Just found out im lactose intolerant !!

Iv just found out I'm lactose intolerant (came on the past month). Im the kind of person who drinks glasses of milk and 3 lattes a day! i love cream and cheese iv gone a few days of black coffee yuck! and no cheese. My symptoms have totally gone i don't feel sick anymore my farts has stopped and I'm not getting stomach cramps which is great but i just love milk. I was wondering if anyone else has developed it in later life and how they coped? and i was looking at lactose free milk and cheese but its so expensive and i don't like soya any advice would be great

I developed it at the age of 18 and the past few years have been a bundle of fun! (kidding)

Cheese, unfortunately, is a difficult thing to replace. I basically don't replace it, although I've sometimes eaten houmous and thought about how much it reminds me of cream cheese (mainly Philadelphia). That could be because it's been so long since I had the regular stuff, though. Anyway, I focus on finding alternatives to enjoy rather than substitutes (although you have to have substitutes when it comes to chocolate, and there are lots and lots of chocolate bars you can get that don't contain milk, you don't even have to stick to dark chocolate-over the past few years I've noticed the quality of milk chocolate substitutes has shot through the roof-Tesco free from chocolate buttons and Moo free chocolate to name just a couple-they're made with rice milk/rice syrup too so have less of an artificial soya taste-I hope you like chocolate or I've just rambled for nothing).

In terms of milk I use rice milk mainly, although I've been through phases where I've had oat milk or almond milk as my main milk. It is expensive, but if you wait until the cartons are on offer for around £1 a litre it isn't as bad as paying full price. Rice milk is probably the sweetest, and also quite thin (think skimmed milk), whereas almond is the thickest and oat milk is somewhere in between. You can get chocolate variations of those milks, although I haven't had an awful lot of chocolate milk because cocoa gives me headaches (yay). You can also get some nice dairy free desserts (soya dairy free desserts don't tend to taste as much of soya as the milks do, so I'd encourage you to give those a try as long as you don't have a soya allergy). I love coyo yoghurts which are made with coconut milk, but they're really expensive too so I save them for a sometime treat. There are really good dairy free ice creams out there too, and if you don't like those you can develop a strong taste for sorbets and fruit juice lollies.

I stopped drinking regular tea/coffee when I was diagnosed because blurgh, and now I drink green tea pretty much every day. It still gives you a small caffeine boost and you soon get used to the taste. You can even get flavoured green teas that make the change much less devastating (my favourite right now is green tea and salted caramel, and ginger bread green tea-both by Twinings, but you can get lemon green tea by Tetley which is a bit cheaper-I spend money on flavoured tea though that I would have spent on actual caramels and treats for myself that I can no longer buy/enjoy now so I justify it that way).

Be careful when eating outside or when buying things from bakeries (even in store bakeries). Most in store bakeries and Greggs don't have anything suitable for us to eat, unless you're really into salads or maybe a plain baguette or ciabatta, so eating out/convenience food can get a bit difficult-all I can say is you'll get used to it and it's well worth making the sacrifices to feel well (although you *will* feel like crying and hitting walls sometimes when you see someone eating something you can't have).

I don't know how much help I've been, but I could go on about this all day...if you have anything specific you need to substitute just let me know and I'll try to help!