In January 2021, after months of eating and occasional drinking while stuck at home during the pandemic lockdowns, my weight had climbed from my pre-pandemic 150 pounds to 180. My blood pressure finally decided to follow suit, shooting up to levels that required both divine and medical interventions.

The doses of my two maintenance meds were doubled, and I was told this was how it was going to be: the older I got, the more medication I would need to control my BP. I panicked. Whaaaaat?!

So I began praying for complete healing.

But when we pray, God doesn’t hand us an instant miracle on a silver platter. We have to learn on our own—that’s how faith works.

I went on a no-red-meat diet of only chicken and fish—tinola or grilled—plus rice, veggies, bananas (for potassium), other fruits, and everything else like carbs, in moderation.

I lost 25 pounds that year, from 180 down to 155.

It was in October 2021, while scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed, that I saw Dr. Josephine Grace Rojo-Tan’s video where she said, “Tatlong taon na kaming hindi nagsasaing.” She was talking about her family and how they had stopped cooking rice for three years.

Wow. No rice for three years. That’s 1,095 days. I couldn’t even stop eating rice for one day. Her video piqued my curiosity and led me to her other YouTube videos and those of other low-carb doctors and coaches, which surprised me even more: there are a lot of them. It’s not just her.

Despite what I was learning, I kept postponing my low-carb journey. There were birthdays in October, more birthdays in November, Christmas and New Year’s Eve in December, birthdays in January, then Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year in February—the same month I enrolled in Doc Grace’s 12-disease low-carb fasting masterclass.

By the fourth week of February 2022, I had run out of excuses and finally started my low-carb journey. I still had bananas on the dining table then. I had one on the second day, and it already tasted too sweet for me—yes, after only one day of going low-carb.

I lost another 25 pounds in 2022. That’s a total of 50 pounds by then.

Four months ago, I was finally able to transition to carnivore, bringing my weight down to between 116 and 120 pounds—that's more than 60 pounds of total weight loss so far, fingers crossed.

I celebrated the 90th day of my carnivore journey in August with absolutely no carbs, not even keto treats.

At a birthday party recently, while everyone else was eating cake, I was looking at the lechon from afar, wondering if I should get more.

Once upon a time, Lao Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I took that step on February 22, 2022, when I began low-carb. Yes, a lot of twos in that date. And the second step followed on February 22, 2024, when I joined the gym. I didn’t plan the dates. They just happened. It was only the morning after my first-ever Zumba session at the gym that I realized it was a February 22, too. Talk about a eureka moment.

It has been a continuing education for me as I learn more about health, diets, and workouts.

I know I’ve been writing about this diet for so long now, but I’m hoping that the more I write about it, the more I’ll stick to it.