Eating, Lent and the Writing Habit

Before you read on… Warning… this blog entry sounds like I’m stepping on the soap box… I really am… but its really so I can psych MYSELF up for next few weeks.

I have fallen off the habit of writing daily! I need to get with the program.

Today is the day I begin reforming the habit. And I will NOT take any days off until after Lent. Lent is a good time for me. I use it as a time for self-discipline. I try not to give myself any mercy. I’m catholic as many of you know and I try to make myself actually sacrifice something… usually it is sweets.

And I’ll tell you a little secret. I always lose weight. Do you ever wonder how many sweets you eat? Give it up for Lent or a period of 6 weeks if you don’t want to make the experiment religious and see what you have LEFT to eat. If you are like me you get into a routine of eating certain things. By giving up ALL THINGS SWEET I leave myself with very limited food items in my normal diet. No sweet cereals, no sweetened French toast, no chocolate, no cookies, no sweetened oatmeal, no breakfast bars or muffins because they are always sweet tasting, I even give up frost mini wheats because it is frosted with sugar. I eat a lot of breakfast foods morning, noon or night.

I do allow one sweet indulgence. Sugar in my coffee because I CANNOT drink it black.

NOW… after I take out all the sweet things that I eat… What I am left with? Hardly anything I tell you! I end up eating things like tuna fish sandwiches and raw vegetables. I do eat a lot of raw snow peas during lent. They are the sweetest thing I get to eat ;)

And so during lent… I do watch what I eat because after all… if I’m going to give up sweets… I might as well diet. So I watch the carbs I take in and I do fast on Fridays… only one meal. YES, often I feel like I’m starving myself. But I remember the millions of starving people in this world TODAY. And that always feeling full or having at least a snack in my stomach is an American Habit that really has only come about in the past sixty or seventy years. People didn’t always have a bag of chips or cookies in the cabinet to snack on whenever they felt like it. They had to actually GROW their food.
They were working outside, performing physical labor, tilling the fields and weeding the gardens. That was hard work and no snacks. That is why American’s are so heavy today. Most don’t work physically hard to eat and food/snacks are so easy to have on hand. There is nothing wrong with letting your stomach growl IMO.
Okay… I’ll get off my ranting soap box.

This year it will be sweets again but this year I’m going to take advantage of my period of rigid self-discipline and get back into the writing habit… because I am especially disciplined and focused during lent. I have to keep telling myself this (grin)

Okay… I did work my self up a bit and lent is only a few days away and I have a whole bag of KitKats to eat before Ash Wednesday ;)