I think we’re at the three week mark of living without any dairy, coffee, or chocolate.

So far my observations about consuming dairy products and coffee has shown themselves to be true in our lives.

Now, I am by no means going to say that dairy and coffee are evil and you should avoid them like the plague. That would be silly, but, for those who have unexplained health problems such as insomnia, low blood sugar, swollen ankles and edema (no it might not be the salt), heart palpitations, depression, anxiety, dry skin, hair loss, inflammatory digestive issues, then it really, REALLY couldn’t hurt to omit certain foods to find out for sure.

Until we’re ready to face the fact that we could have been assaulting our own bodies (and quite possibly the bodies of our children) by eating the offending foods, we’ll just continue to think it’s age related, or due to a lack of sleep, or even stress.

Many people like myself have dodged the dairy and coffee issue, thinking that it would be way too difficult to omit those things from our diet, and continue to make excuses for why it couldn’t be the dairy or coffee, any number of grains, starches or processed food.

We would rather self-deceive, by putting the word “healthy” in front of some recipe or prepackaged food, that includes GMO corn chips, laced with GMO ladened soy, cottonseed or canola oil, and heavily laden with lots of melted cheese. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, because I used to do that! I thought to myself, “The recipe says its healthy probably because it left the chopped meat out, and saturated fats are considered unhealthy.” Now, before you shoot me for thinking such a thing, let me explain that this kind of thinking is based on misinformation. The medical industry has done a great disservice to people when they led them to believe that animal fats and saturated fats were artery clogging, heart attack making foods. The truth is that it would have been better to eat the ground beef and omit everything else! Not that ground beef alone is a balanced meal, but hey, neither is nachos with cheese on it.

I believe that we need to test for ourselves whether dairy could be causing problems to our health. It may not show up as digestive problems, but I can tell you this much; if you KNOW you are lactose intolerant (just drink a regular glass of milk and watch the flatulence commence) you shouldn’t be eating any dairy. I couldn’t drink a glass of regular milk without sounding like someone who just finished off a can of beans! I could drink heavy cream, cheeses, yogurts, and other types of dairy without incident, but that lone glass of regular milk would do me in.

So you might think that the best thing to do is to just NOT drink regular milk any more…drink skim. There is more sugar in skim milk than in full fat milk, and just because its skim, non-fat, or even heavy cream, doesn’t take away the fact that I am lactose intolerant! There is no way around that. It means step away from the dairy, because even if it isn’t causing immediate problems in the gut with flatulence or even diarrhea, it could be causing other annoying issues, like insomnia, or even edema.

The first two weeks of being dairy and coffee free was easy, although I did go through a mini detox. I felt tired and a bit irritable. Then, this past Saturday, I looked down and noticed that my forever blown up ankles were normal in size for the first time in about 8 years. I have a problem with extreme edema in my whole body, but my face and ankles suffer the most. To see my ankles again was amazing. I didn’t change my salt intake because salt is very important to our cells and body. It’s the kind of salt you use that is the problem. My edema was caused by dairy and coffee. I say both because they have similar protein structures and the body will not differentiate between gluten, dairy and coffee…most of the time.

The most important first step we took in going dairy and coffee free was to be prepared. If you are having unexplained health problems, or even, autoimmune responses, look for great recipes online that will support a transition to no grains, starches, dairy, chocolate or coffee. There are so many great websites for recipes to get you going in the right direction.

Unfortunately, there will always be those who will walk away sorrowfully because they despise cooking. I firmly believe that we need to be proactive in our own food lives. Prepackaged foods will always have undeclared food items, or cleverly hidden offended foods in the form of “natural flavors” or “vegetable oil.” The very vagueness of such ingredients should be suspect. If you make your food from scratch, you will be a proactive participant in your well being and health.

If you just can’t bring yourself to cook your own food, hire a private chef to tailor the food to your needs. What? You don’t have money for a personal chef? Isn’t it funny how the food industry has brainwashed us to believe that we deserve to pay for prepackaged foods, lovingly wrapped in bright shinny packages? It’s like a chef in the box isn’t it? That food comes at a steep price, not only to your health and well being, but also to the low wages being offered to those who manufacture that meal in a box. To take it a step even further, the food in that prepackaged meal was derived from unsustainable farming practices, subsidies, and low wages to farmers. That’s why it’s cheaper to get the food in a box, rather than hire a personal chef to order all the organic produce so that you can eat a meal you didn’t want to cook.

We need to take chances, experiment, and be willing to make mistakes…especially in the kitchen. So what if you burn something! Try again. There is nothing more empowering than knowing you are 100% responsible for your own health. It won’t be found in a low calorie prepackaged diet food…ever. We need to learn how to prepare food, and to also teach our children. Their lives, health and well being depend on it. If our children don’t understand the value of good food and how to prepare it, we set them up for a magnificent failure in life. Soon Simone will be old enough to learn how to cook (she’s very interested already in helping), and just like the rest of my kids, she will be taught how to cook the basics. When she’s older, if she’s interested in learning more complex meals, I’ll teach her. I feel it’s one of the most empowering things we can do for our children. We need to set the example and give them the tools needed to thrive…even if they choose not to use those tools.

Some may think they don’t have time to prepare their own food, and since it’s easier to just get the food prepackaged, they just chalk it up to a time issue. To that I say bull-donkey! I have personally made many meals that took less than a half hour to prepare and cook. Cooking food can be as complex or as simple as you make it.

A question I get asked often is, “If you don’t eat any grains at all, or starchy things like potatoes, dairy products, or even coffee, what can you eat? It doesn’t seem too appetizing to me…I’ll pass!”

To me, questions like this mean I pretty much know what that person eats exclusively. Pasta, bread, potatoes, cheese, butter, french fries, ice cream, cookies, cake, cheezits, cereal, milk. They probably don’t actually eat many fruits and vegetables, and it’s funny how they never ask me about the types of animal protein I eat, or how much. Nor do they ask about essential fats, the lack of vegetable oils, whether my food is GMO free, if I eat pastured animal products, what kind of eggs I eat, or if any interesting salads and dressings are included.

The truth is that there is a huge abundance of food that we CAN and DO eat. They just don’t include the foods most people eat. We enjoying roasting, baking, frying, soups, salads, desserts, great hearty breakfasts, light lunches, beautiful dinners. We really aren’t missing a damn thing by not eating dairy, grains, starches, legumes, coffee or chocolate, especially when we have so much food at our fingertips to experiment with.

Tagged as: living without dairy, no chocolate, paleo diet, Primal Body Primal Mind, Primal Living

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