RUSH: Well, it’s happened again. The New York Daily News has trashed my diet and trashed me. ‘Rush Limbaugh’s Diet Plan from Quick Weight Loss Centers Probably Won’t Work Long-Term, Experts Say.’ I haven’t had time to read the whole thing, but I will wager you that one of the problems they have with it is there’s no exercise, that I said I didn’t exercise and without exercise one cannot lose weight and keep weight off, just can’t do it. (imitating sniveling lib castrati voice) ‘It’s such a shame that Limbaugh doesn’t understand this.’ I go on a diet that works and they have to trash it. While everybody is making fun of people being fat, when they go on a diet and lose weight, ‘Doesn’t work, stupid diet.’ I’m holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers Time magazine, and this is today, it’s by John Cloud: ‘Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.’ My friends, I’m a living testament 
to this. I know even when I say it now my close friends and even some of my highly overrated staff say I’m nuts.
‘As I write this, tomorrow is Tuesday, which is a cardio day. I’ll spend five minutes warming up on the VersaClimber, a towering machine that requires you to move your arms and legs simultaneously. Then I’ll do 30 minutes on a stair mill. On Wednesday a personal trainer will work me like a farm animal for an hour, sometimes to the point that I am dizzy — an abuse for which I pay as much as I spend on groceries in a week. Thursday is ‘body wedge’ class, which involves another exercise contraption, this one a large foam wedge from which I will push myself up in various hateful ways for an hour. Friday will bring a 5.5-mile run, the extra half-mile my grueling expiation of any gastronomical indulgences during the week. I have exercised like this — obsessively, a bit grimly — for years, but recently I began to wonder: Why am I doing this? Except for a two-year period at the end of an unhappy relationship — a period when I self-medicated with lots of Italian desserts — I have never been overweight. One of the most widely accepted, commonly repeated assumptions in our culture is that if you exercise, you will lose weight. But I exercise all the time, and since I ended that relationship and cut most of those desserts, my weight has returned to the same 163 lb. it has been most of my adult life. I still have gut fat that hangs over my belt when I sit. Why isn’t all the exercise wiping it out?’
He goes on with more statistics. Then he quotes some doctors in the back. Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher, says, ”In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless.’ Many recent studies have found that exercise isn’t as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser — or, for that matter, from magazines like this one. The basic problem is that while it’s true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn’t necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.’
I remember quoting a guy who wrote a book about this a year-and-a-half or so ago. (interruption) Whoa. I’m not saying exercise is bad for you. Snerdley says I’ll never get a gym sponsor. Exercise is good for you! I’m not saying it’s not! I’m saying it has nothing to do with losing weight or keeping weight off. Zilch, zero, nada. You people at the New York Daily News and ABC News are irresponsible. You are nothing but hacks. You try to destroy everything that is successful and everything that works. You tell me I can’t do what I just did. You tell me what I am doing that is working doesn’t work. You’re idiots! I have never seen these stories about dear old Oprah. I have never seen stories: ‘Oh, poor Oprah, it isn’t going to work.’ Anyway, it works. It’s the best diet I have ever been on, and I’ve done every one of them but Weight Watchers because I don’t like pink packaging. I have done everything there is. I have fasted for 60 days. I have done the grapefruit thing. I have done Atkins. But this one is different, which is why I did it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, would you please indulge me for one more comment on this New York Daily News story on my diet? I’ve got to read something here to you. ‘Limbaugh has professed ignorance as to how his diet works, despite numerous queries since he announced his weight loss plans in March. ‘Folks, it’s not that I won’t tell you, it’s just I can’t,’ he said in June. ‘It’s too complicated. I mean putting the menu together is a jigsaw puzzle every day. It would take me 45 minutes every day to tell you what the diet plan is and answer all your questions about why it works.” At the time I didn’t want to identify the program for obvious business reasons. I choose not to do it. I wasn’t doing the diet as a paid endorser or any of that stuff, and I can’t now tell you!
The diet is made up of recipes that are as healthy as anything I’ve ever had. You do have to mix the protein stats and carbohydrates in the course of the day, but you get all the basic minimums and then some. The first week of the diet I remember I hounded Kathryn because she’s the one who found it. I said, ‘Kathryn, this isn’t going to work; it’s too much food!’ We were at a restaurant. We were at Trevini here. It was like the second night of the diet and I ordered what was permissible. I had some salmon. I had five ounces of salmon and some steamed spinach and some broccoli. I said, ‘This isn’t going to work. I’m not going to lose weight.’ Really, I was kind of mean to her in a way because every diet I’ve done, yeah, you’ve got to be hungry for it to work.
I’m not hungry on this diet. These people don’t know what they’re talking about even after listening to me. Look, if I could tell you what the diet was, you wouldn’t need to go to them! Okay, here’s what I had for lunch. I’ll just tell you. I had five ounces of salmon grilled with all kinds of herbs and spices on it on top of a bed of lettuce with some vegetables in there and some vinaigrette and a bowl of chips. Dinner tonight is going to be something called ‘pizza chicken.’ Now, have you learned anything? Can you go do that with me telling you what I’m eating in the diet? No, you can’t. And I’m going to sit here…
Well, you could do the salmon but you’re covered for one or two meals then. I can’t give you the recipe on the air. This is not a recipe show. We’re not the Food Network here. Yeah, these guys, the chef comes here, fixes it every day and these guys on the staff say, ‘It’s too bad you can’t smell it because the stuff coming out of there every day is awesome.’ Ignorant! ‘Professes ignorance about his diet.’ I’ll tell you, journalism in this country is an absolute disgrace. It’s just an absolute disgrace. I could come up — I personally, I could come up — with the cure for cancer and they would find a way to say this is bad for the drug companies. They’d be defending the drug companies, and it’d be, ‘It’s bad for doctors.’ (sigh)