With Riazat Butt, Religious Affairs Correspondent at the Guardian.

I'm struggling to find something clever to say about Pancake Day, apart from “pancakes are for life not just for a Tuesday in February”. Besides, I'm more of a hot cross bun girl myself. It did get me thinking though that religious holidays have strong associations with food. Holding back or pigging out. Turkey at Christmas, chocolate at Easter. Honey puffs at Hannukah and matzo at Passover. In Islam we don't have particular foods for our festivals but we do have a hardcore version of Lent. Ours is called Ramadan. It lasts a month and it means no smoking, sex, eating and drinking of anything including water between sunrise and sunset. The idea is that refraining from these activities leaves you more time to do other things like pray and reflect. You don't just get physically fitter, you get spiritually fitter too. You identify with the poor and give thanks for what you have. I tend to put on weight during Ramadan. I start off well, eating porridge in the mornings then finishing off the day with salad. A week in and I'm bored and top and tail my fasts with sugar, salt and fat. But even if I don't eat as sensibly as I could, I find myself with more time on my hands simply because I'm not sitting around scarfing food and watching telly. Which makes me wonder why I don't adopt this approach more often. Well I'm human and a bit rubbish. I don't want to always give stuff up. It's nicer to have these periods of restraint consigned to specific points in the year. You know how much you're giving – or giving up – and when. Like spiritual direct debits. Whatever you decide to part with in the next 40 days remember it's about quality, not quantity. You know what they say, size isn't everything.