Who's given up dairy?

I'm going to give it up for a month and I'm wondering - if you gave up dairy:

- What was the reason?
- What were the benefits (if any)?
- Did you go through any withdrawal / detox symptoms?

When I gave it up as a vegan I simultaneously gave up wheat and sugar so it's hard to know how it effected me.

But the last few months my dairy consumption has been pretty excessive... its the bulk of my calories, and sometimes I'll eat it three times a day.! I feel great and have loads of energy, but lately I've noticed a few (not positive) physical changes - dark circles and more wrinkles under my eyes, more bloating than usual etc.

I've read the bad press (used to be vegan... the irony) - particularly about it clogging the lymphatic system, but I was really craving it, so I figured my body must need it. Then I read that casein has an opiate effect... sigh.

Muchos gracias.

Are you giving up dairy or just casein?

[QUOTE=magicmerl;1101334]Are you giving up dairy or just casein?[/QUOTE]

Ummm. Dairy? :)

I don't know - anything bad I read related to dairy as a whole and didn't differentiate...

i eat little dairy but awhile back i was on the Specific Carb Diet for colitis and cut out all dairy except 24h homemade yoghurt (basically no lactose left, majorly good probiotic content).
it depends on teh quality and quantity of dairy you're eating. someone making homemade yoghurt (eating a few x week) and a few hard cheese occasionally (basically me) probably won't notice a big difference of omitting it completely.

BUT someone who has it as the primary diet food such as yourself...i'm so curious! let us know after a month how things go. then reintroduce from the most bening/beneficial to the 'worst' (yoghurt/kefir - then high quality hard cheese - then milk) and see how you feel.

really, anyone else's experience would only be comparable if they had a similar constitution and diet as you.

[QUOTE=meloroaster;1101345]

really, anyone else's experience would only be comparable if they had a similar constitution and diet as you.[/QUOTE]

True that, yo.

Thanks for your input :)

I gave it up for three months to see if it
was the reason LadyTime was coming early (24 days instead
of 28 days, sometimes TWICE a month).

It had nothing to do with it, unfortunately, I'm just old.

In that time I also watched my allergies (lots of sneezing and
blowing my nose), thinking that maybe the dairy had something
to do with it.

It didn't.

Again, just my old ladiness payin' it forward.

Mama ain't 20 anymore.

Wish it WAS the dairy! I'd give it all up in a heartbeat to
make LT regular and to stop freaking sneezing a thousand
times a day WITHOUT Flonase.

Julie

p.s. and it never did anything to make me "stall" or lose
weight any faster, either... for me, that depends on
plain ol' calories, not what they come from.

My body is very sensitive to dairy. I noticed that my body performed more optimally when I cut out my daily coffee with cream, including no tightness in my chest that I used to get almost all the time after exercise. It might have been the coffee, but I was also ingesting a lot of caffeine in the form of tea to compensate, so not so sure if that was the case. However, my congestion got to its worst when I was consuming a lot of soft sheep cheeses, so maybe it was the dairy? It's too bad because I like the cream to cut some of the bitterness of coffee, but oh well.

I know that dairy isn't a problem for me. Plus, I'd never give up milk/cream in my coffee, cheese, or yogurt. I do think I could give up butter, but it's not a "bad" dairy, particularly ghee. So let us know how it goes but know also that your mileage may vary! :)

I gave up all dairy except for butter (and the occasional protein powder) as part of going Paleo. Results have been excellent, but I have no way to determine what result if any can be attributed to not eating dairy.

The thing is that there's two different things that people can be intolerant to in dairy: lactose and casein. Lactose is a carbohydrate, and is found in the 'water' of the milk, so it's largely absent from butter and cheese. Casein is a protein, so ghee (which is just the purified butterfat with the proteins excluded) is casein free.

I have a mild milk intolerance, where I used to get dry skin around my nose.

I didn't consciously give up milk, but when I stopped eating cereals and porridge there was no reason to consume it any more. I still have butter and cream.