Lent is a great time to focus on the metabolic balance rules .   Lets try and follow the rules as much as possible.  If you are not religious, you can just spend 40 days thinking about the following 8 rules and how you deal with them in your personal life as a metabolic balancer.

Here is how I’ve been dealing with the rules so far:

1. Eat only three meals a day.  This rule is easy for me to follow.  I was raised by European parents and there were no snacks in our house. I ate three meals a day with maybe an evening dessert.  We never munched our way through the day and I have continued to live on three meals a day.
2. Ensure there is a five hour break between meals.  I’m not so good with this rule. The problem usually is with lunch. I will have longer than five hours between breakfast and lunch and a shorter time period between lunch and dinner. (I have a daughter I’m cooking for at home.)  She comes home from school at five and we eat at around six.  I find that I eat lunch between 1 and 2pm at the studio. I need to push lunch back to before noon and will try to do that over lent. (I wake up at 530am)
3. Make sure each meals lasts no longer than 60 minutes.  The only time a meal lasts longer than 60 minutes is when I’m at a fancy restaurant and they are dragging me through several courses.  Those meals are always treat meals so I don’t worry about it.  At home, we eat like we are in the military. We try to be mindful but we would rather be drawing than eating so it would be a miracle if we lasted 60 minutes.
4. Begin every meal with one or two bites of the protein portion.  Oh my. Thinking about this, I have no clue. I’m going to keep track of this for the next forty days.
5. Be sure to have only one kind of protein at each meal. This was the hardest habit for me to break. I love cheese on everything.  Cheese is so delicious but now I’m used to using it all by itself and I don’t regret this change in my eating habits.
6. Do not eat anything after 9:00 pm.  This is never a problem for me. I don’t like eating at night and I don’t eat when bored, I eat when emotionally stressed or, I feel like I’m getting sick (I still don’t understand that one, I think it is a childhood habit.)  Night time for me is for working on some art project or writing or doing something artistic in my home studio away from the kitchen.
7. Drink lots of water. I struggle with this one.  When I do it I feel great. When I don’t, I don’t feel as great.  I have lots of water bottles and great drinking water.  I will work on this during lent because water helps elminate toxins and I want to be as metabolically balanced as possible.
8. Eat your fruit portion (including an apple every day) at the end of your meals. I love apples and fruit but I mix it with my meals. I have not been eating it at the end. I will try eating my apple and other fruit (I don’t have many on my plan) at the end of my meals and see if it makes a difference to my rebalancing.

So, after going through the list of rules, this is what I’m focusing on during lent:

1. I will be working on the five hours between meals by eating my lunch at 1130.  That is 5 hours from when I ate breakfast at 630.
2. Eat protein first.
3. Water.  I will fill up my water bottle before making my morning cup of coffee.  I have a litre water bottle. We will make it a goal to finish it everyday.
4. Eat my fruit after my meal.  We are going to try this to see if it makes a difference to how I feel.

During the forty days, I will keep you updated on the Metabolic balance instagram feed and here on the livecleanmb blog.  I’m blogging Tues/Wed.    Did you notice Myra has joined Barbara and me.  So now, we have three metabolic balancers blogging which is lots of fun.  If you are a metabolic balancer and want to blog about your journey, please let me know.

Have fun on Mardis Gras!  I know I will be enjoying a Tuesday relaxing at home and away from the crowds preparing myself for 40 days of focusing on 4 of the 8 rules.

If you want to read more writings by me, you can visit the official metabolic balance blog or my personal blog (I will be doing a daily post on the personal blog for lent.)