Lent....what have you given up?

Well every year I think about this question for all of 5 minutes!

Lent spans 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday and is meant as a period of fasting or giving up something in readiness for Easter Sunday...a celebration day.
Shrove Tuesday of course involves pancakes. Having a clear out of our cupboards before the fasting begins. I like pancakes but making them seems a bit fiddly to me especially as this year hubby was away and I couldn't be bothered to make them just for me. So no pancakes.
No matter how religious people are they all seem to jump on the Lent bandwagon, I wonder if people know the religious background to this self enforced misery. Giving up something that you love for 40 days and 40 nights. I wonder if they realise that Sundays are not included in that 40 days? I didn't until I was researching this blog.
Now I know I sound rather cynical about this, as a child I'm sure I did give up things for lent although we never got sweets or chocolates except at Christmas so I can't imagine that I gave them up.

The main things people seem to give up can be described as the lent ABC.

Alcohol -

I'm not a big drinker anymore.  In my younger days as a student and when I was a Merchant Navy cadet, I drank loads. I remember at college, weekends were spent in a drunken haze, going out into Blackpool or to a local pub and drinking excessively. My drink would be cider, in pints!
Staggering back to college would be a challenge. Waking up before midday on Saturdays and Sundays was the next achievement, often dashing across to get a plate of brunch before the canteen closed at twelve o'clock. Brunch consisted of a large fry up basically which if consumed on your own may stay down all afternoon but if you were in a group of people, it was often the norm to start talking about how fatty or lardy the food looked. This of course could make those with a  weaker stomach feel a little ill.  Those people could be identified by a sudden scraping of a chair and the quick pitter patter of feet leaving behind half eaten plates of bacon, sausages and fried eggs.

Sometimes during the week we would reward ourselves 'a hard day at college' with a quick bottle of the orange WKD alcopop before dinner at 5pm!!  Its only recently I have started drinking Irn Bru again because the taste was so similar it made me feel ill to taste it.
Another drink which I simply could not stomach ever again would be Cinnamon Aftershock. Even the smell of cinnamon can sometimes take me back. It was a bright pink liquid which was drunk as a shot. I remember one occasion when I had just passed my second mates oral exams. I went back home and met up with another friend of mine from college. He lived not far from me and we decided to go out and celebrate our good fortune at both passing our exams. We went to his house and drank almost a whole bottle of Aftershock between us just by drinking toasts to all sorts of mad and wonderful causes. This was mixed with other alcohol, lager I think, so as you can imagine, I was very ill!!

I did give up alcohol for a whole year about 6-7 years ago. We were embarking on a course of fertility treatment and I decided it would be a good idea to give up alcohol to give my body a chance. I lost loads of weight doing it but sadly the treatment didn't work so I went back to my drinking.

Nowadays I very rarely drink while hubby is away. I just never feel the need really, I don't go out much socially to drink either. When hubby is home I am a bit more social - I like a long gin and tonic in the summer or a pint of local cider if I've been on a bike ride or been digging in the garden. We'll have a drink of wine at dinner some evenings but I very rarely get extremely drunk.

So why give up something that I only have for half the year anyway? Nah I'll just carry on with my little treats once in a while thank you.


Bread -

I love bread - I could eat it every mealtime. Nowadays there is such a variety of bread that we're spoilt for choice. Add to that, we have a bread maker too and a great little bakery nearby us. Admittedly we don't use the bread maker as often as we used to but it is lovely to wake up to fresh made bread. I have already cut down my bread intake though. A while ago I started getting stomach pains and after making a note of what I was eating I decided it was too much bread in my diet. I'm not intolerant to anything like gluten but I find if I eat bread at more than one mealtime my stomach rumbles all day. So its either toast at breakfast or a sandwich at lunchtime but never both.
I'm not giving up bread for lent as I've already given up being able to eat it at every mealtime already.

Chocolate -

As children we never had chocolate or sweets given to us. At Christmas we might be given a selection box and we had a great aunt who always kindly gave us a chocolate Easter Egg except it was always made of that naff chocolate which isn't really chocolate at all. It was horrid.
My Dad has always eaten chocolate but mum never really has. So where my love of chocolate comes from I don't know! My theory is as follows. Because I was denied it as a child I'm making up for it now!
I have always had a sweet tooth and for this I blame puddings! Whenever we had a meal at home we always had a pudding afterwards. It became habit to have something sweet after dinner and I really believe that is why now I never feel that a meal is complete without something sweet. We do eat out and when looking at a menu I always look at the desserts first!
I always like a stash of chocolate in the house, better if its in the fridge. I'm more of a chocolate person than a chocolate bar person if that makes sense. Pure chocolate, not chocolate with nuts or fruit or biscuit in. A Dairy Milk or a Yorkie bar would be my idea of heaven. Failing that Minstrels or Maltesers will suffice. My most recent find has been Twirl bites, small bite size pieces of Twirl chocolate.They come in a sharing bag!!! This of course I share with myself!!
I can go for days without chocoalte but once a packet/bag is open they don't last long.


I'm the first to admit than none of these are very good for you, although in moderation they are not too bad (I'm kidding myself right?). I also know that I need to loose weight and giving up one or all of these would certainly aid this to happen quicken plus of course a bit more exercise too.

Perhaps instead then I should give up being weak willed!

But how boring life would be then! 

So I'm not giving anything up for lent this year.......what about you?