Your body is a business in which you hold 100% equity. Your head calls the shots. It has seven holes in it. Two for light. Two for sound. Two for scent. But your seventh hole—your mouth— that’s the loading dock. Did you back up the dumpster last night?

I’m at Ruth’s Chris. “Would you like to share the wedge?”

As a recovering mindless eater, the wedge was my go-to. I loved the wedge. What’s not to love? A perfectly cut half head of iceberg lettuce presented to me on the plate, the leaves shining with freshness, making me feel instantly healthy, virtuous and justified to indulge myself in the sludge of blue cheese and bacon bits.

• Brain says: “Healthy!”

• Taste buds say: “Tasty!”

• Results? Everybody leaves a winner!

Today, the wedge creates wedges.

“Since we have four of you ladies, I’ll bring two wedges on four plates,” the server says, assuming the sale.

No longer a mindless amateur, I politely but mindfully say, “Split it three ways.”

Little bit awkward in here. It had to be done. But, why?

Subscribe now

It’s November 9, 2022. I nearly lost my beloved, longtime business partner for good. Happily, it turns out God had other plans for Shady (and for me). Shady explains the situation this way:

“One minute I’m choking down my free fried chicken sandwich on National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day. Next I’m flatlining naked on a gurney shitting myself for the same ER audience I’m going to see Tuesday at Trader Joe’s!”

Shady claims God sent him back on a mission to “deliver his disciples from the evils of salt, sugar and saturated fat.”

I’ve never said this before in public. I believe Shady.

I have an MBA in finance. We know our bodies are binary. We are just a bunch of ones and zeroes. Why can’t food be binary? Let’s say you receive one life point for a carrot. Now let’s say you get three death points for carrot cake. Your score is minus two. This is how Shady chooses to live his second life. (Click here to see Shady’s Piehole Score)

Shady didn’t die because he was stupid. He died because he was a mindless, gluttonous amateur. But, I’m not judging. To the contrary, I conducted a thorough forensic audit on what I put in my mouth.

I am shocked! I hope you are sitting down or even laying down, just not on a gurney.

Get this — my wonderful wedge salad has been secretly adding death to my bloodstream and it looks like this.

Everything lines up in the photo. The wedge is narrowing the lining of my arteries. The wedge is literally creating a wedge.

Shady had a 100% blockage when he had his widow maker heart attack. They bring Shady’s future widow in to say goodbye. So much equipment. A dozen medical professionals locked in on her husband of 45 years. Julie kisses Shady gently on the cheek, whispering, "This is going to be like a $10,000 copay."

Julie denies it. Shady is emphatic. This time, I believe Julie. If you can’t trust a lawyer, who can you trust?

Your body is amazing the abuse it will tolerate. Shady had two stents put in the main artery to his heart. Don’t know about you but when I hear main artery I think 405 and Storrow Drive and Jersey Turnpike. I don’t think pasta.

Turns out, the main artery is the diameter of spaghetti. The rest are smaller than that.

Subscribe now

Today Shady is 100% healthy. He lost 40 pounds, going from extra large to medium, and, as previously noted, his intake is a matter of public record. All of that and he is the rare patient who has been deprescribed (but for a daily baby aspirin to ensure the blood keeps flowing through his stents.

Inspired by Shady, I want my arteries to look like the graphic on the right. Is it too late?

It is not too late. It is also not too easy. But, now that I am mindful, I can play psychological tricks on myself.

• Method No. 1

  • Every time I am attacked by a craving for junk food, I dial back the pictures in my mind right away, what am I doing to my blood stream? Adding death to it or keep it clean? The picture literally stops me in my tracks. Junk food magically loses its allure.

• Method No. 2

  • Everybody dies. A few of us, like Shady, die more than once. I ask myself: “Self—how do you want to die?

    • A miserable slow death from years of self-inflicting junk food to my blood stream?

    • Or a fast death from old age still vibrant to the day before?

  • Do I want to put my family through the misery of taking care of me and seeing me deteriorate in the end?

  • How do I want the quality of my life to be when I reach 70 years old, sitting on a wheel chair aching with pain all over my body or still active in what I love to do?

• Method No. 3

  • The Shiny & Shady System.

    • The reason Shady and I became partners is that we are both system designers. Shady’s system got rid of my cravings, including wedge salad. I no longer drink my caramel macchiato, which I came to learn was like a Big Mac in a mug. I no longer eat Pepperidge Farm buttery shortbread cookies.

I am cynical now. I ask questions like, “Where exactly is this cookie farm?!” I’ve heard of pick you own berries, pick your own pumpkins or apples or nose. Never heard pick your own cookies! Not even once!

Now that I’ve given up all eating — just kidding — now that I am a mindful pro, my head is clear, no more mid-afternoon food comas. Headaches are gone.

Meanwhile, back at Ruth’s Chris, the cognitive dissonance settles and our server politely gives us a minute. I explain the legend of Shady O’Leery, together with my personal transformation from mindless amateur to mindful pro.

The upshot is that instead of half a wedge, we started with four garden salads on four plates with balsamic on the side. The best news is that one of my friends recently joined our cadre of Piehole Pro beta testers.

The moral of the story is you can have a wedge but still have a whole!

Audit your intake!!!

And, whatever you do, for the love of God, always remember Shady’s fateful words, “That’s not Jack in the box. It’s you in the box!”

Subscribe now

One minute I'm choking down a freebie on National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day 2022. Next I'm naked on a gurney, flatlining in the trauma center, shitting myself for an audience. They bring my wife back to say goodbye. So much equipment. A dozen medical professionals locked in on her husband of 45 years. Julie kisses me gently on the cheek, whispering, "This is going to be like a $10,000 copay."

Next morning I wake up in intensive care with two stents. Main artery to my heart? 100% blockage. For the record, I didn’t “beat” the widowmaker. I was lucky to be a ten minute ambulance ride away from the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute.

How fragile do you have to be to be struck dead by chicken shrapnel?

In my first life I was an amateur. I ran my mouth like a dumpster. My LDL was LOL. Zero intention. In my second life I run my mouth like a business.

The modern grocery store is a multi-billion-dollar psychological war zone. You are a vulnerable plate spinner, juggling a career, a mortgage, a family, and a running list of daily obligations.

The generic health critic attacks the generic obvious targets. Oreos, Doritos, and fast food are the low hanging fruit of the Nutrition Shamers. But, no amount of judgment and moral shaming will save you when you are hopelessly addicted to the mind-numbing vagaries of salt, sugar and saturated fat.

The snack aisle isn’t going anywhere. The wine and beer aisles aren’t going anywhere. The products displayed there are meticulously engineered. The represented brands are globally famous because when the multi-billion-dollar food and drink conglomerates look at your mouth they do not see a human organ.

They see a cash register. They get out of it what you put into it.

You cannot defeat a Wall Street-backed strategy with wishful eating thoughts. But you can defeat bad strategy with good strategy.

I flatlined as an amateur on November 9, 2022. The next day, I turned Pro.

The difference between a Pro and an Amateur consumer is not what you eat. The difference is that the Amateur’s criteria is reckless, haphazard, and unintentional. Treating your mouth like a dumpster lacks intention. Running it like a business reclaims your autonomy.

I am no scientist. I do not have a PhD in Psychology. Rather, I am an entrepreneur with 45 years of experience and the father to an autistic son.

Twenty five years ago, when his teenage brain went through rapid, volatile growth spurts, he was plunged into a terrifying developmental spiral that lasted three or four years. It was a revolving door of psychologists, psychiatrists, and various medications, desperately trying to find just the right chemical cocktail that wouldn’t react in the exact opposite way it was intended to react—as is often the case with autistic folk.

That brings me to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

CBT is as simple as drawing a line straight down the middle of a page to separate the emotional distortion from the audited truth. In business we do side-by-side all the time.

Imagine you are fifteen years old and trapped in a doom loop. In the Left Column, you scrawl your emotional truth: “If I don’t get straight As, I won’t get into a good college. My life is over.”

Now in the Right Column, you reluctantly scribble the audited truth: “People who do NOT have straight As get into good colleges all the time. In fact, the vast majority of people attending good colleges in this exact moment do not have straight As.”

Food is binary. It is life or death. It’s a banana, not banana bread. It’s a carrot, not carrot cake. Food is life affirming or death promoting. Death promoting “food” may be food as a matter of law. But as a matter of fact whose to really say?

If you can imagine an Onlyfans for the cholesterol class, that’s The Shiny & Shady Show. A true bowel to global movement story, dedicated to the premise that what separates the amateur from the pro is intention.

Everybody has nine holes. But, you only have one piehole. My Piehole is pinned 24/7 to the main navigation bar herein. I populate the grid with the stuff I cram into my piehole and Piehole pukes out dynamically generated weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports.

It’s the running balance that restores balance.

I imagine a world in which everyone is on Piehole and the term “Piehole Score” is ubiquitous. A world in which your first date goes well, your second date goes well, thinking about getting serious, and you pop the question, “What’s your Piehole?”

Think about it. If your date isn’t intentional about what he puts in his mouth, in what universe are you putting that date in your mouth?

Piehole is not a diet. “I am on a diet.” A diet is something you stop. The root word is literally “die.” Piehole tracks your piehole, tabulates your intention. Subscribe to this newsletter for free and and I will make you a beta tester.

Subscribe now

When you open your Piehole and populate the grid you systematically force yourself out of a reckless, reactive death loop, into a transactional state of calculation.

The Piehole framework is the ultimate nightmare of a Wall Street-traded ultra-processed rat shit factory. The syndicates calculate their financial projections on the assumption that you will remain numb to their many Froot Loopholes. As a Pro, I no longer play that game. If I eat a burger, I log it and take the -3 Death Points.

The mainstream wellness industry has spent decades scamming you by selling outcomes as targets. They tell you to chase weight loss, chase energy, and chase lower cholesterol like they are elusive trophies to be won through sheer misery and starvation. As a Pro, I know that the foregoing follies are the illusions of amateurs.

Everything everybody wants — less waist, less sickness, non-zero prescription costs, perfect numbers at your annual physical — such are the involuntary, mathematical consequences of populating Piehole and engaging in a bit of regular exercise.

If I’ve learned one thing as an entrepreneur for forty-five years it is this: Goals are for amateurs. I do not do goals. I do purpose. Purpose is for Pros. Goals are arbitrary. You hit them or you don’t and you go to lunch, which means you’re in a restaurant. (Don’t even get me started!) Purpose is unchanging and your ultimate purpose is to be there for your family, your friends, and the people who care about you.

If your purpose is to be a more effective creator, a more lethal litigator, a more decisive executive, or a more present parent. Every single one of those initiatives is either systematically strengthened or actively weakened by the actual items you cram into your beloved piehole.

It’s all about the numbers. Your CPA and your PCP use the same nomenclature. “These numbers look great!” or “These numbers are concerning.” When your cardiovascular system is flooded with a shit ton of un-audited, industrial processed sludge, your energy collapses, your prefrontal cortex is hijacked by marketing algorithms, and your capacity to protect your assets evaporates.

Which brings us back to the question I asked at the outset: Is Selena Gomez trying to kill you?

One minute you’re a globally adored pop icon. Next you present like a billionaire drug mule for Mondelēz. As an end user of a widow maker, I cannot unsee what I just articulated.

Such is life (and death) in the land of the free and the home of the (as-it-turned-out in my case) $12,329.42 co-pay.