Once a wannabe dieter dives into the rabbit hole of searching about the low-carb lifestyle, it will eventually lead him to the carnivore diet. Which is what happened to me. I started to try it on September 28, 2024 but the longest I lasted on it was three weeks.

These days, each time I eat carbs, I get rhinitis, coughs, skin allergies, high blood pressure, and muscle and body pains. A carb-loading episode from April to May this year developed into rhinitis and month-long coughs that needed help from two doctors—my sis-in-law and an ENT specialist she referred me to. And the coughs, of course, required a month-long absence from the gym.

When the ENT doc cleared me to return to my workouts, I immediately went back to exercising from Monday to Saturday for two weeks, sometimes with back-to-back workouts in one day—Zumba, Strong Nation, yoga, boxing circuit training—which led to over-fatigue that raised my BP. So I had to rest again for several weeks, which I used to have my lab tests and consult my low-carb doctor.

Dave Feldman posted his movie, “The Cholesterol Code,” on YouTube on July 17, 2026. 

17—there's my former favorite number again.

Feldman is an engineer, but the high LDL he started having once he went low-carb inspired him to search deeper. His film argues that for lean, healthy low-carbers—the Lean Mass Hyper-Responders—a high LDL on its own may not be as alarming as traditional advice makes it sound. He traveled around the world to interview other low-carb dieters whose LDL is as high or higher than his.

Much like the “Odyssey” effect, “The Cholesterol Code” also made me cry. Okay, perhaps my crying that time was not as dramatic as the tears flowing down my face for “Odyssey.” 

By the way, I cried again while watching “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” two days later. 

But the tears for “The Cholesterol Code” shocked me: why am I crying while watching a movie about cholesterol?

The low-carb diet is against all odds in the traditional world of diets where low-fat has been the more popular practice, with people even going vegetarian. Each time I encounter negative comments about low-carb, I simply say, You do you. To each his own.

I myself have struggled for four years and five months now while switching from keto to carnivore, which resulted in cravings for high-carb goodies. The carbs then led to another vicious cycle of rhinitis, coughs, high BP, etc. I'm already tired of dealing with these high-carb side effects.

When I sneeze, have a runny nose, or have high BP the morning after, I refer to my daily food log to see what could have caused it.

At the height of my one-month coughs, even scrambled eggs in butter, fried kutob tinola, bangus belly tinola, and salmon tinola worsened my coughs. After experimenting with how to cook pork and beef without triggering more coughs—apparently pork and beef have histamines—I ended up eating thinly sliced pork belly sans its fat, boiled à la shabu-shabu. I adopted this super strict menu for a month until I could no longer tolerate a single bite.

On the other hand, carbs are super addictive. Just one bite can make the high-carb dieter crave for more. There's no saturation point.