bread diet

Bread perfect for snacking from The Orlando Baking Co.
 by Lin Carson

Week 2: The Perfect Snacking Bread!

The word’s officially out that I am eating bread again. So this week, I received a nice little basket from Orlando Baking.

What is so special about this bread?

John Orlando, VP of Operations at Orlando Baking, mentioned that there aren’t many baked goods out there touting high antioxidants and can improve gut health. With a high amount of illnesses originating in the gut, they believe that probiotics can promote digestive health. Therefore, when Orlando Baking Co. launched the True Grains® line, they really wanted to provide a loaf packed with nutrients and probiotics.

The True Grains® Purple Wheat Raisin Bread was a moist and lightly sweetened loaf. It helped with my diet because I didn’t need much butter or spreads to go along with it. If anything, I was just eating it slice by slice. In fact, I had to stop myself from eating the whole loaf this way (darn, this losing weight on bread thing is getting on my nerves).

So that is the downfall of this whole dieting-with-bread exercise. I just can’t stop myself eating the bread. Therefore, the weight I am losing is minimal. But hey, at least I’m losing weight and keeping off the hunger pangs with bread.

Bread is the perfect low-calorie snack

My daily ritual looks like this: Eat bread all day. I know you may not believe its true that I would just reach out and eat a whole slice when I am hungry or if I need something to snack on. Most of the time I eat it straight from the bag. Sometimes I toast it to give it a crunchy texture. But if you’re in the same office as me, you will hear the bread bag constantly rustling all day. After all, bread is the perfect low calorie snack. With True Grains® Purple Wheat Raisin Bread, it’s only 80 calories per slice.

This is what a typical day with True Grains® Purple Wheat Raisin Bread look like:

Food Portion Calories
True Grains® Purple Wheat Raisin Bread 8 slices 640
Butter 1 Tbsp 100
Coconut Water 8.5 oz 45
Raspberry Peach Champagne Jam 2 Tbsp 60
Clementines 1 90
Apple 1 80
Ground Sausage 3 oz 285
Steamed Carrots 1C 60
Chocolate Eggs* 6pc 160
Total Calories: 1520

*chocolate eggs are not part of a healthy diet. However, I have a weakness for Cadbury’s chocolate eggs, and I had lots of leftovers. So, someone had to finish them!

My weight at the start of the 90 days.

The first weigh-in: 147.4

 

Week 2 weigh-in: 145.2

Week 2 weigh-in: 145.2

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My weight during Eat Bread 90
 by Lin Carson

Why I Revealed My Weight on Stage

Standing in front of hundreds of baking professionals this week, I was sharing about my EatBread90 journey. Many of them were there to see if I really ate a loaf a day.

Did you actually do it? What happened? Did you eat white bread as well? There’s no way you’re that weight! How can you not gain weight with this much bread? You must be really young to not gain all this weight.

The questions after the presentation were endless. This is what I wanted. I secretly planned the aftermath of this experiment. Which is, to get bread to be the topic of healthy eating again. And I did it. I sparked the idea in people’s minds that bread could possibly be healthy!

So why did I really reveal my weight in journey on stage?

Well, because I wanted to answer the varied questions about how bread can be healthy with just pictures. You see, if bread is the villain that everyone paints it to be, I would have gained a lot of weight. At 1 lb of bread a day, about 1,400 calories, I would have at least gained at least 30 lbs in 90 days right? These pictures pretty much said it all. The idea that eating bread makes you gain weight is a myth.

Now it’s time to take this experiment to the next level. Can you lose weight with bread in your diet? For the next 90 days tune in and read my blogs to see if I get lucky with this experiment.

As for the rest of you that consistently insist that bread still makes you gain weight, and that only a low carb and high protein diet works for you: understand that I will be using lipid catabolism, a well known fat burning technique, to use bread to loose weight. Wanna learn more? Go to eatbread90.com

 

My weight during Eat Bread 90

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Lin Carson Eat Bread 90
 by Lin Carson

Is This The End? Eat Bread 90 Round II

NOPE! I’m just getting started.

After eating a loaf of bread a day for 90 days, you may think I would be done with bread-based diets…you seriously underestimate my love for bread.

I started my EatBread90 project to prove:

  1. Bread is NOT bad for you
  2. You can eat a high-carb diet and not gain weight.

I had heard too many times that bread makes you fat, it will make you gluten-intolerant, and grains are not meant for human consumption.

However, the results backed up my claims: I did not gain any weight, maintained a healthy nutritional profile, and was not bloated or uncomfortable. The journey also sparked conversations that helped give bread a good name. I got to cover healthy bread innovations, dive into the science of grains, and gain insight on how to market bread in an anti-bread climate.

As successful as the 90 days were, there’s still work to be done. So this time, I’m taking it a step further:

I will consume 6-8 slices, about half a pound, of bread a day to lose at least 10 lbs in 90 days.

Why the focus on weight loss this time?

Even if products like sprouted grain bread or whole grain bread are being recognized for their nutrition, people are still cutting carbs when focusing on weight loss. Paleo, Keto, and gluten-free are major trends right now, all focused around the idea carbs are the key to shedding those extra pounds.

However, the carbs found in whole grains are actually an important part of diet. And lipid catabolism is a highly effective weight loss technique that relies on carbs. My goal is to show that along with healthy eating, portion control and exercise, you can still enjoy bread!

Eat Bread 90, Round II

So for 90 days, I’ll be including around a loaf of bread ad day in my diet. I’ll also be exercising, eating healthy, and documenting it all. So come along with me as I discover tasty loaves, cover bread facts, and make more bread puns than you’ll know what to do with. I’ll be posting weekly updates on EatBread90.com, as well as highlighting the bread I eat—feel free to follow along!

If you run a bakery and would like to be a part of this journey, send your lovely loaves to:

707 SW Washington St., #1100, Portland, OR 97205. Attn: Ms Ana Rinck, Operations Manager, BAKERpedia.

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bread crumbs
 by Lin Carson

Is This the End of My Bread Diet? What a Journey it’s Been!

“Aren’t you glad you’re not on your bread diet anymore?”

Honestly, it’s with a heavy heart that I agree with that statement. Mainly because I am sad I’ve come to the end of this bread diet. I’ve indulged in eating a loaf a day, and It’s been 90 days of non-stop eating for me to get all that bread down.

I’ve eaten bread from far-away places, and more bread than anyone I know. I’m so honored to the bakers from around America, across the sea to Germany and Switzerland and all the way south from Brazil. Thank you for sending in your bread, thank you for supporting me on this journey. Thank you for assisting me in my message that BREAD IS NOT BAD.

Throughout my bread diet, so many people have pulled me aside to warn me. And here are what many of them said to me:

  1. Bread is bad for you, it will make you put on weight.
  2. Do you know gluten causes inflammation in your body?
  3. Man was not designed to digest grains, eating all that bread would cause you to become intolerant to gluten.
  4. Bread is a processed food that you need to avoid.
  5. White bread is so bad for you, avoid at all cost.

Guess what? None of that is true.

I have not gained a single pound eating a loaf a day and my energy levels, are through the roof.

The whole purpose of my journey was to disprove these biased, non-science based information on bread. I’ve eaten bread all my life, I play with it, I research it. I know the science behind it. That is why I started this journey—to eat so much bread so that I can prove that it is safe to consume bread.

Is a Bread Diet for Everyone?

If you suffer from diabetes, absolutely not. But don’t discount the low GI breads that I experienced on my journey. You should check those out my blog on Days 19 and 31. For people with Celiac disease, you can consume gluten-free breads and they can be found on my blogs on Days 30 and 73. For the majority of the American population, bread is a nutritious portable food that is safe for consumption.

You know, I’ve received a lot of criticism concerning how I carried out my journey. One of them was, “Hey Lin, you are only one data point, that doesn’t prove anything.” Just let me be clear. I was not carrying out an experiment. I was using data and science-based information that has been generated from decades of research, to show that those experiments and nutritional information on bread work. And I’ve proven it.

king street station - eat bread 90, places - bread diet- healthy - bread myths

I want people to use the info on EatBread90.com to fight the common misconception of bread.

Know that all the information we have collected here is based on science. Thus information will be great to share with your families and friends that have all of a sudden developed a disliking for bread. They somehow become this way because some website selling new age remedies has turned them away from grains and wheat.

If you’re a baker, I hope you use our EatBread90 blogs to help you in your bread journey. I’ve created enough information for you to help you in your business. As you know, I have a soft spot for bakers. Check out my blogs on Days 12, 58, 62, 75, and 90 for innovative ideas.

For the Love of Bread

Because of you, I am working on our next project: Body by Bread. I can’t talk too much about it right now, but it does involve a community that supports bread and whose lifestyles are bread centric. So stay tuned.

It’s been an awesome and life-changing journey. Thank you for reading this blog, thank you for your tremendous support. Thank you for loving bread. This couldn’t be possible without you. Thank you.

Lin EB90cpodcast 2, pitching a loaf, podcast-bread diet- bread myths-whole grains healthy diet

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heart-healthy-weight-eat bread 90-lose weight with carbs
 by Lin Carson

Can I Eat Carbs and Lose Weight on this Diet?

Lose weight? Even if I’m eating carbs in the form of a pound of bread a day?

When I am running errands and people see me munching on my bag of bread, I get some strange looks. When I smile and tell them I am eating a loaf of bread a day for three months, they look at me like I am nuts and always make a comment about how fattening bread is and that I am going to gain so much weight. I invite them to subscribe to my blog to track my progress, and I seriously hope that I will prove them all wrong.

Maybe I will even lose weight! The calories in the food we eat are used to fuel our bodies at rest and in motion. What we eat is digested and converted into energy we can use. Catabolism involves the breaking down of molecules into smaller parts to be sent to our cells where they are converted into energy.

In contrast, anabolism uses energy to build simple molecules to create larger complex molecules, which allow the body to construct and maintain muscle cells and tissues.

Lose weight by understanding calories and digestion

To function properly, our bodies use more or less stable number of calories to run all their essential processes from keeping our heart beating and circulating blood to digestion. The rest of the calories are used to fuel our daily activities and physical exercise. If we consume more calories than what we burn each day, the excess is stored and eventually we gain weight.

lose weight exercise diet calories

If overall calorie intake remains the same, but the types of foods we are eating changes, our digestion will be affected.

We all know that there are foods that make us feel bloated and drowsy, and others that keep us feeling energetic for hours. We have all experienced increased bloating and gas from eating certain foods, and know that there are some foods that are more easily digested than others.

Bread, like any food made up of several ingredients, contains protein, vitamins, fat and carbohydrates. When you take a bite of a sandwich, digestion of the bread begins in the mouth when food is mixed with saliva. As it’s swallowed and continues to the stomach, the components are further broken down.

Carbs in bread

Each nutrient has a unique process for being digested and converted into energy. For example, lipid catabolism breaks down fats using lipases in cells, which are enzymes that break the fats down into glycerol and fatty acids to release energy. The type of bread we eat and its fiber content impact digestion and overall metabolism.

What I can say for sure is that I am eating constantly in order to finish a delicious loaf of bread a day. I am also drinking more water than usual to help my body with digestion. I am never hungry and the constant eating is keeping my metabolism revved up all day long. I would not be surprised if I end up losing weight. After all, fat burns in a carbohydrate flame means that your body simply cannot burn fat on its own.

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