A week without bread: I tried the low gly-cal diet

I was filled with something that resembled dread – maybe slightly less ominous – after a phone call with my mother. She informed me that she was on a new diet and she thought it would be an excellent idea for me to join her when I arrived back home for the summer.

It’s called the low gly-cal and it basically means no bread, rice, or potatoes for me. After receiving this news, the next two weeks ensued a carb fest that would rival a bear storing up for hibernation – I’m not proud of it, but I have no regrets. I was determined to stick to this new diet to humor my mother but also because I’m going to the beach later this summer and that is pretty self explanatory.

My first meal upon returning home was pepperoni pizza… with a cauliflower crust. I think my best friend Maddie said it best when she responded to my SOS text, “Cauliflower is a vegetable, not a crust.”

Spoiler Alert: The pizza was awesome. No, it didn’t taste like regular pizza but it was super tasty and I felt a lot less guilty about eating three slices of it. After dinner my mom showed me all of the new and “better” foods in our house. This is now a place where noodles are made of vegetables and chips are made of beans and turnips. On the plus side, the two percent milk I was banned from as a child in favor of fat free is now present in my refrigerator. This new diet might not be so bad after all.

I started having eggplant lasagna for lunch, or these new paleo wraps made out of coconut with turkey and cheese. The smaller portions of these things were perfect for work when I had less time to eat and needed something that would fill me up.

At first, with no sugar in my diet I got really bad headaches, I’m pretty sure it was some sort of withdrawal. I was light headed, tired, and grumpy. I told my mother repeatedly that I just wanted a Snickers bar. Plus, all the extra fiber in my diet made its presence known. There seemed to be too many drawbacks to this diet to make it worth it, but my mom urged me to give it a couple weeks until I started feeling the benefits.

All of the “weird” foods I had pictured and started dreading just turned out to be modifications on old favorites, with the prohibited items removed. We had green chili one night and beef stew the next, with squash instead of potatoes in each. They were still delicious just as I remembered them to be but no they did not taste quite the same.

My mom encouraged me to wait at least two hours between meals and snacks, but my change in diet had me feeling very snacky very frequently. I did try though, not to indulge my cravings and after a couple of days this was no longer a struggle. For snacks I ate something like seaweed or a handful of nuts – it makes me feel good about what I’m putting in my body, but at the same time I feel kind of ridiculous.

My favorite dish from the week would have to be the zoodles that we had for dinner one night. Zoodles are spaghetti made out of zucchini, and at first I was skeptical but they turned out to be amazing and I even went back for seconds.

After a whole week of sticking to the diet, I really don’t feel any different. As far as appearance goes I still look the same. The headaches are still here, although maybe less frequent and not as intense – I think my body is adjusting very slowly to the changes. My mom raved about how I would feel a lot better and have a lot more energy, which I am still waiting on. I will continue to try and stick to the diet, maybe it just takes longer for me to adapt and for my body to respond.

The food isn’t so bad, it’s actually really good – I do miss bread though. I’m not sure if this will be a permanent change when I return to school, but in the meantime I’ll be here eating copious amounts of vegetables and still craving that Snickers bar.