I promise you I tried, readers.

Last week, I wrote about the habits, both good and bad, of famed independent director/producer David Lynch and other successful, productive people. A couple of Lynch’s ways that work for him (and that’s an important point I’ll come back to later) are eating the same meals for both lunch and dinner, and drinking coffee, along with smoking cigarettes. The larger reason I shared these tips wasn’t that the people are famous — and thus our betters — or they hold some secret the rest of us don’t. “Do what works for you” is a tried and true mantra that you don’t have to pay a membership fee to get in the club for — or hire a fancy schmancy personal trainer/life coach to tell you will make your life better.

Now, there’s another example of someone just deciding they need a change for the better, sticking with it, and doing it themselves.

Most readers know that Mike Pompeo was, at one time, President Trump’s secretary of state, as well as a former CIA director and three-term congresscritter.

Pompeo recently sat down for an exclusive interview with the NY Post’s Salena Zito on a drastic change he has made in the past six months — he dropped 90 pounds since last June.

I feel compelled to highlight this story, which — at first — got lost in the Insurrection anniversary hootenanny by the left, when it was published on Thursday. Here’s how Pompeo described what the final straw was, for him:

It all started on June 14, 2021, when Pompeo stepped on the scale and saw he was just pounds away from 300 for the first time in his life.

The next morning, he said, he woke up and told his wife, Susan: “Today is the day.”

He continued:

“I started exercising, not every day, but nearly every day, and eating right and the weight just started to come off,” he said.

Pompeo, 58, said he invested in a home gym in his basement with some dumbbells and an elliptical machine, where The Post photographed him this week. “I tried to get down there five, six times a week and stay at it for a half-hour or so. And that was nothing scientific. There was no trainer, there was no dietician. It was just me.”

And here’s how he looked about five months later, this past November.

Pompeo added later in Zito’s piece (which I encourage you to read all of) that he could not have improved his health this drastically without the love and support of his family. He’s humble about what he accomplished here, and that’s a great model in any pursuit.

A story like this can inspire people to believe that they can turn around decades of unhealthy habits. That’s something that we could use right now, too. The truth is that Americans’ weight problem left our nation’s medical community woefully unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. And while it’s fairly well known that kidney disease and Type-2 diabetes (among other diseases) are major risk factors for death after contracting the virus, what’s not as well known is that obesity is a co-morbidity, as well.

So, this should be a nonpolitical, feel-good story at every news outlet. And as I told you up top, that was my plan.

But the legacy media maintains a white-hot hatred for anyone associated with Donald Trump, so that can’t happen, apparently.

So, we’re treated to this development. The Kansas City Star‘s editorial board has now run an opinion piece on Mike Pompeo’s weight loss. That’s right, the editorial board of a publication that allegedly commits “journalism,” as my colleague Sister Toldjah might say.

Get this:

We asked weight loss experts, and people who have lost large amounts of weight themselves, whether it’s possible to lose 90 pounds in six months simply by eating better and hitting a humble home gym for half an hour five or six times a week. Their response? Absolutely not, almost certainly not, and hahaha.

That’s what Mike Pompeo, who represented Kansas in Congress before going on to become Donald Trump’s favorite cabinet member, told the New York Post that he did.

“I’ve done this for 20 years,” and never seen anything like that, said Micah LaCerte, who’s considered Kansas City’s top personal trainer. “He would have to be on a massive starvation diet,” probably taking in no carbs at all. And even then, “no way with only a half-hour workout. Ninety in six is unbelievable, especially for his age, unless he’s working out for hours every day. The numbers just don’t add up. Dude, just be honest. Mike, come on, man.”

While it may be theoretically possible, “it’s just not likely” without surgery, drugs or other extreme measures, says Al Rose, a longtime New York bodybuilder, trainer and coach. Even as a West Point-trained former soldier, Pompeo is “definitely being untruthful” claiming that DIY dietary changes and that amount of exercise alone could bring about such a drastic change in that length of time.

And many of the other comments from fitness industry folks are similar. Read through the entire thing, if you can stomach it.

Here’s the impression I was left with, and it wasn’t a positive one on these so-called “experts.” The problem is that that the fitness industry only makes money when unhealthy people remain unhealthy. Don’t believe me? Did you ever notice that Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and the like only advertise their weight loss programs around the new year, before spring break (I think, in the latter case, they refer to it as “bikini season”)? Every single year? And why is that? If they were so successful at helping people cut down their body fat and maintain a healthy weight, they wouldn’t still be in business.

Just check out the sick way these people have to demonize Pompeo’s success. The Star added this foreboding comment from “longtime New York bodybuilder, trainer and coach” Rose:

….[L]osing that much weight that quickly, he said, isn’t healthy under any circumstances.

Bottom line: Fear is one of the weight loss folks’ major motivation tools. I also think part of it is these “experts” don’t want people thinking they can be healthy without paying them. They would quickly be out of a job.

Now, back to the media reaction. Of course, leave it to CNN to be unable to manage a one-minute, twenty-second human interest segment and report something positive about the man, the hatred for Orange Man Bad is so intense for them. Says a lot more about the leftist media than Pompeo, don’t you think?

CNN – 1/7/2021 – a whole segment praising Mike Pompeo for losing weight 🤦🏾‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/vXG6sTPCKN

— CaseStudyQB – #PeoplesGauntlet (@CaseStudyQB) January 7, 2022

As I briefly noted, the former secretary of state’s most recent (publicized) public appearance was at a November 2021 convocation event for Liberty University.

You can watch his full speech below, via LU’s YouTube channel: