Vice President JD Vance used a White House briefing to mix policy talk with a personal update, joking about his recent weight loss after a reporter pressed him on the change. He said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. played a big role in the shift, turning the exchange into one of the lighter moments of an otherwise wide-ranging appearance.
Vance’s first official White House briefing since late July covered plenty of serious ground, including the Iran war, energy prices, inflation, and how Republicans should frame their message heading into the midterms. It was also the first briefing since Karoline Leavitt left her role as press secretary, giving the room a slightly different feel from the start.
Then came the question from Peter Doocy about the pounds Vance has dropped over the past few months. Vance leaned into the joke, saying that if the vice president is being asked about weight loss at a White House press conference, he probably had gotten “very fat” at some point.
The exchange took a sharper turn when Vance explained that Kennedy gave him the push and the playbook. He said he had called Kennedy while thinking about cutting sugar, only to get a much more intense answer in return.
According to Vance, Kennedy steered him toward a high-protein routine and plenty of sauerkraut. Vance said the approach helped him trim down starting around Lent in February, and he delivered the story with the kind of dry humor that made the room lighten up.
“Bobby Kennedy says, ‘No, no, no, no, I’ve got something that’s way better than that and way more intense.’ And basically … I eat a lot of high protein stuff, and I eat a lot of sauerkraut. And let’s just say that if that was Fat Tuesday, Fat Wednesday never came,” Vance said.
He followed that with another joke that made the point even clearer. “So, my advice to you is that if you want to lose weight, call Bobby Kennedy. And if you want to enjoy what you eat, do not call Bobby Kennedy.”
The diet talk fits with Kennedy’s long-running reputation for pushing unusual food ideas. In a January podcast interview, Kennedy described himself as being on a carnivore diet, which means eating only animal products such as meat, dairy, and eggs.
That approach has its fans, but plenty of nutrition-minded people roll their eyes at it. Critics point out that plant-based foods like vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes are usually part of a more balanced way to eat, and that extreme plans often come with tradeoffs.
Vance said the switch delivered quick results. He claimed to have lost 20 pounds in 20 days and said his visceral fat, the kind tied to higher health risks, dropped sharply within a month.
He also said the payoff was not just physical. Vance described feeling more mentally clear, though he admitted some of that improvement could have been a placebo effect, which at least showed he was not pretending the whole thing was magic.
That mix of humor, candor, and policy chatter gave the briefing a looser edge than the usual back-and-forth. Vance was there to answer questions on the news of the day, but the sauerkraut story ended up stealing a good chunk of the spotlight.
