Lactose Intolerant

For those of you who don't know, and maybe I've never told you guys, I am staying at a vegetarian cafe. With that, we can't have meat here at all. Not only do we not serve it to customers but we can't have it even for ourselves to eat after hours. Without having meat around I've been having trouble getting in my daily protein. I never thought I ate that much meat but now not having meat has been quite a struggle. Since I haven't had meat at my disposal I have been eating more cheese then I think I can ever remember eating in my life. My daily food intake tends to look something like this:

Breakfast: cream cheese omelet
Morning Snack: cheese
Lunch: grilled cheese sandwich
Afternoon snack: cheese
Dinner: something with cheese

I'm also eating foods that aren't cheese, but I have been eating lots and lots of cheese. For a while this was okay but lately - maybe the last week - I haven't been feeling all that good. I'd narrowed it down to a few possible culprits: lactose, gluten, sugar, nuts and/or seeds. I can't cut all of these from my diet at the same time or I wouldn't have anything to eat at all so after a bit of experimenting and some critical thinking, I decided that the most likely culprit was dairy products. I have cut back on these almost entirely that last few days (with a few accidentally exceptions because sometimes I forget something has dairy) and I'm feeling much better. I have also tried to cut back on my intake of nuts/seeds and sugar but not to any extreme with those to.

Without cheese/dairy in my diet for protein now, I am relying almost entirely on eggs. Today alone I used 16 eggs, 10 of which I'm sure I consumed. I had 3 poached eggs for breakfast, egg salad sandwich for lunch, 3 poached eggs for my dinner/snack before work, and an egg salad sandwich for dinner #2/snack after work. The only other protein option around here is peanut butter but we're running low there and when you eat peanut butter you get peanut butter mouth - where you can't talk for like a solid 60 seconds because your mouth is stuck together - so I can't eat too much of that in 1 day.

Either way, I'm going to continue controlling my intake of dairy and hopefully I'll start to feel much, much better. Thank god we have soy milk and soy ice cream here at the cafe. At least I can still enjoy those two things!

That's all for today. Tomorrow I'm going out for breakfast with Shelley in town and then I work both jobs later in the day. Then it's Monday and then I'm off for 2 days again. My working days really fly when 4 of the 5 of them are doubles! I don't want my time here to go too fast but it is nice to get through these days quickly and then get back to my fun days off! And I am enjoying the pub work at least. I get to meet so many nice locals and other interesting people - all of whom just love America - that make that job really worth while. I was telling my parents today that I'm trying to suck as much out of the customers at the Top Pub as possible. Hopefully that job will have more benefits than just extra money in the end!

Okay, time for sleep. Night!

Best!

P.S. Happy February!