Do you really need a slice of bread?

27^th June 2012

Too many people miss the silver lining because they're expecting gold.Maurice Setter

Another cracking day on the plan, followed Filing and Healthy again, going to try and do the week on it, my day looked like this;

Breakfast – mango, banana, 0% Greek yogurt

Dinner – Gammon steak, potatoes & veg = filling & healthy

Tea – 3 eggs, leftover potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, spring onions, courgettes & ham

No desire to snack at all, and still have all my weeklies intact and I’ve earned 15 activity ProPoints I haven’t touched yet!  Today and tomorrow will be the real test because this is when my appetite usually kicks in because of the long work hours, so we shall see, my hopes are high.  I feel very ‘in the zone’ and I haven’t even wanted a glass of wine either!  Bring on weigh day ;)

The Earl of Sandwich has a lot to answer for inventing the sandwich, but really, do you need it with every meal?  Although low calorie bread is included in the Filling and Healthy foods on the Weight Watcher plan, I am personally trying to avoid it as much as possible because I know I overeat on bread.

I’ve noticed that many members panic at the realisation that they don’t need to eat bread at every meal, they ask what will I have for breakfast / lunch / dinner / with my soup etc.? They say ‘It’s really difficult to know what to eat?’ We have become so reliant on bread that it has robbed us of our creativity at meal times.

Can you really not think of anything to have for lunch other than a sandwich?

There is no reason to have a sliver of cheese or meat with some limp salad leaves, soggy cucumber and squishy tomatoes crushed beyond recognition between two slices of dry bread.

Why not  focus on the contents and get rid of the bread; change up your lunch to a huge salad with crisp leaves, peppers, cherry tomatoes, courgette & carrot ribbons, spring onions and a sliced chicken breast that was cooked in a WW garlic & herbs bag to make it tasty and juicy.  It won’t cost you much more than a takeaway sandwich from Greggs or Subway, or a pub lunch, making your lunch at home is definitely cheaper.

I found this info online, and it might make you realise why we shouldn’t eat bread all the time. At a base level, the nutrient content of bread is virtually zero, you are basically eating 2 slices of sugar and whole grain bread doesn’t offer much more and fancy breads from chain deli’s are far from nutritious. Here are the ingredients in a Subway wheatgrain roll:

Enriched Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Whole Wheat Flour, Contains 2% Or Less Of The Following: Wheat Gluten, Oat Fiber, Yeast, Soybean Oil, Wheat Bran, Calcium Blend (Calcium Carbonate, Vitamin D3), Salt, Rolled Wheat, Rye Nuggets, Dough Conditioners (Datem, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate), Yeast Nutrients (Calcium Sulfate, Ammonium Sulfate), Degermed Yellow Corn Meal, Rolled Oats, Rye Flakes, Caramel Color, Triticale Flakes, Parboiled Brown Rice, Refinery Syrup, Honey, Barley Flakes, Flaxseed, Millet, Sorghum Flour, Flavor (Yeast Extract, Salt, Natural Flavor). Contains wheat.

You may have noticed that if you’ve ever been on holiday to France that bread is generally brought fresh every day and past its best by that evening. This is how bread used to be produced in the UK until profits came first. Most of the ingredients in the list above are to preserve the bread so it can be transported and stay on the shelf longer. In its purest form bread should basically just be flour, yeast, salt and water, to get this kind of bread these days, you probably need to make your own.

I admit that giving up bread can be hard work and takes some thinking about but not only will your diet benefit, you’ll start enjoying a better variety of meals too, so that’s today’s challenge, go one day this week without bread!  Next week in meetings we’re talking about lunches so you’ll get lots of ideas for none bread suggestions.