What's in your bread?

Do you know what is in your bread?

One of the challenges for this week was to detox from a variety of additives, ranging from aspartame and saccharin to potassium bromate and sodium nitrate.

We were, also, supposed to cut out White flour - bleached flour. Which brings us to the topic of what's in your bread?

One of the specific things requested by our trainers was to look at our bread. It should not have white flour, bleached flour or ingredients you could not picture as a food.

So, off I went to my kitchen to read the bread label. I like to think I have made a fair attempt at buying "better" bread. But, alas, I realize I am a marketing manager's dream consumer. I really like pretty labels. :)

Our bread was crap. There are appoximately 50 ingredients - half of which I cannot pronounce. The first ingredient being BLEACHED FLOUR. Grrr.....

See how they sucked me in with the no high fructose corn syrup and whole grain? Well, they forgot to mention the bleach, the cellulose (which is wood),and guar gum (The drought-resistant guar bean can be eaten as a green bean, fed to cattle, or used in green manure.) Sounds tasty.

So I went the grocery store and found a bread with only a handful of ingredients, made locally, and I can happily tell my trainers about:

Pretty simple. Pretty easy. Not having chemicals pumped in my body. It does not have nutrition values, but I can make a fair estimate. Also, these pieces of bread which are different sizes and smaller (not perfect uniformity like factory bread) is actually MORE FILLING!

So thank you, Superior Bread Co., my trainers will be proud and I like your bread. :)

Here is an article for you to read about bleaching flour.

Bleached Flour in Food


Good luck with better bread choices!!

Resolutions

Here we are - January 2012 - a new year. Everyone starts their resolutions in January. I am thinking, by now, January 20th - a lot of resolutioners already fell off the wagon. :)



Well, I made a new plan this year. I began planning for January at the end of October - 2011. That was when I wrote my last blog.

What has happened in that time, you ask?

1. I joined Lifetime Fitness  - I love this gym. It is great. It has so many things to offer and it just looks like pure wonderfulness. I have to give myself this pep talk everytime I pay my bill. :)

2. I joined TEAM weightloss at Lifetime. This is a group class with a trainer 3x a week. It is for one hour M,W, FR and we, also, do nutrition on Mondays. I am almost done with my second week and it has been fantastic.

3. I bought a Fitbook - This is a perfect tool for tracking all your food and workouts. It is set up for a 12 week program which is perfect because the TEAM weightloss is a 12 week program as well.

4. I joined the 90 Day Challenge at the gym. It is a competition for biggest percentage of weight loss through all the gyms. The good thing about it is that is starts four weeks AFTER TEAM weightloss, so I will have four more weeks with groups to keep pushing me.

5. I signed up for all of the Try It Tuesdays for the 90 day.

So, this is where I am at. I have been journalling all food, so matter what. Even if it is garbage. I am trying to stay accountable. I have been to all my classes and I have been trying to follow what the trainers say.

This is my time, finally.

I will let you know the things I am learning and discovering. Hopefully, it can help you too!

Where are you with your resolution and how are you sticking to it?