ONCE upon a time, Benjamin Franklin said, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
But no matter what time I sleep, I still wake up early. Perhaps because I’m not a man but a woman of a certain age. Hehe.
What to do if I’m awake by 4 am and can’t sleep anymore? Oh, there’s Facebook—a hard habit to break that I’ve been trying to quit since forever. And there’s YouTube for the carnivore videos that I watch daily to remind myself of my deep why for the diet. And then I write this column based on what I’ve seen on Facebook and YouTube.
Mornings are usually “dashing through the snow” now. It’s in the afternoon that I can focus on work and writing. No siesta for me—I fight off sleep so I can work and write pa more. It’s work and writing again after dinner until I’m already so sleepy and can’t concentrate anymore on the task at hand.
I tend to write while listening to carnivore videos. That’s why some of my columns sound like diet advice which I’m trying to avoid since a diet is to each his own—kung saan ka masaya, suportahan ta ka. My writing about carnivore is actually for me, to remind myself of my deep why in adopting the diet. When I talk about it with friends, that also serves as a reminder for me, especially when we’re eating out and the menu has only a few carnivore items.
Aside from the diet, adopting a healthy lifestyle is a major overhaul that also includes exercise, the ability to remain calm despite the chaos, less or even no social media usage, no TV set and gadgets inside the bedroom, and good-quality sleep. It’s impossible to achieve all of these. Just start with the diet and exercise which can already be daunting.
In addition to watching carnivore videos daily, checking out the carnivore group chats makes me aware I’m not the only one struggling with the diet. Knowing that there’s a carnivore community out there is a great help in staying the course.
I’m more like ketovore for now since I bought avocado mayo and guacamole. I’m now trying to observe if they cause inflammation. A carnivore doctor did say that avocado, which happens to be guacamole’s main ingredient, is not allowed, of course. And why is that? Because it’s obviously plant-based.
As for the Greek yogurt I had last week, that definitely caused inflammation.
By simply looking at my face, I already know if I have inflammation or not.
That’s the beauty of the carnivore diet—it helps me pinpoint the side effects of a particular food item. If I eat all kinds of food—high-carb, low-carb, etc.—looking for the culprit will be difficult.
Some people can start the carnivore diet cold turkey. Others, like me, transitioned from high-carb to low-carb at first. I’ve been low-carb for three years, and it’s only now that I’m trying to be carnivore. But as Yoda said in “Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back”: “No. Try not. Do…or do not. There is no try.”
