a new challenge

Hello everyone,
I've decide to blog about my struggles with going dairy-free. I can only hope that as I write for my own sanity, I can maybe help some others out there in the future who have to do the same thing.

While I do love animals and wish that I could say I was doing this simply not to play into factory farming anymore, that isn't the case. I wish I had that kind of willpower. In reality, I am in love with cheese, truly in love, and I don't know how we could ever break up regardless of cheese's faults.

Or so, that is, until the doctor told me I needed to.

Yesterday I went to get food allergy tests (we're thinking food allergy may be the cause of the symptoms I have, including migraines), and reacted to dairy in the tests. I was prepared for another reaction, like corn or gluten. I was thinking how I could get gluten-free stuff with my friend Emily (who needs gluten-free), or maybe even quit Mountain Dew if it were a corn allergy (Mt Dew has corn syrup in it. I've been drinking it my entire life, since I was a baby). But no, not kicking my caffeine habit for me, it's my other life-long affair with cheese that I have to battle.

I feel like I'm totally overreacting, but I really am mourning all of this. All I could think about yesterday would be the things that I love that I'd have to give up:

• milkshakes


• ice cream (especially our great ice cream at CIP, always a bonding type of food with other servers)


• cheese sandwiches (especially when I'm on the run and have nothing else)


• macaroni and cheese (which I have a strong sentimental tie to)


• scalloped potatoes (Thanksgiving and Christmas staple)


• ranch dressing (practically the only way I eat salad!! How can you be Southern and not eat RANCH!!)


• cheese fondue


• just eating straight cheese as a snack


• cheese in anything Italian


• fettucine alfredo


• toast with real butter


• milk chocolate!! kit kats, reeses, hershey's, twix, chocolate chip cookies, ugggghhh


• just about everything at my restaurant that I usually eat

that's enough...

(but seriously I don't know how to even cook without butter and cheese)

See, I know that a lot of these things can be replaced, even if not fully successfully, they can be replaced. But you have to buy them and fix them at home. The convenience and therefor social-nes of dairy is a real problem. I work at a restaurant four days a week, and that means that I'll significantly have to change what I eat when I'm there (two of those days, I have to eat there because I only have about ten minutes until I go to my next job). Then there's the going out factor - no more going out with friends for dessert, going to CIP for my birthday, sharing a milkshake, accepting cookies from friends, making desserts for others (which is something I love to do). Well, I suppose my sugar cookes are dairy-free, there is that!

The thing is I'm a pretty up-for-anything type of girl, ready to try new foods, new restaurants, hang out with a new crowd, and go with the flow as soon as someone invites me to go somwhere. If I really have to stay dairy-free, that will mean I cant just eat whatever, like I do now. It sucked enough that I couldn't eat strawberries in the last few years, but damn, now almost every dessert is out of range. Shit, that made me remember, cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory! crab wontons! ugh my food-soul is dying...

My only hope is that they're wrong. I saw the reaction on my skin, but I've been fine with eating dairy (and lots of it) forever. And the symptoms I have, I don't really see how they are related to what I eat. Right now is just going to be a trial period; I go a month without eating dairy and see what happens.

Other concerns...

Nutrition - cheese was a large source of my protein and calcium (which I don't get enough of as it is, I know) so I'm really going to have to think about what I eat. The doctor said it was possible that I could lose weight, which would be dangerous at my size, and especially since I passed out when they took my blood and couldn't get my blood pressure over 74/54 for about 10-15 minutes.

I know I'm obsessing, but this is overwhelming, so I'm going to obsess. I wish I had like a going-dairy-free partner, a supporter person like they have in AA.