Have you been wondering how we’re going since last week?
The best news is, we don’t stink any more. yay yay! And the sex is back. Thank The Goddess.
Moving right along, there were some days I didn’t think we’d make and and some days, we didn’t really. Wednesday night we’d had ENOUGH of the sweet/sour taste of kefir smoothies. We felt so deprived of the salt taste and wanted to chew something for godsake. So we fried a couple of pasture fed sirloin steaks rare, in butter and tallow and salted them like crazy. Oh my goddess, what a taste. I couldn’t eat it all though. Hara Hachi Bunme happened before I’d even gotten a third through. (Hara Hachi Bunme is a Japanese saying which means eat til your 80% full). The rest of the time, however, we made do with smoothie, smoothie and more damn smoothie.
Amanda from RebuildFromDepression.com told me about her other site, milk-diet.com. She said had done the milk cure once before and is doing it again now. I wonder how she’s going with it in Autumn. She said, what got to her in the end was the boredom. I know what she means and I’m even adding flavour. (a little paw paw or strawberry, banana and sometimes mango or passionfruit but no honey or coconut cream)
I have discovered, however, that I can subsist quite well on a milk based diet. If the world crumbles around us, all we need to do is pack our yurt on a cart pulled by a few cows and take off. We could live well on the beasts milk. I’d have to kill an animal occasionally for a taste difference though. My attitude has changed somewhat from week one when I struggled to get my head around eating only smoothies. I wondered how Mongolians and the Masaii live with such minimal taste diversity. Now I’m ready to eat this way for ever.
What about vegetables? how could I subsist on just animal products? Ask a Masai, Mongolian, Inuit… I watched this gorgeous movie called Weeping Camel and another called Cave of the Yellow Dog about Mongolian life. From what I could see they ate milk, milk and more milk products. My 11 year old said to me, “All they eat is yoghurt”. I said, “yeah and look at their lovely wide faces”.
I’ve heard Raw Fooders talk about being addicted to cooked food. I now know what they’re talking about. Although since most of the Raw Fooders I know are trying to subsist on a vegan diet, when they say ‘addiction to cooked food’, they’re saying ‘addiction to nourishment’. There’s nothing nourishing about a raw vegan diet. This raw milk diet, however, feels very nourishing. My cravings for a steak etc, is probably an emotional addiction or habit because it didn’t make me feel any different in my body when I ate it. I wonder if there is a way I can get the salt taste into my milk? I’d love to know more about the mongolian diet.
Ron Schmidt suggested I eat protein and fat if I’m exercising alot. So this week I upped the exercise and ate some raw Grana Padano cheese occassionally, the steak the other night and some sausages last night. The rest of the week we did very well on smoothies. I didn’t have any sleepy days but I was a bit vague. Forgetting things and missing appointments. I’m usually very crisp with my responsibilities, it’s not often I miss things but funnily enough, I didn’t give myself a hard time for it either. Life seemed to float along on a milky flow.
At the end of yoga practice, my teacher asks us to dedicate or practice to world peace or something. This week as I did this a vision came to me of my breasts flowing with milk. Silently, it flowed down my belly and lap and out across the world like a creamy blanket of love.
Yes my breasts are still filled out but I’ve lost weight on my tummy I think. Maybe I was bloated and now that’s gone. Crewe’s article suggested this would happen. It also said we’d see the best results after two weeks. I wonder if my breasts will continue to grow younger and my skin smoother?
The coating has shifted from my tongue and is slowly shifting from Wes’s. Our breathe has returned to its normal, sweet self. My lips are redder than they’ve been for years as are my gums and tongue.
One of the highlights of this week has been bowel movements. Twice a day. I thought I already had good bowel movements but this is amazing. Angels sing as I sit on the toilet. Wes says he can’t hold back for ages like he used to. When he has to go he has to go. But his stools are solid and well formed. You know those poos that move with grace and you feel like you don’t have to wipe. I feel ecstatic satisfaction for at least half an hour after. I’m not exaggerating. Pooing is fun.
There’s a couple of downsides to eating this way. Having to be near food all the time is a hassle. We’re eating a 600ml smoothie every hour or so. I can’t take off and do the shopping without taking a bottle of milk with me and even then, I’m starving when I return. And eating with friends is a little strange. The washing up is another problem. Since we’re making smoothies and cooking for the kids there’s twice as much washing up. Thankfully, they are getting old enough to be enlisted every meal.
All up, it’s been a much easier week and we think it will get easier here on in. Wes is saying he’d like to continue eating smoothies during the day and a small meal at night. Pity I can’t get the kids to join us.
Will update you again next week.
About the Author...
Joanne Hay, Editor of Nourished Magazine, Chief Nourisher and Mother of three is very grateful to live in Byron Bay and be able to share all she has learned about Nourishment. She has trained as an Acupuncturist (unfinished), Kinesiologist (finished) and parent (never finished). She serves the Weston A Price Foundation as a chapter leader. She loves sauerkraut, kangaroo tail stew, home made ice cream, her husband Wes and her kids Isaiah, Brynn and Ronin (in no particular order…well maybe ice cream first).
Oct 7th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Thanks Joanne, great to read.
Oct 9th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Hey Joanne.
I too have learned that I do very well on milk. I have been on what I’d call a “cheater’s milk diet” since early August. I’ve had a lot of milk but haven’t gone more than a week on milk exclusively. When I have had other food, it hasn’t been particularly planned but it’s been pretty healthy food.
I did do the old-fashioned milk cure about eighteen months ago for four weeks. I didn’t do complete bed rest, but was so tired on a few days that I was basically compelled to rest. I had improvement in my thyroid function after the diet and I seemed to be satisfied generally on less food. It is as if the diet filled some little deficiency I had yet to discover.
On the current diet I was inspired first to do a detox but then got so heavily involved in my work that I slipped here and there and it became an on-going cheater’s diet. I had intended to do the traditional milk cure without the complete rest, but just haven’t mustered the willpower to stay on it. When I am focused on my work, it is difficult for me to focus on anything else.
But I can report that probably in part due to the milk (and colostrum which I’ve added for the first time), I do believe I have set some personal records in my own work productivity. In addition to far too much contract work for the last two months, I have been building a business based on that work (but with a higher potential hourly rate) to support me as I work on my food work. :)
The cheater’s diet has also made it pretty clear to me that I am allergic to wheat or gluten. The “cheating” part of the diet has helped me nail that down, now I just need to focus on cheating on another food. Actual, serious gluten-free living is pretty darned difficult.
On the weight loss possibilities, in my experience, people with bigger weight issues need to keep the calories down on the milk cure to lose weight. For me and my father, there has been nothing magical about it to help with weight loss (though it does certainly reduce fluid retention). I need to stick to about 3/4 gallon a day to lose whereas following the Porter advice, I would consume about twice that amount. Consuming large quantities did cause me to gain a pound or two in a month on the milk cure, but with the thyroid working better, that was certainly a pound or two well-spent. I don’t know what the health effects would be of half that amount of milk for a month. I should try it some time. :)
Amanda
Oct 9th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Interesting
For fun I did a 2 day milk fast sunday and monday
I had 1 litre of full fat organic jersey milk
and 1 litre of organic jersey milk that has been soured
(with high protein level as some of the whey is drained) called Ymer - I have never seen it in other countries but Denmark
Well how did I feel?
Well I felt full but also a bit tired and manday eve I had a headache ( maybe lack of coffein from my green tea and dark choc)
- - yesterday afternoon I was craving chocolate ( I eat a bit of 85 % dark chcokc every week)
and salty food BIG time- so I decided that was my last day.
It gave me: 1387 calories a day ( about 800 less than I need to keep my weight- so it could be a easy diet for me….)
87 gram carbohydrates
70 gram fat
100 gram protein
so I´m not surprised I didnt feel hunger due to the pretty high proteinlevel
- but if I havnt had the product Ymer I would have had far less protein- might have been more hungry…
I would lack a lot of vitamins and minerals if I did it full time- especially vitamin C and iron ( and some of B vitamins and potassium and magnesium)
As well as fibres but I did stay regular
- funny enough my p… became ligher and smelled more like fermented milk- kind of breastmilk p…
Would I do it again ?
Maybe! - as part of a fast/ clean up…
but really I like all kinds of food too much
- so this morning when I had my yoghurt with flax and a fresh apple from the garden and a cup of green tea
-I felt I was in heaven..
Oct 10th, 2007 at 2:26 am
Henriette — When I did it for a month, I definitely had signs of low vitamin C and low iron by the end, but not nothing that didn’t turn around pretty quickly after. If I did it again, I probably would add some citrus (which the doctors used a century ago). I would take an iron supplement as well if I had an iron issue.
Amanda
Oct 10th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Amanda, I was glutin free for four years. If you get your own mill and stock up on amaranth, millet, quinoa, rice and buckwheat you can do it. I made lovely flat breads and pancakes. I love the taste of cooked quinoa especially the left over from the day before fried with onions and garlic. I don’t think I am glutin intolerant. I used to think so though. I’ve done a good few cleanses and I tolerate other grains a lot better now. Good thing too because now I can get raw butter would be a shame not to spread it on some warm spelt bread. Now having said that it could easily be spread on a mixed grain glutin free flat bread, like the one I made this afternoon when there was no bread left in the house.
Joanne I’ll be trying a week on milk in some weeks, I can certainly use the alkaline calcium elements to rebuild my teeth density which has taken a beaten after five years of breastfeeding. And if I can get lovely breasts as a bonus … well it’s worth trying. You see what you’ve started Joanne now the whole world is drinking milk. Including the O types. I was concerned about being an O blood type and milk but I think perhaps a distinction was not made between raw milk and pasterized milk. I’ll find out. Besides I’m less of a blood type diet follower as I realise that I can eat anything and get away with it as long I have lots of fruits and veges to go with it.
Oct 22nd, 2007 at 5:41 am
Joanne,
How is the raw milk diet going? are you still doing it?
Oct 22nd, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Carolyn
Thanks for the prompt. Here’s the latest installment of the Real Raw Milk Cure.
http://editor.nourishedmagazine.com.au/articles/milk-milk-glorious-milk-the-real-raw-milk-cure-week-3
Blessings
Joanne