Milk and dairy
For most of my life I have drank milk and consumed drinks that have milk in them. Milk was always a ‘healthy option’ as advertised to us in the late 60’s and 70’s when I were a lad.
The thing that changed for me though was intermittent fasting in which I needed to assess what I could and could not drink during my fast. It became pretty obvious to me that milk contains lactose and it must raise your glucose levels, so if you are fasting with the objective being to control glucose levels, this objective can be defeated.
So I chose to stop taking milk with tea or coffee and opted to stop drinking milk period.
The strange thing is, I don’t miss it although I had to make my tea weaker as it was bitter without the milk. I also had to get used to coffee black but this has led to another effect, I choose what coffee and when to have it as it needs to be good coffee to be worth drinking black. So I’m actually drinking less coffee as a result. I have now a strange propensity to drink herb teas, something I never thought I would do but clearly not drinking milk changes your taste.
Other dairy products like cheese and yoghurt can be ok to stay in ‘keto’ but I’ve opted to cut out yoghurt for the risk of the lactose left in it.
That leaves cheese that I still eat when outside of a fasting cycle. I believe that the process of making cheese removes or reduces lactose that was originally in the milk but I’m not entirely sure of the chemistry of this. It seems to make sense based on the readings I get on my libre device. So, for example if I had a coffee with milk I would see a glucose spike pretty much immediately and lasting for a couple of hours. If I had a piece of cheese, there is no spike in glucose.
And this is the kind of try it and see that you need to do with the right tools to monitor your body. If you can sustain lower levels of glucose as measured by your libre device or equivalent, this can be a strong indicator of what an HbA1c blood test will return if consistent and prolonged for a 3 month or more period.
You may be able to keep milk in your diet but if your trying to increase your fat intake, you don’t want low fat or skimmed milk. But if like me, you experience raised glucose levels after consuming milk, you may want to consider limiting or even cutting it out altogether. It is not a hard thing to do and you may find you don’t miss it. I certainly don’t.