About Bread

This is a keto/diet post. Feel free to skip it if it's not your thing. I"ll try and get some proper categories or something set up here in the nearish future, as soon as I can get some time free.


I love bread. I mean I really really love bread. Fresh soft, hot bread that can melt butter by just looking at it. Sourdough bread is my kryptonite. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they truly had the most awesome sourdough there. There was a restaurant called "Fresh Choice" which was basically just one huge salad bar with scales at the end to weight what you took. They had the best sourdough bread there, and so fresh and chewy in all the right ways.

Don't get me wrong, I love Pasta and French Fries too.. but bread is where the rubber meets the road for me. I don't buy sliced bread when I can help it.. preferring the act of tearing, ripping, or 'breaking' bread. It's a visceral connection to history and spirituality. What honestly is more heartfelt, than to sit with friends and break bread?

All through growing up, bread was my comfort. The heady rush of the smell of sourdough, mixed with butter.. could take me out of my daily troubles, distract me from my anxieties, and silence the voices of my secrets. It was like a drug... but it was legal.

And now I stand at a crossroads in my life. On one side, there's all the bread and pasta I want, and if I'm lucky, 20 more years of being fat. On the other side, is no bread.. or bread reduced to the frequency with which I eat strawberries (about 2 milkshakes per year), and maybe, just maybe be a little less fat, and steal a few extra years from the Reaper.. or at least improve the years that are left.

Sugar is hard to turn away from. And giving up pasta makes me sad, if only because the only two childhood recipes that I know how to make, that my Mother made, one of them is pasta salad. I love egg noodles most of all.

But giving up bread.. bread.. it hurts. It's like losing a family member, or putting a pet to sleep. (I'm actually in tears writing this, and I haven't actually started this diet yet!)

But I have to choose. And no amount of bread will make up for the loneliness which comes from self-shunning.. hiding from the perceived judging looks of the world. Not being able to be comfortable in my clothes, and NEVER being able to wear the clothes I want to. It's so hard being transgendered AND fat.

Bread would soak up these tears.. Bread would love me... but it would be temporary.. it won't solve the root issues.

I have to let go of the edge if I'm going to swim.

Bread is good for me. It's a fucking amazing food. And the first humans to invent bread were fucking geniuses. My body loves bread, and it wants more even when it doesn't need more.

And that's why I need to get rid of bread. I like bread too much to 'just have a little', and my body has had it way too easy. I need to make things harder for my body, and make it work to survive.