Life without cheese

Dairy-free. No cheese. No milk. No butter. No ice cream. No chocolate.

how?

HOW can people live this way?!?

When I first decided to write about my dairy-free attempt I was about ten days into the lifestyle change. Now here I sit, two months after I gave that up! Needless to say, I gave it a month and a half and decided it just wasn't for me.

First, I started out going dairy-free in EVERY facet of life. If there were ingredients within a recipe, I didn't eat it. If there was cross-contamination possibilities (discovered that almost ALL fried foods, at least from fast-food restaurants, contain milk in some form because of the re-used oil), it didn't go down the hatch. After two weeks without french fries on top of  missing out on all of my beloved dairy foods, I decided to not go quite so intense with it... after all, I don't have an allergy to dairy and the amount of diary actually present in the above-mentioned instances wasn't enough to justify not eating it, at least to me. I figured after my initial diary-free attempts, it wouldn't kill me to reintroduce small amounts of dairy back into my diet overtime.  After another four weeks of that, I thought I would die if I couldn't have a chocolate shake or some macaroni and cheese, two of my four basic food groups, let's be honest. It was at that point I decided to nix the whole thing and go back to ole faithful, all in moderation. Plus, when I read that avoiding dairy, even for a small time, can cause a lactose intolerance, I feared I'd create a lifestyle I didn't really want to implement for all of my life.

My overwhelming reason for attempting this was weight loss. I know that the majority of what I consume is dairy, wheat, sugar, and pasta related things. So by cutting out diary, I'd reduce a little bit of each of those additional groups, because oftentimes diary is a part of or on top of those things. Less of that stuff equals less "bad" stuff I'd be eating, perhaps replacing it with more "good" things and lending towards cut calories. Another reason why I thought I'd give this is a go jumps off a previous post I did where I revealed my absolute HATRED of my skin. I'd read and heard and been told that dairy can be a major factor in acne issues, so why not, right?

Now, most of you will probably say, ummm you gave it like 7 weeks, so of course you didn't see results. Here's my thing... I'm really really impatient. And my love for dairy, dairy-related, and dairy-partnered foods overrides the hell I found myself living in. Okay, maybe hell is a bit harsh, but no freaking ice cream. But seriously... in 7 weeks I should've seen something, and I didn't. No weight loss, no change in acne, no improvement in overall "feeling" better.

My overall assessment: while dairy-free may work for some, it certainly didn't work for me. I think I actually dreamed of cheese at some point :(

What about you... given it a try? Hated it, loved it, still doing it?