It’s Paczki Day (pronounced “poonch-key”, these are in the donut family and made for Fat Tuesday specifically)! One of my most favorite days of the year, even more so in the past few years since my roommate began putting in a paczki order at the local bakery and making sure that I had one or two of my favorites in the batch (one custard, one fresh banana, just in case anyone was wondering or looking to compete with her for the title of Most Favorite Friend on Fat Tuesday).
And tomorrow starts the season of Lent. I’m not very religious these days (um, yea, understatement), but my Catholic upbringing sticks to me like the sticky stuff on the floor of movie theaters and I can’t help but think about what to give up for the next 40 days (approximately – this never made sense to me – you know, until Easter Day).
Last week, I was thinking that sugar would have to go. Well, no sugar as in no cookies, no candy, no cake, no sweets. Not no sugar as in “I’m hog-wild Paleo and don’t eat sugar” where fruit, diet Pepsi and a little honey to sweeten my greek yogurt would be forbidden. But I’m worried about doing the whole restricting thing; I feel like I’m just starting to really drop the “good food/bad food” dichotomy and I’ll tell ya, it makes moderation a whole lot more achievable.
And if you’ve ever seen me on Easter, you know what restricting for that long does to me. It’s even uglier than a chocolate bunny with its head bitten off.
So instead of the normal giving up of stuff, I’m going to do the slightly non-normal mostly giving up of stuff. I’m allowed some dessert as the part of a special-ish dinner (ish = not at home by myself). No extraneous candy. No alcohol except in Vegas (because, Vegas). And I’ll check in daily with my nutrition coaching group with my results, keeping myself accountable without being too weirdly overzealous about all this.
I guess what I’m giving up for Lent are bad habits and striving for unattainable perfection. Seems legit to me.