Friday Favorites: Favorite Lactose Free Products

I’m coming at ya PUMPED this Friday morning because it is SPRING BREAK fo’ yo girl and I am headed out of town tomorrow.

But i’m still linking up with Andrea, Narci, (and Erika but not this week) for another Friday FAVORITES before.

I get asked alllllllllll the time what I eat with my food allergies. “Can you even eat?” Yeah, peeps. I DO EAT. I just have to make modifications.

A couple weeks ago, I promised posts on my FAVORITE lactose free and gluten free products. Many of you already are gluten and lactose intolerant, and many of you are just now being diagnosed with these intolerances. Seeing as it’s taken me about 4 years to finally find products that I enjoy, I thought I would share to spare y’all. Not only did it take a long time, but it took a lot of money and throwing foods away. I mean my poor tastebuds hate me by now too 😉

So when I say these are my FAVORITE products it’s because I have tried them and continue to buy them. There have been some that I have tried where I can say “oh, that’s not awful” but these are the products that I buy over and over again.

Cheese

Cheese was the hardest. There’s nothing like some good ol’ cheese and I missed it…for shredded cheese, Go Veggie is my FAVORITE.

They have Cheddar, and Cheddar + Monterey Jack as well. The Mexican style tastes different than the others but it doesn’t bother me anymore since i’ve gotten use to them. This grated parmesan isn’t bad either and it’s good for pasta dishes!

Sliced cheese is weird because they all taste different! Strangely I’m not a fan of Go Veggie’s sliced cheese but I found this Borden brand that is delicious for grilled cheese and sandwiches when the craving hits.

But this Finlandia brand is what I have been buying for turkey and swiss melts or whatever else i’m needing some sliced cheese for.

Cabot is lactose free. I liked it for wine and cheese nights with my parents, but we don’t do that often enough so this cheese goes bad way too fast. If you have a big family with lactose intolerance, totally get this!

I really don’t used sliced cheese that much. I only have it in the fridge on occasion. But I always have my FAVORITE Go Veggie shreds. And the best thing about each cheese that I mentioned is that they all melt!!! I’ve used some that don’t melt before and that’s awkward.

What happens when it comes to pizza? Well, I don’t buy frozen pizzas because none of them are good to me…so either I just get it without cheese if we’re eating somewhere like Pie5, or we get Papa Murphy’s and i’ll put my own cheese on top before it goes in the oven! That’s mine without the cheese right there on top 😉

Ice-Cream

Ice-cream is by far my FAVORITE lactose filled product. I miss frozen custard so much. But this Lactaid is the absolute best. GET IT IF YOU HAVE NOT TRIED IT. Honestly, you’d like it even if you weren’t lactose intolerant…that’s how serious I am.

If I just want a plain ol’ ice-cream for a shake, Breyers is a great one.

I am way too excited about this coming out, i’m on the hunt right now. I have heard such good things.

And I just found out that this is lactose free, so as soon as I am done with my sugar detox it’s coming home with me.

I have gotten this before because chocolate chip cookie dough is always my favorite kind of ice-cream and it was good. But it’s not as good as the other ones i’ve mentioned.

Any other brand…don’t trust it. If you want some good lactose free ice-cream, you have to go with these name brands to get something remotely edible. I’m not kidding!

Mayo

Mayo is one of those things that you don’t need in your fridge all the time like cheese, but you need it for recipes. And you want a good one!

This is the best mayo brand that I have found…

…but I have also tried their salad dressings and don’t like them. It’s hard telling with some products.

I use it in my basil mayo.

And when I make my own Chick-Fil-A sauce.

I’d keep this on hand if I were you, it stays good for a while too.

Sour Cream

I have yet to find a sour cream that is lactose free. But I was at my local Sprouts the other day and saw this one, which I am pretty excited about because there are a lot of recipes that I have had to forgo due to sour cream.

Cream Cheese

Same goes with cream cheese. I have actually tried this one though, and it’s pretty good. So far i’m really liking the Green Valley brand.

But as I was googling that cream cheese, I found this bad boy and i’m over here like…”Where have you been all my life?!” It’s not in any of my stores!

Cottage Cheese

I ALWAYS have cottage cheese in my refrigerator. It’s a staple for me. A good source of protein,  calcium, and mine is low fat. You need it. I go through this container like a baby goes through diapers. Okay that was a bad comparison…but roll with it.

Butter

This is the only one that I know of that’s dairy free. I couldn’t tell a difference with this one, so I recommend! Shhh…don’t tell but I have used it on my brother’s FAVORITE english muffins and they couldn’t tell either.

Milk

So here’s the thing. I’ve never liked milk. When I was a kid I would only have with cereal in the mornings…but I never drank the milk at the bottom. Sometimes I would even eat my cereal dry. My mom said when I was younger I had a hard time with breast milk.

However, Lactaid is my absolute FAVORITE lactose free brand. I got the eggnog during the holidays, I get the fat free high calcium milk, the ice-cream, the cottage cheese, everything. It’s all good. I have yet to go wrong.

Sometimes we will get the big jug at Costco that i’ll use for recipes, or when i’m making this frozen coffee.

But most of the time I will just get the store’s name brand because #cheaper and #costeffective and #college.

But to be honest…I don’t buy dairy milk anymore. I now only use my FAVORITE unsweetened almond milk (the cheapest kind of course). I don’t eat cereal or drink it plain, so I just use this for my protein shakes or in recipes. Again, if you like dairy milk – Lactaid should be your go-to. Or even your grocery store’s name brand.

Yogurt/Kefir

If i’m craving some yogurt, Yoplait carries lactose free that is good.

And Green Valley is a great option too. Yogurt-wise, I just keep this plain kefir in my fridge. I use it for smoothies, or put it in a bowl with fresh fruit. Kefir is such a great way to  get your probiotic in as a snack! Always get plain because the flavored kinds have a ton of sugar.

So I will say that I have tried all of these Daiya products. Lots of lactose free people swear by this brand and use it all the time…

…but I do not like a single one of these. It is my LEAST FAVORITE. Except Daiya has a lactose free greek yogurt at the bottom of the picture that I recently figure out about, so I tried it and really enjoy it. But that’s it.

And when it comes to coffee…?

I just get some soy milk or coconut milk. But I totally prefer soy.

Really and truly if you can, get the name brand “lactose free” products. I have found that if you try some sort of off brand it’s just not as good.

OKAY FELLOW LACTOSE FREE PEEPS…does that help? Do you have any questions? If you’ve tried some of these what are your opinions?

Have a great Friday. Hopefully you’re writing your grocery list right now and these products are making the cut 😉

“Healthy” & Happy

So, the reason I decided to write this is because last Friday afternoon I went to one of my last doctor appointments for what I hope will be a loooooong time. Oh, happy happy day!

Here’s the lowdown…My junior year of high school I started having some gastrointestinal issues. It seemed like whatever I ate would make me nauseous or the opposite of that…you know. I told my mom and for a while we never did anything about it.  We thought maybe I had eaten something that was upsetting my stomach or drinking too much caffeine. I was on acutane for my face so we believed that could be upsetting my stomach. My mom is lactose sensitive, so at one point we did test me for that. We drove to a hospital an hour away for me to drink a liquid (which was disgusting) and blow into a machine thing that the nurse had for three hours during different intervals. Yes, it was as fun as it sounds. The test came back negative. Strike out. (Even though I am not lactose intolerant I have always been lactose sensitive and because I was giving up lactose to see if it made me feel any better I am basically lactose intolerant because I have tried to re-introduce lactose to my diet and my body does not handle it. Joy.)

Senior year comes around and while I was at a high school event in the cafeteria I was getting sharp stomach pains. A couple minutes later there goes Molly running out to the bathroom. Okay, embarrassing when you’re with a bunch of guys! Once it started controlling my life we decided that something needed to be done. We started to take matters into our own hands (mom grew up thinking doctor’s weren’t necessary—wait ’til she gets two more years down my life timeline). We decided we would try to eliminate gluten from my diet. My aunt is gluten intolerant and we knew this was beginning to become more common because they were finding gluten sickness in pigs and so on, so what the hay, right? (pun intended) While it helped for the most part I was still having episodes of nausea and the you know. Strike out.

Keep in mind these past two years I am still going to the doctor for my acutane and blood work as well as whatever other health issues strike up. I lived at doctor’s offices.

It’s now my freshman year of college and I am moving out on my own. Here I am in a new, unfamiliar town with my health okay on most days, but iffy on others. I was still on acutane up until November of my first semester so I had to go back frequently to get blood drawn and have my dermatologist check my skin. I even had to go home the day after this day:

Bid day. Which stunk because while all of the other girls were getting to know each other I wasn’t. The acutane caused my hair to get really dry with broken ends. So one weekend I went from this length:

To this length:

Not too much of a change I know, but me liked my long hair. Anyways, so while I was going back and forth with that freshman year I was still getting very sick. I vividly remember going to my big’s room in the sorority house to hang out with her. Her boyfriend called and asked her to pick him up and she was going to, so I decided I would go with her. I got out to the car and had to run back up to the restroom because of how sick I suddenly got. There were times that I had to lay in bed in my dorm room because I had no energy to do anything. I went to a minute clinic in Norman just to have them trying to give me a shot for allergies. Strike out.

We decided it was time to see a gastroenterologist. I shouldn’t be excited, but I was excited! Hoping that she could help save me from some of my embarrassment. The summer I came home after my first year of college I was put on a medicine called Linzess. This medicine is for IBS (Irritible Bowel Syndrome). The only thing she could come up with from constipation and episodes of diharrea was Linzess. For this medicine you are required to take it 30 minutes prior to eating and drinking every day and it helps to regulate your gastrointestinal tract. If you eat within the 30 minutes you will likely get bouts of diharrea. I would give you a little story time segment but you wouldn’t want to hear that. Needless to say, you don’t tempt this medicine no matter how hungry you are. My gastro also decided to have me get a colonoscopy to make sure I didn’t have a blockage or something of that sort. 19 years old and getting a colonoscopy…not very normal, but obviously i’m not very normal.

Slide into my sophomore year. I’m moving into the sorority house, living with about 100 girls. Within the first week i’m pretty sure about 30 of us got sick. During recruitment I had to go to the doctor for a sore throat and I came back with a double ear infection. After recruitment was over…again I had to go home. But this time to my OB-GYN for my absence of a menstrual cycle and I knew it wasn’t because I was pregnant. She did some blood work and found my thyroid levels were off. Strike out and I had a doctor appointment after this day, bid day:

Here we go to the Endocrinologist. First one I go to tells me I have a Hyperthyroid. Mom doesn’t really trust Endocrinologist for some reason so we go to a second one and he tells me that I have a Hyperthyroid that will be changing to Hypothyroid. What?? This one also had me do a radioactive iodine uptake. I had to swallow an iodine pill and they watched how my thyroid reacted to it which actually showed my thyroid was acting up. Mom and I weren’t really a fan of this guy so we decided to go to another Endocrinologist. This third one told me that I had a Hypothyroid. WHAT?! How do three different doctors tell you three different things?! Can you see how this can be very frustrating and we are only this far in the process? Now we go to yet another endocrinologist. This guy tells me that my thyroid is normal. A couple weeks later they test another round of blood (note: all of these thyroid tests are blood tests). It’s normal again. Mom says she’s done with these doctors. So we stop going. Strike out.

A couple months later and my hair is getting thinner and thinner. Most of the time I kept it in a ponytail or something. My mom was going to a hematologist for her low vitamin D. She asked him if it could be related to that and he said yes. So I came in for a doctor’s visit and guess what? More blood work. Because a hematologist specializes in diseases in the blood, he did just about every test known to man. I mean lyme’s disease, everything. Stool samples and blood. He also decided to do ultra-sounds of the thyroid, pelvis, abdomen, and heart.

All this later and we finally found that I am anemic (low iron), I have a bacteria in my stomach that eats away at my stomach lining, and my thyroid blood work is normal, but get this: My thyroid had an interesting shape in the ultra-sound and the doctor found a growth on my thyroid. To determine if the growth is benign or malignant I had to get a biopsy of my thyroid. HA. HA. HA. The biopsy showed I have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. The doctor tells me there’s a 1% chance in females my age getting this. But guess what???? The hematologist sends us back to an endocrinologist. Not really a strike out this time.

I started thinking a while ago “God, why do you hate me???” Truth is, I think that all of this was just part of God’s plan for me honestly. And i’ll tell you why. The main reason being that it got me to admit some things to myself. I don’t think that I was truly happy at OU but I would never admit it. Somehow through all of this I was able to admit to myself that it wasn’t where I should be. I also say that I found who my real friends are. During all this, I can count on half of a hand the friends that I had who stayed my friends. There were numerous times I would be asked to do something with friends and never could or never felt up to it. People stopped asking me to do things and would get angry with me for always turning them down. Honestly though, how do you explain all of this to people? It’s kind of impossible, not believable, and to go through this story every time you talk to someone is a lot.

This last Friday I went to ANOTHER endocrinologist, but don’t worry, we like him! He decided to draw my blood again. What the heck right, my poor veins haven’t been poked enough as it is. He reiterated everything the other doctor told me about Hashimoto Thyroidits and has decided to put me on medication for it. I may be taking a lot of medication for stomach, iron, thyroid, etc. but the Lord is faithful and finally has given me an answer. I would really say that this whole 3-4 year experience taught me obedience. You’re frustration will be temporary because in the Lord’s timing you will have the answers you need. And if somehow we would not have caught this my thyroid would have destroyed itself. I was also told when I eat gluten my thyroid attacks it because of the Hashimoto’s, so that’s why I can’t eat gluten. Lucky me!

So all those hours spent at the doctor, paperwork filled out, frustration, prescriptions, blood drawn, etc. FINALLY paid off. July of 2014 is going down in my books.

I only went into so much detail to help those who have had similar issues. I have been there. I have done that. I feel for you. I just want whoever to know that if you have ever experienced anything of this nature, I genuinely feel for you and know that I am thinking of you. Don’t let your strike-outs stop you. Keep hittin’, you’ll get there.

Life’s Color today is Red.
(I say this because what I always think of is the blood-work done)
Be obedient to the Lord. Keep pushing through. Listen to your body. Lean on your family. You won’t always know why things happen. Praise Jesus through the storm.