THE low-carb and now the carnivore diet have greatly helped me survive in the last three years. If not for these diets, I would have been bingeing on carbs, adding more weight to my then 180-pound frame, and dealing with higher blood pressure.
How I wish I had heard of these diets way back in 2006 to 2009 when I was then facing so many challenges, making me grateful to a particular brand of medicine that kept me sane. Which has since been banned, by the way. A friend and I were both using that drug and each time we did, we’d tell each other that we’re having a (insert drug’s brand name here) moment.
But just when I was already one year into my low-carb journey, I received the worst of news. I became too numb to react, and the only reaction I could muster several hours later was, Just when I’m trying to heal myself, this happens. It wasn’t about me, though, but about someone closest to me.
I’d say I’ve been through the blues and might have also experienced depression but since it wasn’t properly diagnosed by a psychiatrist, I can’t say if it met the criteria for depression.
I’ve been praying for complete healing since January 2021 when I was 180 pounds and my blood pressure required sublingual control. That’s how I found the low-carb diet ten months later.
Praying for complete healing may or may not produce the expected results, though. Kind of be careful what you wish for. Because God’s idea of complete healing may differ from mine. But it does have its perks: even if something bad happens, I can now see it as part of the healing process, leaving me with no reason to entertain the blues.
Healing can take time. Months. Years. Decades.
And I can wait. I’ve reached that age when I can wait. But at the long and winding line at the cashier where I opted to wait, a guy told me, Ma’am, there’s a line for senior citizens over there.
Me: Huh?
Blame it on the neck. Delia Ephron did write a book on that: “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.”
The neck is repairable if I have the money and the guts to have it repaired.
I could also have the bat wings repaired, which a famous Pinoy celebrity actually did, and that resulted to long straight scars from her elbows to her armpits. Her now-slim upper arms look like a raw lechon’s sewn underbelly. Ugh. I guess technology will be able to remove the scars, too. But try to imagine the torture she went through for that. Ouch.
Anyway, thanks to that neck, I can join senior-citizen lines without showing a senior-citizen ID as proof. I can enter a mall’s lounge without paying the P20 fee. People are nicer to old ladies like me. Except government agencies. Whose personnel will sell me food like donuts baked by their daughter.
So, it’s obvious now. Not even the weight loss and the carnivore diet and the gyming and hair dye could hide my age.
A friend did tell me, Net, admit it, we’re old, body aches and pains and illnesses are now part of our daily struggles. And that’s after I told her why I’ve decided to adopt the carnivore diet.
