Eating a lactose free diet

Over the past several years it's become apparent to me that I have to change the way I eat. My best friend, at age twenty eight, died of a heart attack. My father, aged sixty five, also succumbed to a heart attack - his third. My cholesterol was shooting up, as was my weight. I was chronically fatigued, I was suffering joint pain, and was generally unable to sleep consistently.

So I decided enough is enough and changed the way I eat. The first thing to go was processed food - if it's processed, chances are it's not actually food - and that was a great beginning for me. When you go to the store and buy anything that's canned or bagged, check the ingredients and see what's involved. It's brutal - it's stuff that doesn't even sound remotely like food. It sounds like stuff that could burn its way through a steel girder if you throw it on there.

But I also made a somewhat radical decision: I decided to go with a lactose free diet. This was tough for me, since I absolutely love cheese. And not just cheese on my pizza or cheese on my burger, but... just any kind of cheese at all. A cheese plate would be just as great a dessert for me as a piece of cake.

Going with a lactose free diet makes sense if you think about it, but I never really had. And it didn't actually occur to me to go with a lactose free diet til I randomly read an interview with Jack Lalane, who was roughly ninety five years old at the time. Lalane attributed his long life and fitness to his strenuous exercise regimen, but also to his diet. And, he said, the most important part of his diet was that it was a lactose free diet. As he pointed out, in nature animals stop weaning just past infancy. In other words, animals go on a lactose free diet as soon as they hit puberty. And we should do the same.

So I went with Jack Lalane's advice and decided upon a lactose free diet for myself. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it. My cholesterol dropped seventy points from 240 to 170. I also lost 20 pounds, dropping from 195 to 175. And throughout I've had more energy and have been able to maintain a much more active lifestyle.

And now it's easier than ever to go on a lactose free diet since there are so many substitutes for milk and cheese. Soy is the primary product for most of these substitutes, but I've also seen rice milk and hazelnut milk as well. And while you can taste the difference, I can vouch for the fact that you'll eventually get used to it.

So if you're in need of a kick start in terms of your health and metabolism, you should consider the lactose free diet.