I originally wrote this back in May. I went back and forth on whether or not to even post this. I can make up stories about what people think about me, but in the end it’s the stories I tell myself that are worst.

There is an unspoken rule in the personal training industry: if you are a female you have to be thin and look like Tracy Andersen and if you are a male you have to be bulky and look like the Rock. I wish I could make shit like this up, but I can’t.
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​I’ve always struggled with my weight and body image. My sister has always been skinny and I always wanted to be as skinny as her. Come to find out she has an autoimmune disease and a crapton of food allergies, which explains her difficulties gaining weight.  

After graduating college I moved to Denver, CO and landed a pretty cushy job with an insurance company. By 2008, I had ballooned to 196 pounds. The company happy hours and dinners were having a huge impact on my health and weight.

One day during lunch I bought Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore's Dilemma. This book busted open the doors to how I began to think about the food I put in my body. Michael Pollan’s philosophy on food worked for a little while, but then I was back to my old habits. At that time in my life, I wasn’t ready for change. I was in denial, I was depressed, and I was convinced that this is how real adults lived.  A couple of months later after a night of binge drinking, and my sister being pretty harsh with her words, I made some drastic changes, fast.

I immediately quit drinking alcohol, cold turkey. I got shit from people at work, but I did it. I started eating organic and smaller portions. The eating organic came down to taste; the conventional fruit genuinely tasted chemically. If was going to eat more of fruits and veggies, they couldn’t taste like scratch n’ sniff sticker.  I also became a vegetarian.
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Today starts week 4 of being completely dairy-free. Now, you may be wondering why I decided to give up dairy. There’s a long list of reasons, but for brevity this is what you get:  Jon and I we eat way too much of this inflammatory food – like every meal has milk or cheese in it, I’ve had an ELISA/ACT blood test done and I have a sensitivity to milk, dairy has gotten fucking expensive, and I don’t have a God damn gallbladder.  So after years of going back and forth I finally cut the fucking cord.

I was dairy-free when I met Jon years ago. I drank soy lattes and bought Amy’s Vegan frozen pizzas. Once we started dating I didn't pay attention to what we were eating - as long as it was organic, local, or homemade I ate it. Pre-Jon I followed a strict low fat diet, not because I wanted to lose weight – okay I did want to lose 40 lbs, but mainly because I had my gallbladder removed back in 2007. (Big shout out to Nicole and Pat for spending spring break with me in the hospital). After I had my “maraca” removed, yes - the radiation technician compared my gallbladder to a “maraca,” eating dairy and meat put me to sleep. To this day eating a hamburger will send me into a comma. I go to bed at 7:30p not necessarily because I am tired, but because I eat ice cream at night (wicked sweet tooth) and it's super difficult for my body to process the fat because I don’t store as much bile as someone who has a gallbladder. Side note, DON’T HAVE YOUR GALLBLADDER REMOVED! DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO KEEP IT! Also, when you are going into surgery, don’t joke about keeping your gallbladder as a maraca. They don’t take too kindly to that kind of joke.

So here I am, dairy-free...again. The first couple of days, okay week, was pretty hard. Thanks to my dairy-loving husband I fell in love with real cream. I LOVE coffee with real cream. Not half and half, motherfucking whipping cream. Before Jon, I just put soy milk in my coffee. Oh sweet baby Jesus, real cream in your coffee is downright dangerous. I also have to thank Morning Fresh Dairy Farm in Denver for having pint-sized re-usable glass containers full of their delicious cream. For which I would have never started putting cream in my coffee.  Real cream has been the hardest thing to get rid of. I tried soy milk, yuck. Coconut oil, bleh. Coconut manna, don’t do it. I was about to just quit drinking coffee when a friend said to drink it black. He promised I would get used to it. Sure as shit I am used to drinking black coffee. Surprised the fuck out of me.
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Has it been worth it? That's the question of the hour. When I met Jon my periods were 3 days long and I had no cramps. I know, lucky me. My overall mood back then is up for interpretation. My periods overtime have become longer, averaging 6-7 days. I have wicked ass cramps and I am irritable as fuck. My latest period lasted 3 days and I had no cramps. This could be from eliminating dairy or the fact that I was at a yoga training and moving a lot. My gut says dairy because I wasn’t pissy at the yoga training. Trust me when someone says something stupid when I am on my period, I let them know it was stupid. I was very level headed through out the entire training. I was even okay with no room service on Saturday and Sunday - and I was hangry as fuck when I got to the hotel room the last night of training.
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Here’s your chance to skip down cause I’m gonna talk about my poop. My poops used to float. Floating poops usually mean malabsorption of the nutrients in your food, you have gas, or undigested fat in the poop. Floating poops also are a sign that you could be lactose intolerant. My poops were also kinda yellow. Yellow poop indicates a lack of bile. Um, hello no gallbladder! In the past couple of weeks poops are consistently darker and don’t float. They are also taking on the banana shape – like poops are “supposed” to be.

In all honestly, I still think it is too early to tell if eliminating dairy is doing any long-term good. Yes, I am down a couple of pounds, I am wanting to stay up later at night, my last period was lighter, and my poops look like poop. I’ll have to wait and see for a couple of more months.  For now, I am drinking my coffee black and am learning to make dairy-free cashew mozzarella for Saturday night pizza.