Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently sat down with Lauren and Michael Bosstick on The Bossticks Podcast, where he opened up about a surprising personal health discovery that reshaped the way he eats, his views on peptides, and what he sees as regulatory confusion surrounding them.
During the conversation, Kennedy explained how he first became aware of an internal health issue despite appearing lean on the outside.
“I had five different people over a two-week period telling me, ‘You got to see this Dr. Sean Kaufman, who’s a military doctor. He was a lieutenant colonel in the military,'” he said. “And they said, because he will get rid of your visceral fat. And I was like, I don’t think I have any visceral fat because I have a very low BMI, like under 10.”
He noted that the referrals came from what he described as “a very eclectic group” of people who had no connection to each other. According to Kennedy, those individuals included the chief of state troopers in Oklahoma, a health food manufacturing company owner from San Diego, and a billionaire woman from Los Angeles.
Despite their different backgrounds, all of them pointed him to the same doctor.
Kennedy had already completed a full-body MRI in preparation for his role at the Department of Health and Human Services, so he decided to send the results to the physician. What followed, he said, was unexpected.
“He then got on a Zoom with me and he showed me my heart was covered with visceral fat. My liver was covered with visceral fat. All of my visceral was covered with it,” he explained. “And he said, ‘If you don’t already have atrial fibrillations, you’re going to have them.’ And I had had atrial fibrillations every day for four months.”
The doctor told him that the visceral fat could be eliminated within 90 days through dietary changes. Kennedy decided to follow the plan and closely monitor the results.
“So I did the diet for 30 days,” he said. “Then I did another full body MRI and my visceral fat had gone down by 40%. In just 30 days, I also lost 20 lbs (9 kg), which I didn’t want to lose, but I lost a lot. And I was actually worried about the amount of weight I was losing.”
He recalled the physician reassuring him about the rapid weight loss.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s all the interstitial visceral fat in your muscles that you’re losing and then your muscles will come back,'” Kennedy continued. “And that’s what happened. I regained all that 20 lbs (9 kg) back in muscle.”
Kennedy also pointed to a major improvement in his heart rhythm following the dietary shift.
“My atrial fibrillations completely disappeared and I haven’t even had a skipped a heartbeat since then,” he said.
When asked about the specifics of the diet, Kennedy described a strict regimen centered on animal-based foods combined with fermented products.
“I eat grass-fed milk on top or cream on top yogurt and I have a very restricted diet that I’ve been on for about 250 days,” he said. “But it’s a carnivore diet with ferments. So it’s carnivore and then the only other thing I eat is ferments. Sauerkraut, kimchi, any kind of fermented vegetable, which there’s a huge selection in most grocery stores, and then a lot of yogurt.”
On the question of carbohydrates, he offered a brief and direct answer.
“No carbs,” he said.
The conversation later shifted to peptides, where Kennedy addressed what he believes is the current instability in the market. He argued that recent regulatory decisions disrupted legitimate supply channels.
“The peptide market was thrown into chaos because the Biden administration illegally moved 19 peptides to category 2 and category 2 says do not formulate,” he said. “So you had ethical compounders who were buying legal API from FDA inspected plants. We shut them all down and we created a black market where people are selling supposedly peptides for research purposes and for animal purposes and they’re marketing to be humans through influencers and that’s illegal. You can’t do that.”
He confirmed that peptides such as BPC-157 were among those affected by the regulatory shift.
Kennedy also issued a warning to consumers about purchasing peptides from unregulated sources, stressing the risks associated with products marketed outside formal medical channels.
“If you’re buying the peptides from a research grade peptide or animal peptide, you have no idea what you’re getting because the plant is definitely not inspected,” he said. “And we’ve looked at some of them and they’re not what they say they are.”
He concluded by saying he is working to change the regulatory framework so that certain peptides can once again be obtained through legitimate medical providers.
Kennedy said he is actively working to move those peptides back to a place where they are available through ethical compounders sourcing from FDA-inspected facilities.
