I have told Lal she is my nemesis!

It's true! I think I heard it for the first time last year, and my daughter says it's true (she's a pastor). I dunno--seems like cheating to me. 

If i drink enough tonight i may sober up after 46 days

 

Im going to try reeeaaaly hard *wonders how long i will last*

 And mine Jenstar

Sounds like cheating to me too...........

 

 

....Sunday drinking??  Hmmmmmm

I wouldnt bet on you 

I'm giving up sugar; chocolate, cake, sweets, cereal bars.. It's all off! I know it's crazy but I need to do it, I'll still be eating natural sugars like fruit & honey. It's the bad sugars that I'm giving up.

When I do that, sweet, my Easter is an orgy of chocolate and jelly beans, etc. 

Lol and do you feel sick pretty quick off half an Easter egg?! I usually do I've given up chocolate & cake before but never the whole lot, it's going to really challenge me this time

Yep, I get a sugar hangover pretty quickly, too. 

Lent is only 40 days,  so you can lapse on sundays (how else can you take communion wine?)

not necessary to give something up, do something instead - volunteer, read the bible? be positive

I have always thought it was 40 days,so I looked it up .

In Rome and in the West, people fasted for six weeks, Monday through Saturday, thereby making Lent last for six weeks. Eventually, the practice prevailed of fasting for six days a week over the course of six weeks, and Ash Wednesday was instituted to bring the number of fast days before Easter to 40. 

 

How Lent is calculated

Christ's original disciples, who were Jewish, grew up with the idea that the Sabbath—the day of worship and of rest—was Saturday, the seventh day of the week, since the account of creation in Genesis says that God rested on the seventh day.

Christ rose from the dead, however, on Sunday, the first day of the week, and the early Christians, starting with the apostles (those original disciples), saw Christ's Resurrection as a new creation, and so they transferred the sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.

Since all Sundays—and not simply Easter Sunday—were days to celebrate Christ's Resurrection, Christians were forbidden to fast and do other forms of penance on those days.  Therefore, when the Church expanded the period of fasting and prayer in preparation for Easter from a few days to 40 days (to mirror Christ's fasting in the desert, before He began His public ministry), Sundays could not be included in the count.

Thus, in order for Lent to include 40 days on which fasting could occur, it had to be expanded to six full weeks (with six days of fasting in each week) plus four extra days—Ash Wednesday and the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday that follow it.  Six times six is thirty-six, plus four equals forty.  And that's how we arrive at the 40 days of Lent!

Thanks for that erinp, makes sense.

We've had a similar discussion on here before and seemingly different 'churches' start and finish lent on different days, adding up to 40 days and I think I'm right in saying that some of our Irish fms are expected to go from Ash Wed to Easter Sunday, but get St. Patrick's day 'off.'

Certainly when I was a churchgoer/at school (Roman Catholic,) we were expected to do that whole period, although that seems to have changed in recent years.

I've been doing 40 days for some time now and choosing my 6 days 'off' to suit me, (may work for you Lori ) but then again I'm no longer a churchgoer, so I suppose I treat it similarly to a New Year's resolution. I'm giving up alcohol this year again

I've decided to give up Jerusalem Artichokes

As a bit more about erinp's posting about Lent and 40 days, the Latin name for the season of Lent is Quadregesima which means 40 days. The word Lent comes from the German word Lenz/Dutch word Lente meaning Spring when the days start to lengthen.

That is pretty much my life anyway, how sad am I?

 

I never usually give stuff up, but thought I'd give it a go this year so asked my bf to pick something. After his first suggestion 'being annoying' was vetoed he has chosen chocolate, which I agreed to before realising it included chocolate cakes and hot chocolate!!

Lent is something that has never figured in my life. I have always been of the impression that it was a Roman Catholic thing.

 

This is an impression I may have gained as a young child, but nothing in my life has ever happened to change that impression.

I'm giving up all goodies....every year I say it and I fail, but this year I know I can do it.  If I can do it for gestational diabetes when pregnant, I can do it now!  This time 40 days I'll be a size zero....watch me disappear

 

I can't say I'm doing it for the right reasons

Well done saz & temps- you can do this

I'm not a big chocloate fan Saz so I could probably add that to my list and it would be the only one I'd find easy to do

It was either that or cheese, I'm glad he didn't pick cheese  

Well that didn't go aswell as expected!!!....It's my Grandsons 16th Birthday, family round for food, drink and games...Had to dust ...

 

I promise no oysters have passed my lips 

Awww....too bad about the dusting, lal. Hope you can get to Easter with no further slip-ups. 

 

Remember that I had settled on giving up ice cream? Well, last night I changed it (after we had ice cream, of course ) to giving up my little solitaire game on my phone--I'm horribly addicted, to an embarrassing degree. Of course, this just means I'll be addicted to something else by Easter. 

 

Fluffy:  I agree that it SOUNDS like a Roman Catholic thing, but it's definitely not restricted to that. My daughter (as far from Catholicism as you can get whilst still believing in God   does it every year, as well, and I've seen numerous area non-Catholic churches advertising Lenten services sacrifice on their reader boards.

I'm giving up: being nice

 

Yeah, definitely no niceness for the whole of lent

46?? Where did 40 days and nights come from then?

I am giving up erm passing any attention to my boss.

I'm giving up giving up.

Scroll up a bit. The explanation's up there somewhere. Sundays don't count, but you have to add on the days from Shrove Tuesday to Easter Day....I think...or something like that.

You can take a break for St Patrick's day too

I bought the book ........that's as far as it went! what treats? it looked pretty hard to me.

I went out for dinner last night and I didnt drink Look at me with my will power

Well done gypsie that's the spirit

Well, tbh, the treats come in the second or third stage, but you can have a couple of meals a week where you eat/drink anything you like. And, once you've reached your goal weight, you start adding in things you've cut out, in moderation. You just have to keep one protein-only day per week.

 

Good for you, Gypsie!

I didn't play solitaire at ALL yesterday! 

Yeah .............I just couldn't see me sticking out stage one and two TBH. Stage one  is  .................I could maybe do it two or three days but at stage two I assumed it was unlimited fruit and veg but it's pretty restricted!

 

Is it working for you? I think I'll stick to Slimming World (when I can get motivated) - it works on the same principle but nowhere near as harsh!

Very impressive!

Soozy, it's not as bad as you'd think. We're eating a lot of cottage cheese and yogurt, and we've found these tofu noodles that aren't bad, to help flesh out the dinner a bit.

 

You're only in that very first stage for a short time, depending on how much you need to lose, and it comes off pretty quickly (if you're exercising). Then you can add in veggies, which helps a lot. It's true that fruit is out for quite awhile, but we've discovered that adding it back in works for us, as long as we're careful not to overdo. I guess we've hit on an adaptation that seems to be working for us (well, me more than Mr. Lori, but that's because I am a runner who runs 5 days/week).

I'm giving up spelling correctly for Lint

Do you have to misspell at least one word every day, or is there another threshold you have to meet?

Indeed