For Holden, a young man from a small town in West Virginia, the bathroom had become a place of terror. What started in 2020 as sporadic irregularities and minor bleeding—dismissed by doctors as “just hemorrhoids”—gradually escalated into a full-blown medical crisis by Christmas of 2023.
Holden was trapped in a cycle of severe urgency, running to the bathroom multiple times a day, actively losing blood with every movement. The condition consumed his life; he couldn’t leave his house without mapping out every nearby restroom. After an agonizing, months-long wait to see a specialist, he woke up from anesthesia following a colonoscopy to a bleak, sudden verdict: “You have ulcerative colitis. You’ll have it for the rest of your life. Choose one of these three medications.” When Holden asked if changing his diet could help, his gastroenterologist didn’t hesitate: “It can’t cure it. It can’t fix it. You need the medicine.”
The Vicious Cycle of Medicine 2.0
Holden complied with the standard care model. He was put on heavy steroids and a daily pill called Ozanimod. He felt great for about three months, but the relief was a mirage—his symptoms returned with a vengeance. When his doctor told him the first line of defense had already failed, Holden did his own research.
“Every story I read was: stick to the Mediterranean diet, take the medicine, and if that fails, try another one,” Holden recalls. “And if none of them work, they cut your colon out. That’s your life.”
The terrifying timeline of his future plunged Holden into a severe, dark depression. Facing the prospect of permanent mutilation and pooping into a bag for the rest of his life, he admits he reached a point where he was ready to commit suicide. Out of raw desperation, he refused to accept that his body was built to fail and began searching for alternative success stories online.
The Quarter-Million Dollar Illusion
Holden eventually advanced to Skyrizi, a highly aggressive biologic medication requiring massive intravenous infusions. To put the mainstream medical paradigm into perspective, each of Holden’s initial monthly infusions cost a staggering $85,000 before insurance—amounting to a quarter of a million dollars for just three months of treatment, supplemented by daily pills costing $300 each.
Recognizing the sheer insanity of managing a lifestyle disease exclusively with astronomical pharmaceutical price tags, Holden took matters into his own hands in mid-2024. He adopted a strict, zero-fiber Carnivore protocol: grass-fed red meat, whitetail deer from his family’s hunts, eggs, salt, and tallow.
The timeline of his healing was immediate. Within two weeks of dropping all plant foods, grains, and seed oils, his chronic diarrhea and bloody stools vanished.
Over a Year in True Remission
Today, Holden has been strictly carnivore for nearly a year and a half. He has completely rebuilt his health from the ground up:
- GEOMETRIC WEIGHT RESTORATION: After dropping to an emaciated 155 pounds at 5’11” due to fear of eating, Holden gained back 30 pounds of vibrant, healthy muscle mass within three months of eating red meat.
- THE END OF THE FOOD CRUTCH: By eliminating ultra-processed “health bars” and sugar-laden energy drinks, Holden completely rewired his brain’s reward center, breaking a lifelong cycle of food addiction and obsessive cheat-meal cravings.
- UNSHAKABLE STRENGTH: Holden works full-time on a golf course grounds crew and has taken up long-distance running—completely without the “carbing up” conventional wisdom swears is mandatory for stamina.
When Holden occasionally tests his tolerance with fiber or dairy, his gut immediately status-checks him with minor cramping and constipation, proving to him that a zero-plant framework keeps his inflammation completely locked down. His ultimate goal is to work with an open-minded practitioner to safely taper off his biologic entirely.
“I was looking down a road that led to getting my colon cut out. To me, that was simply not an acceptable possibility. There is another way out of the helplessness.”
