As this last season of Lent approached, I really struggled with what to give up during those six long weeks. While I am a Christian, I hadn't really participated in giving something up for Lent until high school. I attended a private Catholic high school, during which each Lenten season we were encouraged by our teachers to participate in either eliminating a distraction from our lives or adding something that could help us turn our attention more towards God.

Freshman year I decided to give up soda, which, believe or not, has stuck with me. The following three years I think I tried without success to give up some of the most common things you hear people making the pledge to abstain from: chocolate, sweets, coffee, tv, social media. It wasn't until my freshman year of college when I really decided to take fasting during Lent seriously again. I wanted a challenge and was sick of always falling short of my goals each year during this time. After pondering the idea in my head during the weeks leading up to Lent, I finally made the decision to give up dairy.

I know what you're all thinking... "Milk? Brownies? Ice cream? Cheese?! No way. Never in a million years will I give up cheese!" I had those same thoughts at one point. However, I quickly discovered that there are just as good of alternatives to all of your favorite foods that contain dairy. And I have come to love them! At the beginning of Lent, I really considered this as just a mind game. I had heard that giving up dairy helped with clearing up your skin and reducing bloating, and I wanted to create an experiment to see if I could do it. I never thought that it would become a lifestyle.

Here I am though, six months later, and still living dairy free. I'll be honest, summer was hard and I definitely had some slip ups. There's some days when you just can't refuse an ice cream date with your best friend! But for the majority of the last 180 days, I have consumed minimal dairy. And I can confidently say that I feel the best I have ever felt in my whole life! It's no secret that at first it was definitely hard. I missed adding sour cream to my tacos, cheese to my sandwiches, and yogurt to my afternoon snack smoothies. But after awhile, I found myself missing it less and less. I also found myself liking alternative foods like almond milk, fruit sorbet, and soy yogurt a lot more.

Throughout those first six weeks I also began to notice changes to my body that motivated me to keep on going. I lost the weight (with the help of exercising and clean eating) that I had previously gained during my first semester of college, my skin felt softer, and I no longer felt bloated by the end of each day. I also got a lot better at cooking! I no longer mourned the cookies and creamy pasta that I couldn't eat. Instead I took advantage of Pinterest and pinned probably over a hundred dairy free recipes to experiment with. I got to try so many new foods that I never would have even thought to try before, and my family didn't mind that I took over cooking dinner most nights of the week.

I know that eliminating something so prominent in your diet can seem a bit scary, maybe even impossible. But I promise you that the cravings and negative thoughts will eventually go away and you will be so happy that you accomplished a task you thought you could never do. You'll be even happier with all of the benefits that you'll start to experience!