AFTER experimenting with high-carb food since December, I’m now convinced they’re bad for my health. As if I needed more convincing, huh?
I had colds last weekend, no thanks to carb cravings and my willingness to indulge them.
And then, by simply reducing my carb intake on Saturday, I lost five pounds overnight. Yes, five pounds. That’s how fast the weight loss could be by transitioning from high-carb to low-carb. How much more if it’s from high-carb to carnivore.
Advice on the transition varies. Some carnivore doctors and coaches say cold turkey is better. Others recommend the slow kind: ketogenic first, then carnivore. I went for the latter. But it has been a struggle since then. And I’m talking about October 2024 to the present, that’s one year and three months of transitioning.
In October 2024, I already knew that carnivore was best for me otherwise I won’t have lasted this long in trying so hard to practice it.
Carnivore gives me mental clarity, optimism, a lighter body, less muscle pains and body aches, lower blood pressure, clearer skin, no inflammation — this list of perks can go on and on, perks that will happen only by sticking to the diet forevermore. Stopping it for a while will confuse the body and banish the perks to Siberia.
I don’t know how to explain the perks I’ve experienced to friends who think they’re already having the best life with their high-carb lifestyle. Because they can appreciate the ketogenic and carnivore diets only through their own personal experience. As Yoda once said in “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Do, or do not. There is no try.”
As I look forward to my fourth-year low-carb anniversary this month, I now wonder how I would have fared health-wise if I hadn’t followed the low-carb diet. I’d still be 180 pounds and even more. Constantly dealing with high blood pressure. Wondering why I have headaches. Why my eyes are red. Why I have skin allergies.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” The Greek physician Hippocrates supposedly said this once upon a time, in 400 BC. And that’s the concept behind the low-carb diet. A concept that I conveniently forgot when I was at Totsy’s where my favorites are their black pepper beef, pastrami and ham croissant pizza, milk chocolate croissant bites, and honey parmesan twist. I was there thrice in January. Definitely worth the carbs. In January, that is — new year, birthday, other reasons for the indulgence.
But not anymore this month. This will be my nth attempt at the carnivore diet and I wish me all the luck in the world.
From October 2021 to February 2022, it took me four months to study the low-carb diet because I had many reasons not to: a birthday and a wedding anniversary in October, two birthdays in November, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve in December, two birthdays in January, Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day in February. I ran out of excuses after Valentine’s and had no choice but to finally start the low-carb diet.
The same thing seems to be happening now, four years later. I’m finding excuses. Whew.
