Why I Went Dairy Free

Last Updated on June 1, 2019 by Annie

It’s a long and winding road that led from me eating dairy at all points in the day to avoiding it (although sometime unsuccessfully) like the plague.

Thinking back on my first GI visit I distinctly remember a point in the conversation where my GI asked me if I was lactose intolerant. I laughed. LOUDLY. And said, “No, I eat dairy all the time.”

I ATE DAIRY ALL THE TIME. Seriously. Bacon, egg, and cheese for breakfast. Coffee and cream. Bagel with cream cheese for a snack in between classes. Baked ziti for lunch. Cheese stick later if I got hungry. Pizza for dinner. Salad with ranch if I felt I needed something “green”. What-a-burger jr with cheese at 2 AM. Dairy was my diet. If dairy was causing all of this… I think I would know. Smh. (Also, let’s not judge 18 year-old Annie and her diet, we will just blame college.)

I was first diagnosed with IBS (after seeing my diet…can you blame my bowels for wanting to keep that cheesy goodness in?) and began treating myself to a “new” diet with fiber. In all honesty, my diet remained the same only with added Benefiber and additional water. Often, I would treat the cramps and bloating with Pepto-Bismol and heating pads at night. On my wedding day, my husband brought me a flask filled with Pepto, just in case my stomach was being disagreeable. I thought I had it under control. Gas, bloating, sharp pains, Pepto, repeat.

When my husband’s job moved us to Connecticut, I was tired of the gas. The bloating. The sharp pains. Something had to change. I couldn’t keep treating the symptoms I needed to figure out what was really going on. The first appointment I could get was two months wait and then was canceled due to snow. They were no longer offering appointments that late in the day and I couldn’t leave work early enough for their office.

I remember being frustrated and looking at my husband and saying, what would this GI do differently than the first? He suggested an elimination diet. So, for a month we did the Whole 30.

He would argue this was the roughest month in our marriage to date. I was waking up at 5, naturally, I had way too much energy, and made every meal from scratch. This whole food diet really suited me and my stomach had never felt better. At the end of the 30 days you begin introducing foods back into your diet. When I finally started adding in dairy, there it was. The gas. The bloating. The sharp pains.

I lived in denial for about 4 months. Lactaid became my pregame but I began to notice that the more I went without dairy the better I felt. Slowly, and begrudgingly, I came around to the fact that dairy triggers many of my IBS symptoms and my life would be better after dairy.