2012 Lent Challenge

I am not very good at giving up things I must confess which is probably why I’ve never really embraced Lent before.  However last year around the end of February we gave up shopping in the major supermarkets as an experiment coinciding with Lent.  A very good friend of ours commented that we could consider that we had given it up for Lent.  I was quite excited to consider that I’d finally managed to give something up and that I could indeed consider it our contribution to Lent 2011.  It’s had a lasting impact on our family.

What it did and has continued to do is give us time as a family as Friday nights are no longer spent worshipping at Tesco’s.  Shopping used to take up so much of our time.  This is no longer the case we shop when we need to and we shop locally.   We only buy what we need and it takes minimal effort.  And what we both love is that we are spending less on food and have radically reduced our food wastage by buying less and not bulk buying fresh ingredients.

So giving up supermarkets was a life changing event for us which I hope we will keep too.  Which led my husband and I to discuss what we were going to give up for this year.  A friend suggested TV and we are considering that for a future year. But in reality it was an easy decision.  We are going to give up alcohol.  Like our supermarket decision for a number of reasons.  The most important being that we both have been putting on weight over the last few months which hasn’t done much for our self-esteem and not only is wine full of sugar it also leads me to eat crisps and my husband to have lots of late night snacks.

Yesterday we brought out clothes that we no longer fit and our goal is that by the 7th April we will fit them.    So alongside the alcohol ban we are intending six weeks of healthy living and lots of exercise.

The other reason is that we actually like really good wine and want to get to the stage that we can treat ourselves on occasions to that not cheap plonk!  Our aim post Lent is not to give up wine for good but to enjoy it on occasion and enjoy a better quality product.

I know this one is going to be a challenge even greater for me than the supermarket challenge as I’ve always found supermarkets stressful where as I like a glass of wine when I am stressed and there is nothing like an Arran beer on a Friday night.  So this is why I am blogging about it as I’ve read that the more people you tell the more likely you are to keep to a difficult challenge.

So I will update you on this blog on how we get on!  And if I do manage to get into my  jeans (my goal)  you may even get to see a photo in April!  Wish me luck!

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