30 Day Dairy Detox

At the beginning of June, I was feeling sluggish and my will to continue nourishing my body in healthy ways was burning out. One night, June 5th to be exact,  after eating almost an entire cheese pizza I was feeling supremely discouraged.  I'd been lifting weights, swimming and jogging at least a mile every day but my bodies endurance was falling far below my bodies desire to exercise when suddenly it hit me... I had changed my fitness routine but not my eating habits. I was fueling my body on processed foods not fresh fuels. So I challenged myself to go 30 days without dairy. Thirty long hard void of milk and cheese and ice cream days. My self-imposed detox started off easy enough switching back to soy milk and until I started running out of options aka cereal. Again I had to make a choice to consciously eat fresh foods... doesn't sound like that big of a deal for a vegetarian to eat their veggies and fruit but it was for me.... I loathed sticky-wet-messy-sweet-fruit... which means every fruit aside from bananas 'n grapes. Well, I've made it through! Only messed up once (I am looking at you milk chocolate brownies!) and now reflecting on my 30 days of being a dairy-free-vegetarian (I eat/ate egg and fish as they are crazy high in protein) the whole experience was really an eye opener! I learned I enjoy strawberries, blueberries, honey dew melon, watermelon, green apples in addition to finding out how to mix more veggies into meals. I also cooked whole dairy free meals....wait for it... from scratch! It was really exciting to actually make myself entire meals because then I knew what was and wasn't ending up in my diet. I just wanted to share my little dietary experiment to encourage any type of eater to step out of their comfort zone for a couple days. My body is sure happy I did. Have you ever removed something from your diet all in the name of physical fitness and food self education? Let me know.

p.s. I must admit that removing dairy from your diet does force one to almost constantly think about food. If I wasn't cooking, I was looking up recipes, If I wasn't looking up recipes I was grocery shopping and if I wasn't grocery shopping I was dreaming about an ice cream cones. :)