"I love bread."
Most people do, Oprah Winfrey. Dang, that's a good commercial. In my opinion, it's the best Weight Watchers commercial ever. If you haven't seen it, check it out. You'll see what I mean. Disclaimer: I'm not a Weight Watchers participant or employee or even stockholder. I'm just saying that Oprah knows how to hook people.
The truth is, I really love bread, too. I mean LOVE. There's a part of my soul that would be lost if I never ate bread again.
I've gone through South Beach Diet's phase 1 twice, I've done Atkins twice, and I took a feeble stab at Paleo but quit because I was a biology major and despised the argument that we're "supposed to eat like cave men." I have done calorie restriction where I ate a lot of processed foods and constantly felt like I was starving. I even took diuretics and flushed my meals down the toilet for a while when I was in high school. Major sadface to that period of my life.
Image courtesy of Bart Everson on Flickr.com.
The problem with everything I've done in the past to lose weight is that eventually my love of bread won out. Bread is the gateway drug, you know. For me, lots of bread lead the way to lots of sugar which lead to more fat and more alcohol. I encouraged a lifestyle for both myself and my husband in which our calories spun out of control, we spent half of our weekend hungover, and waaaaaaaay too much money was leaving our bank account to feed a delivery habit.
A month ago, my husband and I started on our track to rein ourselves and our copious amounts of pudge in. BUT.
This is a big "but" (no pun intended).
WE DIDN'T GIVE UP BREAD.
Instead, as Oprah says in her commercial, we started managing it. We're basically like those people who smoke weed in a managed way but don't let it overrun their lives. Not that we smoke. Oh, you know what I'm saying.
The only bread that we eat these days, with the exception of the rare and mindful act of eating out (twice, last month), is bread that I've made at home. That's not my bread up there, but mine is just as attractive and is incredibly delicious. No false modesty here! When we need tortillas, I make tortillas. You get the idea. The act of baking our own bread has made us much more aware of how much of it that we are eating, what exactly it is that we're putting into our mouths, and the time involved in producing another loaf. It doesn't take that long to make a good loaf, but it's long enough that I wouldn't want to do it every other day. You feel me?
One month in, and I know that this is not just a phase. I can maintain mindful carbohydrate intake like this for the rest of my life. This is sustainable.