St. Augustine addressed the up-’til-then-taboo topic of the autobiography with his _Confessions_, which is his life story and testimony. Augustine explained that he believes in the fallen nature of man based on his own experiences as well as his observation of newborns. High-brow and uber-religious stuff aside (but you should read it; it is brilliantly inspirational),we all have a story and a struggle and we all fall short of our goals and hopes. If it happened to the father of the autobiography and pious padre himself, it will happen to us. We need to admit these failures to ourselves. After all, as Augustine pointed out, a person knows himself better than he knows anything else. We know, but do we admit it? ‘Fess up.

I admit the following: I let my emotions dictate my workout intensity and determination. I enjoy sweets in spurts that last up to a month. I am almost always under-hydrated. In spite of anger draining my energy ( I allow it), I permit my rage and memories that I don’t let go of to ruin my workouts sometimes.

With these admissions in mind, what can I do? Therapy? Sure. Prayer? Definitely. Meditation? Yup. Purge the house of all junk food?  . . . I really should. Why haven’t I? Because I use excuses to justify keeping chocolate chips in the house because my son wants to open a bakery someday and he needs to learn to bake. I taught two classes on Thursday, so I excuse the failure to run and to lift with that, in spite of carbo-loading because the kids did not finish their spaghetti.

Where does that leave me? Sluggish and grumpy. That does not work with two little kids. So I need to evaluate my life, my goals in the short and long-term. I want to be around for my kids and be actively involved in their lives and make them into self-sufficient, polite, hard-working members of society. So my cholesterol needs to stay down. Potato chips and candies and cookies have to leave because my kids are more important than Thin Mints or Ruffles and dip. I am vain and I want to keep my tush the way it is. So squats are necessary. No skipping the weights. I am vain and I want to keep my arms looking good. Okay, so the weights have to come out. I cannot afford a new wardrobe from gaining weight. So the running has to happen. I am stressed as all get-out (read: AF), so skipping yoga does not work.

But thinking this way does nothing. Write it down. Even if your goal is “maintain,” you have more concrete goals — your goal is to do the things that will allow you to maintain. Mark that yoga class on your calendar. Watch my barre workout in the morning and plie right along with me. Write it on your calendars. All of them. Work, family, et c. An unwritten goal is a wish. My mother tells me that “if wishes were horses then beggars would ride.”

Write down how you will do these things. You get grandma to pick up Bubba Sue from karate so that you can run or lift. You call her right now and calendar that. Right now. These words will still be on this screen in 3-45 minutes while you talk to your mother. Okay, now pack five protein shakes this evening for your next five workouts. If you only have one shaker bottle, that’s cool. Dump the powder into a plastic container with a lid and a scoop or into snack taxis or sandwich baggies. Do it.

Do you run through fast food places because your kids are starving and so are you? Prepare non-perishable  HEALTHY snacks to keep in your car — if the weather is cold, you can do this with produce, too. Or make a cold dinner that you put in the car in the morning before you pick up the kids. Plan. And act on your plan. A tuna salad wrap after practice will be met with groans for a few weeks, but your kids will adapt. That’s what they do. You might take several months to get over the change, but you can adapt, too. Trust me. You adapted to driving and working and everything else in life, so do this.

Most importantly, READ YOUR PLAN EVERY EVENING and do what you told yourself to do. And be honest with yourself. Pray for strength. Right now. These words on the screen will wait, too. You pray and be thankful and request motivation. Confess your shortcomings and ask for help and strength and a change in your desires. Now, admit to yourself that you do this crap and write it down. Write down how you will fix it. Read that. Act on it.

Let’s make a pact to not eat the kids’ leftovers, shall we? Right now. Or to not eat our own meals so that we can finish their otherwise-wasted dinners. No more overeating to keep from wasting food. Nope. Write that down, too. I just did. 🙂

Good work and stay the course. Stay humble, ask for help, admit your flaws, make a plan, READ THE PLAN DAILY, and move forward.

Why is it that Girl Scout Cookies come in on March 1st when Lent is almost always underway? Couldn’t we deliver the cookies the first week of May? Or the beginning of February? I always keep my GSC boxes in the highest cabinet in my kitchen. Occasionally I will climb onto the counter, open the cabinet door, stare down the cookies, and know that on Easter Morning, I may eat a few* of them.

Lent is a period of denial. We don’t do it do show our piety (we have none). We do not do it for formality (or we shouldn’t). We do it so that we understand the struggle that Jesus endured in the wilderness when he did not eat or drink for 40 days. Okay. That’s cool. But didn’t Jesus do that so that he knew the temptations and struggles and pain of humanity? So we are trying to feel and identify with . . . our own struggles? Ummmmm. Or is it to honor the fact that Christ loved us enough to endure this for us? I know one thing for sure: do not do it for dietary/weight management purposes.

So we give up something lawful for us that is not necessarily good for us, or we give up something we should not have, or we take on a challenge of another sort. You do you and get from this what you put into it.

Make a few realizations, though:  God does not suspend the effects of physics, chemistry, and kinetics during this 46 days (with the rest days, which I struggle with the existence of). I mean this: If you give up meat, find another protein source or your body will be deficient in protein, and you will feel and see these effects. If you give up carbs, understand the effect this has on your body and remain hydrated and know that bulking up is not going to happen. If you give up on red meat and you are prone to anemia, take a supplement. If you quit heroine you might experience some of the things seen in the movie Trainspotting, or so I assume. Or you might write a song about it like John Lennon did. If you give up running to devote more time to something else, your endurance will suffer and you will not burn as many calories during the day, so that will have to be modified. If you give up processed sugars and white flours, you will be cranky for a while. Worse, you will be tempted with Girl Scout Cookies. And Easter candy. And the doughnuts that some horrible person or person who does not observe Lent brings in to work. If you give up extraneous spending, you will get hit with sales flyers and who knows what else.

My advice for any of these things is the trite advice that everyone gives: plan ahead. Write the budget. Stick to it. Use cash only to ensure this. Do the meal planning. Adhere to the meal planning every week. Look at the food plan on your food prep day and look at the next day’s meals every evening. Make sure you have what you need to fix these meals in advance. Wake up earlier to get in the extra prayer time and still be able to run. Or build in time for tabatas. Write it down. Put it on the family calendars. Look at the work calendar. Bubba Sue is having a birthday mid-March? You know there will be cake that week, so pack apples or peaches or dried figs or something in your lunch each day that week. Put the Girl Scout cookies in that cabinet that you have to climb onto the cabinet to reach and forget about them.

Bear this fact in mind, too: your rest days have an effect on you if you do them. If you give up caffeine and you drink a pot of coffee that day, you’re going to feel that effect much stronger than you would before. Think about the Beavis and Butthead episode in which the blonde on gets a candy high. That. If you eat a dozen doughnuts or binge on candy, you’ll feel like crap later. If you give up caffeine and you have that caffeinated beverage on your rest day, you might start all over with withdrawals if you were dependent on it before. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it. That’s how addiction works. If you sleep in until 2:00 pm on your rest day when your plan was to wake up and do your devotions or run or clean or volunteer or something, then it will be harder to wake up again the next morning. In short, be smart about it. Moderation and no addictive substances.

You know what else? Keep in mind why you are doing this. If the reason is not enough to fast in any respect, then either rethink this observation or what you are giving up or find a reason that means something to you. Faith is not the vain exercise of meaningless traditions for no reason. If it does not edify you, then it might hurt you. At the very least, doing something with no reason is silly and pointless. What message does that send about your witness? It is too much like Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery for me, which I find to be one of the most frightening stories of all time.

One more quotation to justify my English Literature degree before I move on: T.S. Eliot has Thomas Beckett asking about why he is willing to endure a certain thing. (If you don’t know, then you should get this from the title I will give), and stating that to do the right thing, but for the wrong reason is the greatest treason. That’s a big statement. Not just the big bad no-no of treason, but the greatest treason. So in Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot warns us to question out motivation. If I get killed in the cathedral, I’m going to Heaven and I’ll be sainted. But wait. I might be sainted, but if I allow myself to be killed here, is that not for a selfish reason? Hmmmmm. So do my intentions negate my action and sacrifice?  So if I’m giving this up because I’m really hoping to lose weight, then I’m not truly observing Lent, but trying to look pious and trying to excuse my crash dieting out of vanity.  Vanity and Pride.

The biggest problem here: we are humans. Overthinking humans, at that. So we might wrap all the right reasons in with a few or all or just one of the wrong reasons. Evaluate your motives and make sure that you are fully aware of the physical consequences and the outcome of your choices before you make any Lenten commitments regarding fitness and nutrition. And know why you are doing what you are doing.

If lack of appetite suppression is messing with your Lenten fasting, look into essential oils that either help suppress your appetite via diffusing or topical application or even — if appropriate — ingestion. I like lemon essential oil in my water.

Now to justify my film studies degree: “Be excellent to each other.”

*Hahahahaha!