Jul 27 2010

Milk Diet: Day 1

Here’s a picture of everything I’ll be eating and drinking today:

Two gallons of raw milk

Two gallons of raw milk

Yes, that’s two gallons of raw milk.  I’m starting the milk diet, which is exactly what it sounds like.  No other food, just as much raw milk as you can drink.  I expect to stay on it for 3-4 weeks, so I’ll write more about the whys and hows as I go.  This is just an introductory post to kick it off and establish some baselines.

The main purpose of the milk diet is to rev up the metabolism.  All restrictive diets, whether you restrict calories, carbs, or fat, tend to slow the metabolism down over the long-term.  This is reflected, among other ways, in a low body temperature.  My temp this morning on waking was 96.4, and that’s pretty typical lately.  I think my slow metabolism goes back to long before low-carbing, to when I first started feeling tired all the time and was diagnosed with adrenal exhaustion.  Low-carb helped with the tiredness for a while, but it came back.  More on that later.

Two gallons of milk have nearly 5000 calories, so this definitely isn’t a diet in the restrictive sense.  It’s actually an overfeeding regimen, where you give the body as much energy and nutrition as possible so it can heal.  Raw milk is a particularly good food for that purpose, because it also includes the necessary enzymes for breaking it down, so the body can use it quickly.  (It’s designed for fast-growing baby calves, after all.)  I doubt I could force down 5000 calories of meat or potatoes every day, but two gallons of milk goes down pretty easily.

I actually did a trial run a couple months ago, for just three days.  It went surprisingly well:  I didn’t crave anything, and it didn’t spike my blood sugar (blood glucose, or BG).  That last part was critical, because a cup of rice containing 40-50 grams of carbohydrate can send my BG high enough to be harmful.  Two gallons of milk contains about 350g carb, so I figured that much might kill me on the spot; but my BG never went over 110, which is completely acceptable.  Right now, after my first three quarts of today (132g carb) my BG is 94, well within the normal range.  I think that’s partly because the milk is spread out over the day instead of concentrated into 3 meals, but I also suspect the lactose (milk sugar) just isn’t processed the same as glucose or fructose.

I forgot to weigh myself this morning to get a baseline for that, so I’ll try to remember that tomorrow.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I gain a few pounds, but it’ll be worth it if my metabolism improves, because the weight should come back off much more easily then.  Some people even lose weight on it, though, so who knows.

By the way, this isn’t some new fad diet.  It was a well-known treatment for metabolic issues before pasteurization and the demonization of raw milk.  You can’t do it with the dead stuff from the store, because it doesn’t have the enzymes and nutrients that make real milk a complete food.  It has to be raw, which isn’t easy for everyone to get.  We’re going to have to run to the farm every 2-3 days to stay supplied.

I’ve got a lot more to write about it, but I’d better save some for the weeks ahead.  I’ll continue to report on my body temperature and BG readings, as well as any changes or problems I encounter.  I suspect the biggest problem will be boredom, especially since we have a lot of good stuff coming out of the garden right now.  We’ll just have to preserve what we can and sell or give away the rest.  There will still be plenty of stuff getting ripe a month from now when this is over.

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