So here's how it started...
I work the closing shift on Sunday nights. A few of my coworkers-turned-friends decided - at the end of our shift - to go breadless for a week. I was in the process of buying a "scrappy cake" (basically a slice of cake jammed in a cup), and my friend on register asked if I wanted to join them and go breadless for the week.
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My first thought is, sure, I need to get some kind of diet going. I also didn't really know what exactly bread was, what did it entail?
"You can't eat that starting tomorrow," my cashier friend said, and I looked at my cake-in-a-cup and frowned.
"Okay, I'm down," was my reply as I tear open the lid and proceed to devour the cake.
When I got off work (1:20 a.m.) and got ready for bed I googled "What is considered bread." The results I found were kind of painful:
The first link was to a CrossFit site that listed foods you can and cannot eat during a "No Bread Challenge."
Here's what it said specifically about bread:
So, as I'm laying in bed trying to shut my brain off from the day I was reading what the week had in store for me.
Pasta is one of my favorite meals, if not the favorite. So when I saw that I couldn't eat pasta I wasn't too surprised but it still stung a little. Cereal wouldn't be too big of a deal since I don't eat it on a regular basis anyway, maybe once a month. Rice and cake and pizza, on the other hand, were a little more difficult.
The first day, Monday, was not too bad. I ate Chic-fil-a nuggets and fries for lunch. Sure they were breaded and fried but I didn't want to count it since I had no other choice. Everything else in the OSU Student Union had something to do with bread unless they were just veggie and fruit trays and that's not my thing. For dinner, I ate these weird Tandoori chicken nuggets. They weren't breaded and they were the only thing in the frozen section of 20 Something that wasn't breaded. I also ate Funyons because I'm weak.
Tuesday was the original exception because I eat pizza with my BFF every Tuesday afternoon. Dinner was more breaded chicken and fries but from Slim Chickens. I also found out that I was going too extreme with my thoughts on the challenge. My coworkers thought it was just bread. Not everything that bread is a part of. So when she told me that I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn't completely failing.
Wednesday was my downfall. I ate a bacon burger from the Union with the full intention of taking off the bread. It just so happened that I saw a friend while I was there and I sat and ate with her and completely forgot to take off the bread. Oh well. Dinner was Panda Express; chow mein and white steamed rice, orange chicken, and mushroom chicken.
Thursday wasn't too bad; lunch was general Tso's chicken and fried rice. Dinner was McDonald's (it was the cheapest option for me and my BFF), nuggets and a burger. The burger was a habit of ordering and I was hungry.
Friday was filled with coffee and TGIF's hot wings from the box and lean cuisine noodles. Dinner is chicken tacos and chips and salsa and queso.
So the week wasn't as bad as I was expecting because I can't stick to a plan for more than three hours. I'm a terrible creature of habit but I know that if I stick to no bread then I can make it work. I haven't had a sandwich all week (burgers aren't sandwiches, right?).
I'm going to try again next week and see what I can accomplish now that I know how our version of the No Bread Challenge works.
