Bread my Demon

My enemy, my love, my demon, my favorite thing in the world, the root of all evil and the orchestrator of every doomed diet I’ve failed.

So what do I do? I tried living without it, avoiding it completely, and yes, that works really well for a while, and I lose weight very quickly, but it’s not long before the cracks start to appear.

What I’ve learned over the years is that there are several things you shouldn’t say to someone who is desperately trying to lose weight, and top of the list is YOU CANT

Just think about all the positive reinforcement that you learned from books and all the groups we’ve attended over the years, they all tend to focus on what you can have and never say anything is off limits, they just focus on all the nice things we neglect and reduce the amounts of what puts weight on us, ive already tried I CAN’T and it doesn’t work long term, its time to try  I CAN.

This kind of flexibility doesn’t come without risk though, and is why it’s so important to monitor and check everything we make, and for God sake don’t go shopping when your hungry, I did once and came home with 2 bags full of triggers lol.

What im saying is that if nothing is excluded we have to be careful not to fall back into bad habits, only yesterday I completely ruined a really good start to the day by not planning and just making something easy, a corned beef butty on a Sheldon’s muffin with just a little mustard.

I know what you think, that’s not too bad, and you’re right, but another 2 straight after the first one was.

It was only after I did the deed and I reflected on it, I sat and thought to myself WHAT A FUCKWIT I AM, I decided to servay the damage by weighing the remaining corned beef to ascertain how much I had eaten, 700 calories worth im such a dick 😆, if I had planed it, i would of cut thinner slices and added loads of salad with it to bulk it up, and I probably would of only had 2 at the most, thats how quickly and easily we can fall into these traps if we don’t show any dissaplin.

Dissaplin, it isn’t a dirty word, truth is we enjoy things far more if we plan correctly, I know there’s the odd occasion when we don’t plan and do things on the fly and they turn out great, but I bet you anything if we are honest more times than not they don’t work out, there a reason why we plan trips, its because it’s more enjoyable and a safer way to do things.

When I went shopping, I had planned for bacon and egg macmuffins, I didn’t need Sheldon muffins or corned beef, but I got them anyway, that was a mistake. I should have planned my shop and stuck to it.

So back to bread 🍞 I’m not avoiding it anymore but I need to control the amount I have and more importantly what I put on it, and how I cook what I put on the bread, but is there more I can do? And the answer to this is yes.

If im going to have bread then im going to have proper bread, home baked, not with a shite bread maker that does it all for you, not even with my kitchen Aid, if im having  this, im going to have to earn it, im making by hand.

So along with all the fad diets I’ve  read about and tried, ive  started to look at other ideas about food, more to the point what food I cant do with out and maybe what drives me to over eat these certain foods, i suppose im hoping to find some answers and gain a little more understanding about what it is that may be driving me to these terrible decisions ive been making over the years.

This is when I came across a book by Chris Van Tulleken called ultra processed people.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you it’s a rivoting read, it’s not but it is very interesting and he makes some very alarming points which really got me questioning a lot of the shite I’ve been told about nutrition over the years.

The book discusses how huge portions of our diet are not even food, it’s several things like starches put through loads of different processes in labs with other ingredients you would never find in your kitchen, and the end result is passed as food, but the truth is that if  you saw the sludge before processing you would never dream of putting it in your mouth, these thing have a longer shelf life so profits or better and unfortunately that’s the the real goal, the food industry are not looking out for our well being they are looking to profit.

These same scientist who make this food to last have also designed ways to bypass your body’s own mechanism to prevent you from over eating, there is loads more to this book and it’s a real eye opener and has realy made me think about things I took for granted, I really recommend it.

Look im not saying I’m never going to eat ultra processed food again, there is so much of it out there it would be near impossible to avoid, plus I’d spend my life reading lables in super markets looking for all ingredients that you would never find in a kitchen just to identify UPF ( ultra processed  food ) 😆, but what I can do is make small changes to reduce the amount I use.

Like baking my own bread, yes I know the flour is processed but you won’t be finding emulsifiers, colourings or preservatives in anything I bake, I also won’t be purposely trying to make the bread softer so you can eat more of it in a shorter space of time, which is exactly what’s going on with the store bought crap.

I also might add this is exactly what happened with the Sheldon muffins and the corned beef yesterday, I scoffed the first down in seconds, then 1 turned into 3 its scary, or is it just a coincidence.

I certainly didn’t do that when I made Avacado on toast with MY bread even though I enjoyed it more.

Was it convenience, was it because I wolfed it down so fast I wasn’t satisfied, was it because the muffins were so soft I could eat it so fast, and maybe that’s why I wasn’t satisfied with one.

Maybe putting an effort into making what we eat and the whole ritual of creating something is more important than we think.

Something else aswell, 1 turning into 3 like it did is addictive behavior, addiction isn’t just about what you use it’s also about how much and how quickly it’s delivered, is this one of the ideas being used to bypass our bodies own mechanisms prevent over eating ? Who knows.

Maybe making items soft like baby food is so you can eat faster and eat more before you feel full, maybe I should just purposely linger and take my time with food, maybe I will feel full before I finnish my plate.

Hmmmmm well, this started out as a bread recipe and turned into something else, I will think of another title and do another post for the bread 😆.