have an impact on our country’s health, even if we don’t make any other changes.

So to me that’s huge.

But that’s really just the beginning.

Promoting Preventative Health

Because what I really appreciate about the MAHA movement is the focus on PREVENTATIVE health, and not the REACTIVE approach to health care that has defined this country for the last 50 years.

Right now we live in a healthcare world that could basically be defined as disease management. If there’s something wrong with you, there’s probably some sort of pill to help you manage your symptoms. But those pills won’t heal you. They’ll just help the symptoms, so you have to keep taking them to feel better. And they generally come with a whole bunch of side effects, which means you might have to take MORE pills to manage those side effects. It’s such a vicious, evil cycle.

Because the reality is that FOOD and healthy LIFESTYLE changes is the best medicine we have. And almost EVERY chronic disease that is out there right now can be prevented or reversed by making the right lifestyle changes.

Now we’re finally getting an administration that not only understands that, but actually wants to DO something about it and create a health system that is focused on disease prevention, wellness, and longevity through healthy diet and lifestyle changes.

The MAHA movement wants to reduce our reliance on pharmaceuticals and also empower people to rely less on medications and more on holistic, natural practices that can actually help to heal you.

Right now the power of Big Pharma is so vast that they’ve actively prevented people from gaining access to information about natural or holistic alternatives, whether it’s raw milk or essential oils or any number of herbs and supplements that have been proven to have huge health benefits. They’ve made it illegal to even talk about, and they’ve run smear campaigns, aided by the media, against anyone who does talk about.

They’ve also actively prevented people from learning about the real risks of their products. We saw that during the covid epidemic when anything anyone said against the vaccines was immediately targeted as misinformation. And yet now almost all the concerns that people were raising about vaccine injuries and even the efficacy of the covid vaccine have been proven to be true. But we weren’t allowed to talk about it.

And that’s just wrong. Everyone deserves free access to REAL information. Everyone deserves the personal autonomy to be fully informed about all the alternatives. If you choose to take pharmaceuticals rather than opt for natural remedies, that should be your choice too, but you should actually be able to weigh the pros and cons for yourself.

So I don’t know what that’s going to look like in practice exactly, but I am HERE FOR IT.

So bring on preventative health and full transparency about ALL the options.

Because you don’t HAVE to be sick. You don’t HAVE to feel like crap all the time. There is a better way to live.

Let’s make that our new normal.

So yeah, the focus on PREVENTATIVE HEALTH is long overdue.

But the good stuff keeps coming.

Combatting Corporate Corruption

Because another big piece of the MAHA movement is their commitment to exposing and dismantling the corporate takeover of the government agencies that are SUPPOSED to be protecting public health and the environment, but are really just being paid off and controlled by Big Food and Big Pharma.

MAHA is committed to creating transparency and accountability, and to reducing the influence of corporate money in politics and media to ensure that these agencies, like the FDA and the CDC are actually operating in the PUBLIC interest, and not just doing the bidding of corporations like they are now.

I can’t even tell you how huge this is, if they actually manage to accomplish it. Because to me it’s absolutely CRIMINAL that that agencies that should be standing in the gap for us as Americans, the very agencies that should be PROTECTING us and looking out for us, have been bought and paid for and sold us a bill of goods.

So I say BRING IT ON. And hopefully this also means removing the corporate corruption from media spend as well. Because right now the two biggest spenders BY FAR in advertising are Big Food and Big Pharma. They do what they want because they’ve paid everyone off.

And I can’t wait to see that change.

Restoring Regenerative Agriculture

Finally, another big aspect of the MAHA movement that I’m happy to see is their commitment to restore regenerative agriculture. Right now commercial farming is not only wreaking havoc on the environment, it’s creating low-quality food that has fewer nutrients and more toxins.

MAHA wants to incentivize sustainable farming practices, improve soil health, reduce chemical usage and increase biodiversity in order to produce healthier food and a healthier environment.

It’s kinda hard to argue that this isn’t a good thing all around, right?

Real food, grown in a sustainable way.

Good for farmers. Good for the humans that eat the food. Good for the planet.

I like it.

Final Thoughts

So in a nutshell, those are the big reasons I’m SO excited for the Make America Healthy Again movement, and why I think all of us should be.

Because the really cool thing about this movement is that it’s not about politics. It’s not about whether you lean left or lean right. It’s about HEALTH and actually FIXING this huge problem that exists in our country right now, reversing this epidemic of sickness and obesity that is destroying all of our lives.

It’s about taking our country back from the forces of huge corporations that DO NOT CARE that we are getting sicker and fatter every year. In fact, they celebrate it. Because it makes them more money.

It’s truly a movement that transcends political divides.

And that makes me hopeful for the future of our country.

So I hope you’ll celebrate with me today friends, because in my humble opinion, MAHA is definitely a good thing.

And if you’re on Instagram, be sure to keep an eye on my stories because I’ll be be sharing what I can from the MAHA ball tonight.

I’ve said for a long time that I am on a mission to change the world by helping women transform their health, and I’ve never felt more committed to that goal.

The truth is that when you’re not healthy and you don’t FEEL good, it affects everything else in your life.

But when you do, it opens up a million different doors. Suddenly you’re not limited by a lack of energy or chronic pain or the embarrassment and shame of being overweight. Suddenly you can do anything.

That’s what I want for you, and for every woman in the country.

And today I feel like we’re one step closer.

So thanks for hearing my heart. I’ll be back soon , but in the meantime, if you’re feeling fired up and ready to make a real change in your own life, our TAS program is the perfect place to start.

To join, just go HERE and get signed up.