You'll Outgrow It

In my last blog post, I told you about my casein allergy.

When I was ten days old it was Christmas time in the late 1970s and I was in the hospital. My mother thought I was dying because there was blood in my stool, my paternal grandmother told her it was the milk causing it, and the doctors confirmed it. My father told me that they did 'nuclear medicine' on me. He had never heard of it and had asked the doctors if it was safe. They assured him it was. I believe that it was probably a barium test that was performed on me. I had extreme inflammation and was bleeding internally. Because many people who have casein allergies also have soy allergies, they put me on an amino based formula called Nutramagen. My dad said it cost $25 a canister. That's about $100 today. I was not a cheap baby.

The doctors told my parents I would outgrow said allergy. I'm not sure that even happens with things that are autoimmune. I think that the milk became less of a part of my diet and I grew bigger so that I was able to tolerate it. I do not think I tolerated it well, and I believe the milk is the original cause of me being nearly 300 pounds. I believe that my gut was inflamed from the time I was allowed to have milk, until three years ago when I gave up all milk products entirely. You may find this hard to believe, but people have lived with far more intolerable things for longer periods of time. I also think as I grew older, that I was tolerating the milk less and less.

Symptoms:

If I were to sit here in front of you and drink a glass of milk, in approximately five to ten minutes, I would feel as if someone were stabbing me in the gut with sharp daggers. This feeling would subside in an hour or two, and is mediated by consuming other food with the milk. The next day and for several days after, I have bad joint pain to the point that moving is painful. I also become a very bad bitch. It's probably from the joint pain, but I am entirely unpleasant to be around if I've been exposed to milk.

I have never had soy by itself, and so I am unsure if it causes the same sort of stomach pain as the milk does. It however does affect my mood, and since it may also be causing low-level inflammation, I avoid it.

It took us a long time to figure out what my problem was. I had known since I was a kid that I'd been in the hospital because of the milk, but I had never heard of a casein allergy, only of lactose intolerance. I didn't think that it was a big deal, and there was no internet, and so I was none the wiser.

McDonalds has good coffee

I backpacked in Italy in 2012. One morning I got a cappuccino from the McDonalds across from Termini station in Rome. If you've not traveled in Italy I'm sure you're thinking McDonalds? Yeah, they have pretty good coffee in Italy, and in the States too. I drank my cappuccino, not having consumed any food with the intention of finding something to eat after, as all they had at that McDonalds was pastries. The Italians need to be introduced to the breakfast taco, seriously, desert for breakfast is not breakfast. Anyway I digress. I didn't get but about two blocks down the street before my stomach started protesting with a vengeance. I thought to myself, "Oh, yeah, coffee is so hard on my stomach, I need to find something to eat quick." No, just no. It is so obvious now that it was the milk in the coffee. In fact, I had made it a point never to drink coffee before I ate breakfast because I thought the coffee upset my stomach. You would think that we would have figured this out sooner, but none of us did. I do wonder how many other people suffer from the same thing, or something similar, and have no idea what is going on with them.

Another interesting thing occurred after I gave up milk. Hiccups used to hurt me bad. I hated getting them, because I would be in agony. My husband thought I was full of it. He would tell me that hiccups don't hurt and that I should buck up. It turns out that my gut must have been so inflamed from the milk, that hiccups did hurt me. They don't any more. I've had them several times in the last three years since giving up the milk, and they've not hurt me once.

But the best thing that happened since I gave up all milk products? The weight that had been plaguing me since the age of eight fell off me. I was and still do eat a low carb diet as well, but I don't count carbs. I just sorta watch that I don't eat too many. How many do I have a day? It's probably akin to the Atkins Maintenance diet. Maybe 60-80? It varies every day. Some days I have less. I rarely go over 100.

So how much weight did I lose? Well I had been stuck at about 190 on low carb for several years and despite doing the Atkins Induction, zero carb, highly ketogenic, I couldn't budge it. However, I had maintained a lower weight than before without struggling and wasn't hungry, so I'd made the decision that if that was as far as I could go, I would be fine with it. I felt so much better eating low carb after all. Then after I removed the milk, I went from the 190 range to about 150 now. I cannot believe that I wear a size 31 in men's Wranglers and I tried on a dress at the mall that was a size 8 and it fit me. I lost forty pounds. Without worrying. Without trying. Without much exercise. I walk my crazy deaf cattle dog down the road a mile or three every day. That's it. It had to be the milk.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles begins Beneath One's Feet

It is difficult to know where exactly to begin.

I know that I weighed nearly three hundred pounds in high school. I say nearly because I wouldn't have gotten on a scale if you'd paid me. I know that I was at the very least 280, but was likely close to 300. I had steadily gained weight starting about the age of eight or so. In the seventh grade I broke my leg, and the doctor told my mother to put me on a diet. My mother, never believing that fat was bad for anyone, put me on a low calorie diet that was not a low fat diet too. I lost quite a bit of weight and was in a size 12, which is still pretty chunky but was an improvement. But then I was very hungry all the time, and the weight crept back on. The size 12 pants got tight, and then the 14s got tight, and before I knew it I was in a size 26 (in women's pants). I was teased relentlessly and called all sorts of names. I remember there was a girl who lost a lot of weight in high school, but I assumed that she did it by starving herself. Now I wonder if she hadn't done Atkins.

Some time after high school, I went to the mall. There were a pair of pants at PacSun that I liked. They didn't make them in a big enough size for me, and that's when I decided to really do something about my weight. Again, I did the calorie restriction, and I lost down to about 220 or so. You can only starve yourself so long though. And 1200 calories a day is starving. The reason why it works is because you are restricting carbohydrates too, and so your insulin is lower, and since your insulin is lower, the fat is let out of the fat cells. Things go so much better without so much hunger if you cut the carbs. And this is why I couldn't maintain the starvation diet. I really tried not to eat very much. My body didn't want to stay at 220 though, it wanted to go back up. I didn't understand why. My sister ate whatever she wanted and in whatever quantity she wanted, never counting anything and was a size 0, and still is now in her thirties.

I had never heard of Atkins, until I met my husband. His mother knew about Atkins since the 1970s. If you read my last post you'll know that I had never heard any of this and there was no internet as we know it now in the early 90s when I was in high school, so I had no way of knowing any of this. The doctors didn't tell me. No one told me.

I went on the Atkins diet in 2002 at the suggestion of my future mother-in-law. I lost down to 163 lbs. It was the least I'd weighed since I was in middle school and lost weight the first time. However, this didn't last. I went off to college in another state, and eating the cafeteria food I didn't gain fifteen pounds. I gained fifty and then some. By the summer before my senior year, my weight had crept back up to 240. I was wearing a size 44 in Men's Wrangler jeans. That summer I did a summer camp at the school for high school students. I was sorta like a camp counselor. We couldn't leave the campus to go anywhere, but we were permitted to go to the gym. With a couple of the other students I worked with inspiring me, I became a gym rat. It's the only time in my life I've been a gym rat. I worked out two to three hours every day. I stopped eating so much in the cafeteria, limiting myself to a small plate. Over the summer, I lost thirty pounds and was into a size 40 in Wrangler's. This was an improvement, but considering the amount I was working out and how much less I was eating over a two month period you'd have thought I'd have lost more, if you believe the mainstream nutritional wisdom.

My senior year was busy, and the weight crept back on very slowly. I took a job a couple of months after graduation, and before I knew it, I was pushing back into size 44 pants. And so again, I started going to the gym at our apartment complex, walking on the beach, eating healthy whole grains, and I managed to get down to about 200 pounds. And that was it. There was no going any lower. Through absolute willpower, I kept my weight in the 200-225 range for three years. I was so hungry, and the weight would creep back on and I'd fight it back off. I tried not to eat very much. I certainly didn't enjoy my food, and any time someone brought something like donuts I felt guilty eating even one. When you're 200 lbs and eat a donut, everyone looks at you like you're a glutton. Even if you nibble it.

In 2010, my mother-in-law sent me Gary Taubes book, Good Calories, Bad Calories and told me to read it. As I said in my previous post, I was angry. All this time the health authorities knew this. They KNEW that low carb worked to lose weight. Not only worked, but kept the weight off. I'm still pissed. I wasted years of my life trying to lose weight. At this point I was close to 225 lbs, again.

I didn't really want to do low carb. It meant giving up food that I liked. In the end though, one has to decide what they like more. As I said before, I have a casein allergy. Things have been given up for that too. When you decide that it's worth it, that you'll feel better not eating the foods you like, and that there are plenty of tasty low carb foods, then it's not so difficult to do. The low carb helped me immensely but because of the dairy allergy, by itself it wasn't a panacea. My husband dropped weight on low carb like it was going out of style. I on the other hand, got stuck, and began to question the validity of all of this. It's valid all right. I believe that if it doesn't work for someone, if they're not cheating on it - as this is not a diet you can cheat on, then there is something else wrong with them. If you've tried low carb and I mean really tried it and you got stuck in a plateau and you couldn't break it, I'd look into other metabolic or food allergy problems.

To be continued...