I recently attended a wonderful lecture given by a female health care professional. The basis of her talk was preventative health care and preventative anti-aging measures.

I took a couple of wonderful things from her lecture. The first of which is that milk is really not good for you at all. Now, I LOVE milk, but based on what I learned I'm trying to get it out of my diet--one week at a time.

I've been successful this week. And even better--I've lost weight without making any other changes to my diet & excercise!

I wonder if it's because I've cut out the calories from the milk, or if it's because I've cut out milk and my body's adjusting....

Has anyone else tried something similar?

Hi there

Have you been counting calories at all? This isn't always the case of course, but when people cut out one thing, they may replace it with something else. So if you cut out milk and aren't replacing it, say, with a glass of juice or something, you've probably added to your calorie deficit. How much were you drinking a day?

I also tend to believe that many people are lactose intolerant anyway, so with my line of thinking it could very well be the removal of it from your diet.

I'm interested to know why milk isn't good for you?

Me also........Why isn't milk good for you? enquiring minds want to know.........

Me too . . . everything I've been reading lately has been touting milk as a great diet-friendly food . . . do tell us more.

There are conflicting opinions on this. Some insist that cow's milk isn't good for humans, period. Others say that it's OK for children but not for adults. Still others say it's fine and a good source of calcium.

There are definitely people who are lactose-intolerant, however--and milk does make them ill, primarily with diarrhea.

The web can give you lots of information on this topic.

Jay

If you were drinking milk (which has calories) and now you aren't drinking milk, the reduction in your calorie intake would make an impact on weight loss. If you were drinking a small-ish glass once a day (12 oz...the size of a Starbucks tall), that's about 135 calories a day you're no longer taking in. Over a week or two, you can see how that would add up!

Otherwise, unless you have some sort of digestive issue like lactose intolerance, current research shows that dairy, including milk, actually helps in weight loss efforts if you account for the calories in it, most likely due to the calcium content. Still, if milk doesn't work for your body, no harm in cutting it out (but do try to get enough calcium from other sources, since osteoporosis is nothing to fool with).

I personally don't like milk at all. Yuck. But I have heard that it is unnatural for humans to drink milk as adults. All other mammals stop drinking milk when they are weaned from their mothers so it really has no benefit to us as adults. Althought the calcium is good for you, I prefer to get mine from yogurt and cheese and other such things. But, as American's... we eat all sorts of unnatural things. I just chose to not drink milk.

did the speaker make the case that all milk products are bad? as in, we shouldn't eat yogurt, cheese, etc., either? i would assume milk-based products would have the same negatives as drinking straight milk. like peachcake, i'm not a big milk fan but i do like some of those yummy things that are made with it!

i also wonder if it makes a difference health-wise if you drink skim vs. 2% vs. whole. obviously whole milk is pretty loaded w/ fat but how bad is skim?

I also love milk and I have cut down on how much I drink and it has made a huge difference to my weight loss! I think my weight loss has almost doubled each week since I cut it out (I drank way too much of it!)
Those calories do add up quickly.

Pardon me, but I'm a little confused -- Those are milk-based you know. You are just eating your milk instead of drinking it.

What about low fat milk, like 1% and 2%? Those also lower calories, and you still get the calcium.

Yes, yogurt and cheese are made from milk--but the milk is changed by the process of making them.

Jay

If you are going to use a "natural" or "no other animals do it" argument, then yogurt and cheese fit in there just as well as milk (I'm not aware of any cheese-making animal other than man). Although it is true that many lactose-intolerant people can eat cheese and yogurt without problem.

When animals and humans are weaned, they lose the ability to break down milk only after they've stopped drinking it. In other words, weaning "causes" us to lose the ability to digest milk. If you never stop drinking milk, you generally do not lose the ability to drink it; because the body has a "use it or lose it" reaction to creating those enzymes. And while it's true that animals and until fairly recent centuries most humans never had the oportunity to drink other animals' milk and weaned before adulthood, those animals and ancient humans had sources of calcium at which modern humans often turn up their nose (such as eating bones and insects).

There have been a couple studies that suggest that small amounts of dairy (like 2 to 3 glasses of low fat milk within the scope of a calorie-controlled diet) actually may improve weight loss, but I think the results are far from conclusive, and it's definitely not something to believe "if a little is good, a lot is better."

My aunt, and my husband before he started watching his diet both drank milk as pretty much their sole beverage, often drinking nearly a gallon a day. That's nearly 1600 calories, even if the milk is skim. That's obviously not good. (So when I heard that Dr. Kevourkian when on a "hunger strike" refusing solid foods, but continuing to drink milk and juice, I found that quite humorous).

Personally, I consider milk pretty much the same as ALL foods, natural and altered, neither evil nor saintly. It's possible to overdo a good thing, and it's possible to incorporate a few not so great things into a healthy diet.

Marvellously informative post kaplods As usual you managed to come up with the perfect pieces of information . . .

I'm starting menopause and definitely need more calcium. I wouldn't think of skipping milk, I drink either skim or 1%. I'm lactose intolerant so I drink Lactaid. You've got to keep your bone strength or you're in trouble when you get old.