No treats for a month or Tamsin puts herself through various hoops on a whim.

No. 

Do you ever feel like you probably need to do something specifically because it sounds like it would be such a hard thing to do? Well, that is exactly how I came to the decision that March is going to be a month of no cookies, chocolate, candy, brownies, ice cream, cake, pastries or a multitude of other tasty morsels to which I regularly fall victim. The jury is temporarily out on the issue of jam, but I have already decided that I will eat syrup on my pancakes, should I make those in the coming month.

I could say a lot (I can always say a lot!) about the whys and wherefores of this particular little project, but I will spare the both of us by summarizing it all like so:

• I've been thinking a lot about healthier habits lately, and how to form some both for myself and as a family. 
• In a particularly navel-gazey moment, I had the epiphany that I spend very little time exercising any sort of self-control and generally do (or don't do) whatever I like whenever the mood strikes me. I'm not really all that comfortable with that. 
• We generally nosh upon something delicious every night after the kids are in bed, and it doesn't take that much brilliance to determine that it might not be that great of an idea in the long run. 

Anyway, combine those three ingredients and mix them all up and you will get this genius little scheme of mine in which I lay off the good stuff from March 1st through March 31st. Why March? Well, mostly because it doesn't contain any family birthdays or holidays like Valentine's Day or Easter. There is also the small benefit that this at least partially coincides with lent, so I can feel solidarity from my Catholic and Protestant peeps. If that is you and you are giving something up for lent, will you pretty please let me know? 

To keep myself accountable, I will report back on how I'm doing at the beginning of each week, and can already tell you that my first post will be filled with lamentations about the month of March having the audacity to begin on a weekend. The nerve! 

Image borrowed from Foodess.com, a blog I will spend much of the coming month drooling over as I wait for the day when I can actually make that cake.