No Dairy! Say What?

Love a Cow!!

Growing up in Upstate NY I used to “do rounds” on the weekends with a retired Veterinarian, Doc, who specialized in Dairy Cows and go to the barns and watch him work. I love the smell of farms. One of my favorite views when I am “home” in NY is going up the other side of the valley where all the dairy farms are. I grew up with kids who showed cows at the county fair and whose father’s got up at the crack of dawn to milk before coming in from breakfast.

Not to even mention CHEESE! I mean NY Sharp Cheddar? Does it get any better than that? (OK, well in the past year I HAVE discovered Goat Gouda and it does give my cheddar a run for its money- which you will see is a darm good thing too!) Milk? I don’t drink it often- but when I crave it? It’s a whole half gallon in a day kind of craving! Ask my friends and My Guy- I could LIVE on Greek Yogurt and Cottage cheese is purchased two tubs at a time in my house… let’s not even get started on Ice Cream!

Did you know My Guy grew up in Wisconsin? He is born bred and grown a full blown “Cheese-head!” We recently revised our budget and eating habits because we were spending so much money on cheese and crackers! Cheese goes in our eggs. Cheese is just nibbled on. My Guy eats Greek Yogurt every day too. We do not buy “Cool Whip” we make our own homemade whipped cream with Heavy Whipping Cream. A sour cream tub is always in the fridge. We use real butter so we don’t have to consume the chemicals in the “fake” stuff.

I think you can see the trend here. <sigh>

Over three years ago, my Holistic Health Practitioner warned me that I was sensitive to dairy. Not just a “simple” lactose intolerance, but an “allergy” to both types of Dairy Proteins. I choose to ignore him! I have no accute symptoms and heck- a girl needs to have SOME fun right? LOL  I do however often have some of the other “milder” symptoms of a dairy allergy. (Some of the symptoms include: flatulence, bloating, cramps, diahrea etc.) However, I figured I could live with them to be able to eat my cheese and yogurt.

This week, I finally got My Guy to go see my Practitioner with me. He went for his back/shoulder pain- but in the initial visit- Dr. Stockton always does the whole overall testing and low and behold… My Guy is also “sensitive” to dairy!! {FRAK} Now what? My Guy is way better at saying- ”Well, if it’s bad for us… let’s stop doing it!” LOL He worked through all those feelings about our cheese, butter, yogurt etc in lightening speed and by the time we got home- he was ready to throw away all the dairy in the fridge and quit cold turkey! SAY WHAT?

So- we compromised. He will stop eating dairy immediately and I will finish the dairy that is already in the fridge- I ate the last yogurt this morning and I was eating some cottage cheese while I started this post! LOL We have some Feta cheese for our salad tonight- we are still undecided what to do about that right now! LOL

A new adventure in the journey to healthy! I will be posting more about this drama! The trials, tribulations and difficulties of going Dairy Free. We are going to start by eliminating the obvious and not worrying about the “hidden dairy” and see how we feel then make some decisions in about a month.

In my Health Coaching classes I have also been learning A LOT about Dairy and the cons primarily of having it in our daily food source. So I will hopefully be sharing some of the information from those resources as well. One thing I will tell you I was surprised about-  the lack of info on the web about dairy allergies or sensitivies. I was going to make this a post with lots of links to information about Dairy and the pros and cons… but the web is surprisingly quiet on the topic.

How many of you have eliminated or reduced the Dairy in your diets?

How did it go? How is it going?