quit drinking milk

It’s now been since the end of May that I had any cow’s milk. I don’t have any desire to go back to it, and I have no cravings for it, either. My last experience with drinking cow’s milk involved a glass of thick whole milk… and even though it was fresh, it tasted really sour to me. I had been drinking mostly soymilk throughout the spring, and I knew with that glass of cow’s milk that I had no reason to change my new habit.

My overall dairy consumption is WAY down. I’ve been running so much lately that just isn’t much time in the day to consume dairy and give it enough time to digest before exercising. Any serious runner will tell you that cheese or yogurt or ice cream is the last thing he or she wants to have in the several days before a race. I’m down to very occasional ice cream, cheese in small amounts, and yogurt a couple times a week.

I am doing well on this while traveling on business. The last couple of mornings at the hotel’s breakfast buffet, the big pitchers of cow’s milk have looked so unappetizing to me. Milk is becoming a substance that just isn’t drinkable… which is akin to the way I have viewed meat since I became a vegetarian: people ask me if I have meat cravings, and I tell them, truthfully, that no, meat is simply an inedible substance to me. I look at a hunk of chicken the same way I look at a hunk of styrofoam: you just don’t eat that. When I saw the milk this morning, I thought, that’s just not drinkable. Especially since I had returned from running not an hour before, and I knew that pouring cow pus and saturated fat into my body was the last thing that my bones and muscles needed.

Fortunately, when I come back here to NJ later this summer, we will be living in a corporate apartment with a kitchen, and I’ll be able to have my cereal and soymilk.

Edited to add: Aftger I first posted this entry, the targeted ads on the 43Things sidebar all had to do with quitting drinking (alcohol) and going to AA. Alcohol help hypnotherapy!

Cow’s milk. It’s hard for humans to digest, it causes acidity in the body which can actually weaken bones over time, and it’s certainly not as good a source of calcium as vegetables are. Also, the stuff that ends up on dairy shelves these days is full of cow pus. Organic milk has less pus in it, but it’s not pus-free. It’s been more than a month now since I remembered how much I love soymilk (especially light vanilla soymilk) and how much better than cow’s milk it tastes in my cereal. I’ve been buying soymilk regularly since mid-May.

A couple of weeks ago (the last weekend in May), Adam and I were at my mother-in-law’s house. She herself is lactose intolerant (as most people are, to some degree), but she had bought me some milk, remembering that I liked it (or, had liked it). Adam drank most of it, but I finally had a glass when I was eating a brownie for dessert one night. It was whole milk (something I hadn’t had in ages), and it tasted thick and sour. That’s the last milk I drank. Since then, I’ve been trying different soymilk brands, trying to find the ones I like most. I also want to try rice milk and almond milk. I try not to overdo it on the soy; it’s easy to do that as a vegetarian.

Overall, my dairy consumption is probably about a fourth of what it was two or three years ago. I was raised on Kraft Singles, big glasses of milk with breakfast and dinner every day, grated cheddar cheese all over everything at dinner, and then, sometimes, ice cream for dessert. Living in the very non-cheesy land of Japan made me realize that cheese was not as essential as I once thought it to be. Ice cream is a rare thing for me nowadays. Often, my only dairy consumption of the day is yogurt with my lunch. Cutting back on dairy has been hugely beneficial to me. Especially as an athlete, the saturated fat found in higher-fat dairy is the last thing I need before a run.

Going to keep it up with the non-dairy milk. I’ll check off this goal once it’s been a significant amount of time since I’ve drunk any dairy milk.