Lent

It’s Pancake Tuesday today, and Lent starts tomorrow. I’ve never done Lent before, or any fasting for that matter, but I will give it a shot this year. Choosing the Lent period instead of any other time of the year is rather arbitrary, it could have been January or Ramadan really, but other people do lenty stuff and document it on Facebook these days, so it should be fun to jump on the bandwagon. Reading about others’ successes and failures might also remind me of my own project and provide encouragement.

Some stop drinking, some go veggie or vegan, some stop eating chocolate. The vice I want to tackle and try to do without for the next six weeks is wheat. And it’s not that I think that there is anything wrong with wheat, it’s just me who is prone to pasta or pastry binges which often lead to carb comas and sometimes to health concerns. I believe it would benefit me to reduce my pasta, croissant and cake intake and come up with better ways to stuff my face. This challenge should push me towards eating more veggies and trying new culinary ideas and recipes.

And I think it will be easier for me to be strict and go cold turkey for a limited time period than to just “reduce” the consumption (which is hard to quantify and too vague to monitor) or ban a specified list of foods from my diet. So technically, I could still binge-eat rice noodles or gluten-free muffins, but that’s rather unlikely, as they come in smaller packages and are pricey.

So, what should you give up for six weeks?