When most people say they want to become legends, they don’t mean they want to become a cautionary tale. But that’s exactly what the latest Florida Man has done as a result of eating his weight in butter, cheese, and beef every week. After nearly a year of his high-animal-fat diet, he went to the doctor to find out why his skin had developed strange yellow nodules—only to discover that his body was literally secreting cholesterol because he was consuming so much of it.
Let’s all take a quick team vomit break, and reconvene in the next paragraph.
Everybody good? Ish? OK, moving on. This dude’s diet is hardly the first time someone has taken the high-protein life just a little too far. Culturally, Americans tend to keep circling back to meat-heavy diets. In case you’ve forgotten, here are a few of the biggies:
- The Atkins Diet: Eat bacon, lose weight, and totally ignore the fact that the man behind it had a history of heart conditions.
- The Paleo Diet: What did Paleolithic humans eat? Probably not sticks of butter, but go for it anyway!
- The Keto Diet: Science says cheese is a food group, so have at it, y’all!
Each of these diets has shared the same promise: minimal effort, rapid results, and a deliberate ignoring of any long-term health risks.
Humans have short attention spans and a deep, abiding love for quick fixes. When it comes to our diets, we’ll try just about anything that doesn’t involve militant portion control or eating exclusively like bunnies. But eventually, we’ve got to learn that “all protein, all the time” is not a great idea. And on that note, let’s circle back to Florida Man.
The Fuck Around
This guy, in his 40s, decided to try what he called a “carnivore” diet. He was eating between 6–9 pounds of cheese, sticks of butter, and burgers daily—adding extra fat to the burgers for good measure. He claimed to have dropped weight, gained energy, and experienced improved mental clarity.
The Find Out
Our dear Florida Man went to the doctor for painless yellow nodules that had developed on his elbows, palms, and the soles of his feet. He was diagnosed with a condition called xanthelasma, which basically means you have so much cholesterol in your body that excess lipids leak from your blood vessels and form deposits. While the rest of his body worked overtime to keep him alive, his total cholesterol level was over 1,000 mg/dL. For context, the “at-risk” threshold for cholesterol is 240 mg/dL.
We know now that meat- and fat-heavy diets can wreak havoc on cholesterol and heart health. But that knowledge hasn’t stopped us from thinking, “Maybe this time it’ll work.” The case of Florida Man proves that the human body doesn’t love being a grease trap for hamburgers. When cholesterol is literally oozing out of you? Maybe it’s time to take a break on the cheese for a little while.
People, just eat your damn veggies like Mom always told you to. And remember: If you decide to fuck around with a cholesterol-heavy diet, you might just find out—by finding liquid fat deposits on your hands.