Friday, February 13, 2015

Fat Tuesday does not also have to be carb loaded

For some reason, our decadent society here in the West just seems to want to make any celebration into one where all of us get richer, fatter, or deeper into a bad junk food deficit holiday by holiday, find any excuse to justify each deficit as it adds on top of the greater bad junk food debt we keep adding on to ourselves. Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras next week is no exception, and for this Fitness Friday post, I am going to explain that loading up on carbohydrates is not a prerequisite to enjoying it but rather kept deep in fat and made richer with another important macronutrient. But first thing, let us look back at the idea behind Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday so we can understand why the day itself changes our usual diet, thus bettering our knowledge behind why people eat as they do on this special day and how Fat Tuesday does not also have to be carb loaded.

The idea behind the Latinized holyday is the last time people can overindulge and gluttonize in something before giving up on that bad habit or negative pleasure and thus performing fasting and abstinence during the confessional and penitential season of Lenten, which begins the next day on Ash Wednesday and continues onward for another forty days excluding Sundays ending on Holy Saturday about six weeks before Easter Sunday.

With that now being said, using this sacred time of self denial should not mean stuffing boxes of Twinkies or paczkis or plates of maple syrup laden buttermilk or buckwheat pancakes by a dozen right down your gullet, as most confessing Christians of Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Reformed Protestants still do today. Instead of the added carbs and cals from the fried breads or pastries, look to all the added fatty proteins from the most oily and fried eggs, the milkiest of cheeses, the creamiest of yoghurts or country cottage cheese being as full of fat as possible with a spoonful or so of nut butter on the side. Healthy fat rich options with a protein and good cal boost, not a simple carb and bad cal bust for the body, are there just sitting and waiting for you to pick them up and use them as your temple like body is waiting to be treated as solemnly as the fast awaits.