Bread

White bread, my nemesis. 

When I was a child, I loved white bread.  It was absolutely a comfort food for me. And not good fresh-baked bakery bread.  No, that crappy cheap kind in the bag from the grocery store shelf that was loaded with the worst ingredients imaginable.  Bleached.  Enriched white flour. Preservatives. I loved that bread so much I would remove the crust from multiple pieces of bread, ball the soft center part up in my hand and make these delicious little compact bread balls.  I was even known to create one giant bread ball and just eat it like a big fat apple.  If I close my eyes, I can still remember how they tasted, how they felt in my hand as I balled them up, the anticipation of the taste in my mouth.

Years ago, when I began my weight loss journey, I cut out bread.  And when I did have bread, it was always multi-grain bread or what I deemed a healthier version. The only time I would have my white bread was on vacation when my husband and I would go to some small local bakery and buy fresh bread, usually sourdough, and make breakfast sandwiches.  It was kind of our thing.  We started to call them “vacation sandwiches” and would buy the ingredients without even a word spoken. 

When the pandemic started, I decided as a “treat” I would make us vacation sandwiches for breakfast. One day turned into 2 weeks. And that unwittingly turned into almost 2 years.  I just couldn’t stop.  It was like a habit for me to make them.  Although I was buying fresh bread at the bakery and at least avoiding the processed stuff, in the end it is still white bread.  At one point I did try to switch it out for a healthier grain bread, but my husband was having grain issues, so I went back to the good old sourdough or Tuscan loaf.  It got so bad that I realized I was eating it every day.  And now when I tried to stop it was like a panic button went off in my head. 

Today I went to the grocery store and came home with a loaf of Tuscan boule.  Despite telling myself that I would not eat bread at all for a week (I do better with little bites of goals and not that whole “I will never eat bread again” thing) I managed to buy bread.  In my head, it was for my husband, but when I got home it was calling to me.  Although I made my husband his sandwich, I resisted making myself one and just scrambled some eggs and turkey sausage, it made me so upset that I cried. 

Yes, you read that correctly.  I stood in my kitchen like a 5-year-old and cried because I couldn’t eat the bread.  I cried because if I did eat the bread, I would be again breaking a promise to myself.  I cried because damn it why can everyone else have bread and I can’t?? I cried because I wanted its warm bready goodness in my mouth.  I cried because I am that weak.  I cried because the betterment of my life hinges on my ability to just walk away and my absolute inability to do that.

If anyone thinks that food addiction is simply not a thing, I will refer you to the above paragraph.  As I type this I am sitting here thinking about my friend the bread loaf that I am allowing to call to me all alone in the bread dish in my kitchen.   I just went to take a picture of it thinking I could memorialize it in photo and you know what it looked like?  A screaming face asking to be let out of the damn bag! (look at the picture.  I know you see it too)

What the hell is wrong with me?  I would literally snort the breadcrumbs like cocaine at this point!

What is worse is that I have given myself a yeast infection and you know what is NOT good for a yeast infection?  Yeasty things.  I have had so much flour and sugar and crap the last few weeks that my blood sugar is probably going off the charts.  I have got to stick to this no bread thing for this week period.  No excuses.

So instead of eating my little bread friend, I came here to the laptop to put my fingers onto the keys and not into my mouth where they would rather go. 

But now the question I need to answer for myself is why.  Why do I feel this obsession to eat bread? And it is not just bread. I am pretty sure if I can get to the heart of this question it will answer a lot of questions about where my addiction with food started and how to undo it.  For me that is the only path.  I cannot continue to just sob over the bread every day because if past behavior is an indication of future behavior, I can guarantee that bread loaf will not be lonely for long.  And I cannot allow that to happen.

For me eating and why I eat is a mental game I have played with myself my entire life.  All I know is that I am sick.  I am sick with the disease of food addiction.  I will always have it.  It will never leave me.  Even when I was powering through my weight loss like a champ the urges were there.  I don’t know how I quieted them really.  I think once I purged a lot of the junk from my body, after a few weeks, I just didn’t crave them as much.  But this starting over from scratch sucks.  It is like beginning the withdrawal process all over again.