I love bread. The artisan, fancy kind you get from small bakeries. Especially sourdough.
Along with skipping breakfast (fasting for 15-17 hours), I have found that getting a food scale has changed my life forever.
I used to think “I don’t eat that much”. It was so easy to cut 1/3 of a baguette and guesstimate the size using any of the calorie counters. But the day I first decided to weigh my bread slices in ounces and plugged it into LoseIt and MyFitnessPal… I almost fainted. I could NOT believe how many calories were in “just a little” sourdough bread.
Count those calories. It helps you reassess how much food you truly need. I used to think because I’ve never eaten a full pint of icecream or half a loaf of bread in one sitting, I clearly don’t overeat. I was so naive.
My bread consumption has gone down by at least 33% since I started weighing. Interestingly, frequency of consumption has barely changed. I just put more protein & veggies in the meal while eating less bread.
Even though I’ve been fortunate enough to meet my goals without explicit intake tracking, I very much agree with the spirit of what you’re saying. I see several sub-optimal qualities in bread: I find it to taste too good, not to promote satiety (in fact it actually creates hunger out of thin air) and has little to offer from a nutritional standpoint. All three, directly or indirectly, by affecting me on a psychological level as a former comfort eater, favor over-consumption. Even when I restrict myself to a single slice (harder than not having any), I am rendered susceptible to overeating whatever else there may be on the table. Food journaling has been rather useful in making me aware of the latter phenomenon – isolated food choices affecting total consumption and nutritional balance over the course of a meal or a day. Ultimately wrt bread, I treat it exactly as I treat chocolate and ice cream – it’s a risk factor, only to be consumed on occasion and mindfully.