My Goal During Lent

I am writing this on Ash Wednesday. The day after Fat Tuesday. The worst day of the year for me. For, this is the first day I must give something up for Lent. It's not really that I must - I'm not a particularly religious person. I just like to observe Lent because I think it's good to challenge yourself every once in a while - to get out of your bad habits and start some new, good habits. I used to lose weight every year during this time because of all of the junk food I would give up. One year I actually successfully gave up fast food, sodas,
chips and sweets. I lost about 8-10 pounds that year. I found that being healthier in one area kind of spills over into other areas. Since I was getting results eating well, I decided to start exercising as well. If memory serves, all of that came to a screeching halt on Easter Sunday.

The first year I can remember giving something up as an adult, it was fast food which included ordering pizza for delivery (restaurant pizza was okay). I did that for several years with pretty good success. But then I
wised up. One year, I gave up fast food but kept pizza in the rotation. One year, I gave up fast food but not Subway and other sandwich places. My reasoning was I'd give up fast food in favor of healthier fare - like a
meatball sub from Subway. Finally I decided to give up fast food unless I just had to eat it (like on a road trip) in which case I couldn't get a hamburger, but had to get a chicken sandwich. At first I ate the grilled
chicken sandwiches, but don't you know the fried sandwiches just tasted sooo much better.

Then, just to shake things up a bit, I decided to give up potato chips (really, all kinds of chips - Doritos, Cheetos, Funyuns, etc.). The one chip I didn't give up was the tortilla chip that you are served in a
Mexican restaurant. The reason being, I don't normally snack on those or make a meal out of those. The challenge was to not gorge myself on chips every day at lunch and dinner. So, tortilla chips were not the
enemy. Of course, people debated whether or not they should have been included in my definition of a "chip", but I prevailed.

Giving up chips was no good at all. I lost a lot of weight that year and began other healthy eating habits. Clearly I needed to amend my Lent commitment a bit. So, the next year I gave up chips that did not include
tortilla chips (I actually ate tortilla chips and onion dip at a baby shower that year. I'm pretty sure that violated my resolution but I digress...), and added that I could still eat chips that were good for you.
Sunchips for example. As if. There is no chip that is good for you. Sunchips are merely less lethal.

Last year I didn't have the energy to give anything up. Lent snuck up on me and then by the time it started, I had already eaten everything I would have given up. So I just decided to give up Lent for Lent.

This year, I wanted to go back to giving something up. The trouble is, I didn't really want to give up anything. I thought about giving up chips, but I had just a few days ago bought a bag of kettle cooked ranch flavored
chips. I just had to eat those. No way I could have waited until Easter.

I considered giving up fast food again, but fast food is simply too easy to feed to my children. And if I'm already there, I should probably go on and get a big, juicy burger for myself. I thought about giving up red meat but that's simply preposterous. I live for red meat! Should I give up red wine? Well, no. I have people coming in town over the next few weeks and I want to be able to drink it up with them. So, no can do.

I could give up cursing, but there's no way in hell (oops) I could do that. Plus, if I gave up cursing, I'd just use a new word in place of a bad one and then be one of those nerds who says things like, "Sugarfoot!".
I'm not willing to do that. I considered giving up complaining, but who am I kidding? What would I do if I wasn't complaining? My whole personality would change! That's all I write about in this blog. It's all I do with my coworkers. It's mostly what I do with my friends. The Maggie McCallie people expect is the one who is sarcastic and complaining all the time. And, damn it (oops), I have to give the people what they want.

So, if I'm not going to give anything up, I guess I have to add something healthy or good for me or others to my routine. Community service? Sure, it's a great thing to do, but I am too lazy. I can't balance the few
commitments I already have. I can't add another one where people would be relying on me to contribute something of value. No fried foods? I can't do it. I just can't. I should, but I can't. What's the best way to eat
chicken? Fried. When does a potato taste best? When it's a french fry. How should we all eat pickles? Fried and smothered in ranch dressing, of course. If my stomach wasn't coated in oil, it wouldn't understand what
was happening. I couldn't do that to my trusty stomach.

I could cut out the occasional nap I take. On my days off, if I've had a rough night or one of the girls has been up in the night, I'll shut my eyes for about an hour or three and it is just what I need to keep me
going. I think I'm a better wife and mother on the days I get more than 12 hours of sleep. So, giving up my naps would punish others; not me.

So, I guess I'll just have to add regular exercise to my routine. Ugh - anything but that! Actually, I've been thinking since last weekend when Mike ran a half-marathon that I should really get back to running. I think I ought to be in good enough shape that I could run a 5K at any given time. That means, I have to run consistently on the treadmill. I can't run regularly outside because it hurts my knees and legs so much. But I can get pretty good at running about four to five miles on the treadmill. That will equate to a little over three miles on the pavement when the time comes for a 5K. So, my goal during Lent will be to run/walk four days a week for at least 45 minutes.

There. It's been decided. I will add exercise. Hopefully once again this will spill over into other areas of my life and I can be a healthier person for a few weeks. Any little bit helps, I suppose. So, now that I'll be running, I should probably open that bag of Doritos in my pantry. Since I'll be running, I'll sweat those calories out. I should probably check out the new fried pickles at Zaxby's too. It would have been bad before, since I wasn't running regularly. But now that I will be, I can eat with reckless abandon. What a great Lent this will be!