We had something of a family reunion over the weekend, and most of the get-togethers revolved around restaurants and meals. I went with the flow, meaning I ate a bunch of bad stuff (fried foods, desserts, “comfort food”, etc.)

On top of this, I added a loaf of bread each day for the 30 Day Bread Challenge. I didn’t buy a loaf yesterday, but finished off Saturday’s Challah. I’m still averaging over a pound of bread a day. I tried to work off the calories by biking everywhere, and developed a bit of tendonitis in the knees. I’ll slow it down now, since I’m back to eating my preferred vegetable dishes.

I picked up this “Seeduction” loaf from Whole Foods this morning, and will have it with some vegetarian curry stew I made.

During this 30 Day Bread Challenge, I’m eating a loaf-a-day in addition to whatever other meals I end up consuming. After an 80 km fixie ride this morning, I had a chicken salad sandwich and fries. I bought a challah loaf for the Bread Challenge, and was going to make ham and cheese sandwiches with it, but decided on the smoked salmon instead. I had a few slices already, which is made with egg, and tastes great with a little butter. Perfect for watching tv on Shabbat.

I weighed in at a new low today, so the Bread Challenge is probably going well. I’m glad I rode my bike out to dinner last night, so I could do some hill work at 10pm to burn off the hamburger, fries, appetizers, and malt shake (in addition to the 540g loaf of corn rye).

Just had some of this corn & rye bread for breakfast. I cooked up some mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes to go with the bread, since it’s important to have fibre with all your meals. Plus, all the real nutrition comes from plants, while the starch just provides energy.

This 540g loaf has about 1500 calories. I won’t have any problems eating all of it today. I’ll bring the bread if I go out to dinner tonight.

I finished yesterday’s Walnut Raisin loaf before dinner last night. So, with the butter, some almonds, and a few tortillas, I probably ate about 2500 calories before the Chinese restaurant. Luckily, I rode my bike out there, and worked my appetite back up.

I weighed in a little lower today than yesterday, so things are probably going according to plan. I’ll update the graph on my Progress page in a week or two, when we have enough data.

I picked up a loaf of Walnut Raisin Bread today, because regular bread gets pretty tiring quick. This stuff tastes great with a little bit of butter, and I’m not going to have any problem finishing it off today. I’m guessing it has (630g)(2.75 cal/g) = 1750 calories. The butter will put me over 2000 calories for the day.

I got on the scale this morning, and saw my weight jumped up a whole kilo from my low point of 79.8 kg two days ago. I’m not really worried about it, because that low followed a hard bike ride the night before. Plus, my water weight will vary day-to-day by a kilo or so. We’ll get an idea of where this is heading after 10 days. We’ll get the final results a day or two after the challenge is over, when I’m back on my usual high-fibre diet. It’ll be obvious from my weight graph what happened over the month.

But, if I’m wrong and this whole 30 Day Bread Challenge goes bad, then alert Gary Taubes and Jimmy Moore.

I was already getting sick of bread on day 1 of the 30 Day Bread Challenge as I forced myself to finish yesterday’s loaf before going to sleep last night. I don’t know why the low-carb’ers think this stuff is addictive. Maybe bread is super-tantalizing when it’s taboo. But when you have to eat a loaf everyday, you soon think of all the other foods you’d rather have.

My 30 Day Bread Challenge is not a stunt, and it’s not going to prove anything. I’m going to continue to lose weight, because I’m exercising and eating my bread with lots of vegetables and whole foods. If anything, I’ll end up eating less calories because of the restrictive nature of having to eat a loaf of bread every day. It kind of takes your appetite away.

Today I bought a 450g Rosemary & Olive Oil boule from Bread & Cie. Yesterday, I thought I’d eat only whole-grain loaves. That’d be too boring for 30 days. Also, I thought I’d be eating veggie sandwiches the whole month. More likely it’s going to be eggs or meat with the bread.

It always drives me a little crazy when I hear the Paleo/Low-Carb crowd constantly disparage whole grains as some kind of capitalist conspiracy to make us all fat. They mock the phrase “healthy, whole-grains” as some kind of deceptive health halo phrase coined by the food industry. But I think they’re honestly terrified of the stuff, and they’re actually speaking from conviction.

Sure, inhaling hundreds of extra calories of white bread is usually a bad idea. But making bread the basis of your daily calories is a fine idea, and people have done it for centuries. Ancient Egyptians didn’t turn down bread, nor mock others for eating it, because they thought it made you fat. Maybe the Pharohs did, but they also probably knew laying around eating delicacies all day didn’t help either.

If it’ll prove anything, I’ll try to eat a loaf of bread every day for the next month, during my 30 Day Bread Challenge. I’ll continue losing weight (I’m within 5-10kg of goal), because there’s nothing magical in bread that makes you fat. I know a lot of people are terrified of “carbs”, and there’s whole ketogenic communities out there dedicated to eating < 50g carbs/day. Those are the people that evolved to eat a few legumes or whole grains and store it all as fat that’s never released.

We’ll see how many loaves I’ll eat over the next 30 days. Today I picked up a 580g Rye loaf from Bread & Cie. I’ll probably have to ride there every morning, but at least the bread is warm and fresh. It’s not that far, but it’s uphill, and I burned almost 200 calories on this morning’s trip.