The Hormone Reset Diet (28 page)

Most of us were raised to think that milk is required for strong bones. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Agriculture told us to drink three servings of low-fat milk each day—mostly because milk provides calcium, potassium, and vitamin D (which is added to milk). The rationale is that milk will help reduce bone fractures and blood pressure.

We’ve all seen the commercials: it does a body good, right? Maybe not. A growing number of experts believe that milk is a top allergen, the cause of many symptoms, such as constipation, sinusitis, rashes, bloating, and irritable bowel syndrome.

Given the number of people I see in my practice who are intolerant to dairy, I agree with a professor at Harvard School of Public Health, Walter Willett, M.D., Ph.D., who calls the milk recommendation a “step in the wrong direction.” It turns out that there’s very little science to prove milk consumption reduces your risk of bone fractures. Luckily, you don’t need to drink milk to have strong bones. Alternative sources of calcium include salmon, sardines, turnip greens, almonds, kale, bok choy, broccoli, spinach, and sweet potatoes.

If you are indeed intolerant to casein, whey, or lactose, don’t worry. Despite the convincing commercials from the industry, a panel of experts found that dairy is not essential to a healthy diet.
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Did a friend ever have to literally pull you away from the frozen yogurt shop? When the cheese plate comes at dinner, do you elbow others out of the way and make a beeline for it? There is a reason you feel “addicted” to your favorite dairy treats. It turns out that they contain “casomorphins,” protein fragments that come from
the digestion of the milk protein casein. A cousin of morphine and heroin, casomorphins are opioids that keep you addicted. Casomorphins are like crack, which is why so many of us have an addiction to cheese or lattes or cream in our coffee. With its drug-like effects, no wonder dairy is constipating, just like opiate painkillers. Overall, dairy is low in fiber and slows down digestion.

It’s good to have this information so you can understand your emotional and physical relationship to dairy foods. It can be tempting to turn to your addictive foods when you’re feeling under pressure, down, or just plain bored. While food can be soothing, it’s important to remember that it’s not a salve for stress. Interestingly, more than 90 percent of your body’s genetic expression—in other words, how those lovely genes play out or manifest for you—is determined by what you eat. You consume more than one ton of food per year, so this is a ton (literally and figuratively) of information for your genes.

How do you want to influence your genes? Feed them morphine-like substances or kale?
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By choosing to eliminate dairy from your diet, even for seventy-two hours, you could be doing your body a wonderful service to clear your addictions and begin with a clean slate.

You didn’t think I’d stop talking about hormones, did you? Let’s get to the effect of dairy on your hormones. It turns out that conventional dairy raises growth hormone and insulin. And growth hormone, along with cortisol, determines how much fat you deposit on your belly.
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Like cortisol, insulin, and all the other hormones of metabolism, growth hormone should be in the neutral zone for optimal functioning: not too high and not too low.

The problem is that synthetic growth hormone, known as “bovine somatotropin,” has been on the market since 1994 and is injected
into about a third of the nation’s nine million dairy cows.
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When injected once every two weeks, the hormone can increase a cow’s milk output by 10 to 15 percent.
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You don’t need to be a scientist to figure out that if cows are injected with growth hormone to fatten them and you eat their products, you may also be affected.

Avoid dairy beginning with this three-day reset and for the remainder of your Hormone Reset, and if you pass the reentry test (chapter 10), buy organic dairy from cows without growth hormone.

The illustration below presents a balanced look at the pros, cons, and unsettled science of dairy. For citations, go to www.HormoneReset.com/bonus.

You’ve now had a chance to see how good you feel after the three-day eliminations of conventional meat, sugar, fruit, caffeine, and grain. Now it’s time to heal further from going dairy free. In only three days you can reduce inflammation, reset your growth hormone and insulin balanced, and determine if dairy is making it impossible to lose weight.

Remember that you want to keep your eyes on the prize—getting lean for the long term. You now have the finish line in sight! Only six more days to go before you begin to add back one challenge food at a time, to track your biological response to it.

In the Dairy Free reset, you’ll be able to swap out your favorites with creamy but nondairy choices. My hunch is that with some creativity, you won’t even miss your milky companions.

DAIRY FREE RULES: DO THESE EACH DAY

When you eliminate dairy, you’ll make more room for alkaline-forming foods filled with fiber, minerals, and iron. Remember to continue the rules you’ve already implemented from the previous resets.

1.
Avoid milk, cheese, butter, kefir, and yogurt.

2.
Make sure you are getting enough protein
in the form of crustaceans, cold-water fish, grass-fed beef, pastured eggs, seeds, and maybe beans (if they don’t cause weight gain).

3.
Eat lots of fiber and fresh vegetables
to fill you up. Continue to aim for one pound of vegetables per day, or even more.

4.
Drink “milk”
—just not from an animal (see Milk Alternatives on page 187).

5.
Substitute conventional butter with pastured ghee,
which has the milk solids removed and is casein free.

6.
Make creamy non-dairy soups
that will last three days.

7.
Look for foods that are labeled “vegan”
at your supermarket or your local health food store; this means they contain no dairy. Examples include “vegannaise” and nondairy cheeses. Just be sure to check the labels to ensure they don’t have casein. For instance, on page 279, you’ll find a recipe for crusted chicken stuffed with almond cheese and roasted red pepper. Yum!

SAMPLE MENU

A suggested dairy-free menu for resetting your insulin and growth hormone is on the following page. For nutritional data, check out the Notes section.
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If you can’t have your tall glass of cow’s milk, you still have a plethora of other options.

• Almond milk.
Great in smoothies or with your favorite (gluten-free) cookie. Make sure to buy unsweetened so you bypass the extra sugar.

• Coconut milk.
Made from healthful coconuts, this milk has a distinct taste that can be great whether you drink it alone or use it for cooking. Scrumptious in shakes!

• Hemp milk.
This is another milk in your arsenal when you are eliminating dairy from your diet. Hemp protein is one of the most digestible if you have gut issues.

• Coconut kefir.
This product is gluten- and dairy-free—and it’s a great source of fermented food. Go to www.cocokefir.com, or make your own version.
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Digestive enzymes can help lessen inflammation, and I encourage you to take them. We all make fewer enzymes as we age, so popping a few digestive enzymes before a meal can really help after age forty. Lactase can be taken as a chewable pill that helps you digest lactose if you’re intolerant,
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but my preference always is to get to the root
cause, which may be imbalanced gut bacteria. You can also take digestive enzymes that help you break down casein.

We all have to eat. But according to yoga’s sister science, ayurveda, it’s more important to pay attention to
how
you eat than
what
you eat. Personally, I believe both are important, but I respect this message from the sages of ayurveda, and you should too. Here’s the idea: mindful eating promotes good digestion. In modern life, it’s easy to scarf down a meal at your desk or in your car. I notice that sometimes I start to clear the plates from the dinner table at home before we are even finished! For this reset, focus on eating as a spiritual practice. Not only does this improve your digestion, it also gives you the opportunity to stay present to your experience.

Here are a few basic ayurvedic rules to follow:

• Don’t drink water during a meal; this dissipates the “digestive fire” you need.

• Eat your biggest meals in the middle of the day, when your digestion is strongest.

• Eat according to your state. For instance, if you are feeling tired, eat foods with spices for a little boost. If you are feeling spacey, eat grounding foods like warm vegetable soup.

• Don’t eat while reading or watching television, which distracts from the meditative nature of your meal.

• Rest after eating to allow your gut to assimilate nutrients.

The right kind of exercise can reset your metabolic hormones to healthy levels, and we know this is important for getting lean. Most
people think that exercising for forty-five minutes, continuously and at a moderate pace, will help them shed pounds. The research shows otherwise. Women don’t lose weight after sticking to this exercise regimen for three months!
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When your metabolism is broken by leaky gut and inflammation, one of the fastest ways to fix it is with interval training—which to me is a prescription to exercise like a cavewoman. Sprinting intermittently, followed by moderate exercise, works superbly to reset growth hormone, insulin, and cortisol. Most people refer to this form of movement as high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which is proven to work for overweight women.
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A recent meta-analysis of ten studies, which included 273 patients with heart conditions and a broken metabolism, showed that HIIT has double the benefit in terms of fitness compared with moderate-intensity continuous training.
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HIIT is a system of interval training that’s superefficient, with multiple rounds of high-intensity burst training interspersed with less intense exercises.
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The idea is to do it for a minimum of twenty-five to thirty minutes four days per week.

Here are a few pointers for how to do HIIT:

• Warm up for five minutes with your favorite type of exercise.

• Run for one minute, then briskly walk or jog for two minutes. If you can’t jog or run, walk as fast as you can for one minute, then walk at a less intense but still brisk pace for two minutes. Repeat this sequence for twenty-five to thirty minutes. Or you can try biking: do a five-minute warm-up, then cycle hard, with your highest possible effort, interspersed with a more moderate effort every other minute. After fifteen minutes, pedal backward for three minutes and then repeat the sequence.

• Finish your workout with at least five minutes of active stretching.

According to the founders, HIIT naturally releases HGH (human growth hormone), which helps you burn fat and gain lean muscle.
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From my personal experience, it works, but science is also in total agreement: HIIT is
way
better than running or stepping for an hour!

When it comes to looking at your reaction to dairy, there are several tests to consider.

• Take the hydrogen breath test (described earlier in the chapter, page 182), which will most accurately assess lactose intolerance.