WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE PASS THE BREAD

I did it again -- ordered another "diet" book.  I swore I would never, ever, ever, never buy another one -- I have been buying and reading them since the beginning of time -- and in the end, nothing really makes any difference.  Yes, I feel soooooo good when eating raw, and yet, it's not sustainable when you love food -- cooked food; food that just doesn't crunch or run down your gullet via a glass.  Juices absolutely buzz through your body and make you feel alive -- but it is outrageously time consuming to have a refrigerator full of fresh, organic greens in stock and the work it takes to create a small glass of green juice is a little over the top.  And the truth of the matter is, I just don't feel bad enough to want to keep that up on a daily basis.  I don't really feel bad at all, except that I am flummoxed at the weight thing.  And yet, am I?  I have enough knowledge at this point in my life to understand exactly what it is all about -- what I haven't yet HAD to do is change my ways due to a life threatening illness or overall feeling lousy, which prompts many people to make dietary changes.

I know that the moment I remove bread from my life, my "wheat belly" begins to decrease.  Almost the very first day.  And yet ... I love bread, I love it more than I seem to hate my wheat belly!  What does that come from?  How can you KNOW something and yet, not care?  I hate to use the word addiction; because it is so abused in this culture.  (As Dr. Phil said on some show the other day, he doesn't believe in sex addiction because people don't usually have it until they get caught having sex with someone they shouldn't!)  True enough.

It is suspected that all of the auto-immune diseases so prevalent today are caused by inflammation, which is caused by what we eat.  Can it really be all that simple?  And yet, the hope that a pill will cure something is so tantalizing, so much EASIER, that many of us tend to go down that road in the hopes of a cure, or at the very least relief from pain.  And obviously changing your diet won't reverse damage that has lodged itself in a body over decades.  I can feel the effects of wheat (or gluten or whatever) in my joints.  Stop eating bread, and it goes away.  Completely.  And yet ...

So the latest thing is paleo (and my heavens, I have eaten potatoes for breakfast when carbs were the way to lose weight, I have eaten my blood type foods, packaging up all my meals where ever I went and religiously following the plan, I have eaten raw exclusively.) But I am somewhat jaded as I have watched over time the icons of the raw food world turn to cooked foods (and the more meat the better) to heal their ruined guts.  So paleo smaleo, whatever, I have paid no attention, but what I do pay attention to is when someone I respect in the blogosphere recommends reading something by someone that has changed their life.  Life changing books are pretty cool, even if the regiments don't last.  We do keep trying, we foolish humans.  So maybe I read these diet books as a form of pleasure?

I don't know, I really don't.  I am about as adamant at following my own dictates with diet books as I am when presented with a basket of bread and a plate of olive oil and garlic at a restaurant.  I think, oh whatever, that is just too delicious to pass up.  Another thing I read is that when you apply stress during a meal (thinking, oh dear, I really shouldn't eat that, it's going to be payback tomorrow) then you raise your cortisol levels and your metabolism shuts down.  Geesh.  If you enjoy your meal, laugh and feel happy, then your metabolism will kick in and  you won't hold all those molecules in your fat cells until the end of time.  It's an interesting theory, anyway.  But damn, I am pretty sure that I don't feel all that guilty when I eat the bread ... I just enjoy it thoroughly.  I really do.  And when my joints ache I just shake my head and know it came from something I consciously did.  Which then causes me to question my own integrity and write about it in a blog!

The other thing I have a tendency to do is eat something that is delicious (and more or less good for me) over and over and over until I never want to eat it again!  Kind of dumb, I know, but ultimately I would skip eating altogether if I could these days -- I just feel as though I have so many things to do in the course of a day, and having to take time to consider something nourishing, non-fattening, non-gluten and easy as hell is a pain in the ass.  Someone I know posted their Salad in a Jar experiment on Facebook this week.  I have had that in my Pinterest for a long time; I have loads of those jars, and salad fixings galore.  But I've never tried it -- and if you read the sentence above, it would kind of take care of the issue.  But salad does not fill me -- it does not really even stay with me -- and I have no desire for it.  Ever.  Well, occasionally, but never in the winter, and like I said, unless it has a fattening dressing on it and some major protein, it won't even qualify as a meal in my brain.

So the thing I am eating now for breakfast is Acai bowls -- a discovery in Hawaii that is sooooo delicious.  You take frozen Acai (am I even spelling that right!?) and throw that in the high speed blender with some frozen fruit (blueberries from 2012 which must have been a banner blueberry year because wow, I still have a ton) a little coconut water, whir that up until it takes on the consistency of soft serve ice cream, then throw some granola (in my case, it is Tropical Anahola Granola straight from the island of Paradise) gluten free and chock full of macadamia nuts, cut up some fruit on top (banana for me) and wa la, it is sooooooooooooooo good.  And it will hold me for hours, but then what?  Damn mid-day hunger, I don't really WANT anything, but oh, if something presents itself in the form of a bad carb, I can't control myself.  (Where do those come from?  Husband (public food enemy number 1).  He buys bread and sometimes it calls me from the pantry ... evil, evil bread.  And yesterday he brought home CHEESE ITS.  I love all of that orange food -- the things I call corn curls (orange and airy and they collapse in your mouth in a brilliance of flavor, causing you to need to experience that same feeling over and over and over, until the bag is gone.)  I have a trick, where I put a few of the bad items into a teeny tiny bowl, and that is all I allow myself.  It doesn't work, I have no trouble getting up and refilling the bowl over and over and over.  Mind games.  I always lose I guess!

So in conclusion, would somebody please pass the bread?  Yes, I know it will pass my lips and remain forever on my hips, yes I know my joints will ache, but more importantly, slathered with that soft, sweet butter, for one moment I will close my eyes and chew and swallow and revel in its glory.

I blame it all on Eve.