Raw Milk = 10 lbs Lost!

As I was drinking a glass of raw milk last night, I realized something that could be a coincidence or an actual cause and effect:  Since switching from "regular" milk to raw milk I've lost 10 lbs!  For the last week or so I've noticed my jeans are so loose that I need to wear a belt now.  The other day I weighed myself and the scale showed that I had indeed lost 10 lbs.  So couldn't it be that YMCA membership we have now?  Probably not, because I only seem to get in once every week and I haven't noticed the weight loss until just recently and we've had the membership since January.  Am I eating differently?  Yes.  I'm eating more raw foods (veggies and dairy) and drinking more tea since we've switched from "regular" to raw milk about 2 months ago now.  The biggest factor in my eyes is the raw milk.  I rule out the veggies because I'm not eating more of them, I've just been eating them raw instead of cooked.  Where as with the milk, I've not only been drinking more of it, but I've been drinking the raw cream in large amounts in my tea and lattes.  Raw milk and cream naturally have more fat in them.  So shouldn't that cause me to gain more weight instead of loose weight?  I think the whole low-fat low-calorie diet craze is a big myth.  If you eat healthy fats and calories it may actually cause you to loose weight because you're not depriving your body of the essential vitamins and minerals that it needs to function properly.

For instance, if you eat feed-lot beef (fed a diet of corn and/or soy w/out much room to move around and given hormones and antibiotics) it has a higher fat content than grass-fed beef.  The things that it eats are more concentrated in its fat.  Thus when you eat it you're eating a concentrated amount of those hormones and antibiotics (as well as soy - which has been proven to mimic estrogen - and corn).  If you eat grass-fed beef, it has a lower fat content, and what fat it does have is rich in those vitamins and minerals from the grass and alfalfa that it ate.

So too with "regular" pasteurized/homogenized milk, the cow has been fed a corn/soy diet.  It's been given antibiotics and growth hormones.  Those things are going to concentrate in the fat of the cow's milk.  Then the milk is heated to a high temperature to kill off any "bad bugs" (pasteurization) which also kills the good things like beneficial enzymes, vitamins, and minerals.  This is why vitamins A and D must be added into the milk after pasteurization because any of the good things have been killed along with the bad.  Then you homogenize it, which breaks down the particles by shaking it up so much that the fat can't separate from the rest of the milk.  And then you have whole milk, 2%, 1%, and fat-free.  You'd think that fat free would be your best bet, but it's actually the worst.  From my understanding of fat free milk it has had powdered milk protein added to it (some of which contains MSG) so as to give it a higher protein content because there is no fat found in it.  I'm still not clear on the whole "fat free" concept and what goes into make it that, but I do know for a fact that they've added powdered milk protein to it.  In my opinion, no thanks!  Then you have your organic milk, which may or may not have been fed a grass-only diet.  But at least they claim not to have had hormones are antibiotics.  And lastly, you have raw milk.  Most raw milk has been fed an all-grass or mostly-grass diet.  Grass and alfalfa are high in vitamins A and D that unlike the vitamins added to "regular" milk, are easy for our bodies to digest because of their structure (again I'm not a scientist or a dr, so I can't explain the details of one structure from another).  So when you drink raw milk, you're getting all of those good vitamins, minerals, and enzymes that are naturally occurring, not added.

Did you know that cows are not designed to eat grains?  When they do it introduces E-coli into their gut which in turn raises the chance of us getting E-coli if we eat the meat or dairy from a cow that ate grains.  A grass-fed cow, on the other hand, does not have E-coli in its gut because a cow is designed by nature to eat grass and only grass which in turn does not produce a scary bacteria such as E-coli.

To sum up, grain-fed cows introduce a host of "bad" things into our bodies if we eat and drink their byproducts.  Grass-fed cows in comparison have no need for the antibiotics because they don't get sick because they're eating what they're supposed to eat.  And farmers who actually care aren't going to give them growth hormones.  Thus eating and drinking the byproducts of grass-fed cows is beneficial to our bodies.

I hope you have the chance to try raw milk.  I'm hooked on the stuff.  My husband no longer has lactose intolerant symptoms.  My kids love to drink milk now that's not flavored.  I'm planning on making home-made ice cream from the raw cream so John can enjoy ice cream again w/out taking a pill and having its side effects.  In the end, I'm in love with raw dairy and don't understand why we ever went away from it given the facts we now have.  And to top it all off, I've LOST 10 LBS! :)