Thursday 11 March 2010

Half way through Lent

It's gone so quick this year I'm not even counting off the weeks. As one gets older, so time passes faster. At the age of ten, a year is 10% of your life's experience. At 50, it's but 2%. Lata lecą. This is my 19th Lent in a row, and keeping to a strict regime has become an entirely natural process, second nature, an integral part of the year, one-eighth of its duration.

I'm eating lots of fresh fruit, doing sit-ups and press-ups twice daily, keeping off foods that are unhealthy - fatty, salty foods, and not touching alcohol or caffeine. I've trimmed a centimetre off my waist (98cm down from 99cm).

As Lent is going so well, passing so easily, at this stage there's the temptation to say "I'm keeping this up after Easter," in practice what happens is that the resolve peters out eventually, and I get back to an entirely unremarkable lifestyle - until next year's Lent.

For the record - 80 sit-ups today (two lots of 40) and 36 press-ups (two lots of 18).

Diet-wise, the big hits of this year's Lent are a) creamy coconut milk - served with quartered plums today, raspberries yesterday - entirely natural cream substitute, and b) toast or crispbread with peanut butter and Patak's hot chilli pickle (a great taste combination!). Brazil nuts, dates and honey for afters.

1 comment:

Ryszard Wasilewski said...

Don't want to drown you with praise, but what you are doing seems truly admirable. I live amongst Native Americans (Pueblo) who practice an annual cycle with lots of ceremonies, diets, and such-like events. There's also a proliferation of temples, ashrams, stupas, covens and their New Worldy observances responding to every twitch in the constellations above and rumbles in the depths below. Sadly, I feel out of touch with all that, often forgetting which day of the week it is.