You'll take my cheese when you pry it from my cold, dead hands
[weight-related stuff, may be triggery for some]
So I've gotten desperate enough (about feeling sick constantly) to start trying a semi-exclusion diet to figure out if I have food sensitivities. I decided to start with dairy, since I was allergic to it as a kid, so it seems the most likely culprit.
I've removed milk, cottage cheese, yogurt, and butter from my diet for two weeks, and severely limited my cheese intake. And here's the thing: I feel better. I have more energy, my asthma hasn't been plaguing me, and I'm sleeping better.
However, it's also normal for me to go through phases where I sleep better, have less asthma, and don't feel completely horrible. So I don't know whether it's the lack of dairy, or I would be experiencing this anyway. I'll have to keep doing the semi-exclusion diet.
Which brings its own problems, unfortunately. Dairy is my major protein source, and on any given day, will be 25-33% of my daily calories. I can replace the calories with rice "milk", but not the protein. I don't have enough appetite to start consuming ten additional eggs a day, or 1.5 cups of peanuts. Soy "milk" has protein, but it also has phytoestrogens; with the fact that I'm super-sensitive to hormones and my hormone system is already all weird, dumping a lot of outside estrogen into the system seems like a bad idea.
Not sure how I'm going to resolve this. I've had to almost entirely stop going to the gym because of not having enough calories. I'm already underweight, I can't risk losing more weight.
Ultimately, even if it does turn out dairy is my problem, I'm not going dairy-free. I'll trade having asthma for the pleasure of eating Beemster Extra Old. But I'll have to figure out how to significantly reduce my dairy intake and still get enough calories and protein.
So I've gotten desperate enough (about feeling sick constantly) to start trying a semi-exclusion diet to figure out if I have food sensitivities. I decided to start with dairy, since I was allergic to it as a kid, so it seems the most likely culprit.
I've removed milk, cottage cheese, yogurt, and butter from my diet for two weeks, and severely limited my cheese intake. And here's the thing: I feel better. I have more energy, my asthma hasn't been plaguing me, and I'm sleeping better.
However, it's also normal for me to go through phases where I sleep better, have less asthma, and don't feel completely horrible. So I don't know whether it's the lack of dairy, or I would be experiencing this anyway. I'll have to keep doing the semi-exclusion diet.
Which brings its own problems, unfortunately. Dairy is my major protein source, and on any given day, will be 25-33% of my daily calories. I can replace the calories with rice "milk", but not the protein. I don't have enough appetite to start consuming ten additional eggs a day, or 1.5 cups of peanuts. Soy "milk" has protein, but it also has phytoestrogens; with the fact that I'm super-sensitive to hormones and my hormone system is already all weird, dumping a lot of outside estrogen into the system seems like a bad idea.
Not sure how I'm going to resolve this. I've had to almost entirely stop going to the gym because of not having enough calories. I'm already underweight, I can't risk losing more weight.
Ultimately, even if it does turn out dairy is my problem, I'm not going dairy-free. I'll trade having asthma for the pleasure of eating Beemster Extra Old. But I'll have to figure out how to significantly reduce my dairy intake and still get enough calories and protein.