I Am Not An Animal!

Have you ever watched a nature show? I've been watching Planet Earth lately and it is so fascinating to watch the animals behave. If you watch long enough you start to see a pattern emerge....every single animal spends its day sleeping, procreating, eating, and searching for more things to eat. In the wild, food is not always bountiful and there is competition for resources. Biologically, creatures great and small are driven to find nutrition. They'll attack each other for it, even kill their own kind if they fear their resources are being threatened by outsiders. I believe these natural instincts are buried deep within us as well. Our ancestors had to hunt and gather and had to deal with great famines and sparse resources. These instincts have manifested themselves not only in our body's unfortunate response to weight loss (slowing down metabolism in anticipation of a famine) but also in our behaviors as well. How many times a day do you think about food? Go beyond emotional eating, beyond boredom snacking with your head stuck in the refrigerator. How many times have you been on a road trip and seemed desperate to figure out where lunch would come from, even when you just had a big breakfast? When you're on a vacation, how many of your stories involve the places you've eaten and the new foods you've tried? Local cuisine certainly has its place in experiencing a new culture, but why is it that we plan what we're going to do AROUND food? My husband and I realized that we have had "food goals" rather than experience goals while on vacation. We'll eat here, try these drinks, this soup, that dip, etc. Past trips have been focused not on the large group of old friends we'll visit that we seen only a few times a year, but how much we'll all drink out on the boat. Why is it that the views we'll take in walking on the beach or the new memories we'll make with old friends seem second to the most base of our desires-when can we eat and how much? Couple this with the standard vacation eating mentality "I'm on vacation, this doesn't count" or "I've earned a break, i deserve a little naughty food." and you've got a recipe for disaster. We have evolved far beyond the locust swarming the fields for a meal before moving on to the next feast, and we should behave as such. A little planning can do much to sate this primitive urge. Take protein bars, bottled water, nuts, beef jerky, a cooler with fruit, yogurt, lunch meat and bread for sandwiches, you can have ample food available to you wherever you are if you think a step ahead. Bend your thinking to what can you DO with your time rather than what can you EAT. Food will always be there. Keep your body and mind in check and you'll experience more (and eat more interesting food) than you'd ever expect. Remember just because YOU are on vacation doesn't mean your metabolism is. Whatever sins you accumulate on your free time will stay with you when you return to reality. Keep your metabolism, and your subconscious primitive urges, in check by staying on your healthy food schedule-small meals every 3-4 hours of clean, minimally processed foods. Then when it is time to eat, seek out the best local fare and enjoy the healthiest of what they have to offer. It may not be the tastiest item on the menu (who doesn't want fried seafood and french fries at the beach) but a fresh caught grilled snapper and fresh steamed veggies are a treat AND kind to your body. A small deviation for the local specialty that's not so clean certainly isn't the end all, in moderation. But remember nothing should be a license to go crazy and eat everything without thinking you'll have to answer for it. We don't have hibernation or fallow seasons coming around the corner, our food supply will be there day after day, same as always. And if the urge comes over you, remember that God blessed us with a far superior brain to his other creatures, one capable of controlling those urges instead of giving into them whenever and wherever they hit us. With the proper planning and a little self control, you can enjoy any event without any regrets. Should that primitive urge rise within you, just remember, you are not an animal!