Experimenting with Mardi Gras

And now, a break from the Should Be's for a bit of Lenten humor.  Joke's on us. 

We aren't doing a traditional Lent this year.  Seth was going to give up alcohol, and I resolved to journal more.  So far, general success. 

But then Seth's gym announced that they were going to sponsor a Whole 30 support group during the month of March in an effort to encourage healthy eating, and we signed up.  For those of you not familiar with Whole 30, it takes all the grains, sugars, legumes, dairy products, and preservatives out of your diet for 30 days (no cheating).  More meat and vegetables, clarified butter (whatever that is), nuts, coconuts, olives (ew!).  It's going to be an adventure. 

So over the past week, we've been having a mini-carnival of sorts to clear out our kitchen.  We are not big into sugars, but we love our dairy products.  We also had a fair amount of grains in the snack cupboard (but only the best kinds of grains, you understand).  And sugar hides in the strangest places.  And it all had to go, either into a big bag which is going to get buried in the storage room downstairs or into a giveaway box or into the garbage can. 

Now I didn't live through the Great Depression, but I was raised by people who appreciate the value of a dollar.  I don't throw food away.  Doesn't happen.  So I looked at the bread in the cupboard and the big bag of chocolate chips above the stove and the coffee creamer in the fridge, and I thought, "These are all open.  We can't give them away.  We've got to eat them."  From there, this attitude kicked in where we realized that there were going to be a whole bunch of things that we can't have for a month -- pizza, pancakes, lattes, french toast.  In addition to that, today is Boogaloo's 10th birthday, so I made her the most decadent chocolate peanut butter cake I could to use up our sugar supplies (didn't succeed).  I daresay these last three days have been the least healthy food-wise of the entire year.  And I don't feel so good. 

In fact, I think I'm going to be sick.  Literally.  This isn't healthy. 

Usually, we are pretty conscientious about how we eat.  A salad every night and the leftovers in our smoothie for breakfast.  Fruits and veggies are our biggest expenditure.  We eat pretty simply.  We don't usually go out of our way to find sugar or grease, but this weekend, for some reason, we did.  Before this weekend, I was pretty confident that our transition into a whole foods diet wouldn't be that hard because we wouldn't have a lot to purge from our systems.  After this weekend, however, I am not so sure.  I think the mental consciousness that we are giving up something is as hard to fight against as the actual desire for the thing itself. 

This is funny to me because we are Calvinists, and Calvinists are the people who were ridiculed for having "Lent all year round."  We don't do Mardis Gras.  The wildness of carnival isn't part of our system.  But just because we don't  indulge religiously doesn't mean we aren't human. 

Funny how hard it is to give things up.  I'll post later on this month about how Whole 30 is going.  #notexactlylent