Not Long Now!

Well, here it is, the last few days of Lent!

It's quite strange to think that it's almost over, doesn't seem like almost 6 and half weeks ago since I started.

I got my hair chopped today which was something I promised myself I would get done for Easter.  It was almost a year since I last had a hair cut so it is quite odd to have short short hair again.  I hope having it cut hasn't lost me my strength!

My housemate, Vicki, and I were having a chat about the end of lent as she has been doing it too, even though she isn't religious she wanted to see what it was like to do it.  She mentioned she was worried about Lent being over soon.  I know what she means.  It's odd to think what it will be like eating the foods you have given up for what seems like a long time.  I told her it is a little odd at first.  Eating something you haven't been eating through choice feels 'wrong' as your brain puts up a sort of mental block when you get offered / go to eat something on the no no list.

The first few times are almost a novelty, take for instance eating toast (as we have both given up bread as part of Lent).  The first time is almost a novelty because you don't actually want / need it but you have some anyway.  The next time is kind of a continuation of that.  And the third time usually goes like this...

You want some toast.  Then you realise you can have some.  So you get all giddy that you can actually have it so you do!  This might sound odd but it's true.  Lent usually lingers on a good while after it has ended but it really makes wanting something and then having it seem so much more outstanding.

Well, there are just 3 more sleeps to go until my first cup of coffee in 6.5 weeks and also a Sunday dinner with meat and gravy.  The Sunday dinner will be nice, but I'm not craving it at all.  Just the Coffee.

MMM!

Last Week!

Oo-er.

What a time of it I have been having lately.  I have had a lot of lent dreams, but they are so subtle that I only remember them days after having them and get very confused.  I had one a few days back where I broke lent a few hours before it ended.  I have also had a mirage of dreams about eating stuff I shouldn't.  So confusing.

Well, as you have noticed, I haven't been posting any shopping pictures lately.  The reason is that I have been doing little bits of food shopping here and there so haven't really got one big picture to put up.

I got 'properly weighed' and tested last Wednesday and had quite a shock.  In a good way.  I'll be posting all the gory details next Sunday which, of course, is Easter Sunday.  It's a bit shocking.

As far as temptation goes, I really wanted a beer yesterday (same as the saturday before) and had another barrage of thoughts about eating a dirty burger.  Grumpf!

Which leads me onto the next bit.

I am really worried about trying to keep my healthy eating from Lent on after Lent ends.  Each years after it is over, I just eat what I want, and Keep Lent as Lent.  However, this year I genuinely want to keep eating good normal healthy food.  But there is a problem.

Since Wednesday I have found myself to be contemplating the end of Lent a lot.  It's as if my body knows the mandatory 40 days and 40 nights have been fulfilled and what am I still doing on this ludicrous fast!  I am starving myself a lot more almost in an attempt to make bad food seem like the only option again, if that makes any sense.

I'm not starving myself on purpose, it's just I seem to be able to go for a very long time without eating because nothing is grabbing my appetite.  Even when I do cook food for myself and eat it, it seems tasteless and I get nothing out of it.

Now, I know his isn't exactly the best thing that I could be doing, but the thing is I'm not consciously doing it, It's just happening.

Yesterday I cooked potatoes, salmon and mushrooms and I enjoyed it abut as much as a plate full of treacle (and I hate treacle).  The only way I can describe it is like if you have a 9-5 job and you have been working 4 months straight and you have a 2 week holiday coming up.  The last few days of the last week you have to work before your holiday, you aren't exactly 'at work' any more and instead, your preempting your wonderful holiday and 14 days of non work activities.

It's a little like that.  I think in all honesty, all I want is a cup of good coffee and be able to use butter in my diet to get rid of the craving, I am just scared I might go mental and devour every fast food place within a five mile radius.

Well, we will see.  I do need to go buy some food as I have little left in the fridge and my fruit rack is a joke (I just ate a banana out of it there now, of which 90% was black goo - I only ate the 10% that wasn't by the way).  So maybe I can entice my mind back into enjoying good food and pretend next Sunday isn't happening so I can continue what this Lent has started for me.

I got 13 days to go!

Sorry for not posting as regularly as usual, Been fasting well and working hard.

Still on the go.  Clothes that haven't fitted me before are now doing so and that means I have a bit of a new wardrobe as a result!  Well, a new wardrobe as in I can wear things I already own but haven't been seen in for quite a while.

Last night was hard.  In fact, all weekend I wanted things I couldn't have.  I really craved some beer on Saturday and then Sunday all I wanted was a cheeky Burger from somewhere.  So I ended up watching Fast Food Nation on DVD and then Super size Me on Google Video just to appease myself that Fast food is not a good idea.

But as is usually noted when watching Super Size Me, it just made me want bad food even more! especially a Big Mac.

It's crazy really when you think about it all for a minute.  Most of us (not all) enjoy junk food to some extent.  You pass any McDonalds and you you will see people inside eating and chatting and if like me, you enjoy the odd one now and again, you know that those people are feeling happy, relaxed and good about everything.  Well, until the sugar low hits them an hour later and they just want more.

It's like we have been enslaved to like this crap en masse and have to try ultra hard to resist it.  I was thinking there now how hard it would be to give up something other than food for lent.  I mean let's say I decided to give up driving.  There goes the ability to do a lot of work as I generally travel with equipment to jobs.  If I wanted to give up talking, well, you can imagine how hard that would be!.

But in the society we have today, you either have a car, use public transport or don't go anywhere unless you can walk it.  We almost have to communicate verbally all the time or be limited to what we can achieve.

What I'm trying to say is that we rarely have a chance to do what we want in life.  And I mean 'Truly' do what we want without being limited in some way.

I always remember my History teacher in Secondary school teaching us about the history of Medicine.  He told us that at certain points along the timeline, Humans took a path at a junction and continued along it, came to another junction and continued along that one until we are where we are today.  Today we have hospitals, certain methods of making people well, surgery, Kaemotherapy, brain scans and so on.

Who is to say that is the right way?  why shouldn't spiritual healing or some other form of healing be in place of what we do today?.  He said just because this is where were at with medical skill doesn't necessarily mean it's the right place to be.  We could have taken the wrong path somewhere back in time.

And it's true for todays status on pretty much everything.  Who is to say a money based society is correct? who is to say Internal Combustion Engines are correct? why should we still depend so much on animal instinct? Why do we all wear clothes?

I know this might sound funny or even pointless, but it is just something I have been thinking about a lot recently and how Lent is a good chance to shed all the things we have been 'given' by society and think for ourselves.  Just because it's there doesn't mean we have to take it.

Just like I am on lent and have given up eating a lot of different types of food.  Just because the general populous stuffs their face 2 times a week in McDonalds doesn't mean I have to.  Yet, showing one of those families that I prepare fresh food and eat little each day might be as bizarre to them as it is to me going to McDonalds for my Food twice a week.

Jesus was in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights (for arguments sake, lets say that is how it was) and he ate Locusts and Wild Honey.  No clothes (spare what he had on him) stones for a pillow at night and his faith.  Nothing else.  I always imagine how focused and unattached from society he must have felt.  But better still, how 'free' he must have felt also.

We are never truly 'free' from our society, and I doubt we ever will be.  Don't get me wrong, clothes, cars, computers, the internet are all great, but is that just my thoughts because I have never given anything else a chance?

Hmmmmm.

Oh well, back to work I go.