In Praise of Whole Milk

As a supplement to my previous post ("What Non-Fat Really Means")...

A coworker of mine once told me about a Russian doctor who helped a 70 year-old woman look 40 years old.  He did this by putting her on a strict diet of natural foods.  Absolutely nothing processed.  She could eat meat but nothing with hormones.  And for milk, he suggested drinking whole fat milk, because the non-fat, low-fat varieties had chemicals added to make them that way.  Only whole fat was good for you, he said.  After a few months on this diet, the woman started looking years younger, her ailments (which she had plenty of before) started to go away, and she was healthier than ever.  Looking at her "after" pictures, my coworker said, you could not tell that she was 70.  She looked like a woman decades younger.

Well, after hearing my coworker speak so enthusiastically of this doctor and wanting the anti-aging effects he accomplished with this woman, I changed my consumption of low-fat milk (which was the only low-fat thing I drank), and switched to whole milk.  I had drank whole fat milk for most of my life until I switched.  I don't know why or when exactly I switched, but I did.  So now it was just a switch back.  It was difficult at first because I wasn't used to the thicker consistency anymore.  (Incidentally, the creamier consistency is one of the reasons people tell me they can't drink whole milk.)  But, once I got used to it, I found I liked it, again.  It was pretty good. 

And the funny thing is, it had a side effect.  I started to lose weight.  Even though I was already slender (too slender from what people told me), I started to lose weight.  It was the weirdest thing because I could just not keep the weight on.

Of course, there might be other factors as to why I started shedding the pounds, one of them being I had told myself that I could use to gain weight.  And of course, when one tells oneself to gain weight, one usually ends up losing weight.  I think it's because of this mechanism - I'd read in a success book - that according to your mind, if you have to gain weight, then you need to be underweight first.  And because you tell your body you must be underweight first, it starts to lose weight to match your thinking.  This way you can then gain weight like you want, since it probably thinks that whatever the weight you are at the moment is your normal weight.  That, or you just don't like telling yourself you "should" do something, and so you rebel and go the other way.  In any case, I would think the same effect probably applies if you want to lose weight.  But I don't think many people want to try it that way. 

The other thing I discovered, after I started drinking whole milk, is that it's much easier for me to lose weight whenever I want.  Before, like everyone else, gaining weight was easy and getting it off was hard.  But now, it seems the opposite effect is true.  And I am much better at controlling it.


Maybe it wasn't the whole milk entirely, but I feel as if it helped in some way.  Maybe it makes me fuller, more satisfied, and so my brain tells me not to each as much. 

Whatever it is, I like whole milk now.  I can't go back to less than whole.