In November 2023, Neithan and I decided to run a little experiment and change our diet.
Specifically, we decided to stop eating rice.
Around late October 2023, I had some rashes on my face.
It was a bit worrying because I didn’t really know what caused them.
Maybe it was the weather? Maybe stress?
One day, I told Neithan I wanted to try something — to change the food we eat.
Around this time, we had already been hearing about the carnivore and animal-based diet —
essentially a way of eating focused on meat and animal products (like eggs, milk, and dairy).
We’d seen stories of people healing and feeling better after shifting to this lifestyle.
So we thought: why not give it a try, one step at a time?
Our first step was to give up rice and just eat meat.
I’d already had a few half-hearted attempts at cutting rice in the past. I’ve been a half-rice eater for a while. But this time around, giving up rice was surprisingly easier.
Since November 4, 2023, we’ve never had a meal with rice.
There was a cheat day in June 2024, when we had champorado at a restaurant in Boracay.
And in April 2024, we attended a wedding where they served cordon bleu with rice filling — which we didn’t know about. But aside from those two instances, we haven’t touched rice.
We’ve also become more mindful of our carb intake.
We occasionally eat pasta or bread, but they’re not staples anymore.
We now eat mostly — around 95% — meat.
When we eat out, we go for the meat options.
When we cook, we avoid seed oils (like canola oil).
We use butter, beef tallow, or the fat rendered from the meat being cooked.
Animal fat is good fat. Seed oils are not.
We also try to cut sweets. This is HARD.
We’ve switched from coffee frappes to americanos and lattes.
I read somewhere that if you like the specialty drinks at coffee shops, you love sweets, not coffee.
I guess now, we can truly say: we love coffee.
Sugar is no longer a home staple.
We’ve substituted honey when needed.
We haven’t had soft drinks since 2012.
We also try to avoid store-bought bottled drinks and juices.
(Though Neithan still drinks his Don Papa and Smirnoff.)
We still eat cakes (I, particularly love cheesecakes huhu), chips (Neithan LOVES Lay’s Cheddar & Sour Cream), canned corned beef and tuna, and spam. We haven’t given up takeout or eating out completely. But our home-cooked meals have become a little “boring,” I guess:
Steak and eggs
Sinangag na pork + eggs
Beef patties + eggs
Bacon and eggs
Some days, Neithan cooks adobo.
As for seasonings, we mostly stick to salt, black pepper, cajun seasoning, cayenne pepper, and a smoked chili sea salt Neithan found interesting at the grocery.
Neithan: I actually love that we still have a bit of junk in our system. The first time I heard the idea phrased that way was from Yujiro Hanma (a fictional character from Baki the Grappler), and it stuck with me. He said something along the lines of:
“When you eat only healthy food all the time, you get sick at the first taste of junk. You’re the perfect guy—but you can’t handle alcohol at a party. You have the best manners—but you fold the moment you’re insulted. You train hard—but get injured when the ground isn’t cushioned.”
The epitome of human existence, he argued, is to be in command of both good and evil, yin and yang, discipline and recklessness. The knight in shining armor isn’t the one you instinctively fear—but the one whose armor has been tarnished by war.
Eat everything. Learn from everything. Make nourishment come from all sources. That’s how you fortify the body.
Kids today get sick ten times a year because they’ve never swam in the rivers of Tabuco or did something similar.
The superior human isn’t the one who’s protected from the world—but the one who has survived both benevolence and malevolence combined.
I wrote this part 80% really trying to be useful to the reader, 20% trying to justify why Don Papa and Lay’s Cheddar and Sour Cream needs to stay in my life 😀
As we learned more about the carnivore and animal-based diet, one thing really struck us:
We’ve been taught to look at the nutritional value of food — the numbers in that neat little table on the packaging. But rarely are we taught to look at the ingredients list.
And if you do look closely at that quiet little list on the back of every package, a lot of the things we eat are filled with stuff we can’t even pronounce.
That shift — from looking at nutrition labels to reading ingredients — was a big one for us.
So now, when we go grocery shopping, we try to read the ingredients first.
The fewer the ingredients, the better.
When we order food or eat out, we’re pretty much blind to what’s in it.
It’s best effort at this point.
But even so, the way we eat now feels worlds apart from how we used to.
Eating has become much simpler for us.
We’re learning to look at food as something that fuels us, rather than something that controls us. We’re building the habit of approaching food and eating rationally not emotionally — I will eat because my body needs fuel vs. I will eat because I’m stressed.
Oh, and one other thing: unlike before, we haven’t been on any regular workout routine or structured exercise program.
We do home workouts and bodyweight exercises when we feel like it.
We’ve also revived old hobbies — badminton, volleyball, rope flow — but even those, we do without strict schedules.
Our move back to Naga gave us more time and space to move naturally.
Lots of walking, cleaning, carrying stuff, going up and down stairs.
Not formal workouts — just being on our feet. Everyday movement.
It turns out, that’s been enough so far.
We get it now when they say staying fit and healthy is 80% food, 20% exercise.
So what changes have we noticed?
Even just a month in — around December 2023 — we already felt lighter.
My tummy felt smaller, less bloated — or not bloated at all.
We’ve noticed significant improvements in both our physical and mental states.
We don’t feel hungry all the time.
We can have brunch at 10 a.m. and our next meal at 6 p.m.
We don’t feel tired or groggy after eating.
Neithan’s back acne is gone. (There are marks, but the acne itself is gone.)
We can focus better. (Of course, a lot has changed in our lives over the past couple of years — so this may not be just the diet. But we think it helps.)
We don’t get sick too often.
And honestly? This is the best we’ve felt in a long while.
Some photos from before the diet change.
Lots of Uncle Moe’s, fried rice for breakfast, Spanish bread and ube pandesal here and there.
But also — a semi-strict workout routine.
We even enrolled at Kinetix Lab with a coach, and signed up for month-long UFC Gym subscriptions.
In January 2023, Neithan had a stye — we figured it was stress, weather, or who knows what. He still had to attend meetings with it because, well… work was more important than life. (But that’s another thing we’ve changed — for another post. 😄)
Neithan: I should’ve been perspicacious enough to know that anything happening to your body is an alarm. Around the same time last year, I had boils on my legs — I literally couldn’t walk. That was my body telling me, “Neithan, diputa, your life sucks. Do something.” So I did something.
Minsan talaga, padeh — your mind will fail you. Your heart will fail you. But your balls never will.
Whenever I get scared to change, I remind myself:
I could’ve died in 2020. And it feels like an insult to the now-unliving if I don’t seize the day. Every day.
Anyway, no eye styes or boils since the diet change. So far, so good.
Neithan: There was an initial concern about a possible drop in performance/energy if we went animal-based. Back in college—and even now if you look it up on YouTube—you’ll hear people say stuff like, “Oh, you’ll have a hard time finding energy because you’re not taking in carbs.”
But I’ve seen the exact opposite happen. That sluggish, nap-craving feeling after meals Jen was talking about? Gone. No more food coma. No more productivity crash.
What surprised me even more is that I’m still able to do the same exercises with the same number of reps I used to hit back when I was regularly at the gym. Still lifting the same weight range—or more. Push-ups, kicks, lunges, sparring and all the functional movements are intact.
So I guess the big takeaway here is—whenever someone confidently says, “You need X to do Y,” your first reaction should be:
“Is that true? Why do you want me to believe that? What happens if I test it myself?”
I find that this mindset scales and applies everywhere.
People used to tell us, “You need to reply to emails fast. Attend all meetings. Be visible. That’s how you do good work.”
Now I barely respond to emails and I actively skip non-essential meetings— and my net worth is several times more than back when I followed that advice. (It took me 10+ years to realize so ako yung bobo)
And this is just super logical and common sense, the more you’re out of meetings and email replies all of those brain cells just go into action and actual work. If you have person A who’s in meetings for 4 hours a day and in messenger after the meetings and during weekends to discuss what happened during the meeting, and you have person B who’s just hammering task after task after task and maybe sending 1 email to update everybody of their progress, and since there are no meetings he can train for certain hours, have a life, rest in some cases, Person B doesn’t get as sick as Person A and so Person B can just go back to hammering task after task after task. Who the fucking fuck do you think will progress faster? Sentido común!!
When we told one of our former friends what we really wanted was Time, Money, and Freedom, he told us, “You can’t have all three.”
Well guess what incel, we have all three now.
You lied.
And in your quiet moments, when the thought crosses your mind that, deep down, you hate your overengineered, underpaid life…
you will think of me.
And in your thoughts,
I’ll be laughing…
at you.
Don Papa in one hand.
Lay’s Cheddar and Sour Cream on the other.
Plotting my revenge.
Mars Rover launched to future coordinates and it will find you when it lands.
Tefached.
We went to Malaysia in December 2023 for ESL One Kuala Lumpur, and that’s when we really started to see the changes — especially in our photos.
I remember reading something about elimination vs. supplementation.
The idea is: we, as a society, have become addicted to adding.
To supplementing.
Exhausted from work and want to relax?
There are scented candles and calming creams for that.
Feeling unproductive or unfocused?
There’s probably an app, a special drink, or a new planner layout waiting for you.
Can’t sleep at night?
Try ambient noise machines and weighted blankets!
Trying to keep the house clean?
There’s a spray for every corner and every creature —
one for lizards, one for cockroaches, one for ants, one just to make the room mabango.
Feeling sick or just want to stay healthy?
Pills are now more accessible than ever.
There are vitamins for everything, stress relievers in tablet or capsule form, and supplements for all ages.
Even kids’ medicines are now “easy to consume” — “Di na kailangan i-shake. Para pag may lagnat ang anak, buhos agad, inom agaaaaaad!” (haha kakarinig ko sa FM radio)
— https://youtu.be/UQ37uC8PhhM
Most are available over-the-counter — even at grocery stores.
No doctor’s prescription needed.
And the marketing? They can be very convincing.
“Mga mahal ko pong kababayan, subukan niyo po na mag-inom ng Markcafe Brown Rice Coffee dahil po dito, asahan nyo po na lalakas ang inyong pakiramdam…” (haha galing ulit sa radyo :-))
— https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1365015908203368
And then there’s food — the thing we put in our mouths to nourish us.
Even here, supplementation has taken over.
Canned corned beef used to be just corned beef.
Now we have spicy versions, hash versions, and “extra flavor” variants.
Pandesal? You don’t just get it from your neighborhood bakery anymore — they’re everywhere, in every form: cheese pandesal, ube pandesal, low-carb pandesal.
Desserts are more colorful, more layered, and more sugar-infused than ever.
Ice cream isn’t just ice cream — it’s topped with Oreo bits, crushed grahams, M&M’s, marshmallows, chocolate syrup, and Stick-O.
It’s wild when we think about it… even food has become a product of excess.
So much added. So many options.
But maybe it’s time we start questioning the choices constantly being thrown at us.
Try something different for ourselves — and see how things turn out.
We continue the experiment, but so far, it has taught us this:
We’ve been conditioned to add things to solve our problems.
Rarely are we told: maybe… take something away?
Perhaps the simplest food choices are the most nourishing — the basics, what our ancestors lived on for centuries: meat.
Oftentimes, we forget that our bodies are built to heal.
We rush to fill them with fixes, instead of giving them space to do what they were made to do.
But of course — there’s no money in “taking away.”
So maybe that’s why we’re told to just keep adding.
