How Going Completely Dairy Free is Changing My Life

For those of you who have been following my journey for a while, you know that it has taken me four years to get to this spot. I lost 100lbs, gained back 10-20 while I was marathon training and have been lingering around this spot without much movement for almost two years now.

It didn't take me much time to learn what is wrong with my body, but it does seem to take me a lot of time before I will make changes. For instance, I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease 11 years ago. Unfortunately, I really liked cinnamon rolls, pasta, and pizza so I didn't actually get off gluten officially until about five years ago.

That was the first step of my journey into understanding and listening to my body. Through the years, I've learned a few other things. One of them is that my body doesn't really care for dairy products. That might actually put it lightly. After doing significant research, it seems that my body is "highly allergic" to dairy products. Whenever I would eat dairy, I would stop breathing and need to take Benadryl, my ears would clog up so that I couldn't hear, and the scale would go up 15 lbs overnight (not an exaggeration). This 15 lb weight gain wasn't because I binged on dairy products. This happened once with a piece of cheese or a little of the creamer from the store. It felt like I was on an uphill battle that I would never win.

Once I understood that I couldn't really handle dairy, I gave it up in my daily life "sort of." I didn't drink milk or eat cheese. I gave up my daily yogurt habit. But I would still sneak it in with little things like some milk chocolate or "just one slice" of gluten free pizza. Every time I ate it, I would have vicious reactions. It took a couple of years, but I finally made the choice to give it up for good. No gluten free pizza (unless cheese free), no sneaky milk chocolate (sad), and no non-dairy creamer (since this still has milk proteins in it unless it says dairy free).

It has changed my life. I finally feel like my brain and the scale are moving again. My workouts are awesome, I don't feel bloated all the time, my ears have actually been clear and my crazy sugar cravings have leveled themselves out. If you are concerned about any intolerance or allergy, I would definitely go without it for a while and see if that helps. Finally being honest about my allergy and removing dairy from my diet, makes me feel like I have a brand new body.