Give It Up!

Lent Season is the Reason
While Lent is over - I thought I'd use the model of the "opportunity" Lent offers us. Yes, I know the purpose of Lent is suffering. But sometimes suffering feels good and is beneficial. That "good pain" anyone with masochistic tendencies sometimes crave. 

During the Lenten season, practicing and non-practicing Catholics (and other religions) select a favorite unhealthy vice to give up for 40 days and 40 nights. Lent comes at a good time, it's a couple months into the new year and when New Year's Resolutions tend to fade away. Easter is the epitome of spring - the time of year when motivation hits its peak. The winter diets have failed, the winter holiday and football eating season is over, so when the weather gets warmer and the days get longer, the possibilities seem endless.

Now, to all the faithful Catholics out there, I am in no way saying that the meaning of the Easter season is to diet. I am simply using it as another excuse/motivation/reason TO work it in. I very much understand and appreciate the real celebration of Easter, but for the purposes of this blog, I am focusing on the eating aspect :)

The easy part about giving something up during Lent is that "everybody's doing it." So there's power in numbers! Coworkers, friends, family can all commiserate over the vices they gave up during this time. It's that group mentality that can help hold you to it! In Lent's past, I've given up the cliche chocolates and fried food, but every year I try to come up with something new. Last year, Lent was right at the beginning of my lose-the-baby-weight diet, and instead of giving anything up - I added :30min workouts everyday. Some days it was really difficult, but I would squeeze in 10min here and there and somehow made it work. When I could do more I did more, and it was such an accomplishment and really catapulted me to my goal of losing 15lbs!

The Monthly Give-Up
Rewind several years, back to 2006. I decided to roll-out the Lent mentality and tied it into a New Year's Resolution. Since I've never been that great at keeping those either, I knew I had to make it interesting. So, every month I gave something  up. A lot of times it would be whatever I over-indulged in the previous month, but mostly I just rotated through my favorite bad things to give up every month. It become sort of a hobby and form of entertainment. Many of my friends knew about it, and would check in each month to see what I was giving up. At first I felt foolish telling people what I was doing because of course they'd ask "Why?" But to my surprise most people thought it was a great idea and would support me as the month would go on. My friend Katie even worked it into her 101 Things in 1001 Days goal project!

Get a Give-Up Friend!
Now bring it back to 2011 and I asked Katie if she wanted to be "give up" partners for 2011. Graciously, she agreed and for the past few months we have taken turns deciding what to give up each month. So not only do I have a partner in crime, which for any diet is a great support tool, but I also don't have power over my own give-ups every other month. I know it was VERY hard on me the month she chose for us to give up meat, but that motivated me to explore some fish recipes which were some of the tastiest (and healthiest) meals I've ever made!

So as silly as this method seems, it's really enjoyable and makes it more like a game than a diet. Plus after giving up these bad foods for a month, as much as I miss them, when the month is over I am still trained to shy away from them so it really helps to break (or at least lessen) that bad habit!

I recently had another idea to supplement the monthly give ups, that I'm going to start next week. Every week I am going to give up the bad food I indulged in the most the previous week. I will probably also add things - especially vegetables and exercise - that I need more of in my life!

I really enjoy this "diet" and it's a great way to just go cold turkey on any bad habit!