Paczki Day

If anyone is from Southeastern Michigan, you are very familiar with the term "paczki" which is pronounced "punch-kee". This is the pleural form of the word "paczek" which is a filled donut that is popular on "Fat Tuesday" which is the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Paczki are prepared in Polish bakeries especially in the Detroit area of Michigan. People line up as early as 5AM outside of the local Polish bakeries to by boxes of these delightful filled donuts. There are several fillings available but the traditional filling is a prune filling. My personal favorite is the custard filled paczek but they can come with strawberry, raspberry, lemon, blueberry, chocolate, grape and whatever other type of liquid/creamy filling you can think of.

Now these are not your typical health food. I would only advocate eating them the on Fat Tuesday. They very from 500 to 1000 calories or more in one single donut. They can contain 50 or more grams of fat. If you are going to eat one, I suggest you take a long walk afterwards or do Cardio Party 1, 2 or 3 (or possibly all of them afterwards) to burn off some of the fat and calories. They are definitely a "fun" food and something that you would eat only once a year.

I work in the Detroit area so Paczki Day is a big thing at my workplace. Today there were several boxes of Paczki available. I brought a box of 6 to work yesterday and another box of 4 today. There were 6 boxes sitting on top of the microwave from different people who brought them in.

Another tradition for Fat Tuesday, is the Canadian Pancake Tuesday. I am Canadian and I will be making pancakes for dinner tonight. Churches offer pancake dinners for the pre-Lenten celebration. The idea behind eating all of these not so healthy fatty foods, is that in the Roman Catholic faith we fast or do without some of the foods that we love so much. I usually give up junk food for the 6 weeks of Lent. So after today, all of my candy, cookies, cakes and donuts will be gone.

The reason I am writing about this in a fitness blog, is to demonstrate that this is actually a very good opportunity to begin a fitness program. My plan is get rid of most of the unhealthy temptations for six weeks and hopefully increase my workouts to help with my healthy lifestyle plan. So I am sacrificing for a religious purpose but my health should see benefits from the sacrifice, which is a good thing no matter which way you look at it.

So enjoy your paczki and your pancakes or whatever other indulgence you might enjoy on Fat Tuesday so that you can start a new healthy program tomorrow.