Bread addict!

[pinkkpanthur]

Hi peoples!

I'm just beginning my raw journey and I'm wondering if any of you have struggled with serious attachments to bread (I love any and every kind) and how you over came that - preferably without a dehydrator or complicated recipes. I like to keep it simple, at least for now.)

(I love fruit and leafies and fresh spices like cilantro and garlic and ginger. I'm growing quite fond of sprouts as well. There just comes that time of day when nothing tastes good to me but bread. Hmm.)

[Veganforlife]

Two words: GREEN SMOOTHIES

[Zella Juice]

she always beats us to the punch.

but yeah..what she said. blend up some leafy greens with some juice and fruit and nannas. Cuts down on those cravings.

I was a serious bread addict. It might as well been crack. And when I was feeling sick or had a headache...bread was there to comfort me. Ahh bread..so comforting. But little did I know it was the cause of all my problems.

After doing green smoothies for a year and constantly slipping and having bread. I was able to cut it out finally.

Now, if I were to have it ..it will give me a headache and I wouldn't be able to poo for days. So, I don't even go there. I know it would taste good...but that's about it. Once past the throat it's all downhill from there. It's not worth a few minutes of joy to have a few days of misery. But that's just a stage you will have to get to. And GREEN SMOOTHIES are the way to get there.

p.s. I think I am addicted to the raw onion bread and ritz crackers in the recipe section of this forum. But it requires dehydration.

[cara4art]

I was reading somewhere one of the reasons bread is so addicting(like, try stopping at just ONE slice of good bread)is that wheat has natural opoids in it that are addicting. Plus the fact that breads are flour products which are tend to be high-glycemic which means that messes with your blood sugar. If you can stay OFF the bread, and do what veganforlife says, GREEN SMOOTHIES, and be sure to eat enough food, you will find your bread cravings decreasing. The importance of getting enough greens cannot be overemphasized - and the raw diet works wonders in this regard. I know from personal experience, if I have bread, I will want to eat more and more of it, but as I've continued here, cravings for bread have virtually disappeared! OH, OK I'll think about it sometimes, but that's as far as it goes, because when I tune into my body more, the answer is no, I don't really want it, so it makes it much easier. In the beginning though, if one is coming straight off a flour-product heavy diet it's harder, but the longer you are into the raw food lifestyle, it gets easier, because your tastes and cravings really do change over time, even when not 100% raw, depending of course on the non-raw foods you might be eating. If of course you're eating bread as your non-raw food, you're going to keep the cravings alive which is what you don't want.
Hope this helps!

[cherries]

It took me about six months to get out of the grain habit. It IS physically addictive, it contains opiates and it also helps to move serotonin into the brain. Some advise I was given while struggling with this was "to make sure that I was eating enough sweet fruit" Also, like they said, eat greens for the minerals, (I've noticed that my cravings are stronger on days when I don't get greens) and vitamin C which you'll get in abundance from fruits and greens.

Minerals and Vitamin C are what the food addiction clinics use, they also seem to avoid salt:

http://www.springboard4health.com/notebook/health_food_addiction.html
Dr. Rosenbaum, as well as other nutritionally oriented allergists rely on other methods besides avoidance of the allergenic foods. Vitamin C and mineral bicarbonates are used extensively in allergy clinics throughout the country. The mineral buffers should not include sodium, which is a hypertensive agent and can make a person more prone to edema, but instead the minerals calcium, magnesium and potassium. These buffers will neutralize the acidity caused by the allergic reaction and alleviate stress, thereby inducing symptomatic relief.

As little as one teaspoon of this combination of nutrients can totally knock out hunger cravings caused by food allergies as well as eliminate the withdrawal symptoms caused by exclusion of the addictive foods."

[Vaclare79]

It took me about six months to get out of the grain habit. It IS physically addictive, it contains opiates and it also helps to move serotonin into the brain. Some advise I was given while struggling with this was "to make sure that I was eating enough sweet fruit" Also, like they said, eat greens for the minerals, (I've noticed that my cravings are stronger on days when I don't get greens) and vitamin C which you'll get in abundance from fruits and greens.

Minerals and Vitamin C are what the food addiction clinics use, they also seem to avoid salt:

http://www.springboard4health.com/notebook/health_food_addiction.html
Dr. Rosenbaum, as well as other nutritionally oriented allergists rely on other methods besides avoidance of the allergenic foods. Vitamin C and mineral bicarbonates are used extensively in allergy clinics throughout the country. The mineral buffers should not include sodium, which is a hypertensive agent and can make a person more prone to edema, but instead the minerals calcium, magnesium and potassium. These buffers will neutralize the acidity caused by the allergic reaction and alleviate stress, thereby inducing symptomatic relief.

As little as one teaspoon of this combination of nutrients can totally knock out hunger cravings caused by food allergies as well as eliminate the withdrawal symptoms caused by exclusion of the addictive foods."

WOW, thanks for the information. I'll definitely be sharing this article.
:)

[pinkkpanthur]

Cool! Thanks guys!

I do love my raw smoothies. For the past week I've been making this for breakfast every morning, give or take an ingredient:

1.5 cups romaine lettuce (it's cheaper than everything else)
1/2 cup watermelon
1/2 cup water
1 small pear or 1/2 cup chopped zucchini

Yummy! and so simple. Any suggestions for inexpensive alternatives to the lettuce, just for the sake of mixing it up?

[steveoregon]

I started transitioning from 70% to 100% raw back in February. I started methodically eliminating cooked things in my diet one by one. Withdrawing from bread was the hardest. I withdrew from bread in two steps, reducing bread by 50% each time. Each time, I was hit by horrible fatigue that lasted about three days. It felt like recovering from the flew (when most of the symptoms are gone, but you still feel physically wiped out for a few days).

Cooked rice and/or a baked potato became my bread substitute for about a month. Those two items were also the last two things I eliminated before becoming 100% raw. I did not experience any real withdrawal symptoms from rice or potatoes - so I've concluded those are better transition foods while getting used to a life with no bread.

[Zella Juice]

yep..baked potato, rice and quinoa noodles were the things I ate to get off bread.

[fuggles]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2707143.stm

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/08/06/is-sugar-more-addictive-than-cocaine.aspx

[Zella Juice]

Victoria Boutenko in her book '12 Steps to Raw Foods says to treat it like an addiction and go through the 12 steps to recovery. Get that book!

[MiahTay]

Cool! Thanks guys!

I do love my raw smoothies. For the past week I've been making this for breakfast every morning, give or take an ingredient:

1.5 cups romaine lettuce (it's cheaper than everything else)
1/2 cup watermelon
1/2 cup water
1 small pear or 1/2 cup chopped zucchini

Yummy! and so simple. Any suggestions for inexpensive alternatives to the lettuce, just for the sake of mixing it up?

Kale and Collard Greens are pretty inexpensive and I LOVE them in my green smoothie ... I'm on a kale kick right at the moment.

Blessings,
Heather

[RawHeaven]

I used to make 3-4 loaves of home made bread weekly...and pastries. I was a bread freak. I just stopped eating it when I went raw last year. Raw crackers, pizza crusts and such were good transition foods for me and now I don't even want those. I went to the Farmer's Market last Sunday and there was a section dedicated entirely to breads. Most of them were fresh baked. Yes, yes yes curiosity got the best of me and I walked over there and just looked at it. It was an interesting feeling, I sort of remember what it tastes like but seriously I can only think of the yeast and how my body would process all of the ingredients now. It looked good, it smelled good, but it also looked like a foreign substance to me and I will not risk not feeling well by eating it. I think what works for me is not so much focusing on how I could transition away from any particular (SAD/cooked) food, but to focus on my core goals of why I'm doing this raw thing in the first place. This inevitably brings me back to raw and keeps me raw without sweating over certain foods.

Bread is cool, just not for me anymore.