Wellness programs are a dime a dozen. The latest trending now is Shevera. Because you shiver if you use it? Ah, I don’t know. But some of its users have attested to its effectiveness in helping them lose weight—three kilos in five days. Wow.

Back in September 2025, when I became one of the hapless victims of Cagayan de Oro’s gastroenteritis scare, no thanks to the service water at a Chinese restaurant in a downtown mall, I decided to heal by going on a three-day fast. I had no appetite and couldn’t keep any food in, so might as well fast. That’s one thing I had learned by then in the low-carb community: “Listen to your body.” So I listened.

By Day Four, no more gastroenteritis. And that’s with no medical intervention. Just water with salt.

Five days later, I had lost almost four kilos, perhaps thanks to the three-day fast, but it was mainly due to the gastroenteritis. I lost 2.35 kilos on the first day alone. You can surely relate to this if you’ve experienced gastroenteritis before. Weight loss becomes easy peasy when you’re often inside the bathroom and food is suddenly not your best friend anymore.

So yes, it’s possible to lose three kilos in five days. But only when you have a bum tummy and you’re drinking only water and salt for three days? Hmm.

By September 2025 when I had that three-day fast, I had already been on a low-carb diet for three years and seven months and was continuing my research on the diet. I was already consulting two low-carb doctors, complete with lab results. I went into this practice with all the knowledge I could gather, I even enrolled in the Low-Carb and Fasting Masterclass of Dr. Josephine Grace Rojo-Tan before I started my low-carb journey in February 2022.

In other words, if you’re reading this and thinking, “Oh, I should fast, too, to lose weight”—oops. I’m not loosely and casually recommending fasting to anyone. As Lao Tzu once said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” And for fasting, you may start by watching Dr. Jason Fung’s YouTube videos.

For me, despite my low-carb practice, the best diet is still the one you can sustain and maintain. Because what’s the use of going low-carb if you’re low-carb today, high-carb tomorrow, low-carb the next day? Your body will only be hopelessly confused. There has to be consistency. And after all these years of low-carb, I already know how my body reacts even after a single bite of high-carb taste-testing. The body doesn’t forgive. It can’t distinguish between yummy and bummy. It can only distinguish between nutrient-dense and nutrient-less.

A doctor/friend commented on my “Carnivore means zero carb tolerance” column: “Carbs make people fat and happy, not give you colds and cough. Probably down with a virus. Protect yourself with annual flu shots.” Advice well taken.

But when I refer to high-carb side effects, which I enumerated in that column, I’m actually simplifying them by calling them as such. Because they do act like side effects each time I eat high-carb food. It’s already a given that each time I eat carbs, I’ll be sneezing and will have a runny nose the morning after. It’s now my body’s standard operating procedure. Plus I get elevated blood pressure again, skin allergies, brain fog, a bloated face, and body and muscle pains. Yeah, WTF.

As for “Carbs make people fat and happy”—true. I can relate to that. I was indeed fat when I was high-carb. And happy while eating carbs. I didn’t know then that my high-carb diet was the culprit behind my hypertension and other afflictions. My mini-fridge in the bedroom was bursting with all sorts of high-carb goodies: potato chips, corn chips, wheat bread, chocolates, nuts, cookies, cakes, muffins, pastries, cupcakes, cheese sticks, kakanin, piñato, turrones de mani, leftover pasta, ice cream, fruits, etc. For a while there, I thought of buying a regular fridge for my bedroom because the mini kind could barely hold everything. Yup, those were the days.