Saturday, January 17, 2009

No Bread, Day 7

So this is it. The end of the 'No Bread' self-imposed challenge. The week long moratorium on bringing bread into my home.

It's funny to think about. Strange funny, not ha ha funny. For the first five days, my life was a living hell. I was all consumed with the notion of bread. I had been going through at least a loaf a week for I-don't-know-how-long, and often more than that. Especially after I was so sick. When there was a loaf of bread in the house, there was always something grab-able, and grab I did.

The thing about bread is that the addiction is not purely mental. There's a physical reaction to carbohydrates too. They act as an antidepressant. Actually raises the seratonin level. If I was more inclined to work at this moment, I'd look up an internet site or two for you to see. But the truth is that I don't think you need to see it. I'll bet y'all have experienced the lift in mood as a result of eating carbs. Bread carbs. Sugar carbs. Even fruit - in my case, specifically apple - carbs.

That's the addictive part. I would get a high from mass consumption, then of course, drop like a stone because bread carbs, unlike apple carbs, don't stick, and then I'd have to go back for more. I think that's the source of my fascination with it for my entire life. And especially the last several months as my energy level from illness was depleted.

So I've done a week of detox now. Although I am not making another commitment to keep it out of my home, I don't feel any great compulsion to buy it right at this moment. I know that I will probably want to bring it in within the next week or so because sandwiches rock. But the loaf will go directly into the freezer and I'll only take a couple of slices out at a time. That behavior has worked well for me in the past, and I expect that it will again now.

Of course, I will report in here on my status as I go along. The Fucking Agreement. Do the best I can. I found my best-I-Can by deciding not to buy bread for a week and posting that commitment to you all. If I hadn't declared myself, I don't know if I'd have gone through with it or not. So at this moment, my Fucking Agreement is to be honest with my bread status for the next 10 days, no matter what I do. Whether I abstain, whether I buy it and put it into the freezer, whether I bring it into my home and refrigerate it, or even if I eat a whole loaf at once.

I'm Fucking Agreeing to be up front and honest. Because I know that bread is one of my weakest points, and I'm relying on you to help me through.

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