Travel & Eating

The balance for me when traveling, is to be as close to my plan as possible, and to keep my behavior in check.
For a long time, I would capsize under the weight of any divergence from my plan. “My plan” has historically been a set-in stone type affair. Whether it be what time we need to leave for the airport, what television show to watch, or how I’m eating. Maybe this is because for a long time, no plan, got me into trouble.

So, if my plan said I had to eat in a certain way, and I found myself in a part of the world that wasn’t conducive to that, the wheels completely came off, and I would then eventually return home and keep the party going until I eventually found my life unmanageable.

I’ve come to terms with some semblance of moderation. For example, I don’t eat fast food. But this is not an absolute, it’s a guardrail. The absolute for me, comes down to my behavior with the food. I appreciate the time I spent early on, being very rigid about how I needed to eat. That is what that period in my life called for. But that is not my forever plan with food. In the same way that I see no finish line to putting some effort into maintaining my weight, I see no need for my early absolutes to go on forever.

I think it also helps that I no longer travel only to eat, something I spent decades doing before - Peking Duck in Beijing anyone? Now I am active, often clocking more than 20,000 steps a day in whatever city we are visiting, begging my children to keep up with me.