Musings of a Wench

Stop the Milk-ness!

A few years ago we did the Wild Rose D-Tox cleanse, and while it was good, there were a few sides affects that I really didn't enjoy, plus the worst sugar cravings I have ever had in my entire life. Plus, the pills were gross, and the tincture made me want to throw up as I drank it. That said, the last two months have been just brutal on our diets and digestive systems and we need something. His company Christmas party was November 18th and it just did not stop after that. There were birthday meals (2 for me, 1 for my mother), our anniversary dinner, corporate Christmas parties (3 in total for me), the Christmas Marathon (4 big meals in 4 days), plus all the tasty crap left on counters at work, plus New Year's, plus all the drinking... I will be honest and admit I put on 6 pounds between mid November and early January. I have also been sick on and off, never fully recovering, that whole time. Coincidence? You decide.

(The only saving grace in the endless parade that was Christmas was that we went snowboarding at Sunshine on Boxing Day, cross country at the Inkpots a few days later and I managed to fit 3 yoga classes and 1 pole dancing practice at home in during that week. Still wasn't enough though.)

Because of both the weight gain and feeling like crap, we're doing a 5 day modified cleanse this week. No sugar, flour, bananas, dairy. Limited meat. Lots of almonds, fish and brown rice. In my head, I'm not calling this a diet, because for me, it isn't. I'm just trying to give my poor digestive system, which is already lactose intolerant and suffering from IBD, a break. A chance to go a whole week without some kind of milk product sneaking in. Because it's everywhere, and while I don't seem to be that sensitive to traces, maybe I am.

I'm going to go off on a tangent about my mother-in-law, so please excuse me. I'm lactose intolerant, yes, and it can be a huge pain in the ass when you want to eat dessert in a restaurant. With a few exceptions like pizza (ah, pizza, how good my memory of you is) where I use fake or lactose free cheese (or even some goat fetas that I have found I don't react to), I have found it fairly easy to keep my diet dairy free. I'm not a fan of soy so I have simply chosen to cook recipes that do no require dairy at all. Asian food, for example, is great for this. It's not that hard to just avoid it if you use a little creativity. Even if you are not in the least bit creative, there are now easily available non-soy lactose free dairy products available in grocery stores. I get lactose reduced fruit yogurt cups from Safeway or Superstore. Superstore also has 99% lactose free sour cream, which tastes exactly like the normal stuff, though perhaps a tad more gelantiny in texture. Co-op and Safeway sell large tubs of plain 90% lactose free yogurt. All three see Lactaid milk, which while I wouldn't tend to drink it by the glass (having completely lost my former love of the beverage), it still is excellent for baking or hot chocolate or cappuccinos. (Soy cappuccinos kind of blow.) I don't know why all three stores carry all three products, but with a little bit of planning, my mother-in-law could continue to cook in dairy rich ways without making me horribly sick.

Ah, but does she, you ask?

In a word? No.

My birthday cake this year had me bursting out of a sound sleep at 4 in the morning thanking god that our bedroom had an ensuite bathroom less than 4 feet from where I sleep. I was in there for an hour and sick on and off all the next day. (TMI? Sorry.) I had assumed that, knowing that I've been lactose intolerant since 2003, she would not have made a cake that milky. However, John's pretty sure he saw he using ACTUAL CREAM to make the icing. God. John was pretty sick after than incident too. We threw away the whole cake. My mother, who was again horrified (a poisonous birthday cake?!) tried to convince me to confront my MIL about it, but I just couldn't. How do you tell someone off for making you a birthday cake? A few weeks later John, while lightly drunk and very tired, told his mother that her cake made both of us sick. She freaked out and John then told her that it was okay for his birthday (which is next week) because it's worth it. It isn't, and I am completely prepared to not have a single bite of it. I mean, sure, it's tasty, but 1 day of rather embarrassing side effects and sleep disruptions are not worth it. At all. You know that old expression - a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips? Well, for me it's more like 'a moment on the lips, a day of explosive diarrhea and then a lifetime on the hips'. However, the woman could make all the problems GO AWAY by simply reaching one refrigerated door over from the regular milk to grab the Lactaid milk and cook as usual. But will she? Oh no. That might involve CHANGE and we can't have that.

Oh, related bitter note. Cathy didn't sleep for more than 9 hours in the 4 days leading up to Christmas. One of the many things that kept her too busy to sleep? We got a deep freeze for our basement from then, and instead of, I don't know, giving up a bag of pork chops or something, Cathy baked 7 different kinds of treats, 5 of which are made or iced with milky icing. Yes. I swear to god I'm not making this up.

I probably won't surprise anyone if I admit that +90% of our fights involve family.

Then again, my parents aren't making him physically ill and gave him a new computer for a Christmas/Birthday present, so it's a little uneven, the problems we have.

Sorry. That was a much longer tangent than I had planned.

At any rate, I'm looking forwards to eating healthier and all my fitness classes starting up in a few weeks. I have missed them. I'm actually really looking forwards to dinner, which is fish, mango salsa and brown rice. (Don't tell, but mangoes are on the no list. I just don't care, but I hope that will be my only cheat.) We're not doing the pills, just the healthy eating, so I'm hoping that it goes well. I'm also hoping my pants fit again, but hey, it's January, aren't we all?

Labels: life

posted by Morgan @ 12:40 p.m.