I promised to post a few milestones on this journey - what I'm calling my "Last Chance Diet". My first milestone was giving up three food groups for Lent: bread, candy and alcohol. [What? Those aren't food groups?] This has been easier than I thought it would be - only with God's grace I know. Then, DH and I joined a fitness center at our church. Since both of us have been off this treadmill, so to speak, for a while now, it has been somewhat painful to start exercising again, to be sure. I also wanted to be diligent about writing down everything I ate, but hey, two out of three isn't bad, right?
The result: I've lost 12 lb. since the beginning of Lent. Now that's what I call a motivation! My next challenge is continuing my Lenten diet restrictions even after Easter. I plan on continuing at least until the fall family wedding, but I guess the real question is, can I make this a life-long commitment and should I? Specifically I'm asking, can I give up bread, candy and alcohol for the rest of my life? Should I? I can make arguments both for and against. If I can give them up for a season, surely I could learn to live without them forever, but do I need to be legalistic about it? I'm sure there are other things I should give up eating too.
One consideration is whether I can simply limit my intake of these things. For example, I knew when I gave up smoking in 1979 that I could not ever smoke even one cigarette again. I knew how addictive that habit was and that I would never be able to stop at one cigarette. I'm afraid the same might be true for at least two of the things I've given up for Lent! [Can you guess which two? Ha!]
One more thing that I will put in the "motivation" category - I was riding in the car with one of my grandsons about a month ago when I told him that I was giving up alcohol, among other things, for Lent. He immediately looked up at me with the biggest smile on his face and said, "That's what I've been praying for Gran."
Really? Really? How can I disappoint that boy? Sigh!
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