Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches: Deliciously Unsatisfying

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Why is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (a.k.a. pb&j) so damn good?  YUM!  Just typing peanut butter and jelly makes my mouth water!  But it also makes me sad because currently, I am out of bread.  Actually, what really makes me sad (because I can always go buy bread-duh) is that I’m trying to lose weight, and having the components to produce a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my midst wouldn’t help my already hard struggle.  Losing weight is a challenge and I find that it makes things a little bit easier for me, not to have certain foods in my apartment, to prevent a binging episode.  Although to be perfectly honest, I can binge on anything. 

I love peanut butter; my favorite brand is Jif.  I prefer creamy to chunky but sometimes I don’t mind the chunk.  I have tried various brands, unprocessed and processed, and I always go back to sweet, processed, good ol’ Jif.  Anyway, I could probably eat a spoonful of peanut butter and follow it with some milk and repeat that process all day long.  Bread is another thing that I love!  But for the last few months I haven’t really been buying bread because I eat way too much of it.  I love all kinds of bread, as well as all kinds of cheese-but that has nothing to do with this.  Anyway, for a pb&j my all time favorite bread to use is just fluffy white bread.  Well, since I’ve been brainwashed to feel like I’m not allowed to buy white bread I’ve gotten used to using whole wheat bread, which is good too.  I hate eating a pb&j on toasted bread or on sour dough bread.  Yuck! 

Growing up, my Mom mostly bought grape jelly, which I liked and probably never cared to change.  But in the last couple of years I somehow switched over to strawberry jelly.  I love Smucker’s Strawberry Jam, it’s SO good; I love the chunks of strawberries.

What’s negative about eating a pb&j is that it’s a lot of calories and it’s not very filling.  The peanut butter is about 190 calories for 2 tablespoons, the jelly is about 50 calories for a tablespoon, and the bread is usually around 200 calories for two slices, which equals about 440 calories altogether.  To know how much you’re eating it’s definitely a good idea to measure the peanut butter and the jelly; trust me, eyeballing it can be deceiving.  A serving of each is enough to taste both components but if I don’t measure (and when losing weight isn’t a consideration) I slob that peanut butter and jelly on those slices of bread like I'm a cavewoman.  I love it thick, smooshy, and probably 1000 calories.  Plus, I can’t eat a pb&j without a glass of milk, so that’s another 90 calories for a cup (if drinking non-fat milk).  So having a pb&j with a cup of milk is around 540 calories, which is an ok amount of calories to eat for a meal.  But does anyone eat a pb&j for a meal besides a kindergartener?   And I’ll bet that even a kindergartener has a side of some sort with that pb&j. 

I’ve tried eating just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for a meal and it’s hard, especially if I’m measuring the amounts I’m spreading on the bread.  I remember telling one of my slender friends, who always wants to talk about the 5 lbs. she needs to lose, that I had a pb&j for lunch and she even thought that was nuts.  “You had that for a meal?  That’s more of a snack!”  You would think that  a pb&j would be the perfect snack, but it has too many calories to be a snack for someone who is trying to eat around 1500 calories a day.  And who knows, maybe my thin friend was bullshitting me.  Kind of like when you have a classmate who is worried because he/she didn’t study for that test; they get a B+ and then they complain that it isn’t an A.  Annoying.  Lets get rid of the naiveté, my friend is thin, she probably has half a pb&j and an apple for lunch but likes to pretend that she eats whole pb&j's for snacks.  I’m on to her.

I don’t know if there’s a solution for this, and it doesn’t really matter because this isn’t a life or death situation.  But what I could do is buy unprocessed, no sugar added peanut butter and low sugar jelly to knock off some of the calories (not going to happen); I could eat a pb&j as a snack and exercise more (maybe); or I could eat the pb&j for a meal with some fruit and/or vegetables, and if I’m still hungry afterwards?  Be hungry and suck it up.  I guess it’s as simple as that.