Fat Tuesday

Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is a giant party where people tend to indulge their vices, or as I like to think of it: the pigging out most people do before starting a diet.

Fat Tuesday is followed by Ash Wednesday, which, in the Catholic tradition, marks the first day of Lent, the 40 days preceding Easter. Lent is a time of sacrifice, fasting and discipline, or as I like to think of it: being on a diet.

Then on Easter Sunday, everyone goes to church, hunts for Easter eggs, eats chocolate bunnies, and life goes back to “normal.”

“Normal,” with respect to eating, should be synonymous with living a “healthy lifestyle,” which requires enough self-discipline to eat your vegetables, but with the occasional indulgences for things like birthdays and special events. It’s mostly being content to live in Lent (minus the fasting) with the sporadic allowance for a Fat Tuesday cheat meal.

A healthy lifestyle doesn’t come easily for me; yo-yo dieting does, because at least with a diet you know the end is near. To be perfectly honest, sometimes following a healthy lifestyle feels to me like a never-ending Lent.

Hopefully, one day I will find that dietary Nirvana where I feel at peace with following my meal plan and not crave cheat meals so often. To keep myself motivated to stick with the new normal of consistent clean eating, I set up mini-goals for myself along the way that require me to wear a bathing suit in public, like figure and fitness competitions, so I don’t slowly creep back into the gluttony of my past. Perhaps this isn’t ideal, I should just want to always be healthy, but for now mini-goals work for me.

How about you? Do you find living a healthy lifestyle easy or a challenge?

Lisa 😉

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