Much Needed Vacation

Long time no write!  I won't even try to recap the past 11 months in full, but I'll share the highlights of the present in hopes that I'll be more consistent with my blogging!

Chris and I are up at the family cabin and we will be here a total of 10 days.  We are at the tail end of our vacation and it has been wonderful.  We hadn't taken off work for a big chunk of time since our wedding in April 2011, so this vacation is much needed.  The weather has been awesome and I've been able to work on my tan a bit.  We've spent a lot of time riding on the boat, playing cribbage and bags (or cornhole as some people call it), and relaxing.

My favorite view from the cabin

Our traditional 4th of July picture at the baseball game and fireworks show

Some highlights of life right now are that I have lost 18 pounds since January, which is a lot for me (I'm pretty much back to my high school weight now).  I still looked like normal Jenny when I was 18 pounds heavier (stick-like legs and arms) but my butt and stomach were a little bigger.

Anyway, key to losing weight for me?  Cut out the pop (I was drinking around 25-40 ounces of Pepsi a day), cut back on the sweets, decrease my dairy and gluten intake, and increase the vegetables!  It's amazing what cutting out pop will do.  I had to ween myself off, but I am to the point now where I can only stand one or two sips of pop and then it tastes nasty.

During this whole time I have been having some incredible stomach issues.  It went from stomachaches here and there to stomachaches every morning and every evening of every day.  I did a little test on myself during this time by going through spurts with and without gluten and dairy and seeing how I would feel.  I noticed that when I didn't eat the two, I felt better.  I had not fully cut them both out, but I significantly decreased my intake of them.

The decrease of dairy and gluten didn't fix the stomach issues though.  I went to the doctor and was tested positive for H. Pylori, so I took some antibiotics to get rid of those little boogers (and I was tested again recently and they are gone!)  Long story short, my stomachaches were still occurring, so I had a food allergy test done.  Got the results back today and they are unfortunate but very good to know: I have a severe, off the charts allergy to dairy.  From now on, that means absolutely zero dairy. 

As unfortunate as this is, it is so good to know.  It gives me hope that my stomachaches will go away soon.  The interesting thing about this allergy is that my body does not have the typical reaction time that most people think of when they think of allergies.  My dairy allergy does not have an immediate reaction in my body, but a delayed reaction.  This basically means that when I consume dairy, not much happens until several hours or days later, and that is why it was so difficult for me to pinpoint whether or not cutting out dairy had been helping me.

It's going to be difficult to restrain myself from eating cheese (which I love so dearly), ice cream (which I also love dearly) and anything else dairy.  But, the good news is that I have already dipped my toes in to this lifestyle, so I at least know a little bit of how it is.

Today I went the whole day without dairy, even though the temptation was around me.  The family had a delicious egg bake for breakfast (egg, cheese, milk, cottage cheese) and some butterscotch/caramel rolls (drenched in butter), and for dinner they had one of my favorites -- boursin cheese potatoes.

Today was just the beginning of my dairy-free lifestyle.  I no longer have an excuse to not completely cut it out--I'll only be hurting myself even more if I eat anything dairy.

My hope for future posts is to continue to give updates on what Chris and I are up to and hopefully post some things involving my dairy-free lifestyle!  A little teaser for (hopefully) next time is that Chris has agreed to let me get a friend for Augustus!  I'm hoping that a tattoo is in the near future, too!