Affordable Healthy Swaps, GLP-1s, Hot New Wellness Brands & Is Target The Next Whole Foods? | Hunter Stoler

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Hunter and I have crossed paths more times than either of us can count, so it felt overdue to finally sit down together. Within the first ten minutes he'd already taught me that a Big Gulp isn't even the biggest option at 7-Eleven - there's a Super Big Gulp and a Double Gulp above it - which tells you everything about the gap between where his relationship with food used to be and where it is now.

That gap is the real story here. Hunter used to weigh 230 pounds, dealt with cystic acne and constant fatigue, and genuinely thought that was just his lot in life - until Thanksgiving of 2019, when his mom and sister gently pointed out that his plate was a foot high of ultra-processed carbs with maybe one slice of turkey on it. That was the moment it clicked. He started with Weight Watchers for structure during lockdown, lost his first 25 pounds simply by becoming aware of portions, and then lost the next 25 through the F-Factor Diet, leaning hard into real fiber from whole foods rather than fiber powders. Within three months of really committing, he says the weight "literally melted off." I love that his turning point wasn't a supplement or a drug - it was awareness, structure, and simple food. It's also worth naming that Jennifer Fisher, a mutual friend, is the reason Hunter found my book Ketotarian in the first place, which then shaped his whole "health made simple" philosophy. Small world.

What I really wanted to get into with Hunter, though, is something I don't think gets said enough in our space: healthy eating and healthy eating for weight loss are not the same thing, and conflating them confuses people. Hunter's framing of this as a Venn diagram was genuinely one of the best explanations I've heard - there are foods that are healthy, foods that are weight-loss-friendly on paper but nutritionally hollow (he used the David Bar as his example, and did not hold back), and then the overlap in the middle, which is where sustainable results actually live. Portion still matters even with the healthiest ingredients on earth.

We also spent a good chunk of the conversation on something I think is genuinely important: the idea that eating well requires wealth. Hunter's take, which mirrors what I see clinically, is that most people aren't actually broke relative to their health, they're misallocating. Alcohol a few times a week, constant Ubering, daily takeout, a Double Gulp habit - it adds up fast, and redirected toward real food at Aldi or Costco or even Target (which he half-jokingly called the new Whole Foods), it goes a long way. He walked through his actual healthy-swap hierarchy too: start with your cooking oil, then look at laundry detergent and home fragrance, then your water filtration, then your protein bars. None of it requires an overnight overhaul.

Here's the part I want people to sit with, though. Hunter told a story about getting his blood work done through Function Health and finding out his liver enzymes were so abnormal they told him to go to the ER for suspected rhabdomyolysis - from supplement overload. No symptoms, nothing he could feel, just quietly accumulating stress on his body from taking seven-plus supplements at once because they'd been sent to him or he'd ordered them without much thought. He's since brought it down to just creatine, a probiotic, and magnesium. I talk to telehealth patients constantly who are doing some version of this - more is not more, food is the foundation, and supplements should fill specific gaps, not become a personality. That's the whole philosophy in miniature: not extremes in either direction, just informed, sustainable choices.

A few of my favorite things we cover in this episode: 

• Expo West: the "Disneyland" of health and wellness trends
• Why getting acquired by Big Food isn't automatically "selling out"
• Rising brands to watch: Fruit-ola, Chomps, Just Ingredients, Kara Lynn's
• Busting the myth that healthy eating requires wealth
• Where your money actually goes vs. where it could go
• Best budget grocery stores: Aldi, Costco, Target, Trader Joe's
• Is Target quietly becoming the new Whole Foods?
• Top healthy swaps: cooking oils, laundry detergent, water filters
• Reading the David Bar label: why "healthy-looking" isn't healthy
• Protein bars done right: Jacob Bar, Lineage Provisions, Rawr Organics
• Hunter's 230-pound Thanksgiving wake-up call
• Losing 50 pounds with Weight Watchers, then the F-Factor Diet
• How Jennifer Fisher led him to Dr. Cole's book, Ketotarian
• Healthy eating vs. healthy eating for weight loss, explained
• Why he stopped tracking macros and trusts his "mental scale"
• His real 80/20 rule and the Seed Oil Scout app
• His non-negotiables: filtered water, no fragrance, tested coffee
• GLP-1s, Accutane, and a both/and approach to weight loss
• A scary supplement scare and dialing his stack back down
• His weirdest wellness habit: red light mask while folding laundry

Products Mentioned:

• Ketotarian by Dr. Will Cole
• Trust Your Gut by Jennifer Fisher (cookbook, foreword by Dr. Will Cole)
• Jennifer Fisher Jewelry
• Seed Oil Scout (app for finding better-oil restaurants)
• healthwithhunter — Hunter's Instagram
• The Creatine 
• Seed DS-01 Daily Synbiotic (probiotic Hunter takes)
• BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough (magnesium Hunter takes)
• Danger Coffee
• AquaTru reverse osmosis water filter
• Truly Free Home laundry detergent
• Koala Eco laundry detergent and hand soap
• Branch Basics all-purpose cleaner
• Realm air freshener (Febreze/Glade swap)
• Flackers flaxseed crackers
• Jacob Bar protein bar
• Lineage Provisions protein bar
• BTR Nation protein bar
• Rawr Organics protein bar
• Chomps meat sticks
• Just Ingredients energy drinks
• That's It Fruitola fruit granola
• Siete Foods
• Epic Provisions (meat snacks, bone broth, tallow)
• Force of Nature regenerative meats
• Primal Kitchen
• Lumineux nano-hydroxyapatite toothpaste and whitening strips 
• Bon Charge red light face mask 

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Happy listening, and we hope you learned a little bit more on the art of being well!

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In Health,

Dr. Will Cole