What we learned...

One month dairy free. This was a challenge we set for ourselves after taking a long look at our diet and seeing how many dairy products we were consuming. We stopped all dairy cold turkey for one month changing nothing else. Our home was already gluten free, so learning a new diet was not that hard. In later posts I will put up some new recipes and food reviews of things we tried. Here are some of the things we discovered along the way.

~The first thing we noticed was our weight just dropping off. My husband Bear lost 19.5 lbs and I have lost 15 lbs ( I had a Dr. appointment before this all started and I have a Dr. appointment on Thursday, I may have lost more and will get a more accurate reading on my weight then).

~The second goes with the first, with out the dairy, our caloric intake was drastically slashed.

~Right away we also noticed that we had lost a bloated feeling that we did not know we had till it was gone. It sounds strange, but we felt lighter.

~After a week we noticed that we did not miss or crave the dairy any more but were starting to crave healthy foods, like raw veggies (sugar snap peas and zucchini Yum!).

~ The weather has been shifting all over the place and my Ehlers Danlos has not hurt as badly as it normally does when the weather shifts. It's still there, but less pain is always better.

~Staying true to the experiment of ONLY changing the dairy in our life style became harder to keep to. We have more energy and want to get outside, go for walks, and exercise more. It's like the dairy was keeping us tired.

~At first I had some problems with my Hypoglycemia. I used to control the crashes with cheese. But with a few protein changes in my diet I have not had a singe crash since the first week and feel overall more stable. If I don't start my day with protein I need it for a mid morning snack. Having a protein filled afternoon snack usually carries me through the rest of the day.

~Bear used to suffer horrible acid reflux that would keep him up all night. That has completely disappeared since we went dairy free.

~Bear also used to snore so loudly that I would loose sleep. With less dairy there is less phlegm, with less phlegm the snoring has also ceased.

~We both sleep better and deeper, wake up without being groggy, and have noticed an overall mood improvement on both our sides.

~Our skin has cleared up. We have less acne and our skin has an overall even tone.

~Food seems more enjoyable and we feel fuller faster.

~Spending time in the kitchen cooking together and looking over new menus has brought us closer together. It 's so fun to spend the evening looking over recipe books and baking pita bread.

~We both have an over all "clean" feeling.

~ We've shifted back to eating out of bento lunch boxes which give us less food with more variety which tricks our brain into thinking we are getting more food.

~ Our grocery bills have gone down.

Bear has made a complete 180 health wise, just like I did when we went gluten free. He will be getting tested for casein, lactose, or other dairy allergies. It looks like no matter what the test results are our house will now be Dairy and Gluten Free. We wont be as strict as we are about gluten but for all intensive purposes this experiment was a success. Enjoy!