Cutting Out Dairy - some pracical tips.....

This has been the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. I LOVE CHEESE!! In fact I am sure cheese is the main reason I find myself in the grip of gall stones. When I cut out dairy i managed quite well the first few weeks without thinking of cheese too much., but as time went on I began to dream about cheese, pizzas, or melted goats cheese, baked brie with red currant sauce.... you name it. So I decided to explore the world of vegan cheese.

Vegan cheese is of course NOT actually cheese, it is a variety of things masquerading as cheese. Not always the healthiest things either I am sure. So I treated it as an occasional treat. If you are a cheese freak like me and in this position here are a few tips.

Vegan Cream cheese seems to be the most successful of cheese sustitutes, and you can also use it to make reasonable cheesy, creamy sauces too. My favourite was Sheese - they had a good plain and also garlic and herb flavour. The least successful cheese substitutes I found were pretend cheddars.... awful!! they just tasted of old socks, and not in a good stilton blue cheese way - but in a horendous waxy grim sort of way. It was wholly unsuccessful. One surprise treat was cheezely's Blue Cheese sustitute. It looked like polyfill gone hard - but it actually melted - a thing most vegan cheese resolutely refuses to do. I found it was bearable over a salad a little warmed. Or over some toast with some carrot sticks. I even made a blue cheese dip from it which was pretty decent.

Apart from cheese there are the obvious mik, cream and yoghurt. Everyone has thier own favourites. For me I love my cappucinos. After some experimentation I have discovered that Soy Milk makes the best cappucinos. Its not half bad and now i barely notice the difference. If your local coffee shop does not stock it - just keep asking if they do soy milk, and eventually they will relent. Most chain coffee shops have it and if not its worth asking them why not - sometimes they will even run out and get some - its happened to me!

The only other real time I have milk is on my cereal. For this I prefer Rice Milk. I have found it goes off before I can use it all though. So I buy small packs (waitrose stock them) or even mini individual cartons. That way I am not constantly throwing it away, which I ended up doing the first few weeks. There are also options like oat milk and coconut milk, even hemp milk.

For Cream I have two recommendations I work well with. Firstly is Provamel's Soy cream. I have actually been using it long before the gallstones as its a great one to have in the cupbaord. Great for cooking with too! Higly recommended. The other one I have discovered is oatly. Its an oat milk cream, really good for cooking and also for desserts. I have also fund the coconut milk or coconut cream great for cooking with too, and for making fabulous dairy free desserts! Sometime I'll share my coconut ice cream recepie - it amazing!

Yoghurt wise. These days it easy to find the fresh ones in the yoghurt aisle now. These are so much better than the pastuerised ones. I find the Alpro Soy one very good and I use it in lieu of yoghurt or sour cream. Great for dips or on cereal.

I'd also recommend Alpro soy's custard. They do large packs of vanilla and smaller packs of vanilla, chocolate, forest fruits or caramel.

Good Fat, Bad fat.....

Not all fat is bad!! Its amazing how many people have been telling me on my detox how I must be avoiding salad dressings, how can I cook without oil etc. I have to say I have learnt a lot about food on this adventure. But I have learnt a lot about fat. Not calories. That for me is the blessing about this detox - no calories to count, ask me how many calories are in a carrot or a piece of carrot cake and I am so NOT your man. The trick is to find the foods that are good for your body and eat them.

For a good diet in general your body needs fat!! One of the most useful books I found so far has been Ian Marber's book "The Food Doctor - Everyday Diet" mostly becasue he explains things succinctly and clearly. One of his key statements is that you need to "Eat Fat to LooseFat" mad as it sounds it makes perfect sense. ou give your body fats it can process easily and avoid the fats that clog up your system and stick to your ribs! So less saturated fats, less cholesterol - more essential fats such as Omega 3 and 6 rich fats. Seeds oils and cold pressed oils are prefect for this. So Olive Oil, Flax Oil, Rice Bran Oil, Pumpkin Seed Oil, Peanut Oil, Grapeseed Oil, Safflower Oil... all sorts are out there for you to experiment with. Some are great for cooking with - others make fab salad dressings or dipping oils.

Water - Make sure you drink enough......

I have become firm freinds with my Britta Water Filter!! One of the most important things in a detox is to make sure you drink enough water the general advice is 6 cups of water (about 1 litre) a day. Here are some of my top tips.

Fill up your water filter every day and make sure you have drunk all of it by the time you go to bed. I have a 1 litre Britta Filter.

Try not to drink super freezing water. It can be far too much of a shock to the system.

Hot - or warm teas are great for the system. I grow mint in my garden. A fresh ginger mint tea is delicious and great for the digestion. Just add a few leaves of ginger mint (or whatever mint you have in your garden) to a cup of boiling water and let it infuse for a couple of minutes. I usually leave my too cool for 5 mins or after 1 minute add a littel cool water so as not to drink it too hot. The mint tea is also fabulous cold with ice.

Another favourite is ginger tea. This is another one that is great hot or cold. Shave some fresh ginger root into a cup and add boiling water. Leave to steep a few minutes and drink. Again ginger is great for the digestion. It is also wonderful at freshening your breath.


I have been trying to make sure I drink between meals and not glug all my water with my meal. This can make it harder to digest your food. At first it feels like a crazy amount of water but its good! My skin is healthier, I feel more awake and the great thing is I used to suffer quite badly from migraines but it turns out they must have been due to de-hydration - which I had been told can casue headaches. Since the detox I have not had a single migraine and I used to get one or two a month!

The Detox Diet so far.....

This detox of mine has been doing some amazing things to my body. It is 3 months today since I finally gave in and admitted I might need to see a Dr. It turned out what I thought might be some sort of random recurrent food poinsoning turned out in fact to be gallstones. Anyway to cut a long story short I embarked on a detox to try to sort my body as it was clearly trying to tell me something, and all the comments of well you know "fair fat and 40" stung a bit even though I did not consider myself to be either fat or 40 (a few years to go yet!) so I decided it was time to get of my admittedly not small bottom and do something about it.

So three months later and I have lost 3 stone (42lbs) and dropped 3 dress sizes.Half my wardrobe is now on ebay whilst I try to find clothes in a size 10 (6 US) that will fit me these days. I have to say I feel tons healthier. Last week I achieved my "normal" BMI level I am now at 24.9 and it still seems to be dropping. So for my long term health this can only be a good thing. I am literally vanishing. The whoops of joy when I fitted into a pair of size 10 jeans for the first time since I was 20 was hilarious! I've never been particularly miserable with my shape or size, admittedly I was a size 16 but I htink I carried it fairly well and dressed in a way that never made me feel fat, but looking at the BMI scale was quite scary at my old BMI level I was considered to be pretty overweight.

So as I am visually vanishing loads of people keep asking what I have done to loose the weight. People have talked to me lots about calorie counting, GI and other stuff. Honestly I'd consider what I have done to be much easier, becasue Ihave not counted calories, or worked outthe GI levels of different foods or anything like that. The detox programme I have followed has evolved as time has gone on - but essentially it just consists of cutting out food groups for a period of time. I started out my looking at the book "The Liver Detox Diet" by Xandria Williams - I have to admit I did not try any of her recipes but I took the premise from her ofthe food groups to cut out and took it from there. The idea is that you cut out particular food groups and then re-introduce then gradually over a period of time. She recommends re-introducing a food group every two weeks so you can monitor your body's response and check for any sensitivities to particular food groups.

So for those who wanted to know heres what I've been up to. I'll post some of my recipes I've been living off too - although there are some on here already!

The First Two Weeks...

This bit is the hardest and I'll have to admit I cut out more than these groups as I had the gallstones to consider too, but you don't need to! And lets be sensible here - you should of course talk to your Dr before embarking on a weight loss programme blah blah blah... you know the score :)

Why cut out food groups? Essentially you are making freinds with your liver. If your liver can process food properly - your less at risk from stomach, liver and gallbladder realted illnesses and if your liver can process food properly your less likely to put on weight - its like tuning a car - it runs better and more efficiently if you clean it out regularly.

Cut out the following food groups to begin with - it sounds like a lot to start with, but if you really are serious about a detox you need to do it properly - but cutting them all out then re-introducing them slowly with a week or two's break between each re-introduction. You are giving your liver a chance to jumpstart and heal itself. Don't worry its not forever!:

Wheat - this means that it pretty much cuts out snacking and most processed food. Cutting out wheat is very hard to contemplate - but honestly once your there you can survive, and actually if you can put your doubts aside and try some new things there are some really tasty things you can have. My only advice is don't get too carried away with too many of the gluten free substitues as many of them are very sugar packed. Don't forget wheat sneaks into most pre packed food, gravy, soup, cutting out wheat involves lots of label reading! But it is really not as bad as it sounds. I'm sure that cutting out wheat has been one of the key reasons I have lost as much weight as I have so far.


Dairy - Yes this is another tricky one to cut out - but the good it does you is untold! Think what it will do to your cholesterol levels to give your body a break fro a while! We really not meant to consume the amount of dairy that we do anyway, and giving your body a break from dairy will do untold amount of good. For me I'd say wheat and dairy were the two power houses when it came to loosing the weight. There are plenty of substitutes available - or simply try something else completely. Soy cream cheese is pretty good, there are cream substitutes if you can't do without cream in your cooking - so far I have found the soy and oat cream ones very successful and there is rice milk, soy milk (watch out for ones with too much sugar) or even oat milk or just plain water! Its really not as hard as it sounds!

Meat - Give your body a break from meat products for a while. Much meat we eat is packed with cholesterol, the meaty fats that our digestive system has to break down. Cutting out meat is much easier than I had expected - there are so many delicious recipes out there!!

Eggs - For the initial stages of the detox cutting out eggs along with the other dairy and meat products gives your body a good cleanse.

Caffiene - I know coffe is great - believe me I missed it at forst, but I haven't had any in 3 months now and I am coping surpisingly well!

Alcohol - Yes I know - but its worth it!

Refined Sugars - This one was not really too hard to be honest. I never took sugar in tea anyway - only if I was starving hungry and needed a boost. And once you have cut out wheat your pretty well cutting out most things with refined sugars.

Processed Foods - I have my mum to thank for this one. She taight y sister and I to cook from a young age and she cooked most things from scratch. For me its always been the best way to go about it. I know for others it can be hard to give up the jar sauces and the easy ready meals - but the huge difference it makes to your body is so worth it!

Chocolate - Yes REALLY!!


Managing your detox:

I'd recommend if you are going to do a detox you'd be best to get a book like "The liver detox plan" to give you some guidance. You may also find it is best to chat things over with your doctor. The trick of a detox is that it is not a diet in so much as you are not starving yourself, or not allowing yourself yo eat fully. You are simply cutting out the foods which your body needs a break from, and finding those that either you need to cut out long term or that perhaps your body needs to have in moderation.

As you re-introduce each food type you need to look at your body's reaction to that food. Re-introduce slowly over several days, and look carefully at your bowel movements, your stomach - how gassy are you, do you feel lethargic, do you feel sluggish? Or even are you feeling itchy or bloated? Sometimes this can be a way of discovering an intolerance to a food group or type. For me I discovered the foods that trigger my particular gall stone attacks. They were dairy fats (particularly when heated as in a creamy sauce or cheesy pizza) and meat fats - so no more chorizo, sausages, streaky bacon, fatty lamb or duck... But I have to say that avoiding these has done me the world of good. Now I am a UK size 10 and when I started this I was a size 16 pushing a size 18!!

A Day in my Detox...

Well - this period of cutting out whole food groups will not last for ever. My plan is in two months I will start re-introducing the remainong food groups I have cut out - namely Wheat / Dairy and Meat. I am also off Caffiene, Alcohol and (sob) Chocolate. I will re-introduce them over a period of time - then I can see how my body reacts to each food type. Then I will need to stick t a low fat diet - pretty much forever unless I want surgery!

Anyway at the moment the detox is not too bad. Here is a sample of the type of thing I am eating each day.

1) First thing in the morning:
A cup of hot water with a slice of lemon and a slice of fresh ginger root, before I eat or drink anything else. Its supposed to be great for detox and just as an everyday habit.

2) Breakfast:
A small bowl of Munchy Seeds Granola with either some rice milk or all by itself.
A Glass of fresh made smoothie

3) Snack:
A couple of Dr Karg's Spelt and Seed Crackers with a smear of Toffuti Vegan Cream Cheese or a Smear of Pumpkin Seed Butter.
A cup of detox tea.

4) Lunch:
A light vegetable / noodle soup.
A piece of fruit.
A glass of water.

5) Snack:
A few nibbles of Munchy Seeds Original Mix - or a few nibbles of some nuts and Raisins.

6) Dinner
Steamed Vegetables, Oriental Steamed Salmon Parcel, Brown Steamed Rice