Tuesday, April 21, 2015

I wonder...

I would say that, over the past year or two, I really haven't had a lot of control over my weight. It's been going up. Slowly, for which I am grateful, but inexorably - or so it seems. I can get a temporary drop, but it doesn't seem to stick around for more than maybe a week. Last summer, I tracked my weight extensively and tried hard to eat in the same way that helped me lose 50 pounds, only to watch it vary narrowly around maybe a 4-5 pound range, and then inch upward every time I ate at a restaurant (as an example; this didn't always happen).

This trend tracks pretty closely with my current job and its attendant annoyances (the commute, the fact that it only stops boring me to death when it becomes seriously irritating), which started a bit over 3 years ago. So I know I'm dealing with higher stress hormones than I had while losing the weight, for example. Add in significant menopause, and the disrupted sleep and inability to trust that I'll adapt to changing temperatures, and I'm kind of a hot mess (pun not intended, but appreciated).

But something else keeps poking at me, something I haven't really wanted to deal with, that might be worth investigating.

Dairy.

People do have problems eating it. I don't think as many problems as with gluten and related proteins, but the issue exists. I've always sort of figured I can handle it - and I should say that I haven't had milk to drink in probably 5 years. I confine myself to cheese, sour cream, butter, and heavy cream, all of which are supposed to be lower in lactose than milk itself, at least. 

Thing is, if you really look at what I've been eating over the past years, you'd see a LOT of cheese, sour cream, butter, and heavy cream. Daily - one or all of them. Cheese, in particular, has been a go-to LCHF snack for me. 

Anyway, while I think I'm still generally healthy, and I haven't been "sick" in quite a long while, I'm dealing with a handful of things that are making me question if just maybe, I should cut out (or way back on) the dairy. Do an elimination period. The things are: 1) body aches and lack of energy, 2) sinus congestion (possibly low-grade infection) that has been around for the past 2 months and will NOT go away, and 3) the weight gain. Maybe all of them are stress-originated, but maybe cutting out dairy will be enlightening.

I'm going to give it some thought, since for me, that would be a fairly huge change - and on top of other stress, maybe would just make things worse. But I think I'll mull it over for a while, see if I can come up with a plan to do it, try it for 3 weeks, which I think would be long enough. I'd need to come up with fat substitutes for the heavy cream - especially since fat may be a good thing for my sleep - and other snacks to swap for the cheese (that aren't nuts). This isn't something to launch into blindly, unless I want to fail.

Mulling...

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