93: Eating Bread Without Mind Drama
One of the biggest gifts you can give yourself is peace with food. That’s where it all comes together for me - peace with the Lord, peace with food.
After years of avoiding bread, feeling guilty about sugar, being fat-phobic and then carb-phobic, I’ve finally settled into a way of eating minus the mind drama.
It’s what I feel led to teach despite the popular diet trends or what other people may be teaching.
In this week’s podcast, I’m sharing the story of my evolution with bread - both the flour kind and the Jesus kind. At one time I avoided both and, now, I feast on them! I hope explaining the steps I’ve taken over the years to improve my approach helps you to love and eat bread with no mind drama.
If you want to experience the way I bring together God and food, sign up for Feast 2 Fast® which starts January 4th.
EPISODE 93: Eating Bread Without Mind Drama
SHOW NOTES
(0:00) Intro
Today I want to talk about bread.
I’ve had an interesting relationship with bread over the last 15 years and I thought I would share that evolution because you may find yourself at any of the stages I’ve been in as you’ve tried to clean up your diet. And for me eating bread without mind drama is a huge win and represents this place of peace that I’ve found with food.
(4:13) Lesson from Bible Study:
I learned that the word Bethlehem means House of Bread in Hebrew.
Beth means House of and Lehem means bread. And then we talked about how a manger is a food trough. So we have Jesus, born in Bethlehem which means House of Bread. Jesus, laid in a manger which is a trough for food. Jesus, who multiplied bread to feed the masses. Jesus, who broke bread and said, Take, eat, do this in remembrance of me. Jesus who is called the Bread of Life.
All the talk about bread made me think of how much I love to eat bread now and how much I also love the bread of Life - Jesus - and there are some parallels in this evolution of my relationship with bread.
(6:08) Paralleling my relationship to bread with my relationship with God:
You know growing up I just took bread for granted. I didn’t think too much about it, it was there and I ate it.
I could say the same about my relationship with God:
We went to church, I went to VBS, I even went to church camp a few years, it was there, I went but I took it for granted. It was more of a check the box thing. And that’s how it was for many years. But somewhere along the way I picked up a tremendous sense of guilt and fear when it came to God.
This sounds weird but I felt guilty for having a good life. I could look around me and see my friends’ parents getting divorced and kids struggling with things.
And with that came a lot of fear - like this is too good to be true, something bad is going to happen.
In those years, I avoided a relationship with God. He was scary to me. We didn’t really have a relationship, kind of hard to do when you fear something or someone.
(8:53) Step 1: Breaking Up with Mrs. Baird’s
Upgrading ingredients / quality
My first step was to stop buying bread off the shelves - like, break up with Mrs Baird - and to buy it from the bakery at my grocery store instead. I figured it was at least more fresh and wouldn’t have as many additives and preservatives.
All of this is during the time when my aunts had been diagnosed with Celiac disease so I was aware of gluten but I wasn’t ready to give it up.
I went gluten-free the first time after I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility.
(12:23) Step 2: Ezekial Bread
At the time, Food for Life (the company who makes Ezekial bread) did not have a GF option, but Ezekial bread is sprouted grain bread which makes it a better option and step in the right direction.
The recipe is based off of Ezekial 4:9 which says "Take also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils and millet, and spelt and put them in one vessel…" so those are the ingredients - but they sprout the grains which makes it more digestible, it increases the absorption of vitamins and minerals and is generally just better for you.
I have a podcast called Insider Secrets to Eating Grains and Legumes which talks more about properly preparing these Whole Food Carbs (as we call them in Feast 2 Fast.)
Food for Life does now make a gluten free bread but I never see it or can get it where I am. I use the Food for Life sprouted corn tortillas when I make enchiladas.
All of their stuff is found in the freezer section - again, because it doesn’t have the preservatives like shelf-stable things so it’s better to keep it frozen until you use it.
(15:18) Getting more serious about food changes:
I didn’t really get serious about food changes until after my second son was born.
He was the one who came out of me already having eczema and I was like, how did I already screw up this baby, he just came out of my body.
C-section vs. Vaginal canal birth
Microbiome
It was the years between my second son and my daughter that I really started seriously reading and getting obsessed with learning about nutrition.
I hired my own nutritionist who was helping me with Beau and helping both me and my husband and she was like - heads up - you’re going to be very fertile when you change your diet and take all of these supplements.
I got what I call my unexpected blessing with my daughter.
Why my nutritionist recommended fish oil.
(18:28) Becoming an NTP:
These experiences I was having and everything I was learning and reading just got to the point that I was like - wow, with all of this reading and learning I’m doing I could probably get certified in something.
That’s when I decided to go through the NTA program.
This same nutritionist recommended a book to me called Life Without Bread and I was reading a lot about Paleo which excludes dairy, grains and legumes and, of course, I read Wheat Belly.
(20:00) Step 3: Avoid Bread
So this is when my war against carbs started. I was like - carbs are the devil, you can’t eat carbs.
I was pretty much Paleo, but if I ate anything off that plan I felt guilty and like I was a failure.
When fat was making it’s big comeback and it used to be that I felt guilty and wrong eating fat, and now we’re avoiding all the carbs and eating all the fat.
Somewhere deep inside of me, this didn’t sit right. I had a niggling feeling that demonizing an entire macronutrient category didn’t make sense.
Beginning to understand the full context of working with food and the body.
SO many people do have compromised guts that can’t handle carbs, avoiding them or significantly lowering them can really help and start the healing process.
(24:12) Seeking bread while avoiding bread:
This is was what was kind of happening with me and God.
I wanted to know and love him without all of the mind drama.
Going to church and to Bible study and reading the Bible and reading books about the Bible—It was all turning my heart and deepening my relationship with Him and all was well until He wanted to take it deeper. This was when I could hardly look at my bible without seeing something related to health and nutrition.
(26:41) Mind drama along the way to peace of mind:
What I’ve realized is that all of this, everything I’m doing in this capacity with my nutrition work has been His plan for relationship with me.
I’ve become more at peace with this way of eating the bread just like I have found more peace eating actual bread.
All of this journey has also been about finding and accepting the way that I eat and the way that I’m going to teach people to eat despite what other people may be teaching, despite what is a popular diet trend.
Signs from God podcast episodes:
One of the biggest gifts you can give yourself is peace with food.
(33:16) Closing Thoughts:
No matter where you are in this process I think here are the major takeaways:
Keep upgrading - just take the next best step in the right direction.
Next, Give yourself the time and grace and space to let it happen. I went gluten-free several times before it finally stuck. Whether that’s your goal or it’s something else that you’re having trouble making stick….don’t give up and don’t beat yourself up.
And finally, seek peace in the process. Again, one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself is food peace. Make peace with the bread.
If you want to go through the Feast 2 Fast® process to experience how I teach this OR if you are a health professional who wants to learn how to teach this process to your clients, the next round of Feast 2 Fast® and Feast 2 Fast® Coach training starts on January 4th. I invite you to ring in the New Year with more God and better health.
I wish all of YOU a very Merry Christmas and I hope you receive the gift of the bread before you.
(36:03) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!