Die Fastenzeit

I can't help but feel I'm probably doing it wrong.

Last year I decided to try this whole "giving something up for Lent" thing a go. I'd been going to an Anglican church for over a year and I was starting to feel comfortable in thinking of myself as Anglican, so I figured it was time to engage in a few religious observances. However, I grew up in a Pentecostal denomination where Lent wasn't observed, and there's an extent to which I have no idea what I'm doing. One of these days I'm going to have to take a course on being Anglican, or something, instead of trying to pick it all up by osmosis.

Anyway, last year I gave up chocolate for Lent. It seemed like something that would be enough of a challenge to be significant (I eat chocolate everyday - usually at least twice a day), and it meant that eating a chocolate Easter egg on the Sunday would actually have some sort of meaningful significance (the feast to break the fast), instead of being a weird mutilation of a pagan tradition that had been more or less completely high-jacked by confectionery companies and supermarkets.

It was good for me, I think. I tend to lean on chocolate a lot more than I should when it comes to getting an energy boost in the afternoon, and I have developed a habit of eating something sweet after lunch and dinner that should be discouraged.

This year I decided to up the ante and give up both chocolate and coffee. These are two things I used to consume much less frequently a few years ago, but I've become decidedly addicted to them in the last couple of years. I seem to rely on coffee to keep me upright in the morning and chocolate to keep me going in the afternoon. Getting rid of both seemed like it would be a suitable sacrifice for a period of fasting, as well as being something good for me in a physical sense.

The 40 days of Lent (which, technically, don't include the Sundays, but I'm ignoring that detail and going cold-turkey until Easter Sunday) is meant to call to mind the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness before beginning his ministry. It's one of many times the time frame of 40 days is mentioned in the Bible. Theologians theorise that "40 days" is a period deemed "long enough". Some even go so far as to claim the time is entirely metaphorical (like "a time, two times and half a time"), but there is evidence in a lot of other sources that six weeks is the ideal time to establish or break a habit.

If you can consciously make yourself do something for six weeks (like, say, getting up at 6.00am to go for a run), then it will become "normal" and take less effort to do. By the same token, if you avoid doing something for six weeks, it becomes non-habitual and you find it more difficult or unnatural. Or so They say.

So, 40 days without chocolate or coffee should, by this reckoning, be "long enough" to get me to the point where I don't need a balance of chocolate and coffee to get me through the day...

Only I think I'm doing it wrong. I'm not really avoiding coffee and chocolate so much as substituting other, similar things in their place. I'm eating more lollies than I normally do (liquorish all-sorts are currently taking the place of my after-dinner chocolate), and I've actually started drinking more flavoured milk than I used to... While I am significantly cutting back on my caffeine consumption (I've taken to having weak black tea instead of my morning coffee), I think I've definitely increased my sugar consumption.

It's not really a fast if you give up beef and lamb only to eat more venison, and I'm not sure giving up chocolate only to take up liquorish is the way it's supposed to work.

But... Darn it all, I NEED the sugar. Especially without the caffeine. I NEEEED it. I've been doing a lousy job of being awake since Ash Wednesday, and without the sugar I think I'm going to need another two or three hours of sleep to make up for the lack of stimulants.

I have previously noted that replacing sleep with coffee is a bad idea, but it gets worse when you stop drinking the coffee.

Which I guess is just symptomatic of the fact that I really need to alter my lifestyle to get off the coffee and sugar on a more permanent basis. Early to bed and early to rise, and all that jazz.

All good ideas for the future. Doesn't help me stay awake right now, though. I don't think I've ever looked forward to Easter so much in my life.