# Cutting out Bread .



## Banjo (22 Aug 2010)

It regullarilly seems to come up in weight loss threads that cutting out bread is a good idea.

I have got down from being seriously obese to the top end of the healthy weight bracket . I still have noticeable layer of lard around the middle that I would like to shift but my weight has remained fairly constant now for the last 6 months or so.

I do eat a considerable amount of wholemeal bread each week (probably about 6 slices per day) would cutting out all or some of the bread be a good option for me?

I cycle at least 100 miles/ week .More in summer.


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## Dayvo (22 Aug 2010)

Most breads contain sugar - some more than others.

However, I believe the biggest problem is _what_ you put on the bread!

Butter or margarine, plus cheese, jam, chocolate spread, pate, honey, treacle, peanut butter, fried eggs, bacon etc. etc.

If you're sensible, you can eat more or less what you like, but in moderation, and to make sure you do enough exercise to burn off surplus calories. 

Then there is the alcohol aspect to take into consideration! 

Calories are easy to take in excess, but not so easy to reduce with regard to a healthy diet. And as someone said on another post, it's shouldn't be a diet or fad, it should be a change of eating habits.

Just try what seems right for you, and if you get pangs of guilty conscience, you know you're doing it wrong!


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## rsvdaz (22 Aug 2010)

wholemeal is a lot better than white bread.
white bread has a lot of what is considered "bad" (processed) carbs.

6 slices seems a lot though


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## j66 (22 Aug 2010)

I recently stopped eating bread and all irritable bowel problems have completely disappeared. I wish I'd stopped eating it twenty years ago. Thanks for the barium enema though, doc, that was fun - couldn't you have suggested a bread-free diet, hmm? Just thought I'd share


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## Ben M (22 Aug 2010)

Reducing your carbohydrate intake is a fairly easy change to make to your diet and is very effective way to lose weight.

If you look at a "normal" meal it's usually meat, veg and a starch item (rice, potatoes, bread pasta etc.) Having the same meal without the starch and with more meat and veg instead is a fairly easy change to make and will help you lose weight.

Things that you have to look out for are "low fat" options, these are often advertised as being really low in fat, what you need to realise is that such products often contain a large amount of carbohydrate, usually sugars. Yoghurt is the worst product for doing this, my mum is on a low carb diet (low carb, not no carb like Atkins) and she eats lots of yoghurt, her favourite is actually 10% fat, most people recoil at that figure because of the ingrained belief that fat content= bad. Eating that yoghurt is much better than another product which is the same kcal/100g but is full of sugar.


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## jimboalee (22 Aug 2010)

The human being should try to avoid eating anything that contains pulverised grass seeds. That's 'refined grains' to most people, ie Flour.

It is a recent addition to the human's diet, approx 12,500 years ago. It is extremely high calorie, about 1700 calories for an 800g loaf.

It should only be eaten if you intend to be an oarsman on a galleon which will be rowing the length of the Mediterranean.

Otherwise, steer clear.


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## Baggy (22 Aug 2010)

For the last two months or so I've cut back on bread, pasta and potatoes. I've upped the mileage a bit too, with the result my clothes are all much looser. I still weigh exactly the same, but have definitely lost quite a lot of flab, so it's got to be worth a try.


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## automatic_jon (22 Aug 2010)

I wouldn't know what to eat if I were to cut out bread! Man cannot live on ryvita alone!


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## Banjo (22 Aug 2010)

jimboalee said:


> The human being should try to avoid eating anything that contains pulverised grass seeds. That's 'refined grains' to most people, ie Flour.
> 
> It is a recent addition to the human's diet, approx 12,500 years ago. It is extremely high calorie, about 1700 calories for an 800g loaf.
> 
> ...



Think i would rather be the guy at the back who beats out the time on a drum 

Seriously though if a loaf is 1700 cal. then I think that reducing my bread intake has got to be good.


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## rich p (22 Aug 2010)

I'm no expert but I cut down on the amount in each portion of carbs rather than trying to give them up. It doesn't take as much discipline to have 2 instead of 4 spuds, 1 sandwich round not 2 etc. The other thing I did was to cook and serve the whole dinner rather than put dishes onto the table where greed and thrift encouraged me to keep picking after the meal.


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## rogersavery (22 Aug 2010)

I have replaced most of my bread intake with pita breads, 1 pita is around half the calories of 2 slices of bread, and tastes really good without butter


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## yello (22 Aug 2010)

Ben M said:


> her favourite is actually 10% fat, most people recoil at that figure because of the ingrained belief that fat content= bad. Eating that yoghurt is much better than another product which is the same kcal/100g but is full of sugar.



Indeed, not all calories are created equal! Fat is not necessarily fattening and (fast) carbs mess with the blood sugar levels. From what I've read, it's the latter with its related effect on insulin production that stimulates fat storage.


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## darkstar (22 Aug 2010)

Will cutting down on bread increase weight loss? Yes, same with white pasta and potato, try whole meal pasta. Don't bother taking bread out of your diet all together, unless you really feel it's possible. It sounds like you like the stuff, as it makes up quite a proportion of your daily food intake.


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## ChrisBD (22 Aug 2010)

I've pretty much nailed bread and bread products out of my diet.

Going from anything up to 6 slices a day (toast, sandwiches etc) to what now amounts to one very thin home made pizza a week.

White pasta has long since been off the shelves in our house, swaped for wholeweat. Rice I try to reduce to reduce to maybe one or two portions a week; I hate brown rice so it has to be white, which is why I try to keep this low.

Changing my outlook on carbs and bread products in particular has helped; as has having the same outlook with beer (I drink more red wine) and sugar. I may not have lost loads of lbs, but I certainly feel better and much less bloated.


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## Crankarm (22 Aug 2010)

We thank thee who giveth us our daily bread ...................

Bread does actually contain one or two beneficial ingredients of our diet.

White bread is the Devil's own sustenance.

Wholemeal is just fine. A couple of slices a day isn't going to do any harm. It has slow release carboydrates and helps keep one mobile.

As was suggested it's what people load onto the bread that causes problemos such as Nutella or spoonfuls of jam.


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## ASC1951 (23 Aug 2010)

jimboalee said:


> The human being should try to avoid eating anything that contains pulverised grass seeds. That's 'refined grains' to most people, ie Flour.
> 
> It is a recent addition to the human's diet, approx 12,500 years ago.


There's no evidence for this theory at all. Humans have evolved to eat just about anything, which is one of the reasons why we became such a widespread species. There is a notion that modern diseases are diseases caused by the change from hunter-gathering to farming, whereas in reality they are diseases of extended lifespan. There are still a few hunter-gatherer societies and they live shorter fitter lives because they are more physically active, not because they don't eat grain flour.

Calorie density is irrelevant. Cheese and meat are much higher in calories, but that's not a reason to avoid them.

Crankarm has it right - a) it's not so much the bread, it's what you put on it and b) moderate amounts of wholemeal bread are a sensible part of the diet.


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## Rob3rt (23 Aug 2010)

Crankarm said:


> We thank thee who giveth us our daily bread ...................
> 
> Bread does actually contain one or two beneficial ingredients of our diet.
> 
> ...



Hey dont knock the nutella! Two slices every morning and im closing in on racing weight just fine 


My opinion on this topic is......... cut it out of you want, but dont feel you have to, 6 slices a day? Knock this back a bit, I eat between 2 and 4 slices of bread a day during the week and 2 slices a day at the weekend (always white, 2 slices with nutella for breakfast every day, and 2 slices for a sandwich as lunch maybe 3 out of 5 days a week) as part of a balanced diet and I can drop 1-2 lbs a week consistantly there is no reason you cant do the same. If you enjoy bread, keep eating it, but dont eat too much. Also beware moving from white to brown/wholemeal, a lot of these wholemeal and brown loaves aparently are only brown because of some dye or ingredient, and are pretty much as "unhealthy" as white.So check the ingredients and get "proper" wholemeal.


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## numbnuts (23 Aug 2010)

This thread has just reminded me to make some bread .....


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## e-rider (23 Aug 2010)

I lost weight by simply cutting out bread - as soon as I started eating bread again the weight loss stopped (although I didn't put it back on again which is good) - I'm now planning a second '10 day' period without bread to lose another 1/2 stone.


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## ChrisKH (23 Aug 2010)

j66 said:


> I recently stopped eating bread and all irritable bowel problems have completely disappeared. I wish I'd stopped eating it twenty years ago. Thanks for the barium enema though, doc, that was fun - couldn't you have suggested a bread-free diet, hmm? Just thought I'd share




You could have just as easily started a food exclusion diet which would have told you the same thing. But it's extremely boring for the first couple of weeks as you start on nothing then eat just potato, add rice the next day, add bread the day after that, etc. until you get kickback. Then you just pull the offending foodstuff from your diet and go on to the next food item. It takes months of patient observation and record but access to a dietician helps.


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## yello (23 Aug 2010)

ASC1951 said:


> There's no evidence for this theory at all. Humans have evolved to eat just about anything, which is one of the reasons why we became such a widespread species.



That reads quite harshly, I'm not sure if your dead set against it or merely suggesting another interpretation. Personally, I'm not convinced either way with the 'evolutionary perspective' argument but I think it one that should be considered.

I think your wording ("humans have evolved to") might confuse the argument a little. Strictly speaking, humans don't evolve to do anything specifically. We evolve randomly and natural selection sorts out the survival aspect (though arguably, today, modern medicine helps us out there too!). Its follow then, to me at least, that there is a high probability that we have, in the past, eaten stuff that has killed us! It's our evolution that has allowed us to survive on what we have eaten.... which is almost the reverse of your wording. Moot point perhaps but I think important in understanding evolution and natural selection.

With that context in mind, it follows (again in my mind) that new food stuffs in our diet have an as yet unknown long term effect on us. We haven't in the past eaten the additives and chemicals that form a part of processed foods these days. And these are invented/discovered (and added to foods) much much more quickly than we evolve! Btw, when I say 'new food stuffs', 'long term' and 'in the past', I'm using the evolutionary time scale... millions of years. 

I think your point about 'new' diseases being attributed to our longer life spans is valid. Though interestingly it can be understood using the evolutionary perspective too; that is, we're in uncharted waters - we simply haven't lived this long before so haven't evolved down this line! Give us another couple of million years and we could well be living disease free until we're 150!

To be perfectly honest, I don't know what the answer is. I haven't even decided which notion I side with (i.e. 'we can eat anything' or 'we have not evolved to eat the new stuff') but I don't dismiss either out of hand. What I do go by though is the equivalent of the mirror test for weight loss; if something I eat disagrees with me or just makes me feel bloated and farty, then I limit my intake of it! Be that white bread or a fresh home grown apple.


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## jimboalee (23 Aug 2010)

Banjo said:


> Think i would rather be the guy at the back who beats out the time on a drum
> 
> Seriously though if a loaf is 1700 cal. then I think that reducing my bread intake has got to be good.




I prefered to be the guy with the whip.

The oven was at the back of the boat. Some days the loaves tasted something like roast pork, then we realised what was happening to the dead slaves.

Some days the wind would be favourable and the slaves could rest their oars and have a rest.
On windless days it was a single ration. Double rations were handed out with a dip in the dripping ?? when the Top Neddy wanted to do some water skiing.


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## SavageHoutkop (23 Aug 2010)

Banjo said:


> It regullarilly seems to come up in weight loss threads that cutting out bread is a good idea.



can't comment too closely on the weight loss aspect, but reading what goes into industrially produced bread might make you want to make your own. 
You can get away with putting what you want in the bread, it does normally need a bit of sugar though. See other bread making threads on this site


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## jimboalee (23 Aug 2010)

Breadmaker.

A machine that converts perfectly healthy human beings into lardyarses.


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## SavageHoutkop (26 Aug 2010)

Uncle Mort said:


> Oh no it doesn't - not even in a breadmaker!



care to share some recipes?

Jimbo... *some* people perhaps


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## Banjo (26 Aug 2010)

Some interesting replies  thanks for all the input.

So far I have managed to cut back on bread about 50 % which I am happy with for now.


Over the last year and a half I lost 4 stone from 16 to 12 stone waist size from a tight 36 to a needing a belt with 32. Lately I have put back on about 5 lb but genuinely think at least some of that is leg muscle.

Have been doing a sort of reevaluation of my exercise to food ratio and trying to make some small changes to get rid of the last bit of lard. 

PS my arse wont fit in the breadmaker, cant see how that would help with weight loss anyway but I like to keep an open mind


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## jimboalee (26 Aug 2010)

Breadmaker.

A machine that converts grass seed pulp into feed for water fowl.


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