Nutrition / Fitness and Travel

Since returning from Las Vegas, we’ve been thinking about staying healthy while traveling. We’re on the road a lot – a few months a year since remodeling our life a while back.  Something that we don’t write much about is that, thanks to all that we have learned while traveling, we try to be even more nutrition and fitness minded.

Wait. I guess we’ve always been health-minded. It’s just that – after seeing the devastating impact of poverty in Africa and volunteering in a shantytown in Ecuador – we try to be especially mindful because we’ve got it good here in the USA.

Who in the hell moved my cheese.

Back in January, we did a self-imposed boot camp that included a month long experiment with veganism and a ramped up exercise plan. Being vegan for a month wasn’t the toughest thing in the world, but – to put it nicely – let’s just say that we’re much nicer guys when we have access to cheese.

The results blew us away. We had our cholesterol checked on the last day of the month long mission, and it was down significantly (it was great before even starting). Furthermore, we were running more effectively and feeling better in general.

Despite the glowing results, though, we decided to settle back into vegetarianism. We celebrated the decision by quickly making some sort of cheese filled meal that I can’t remember (cheese coma) and giving the Insanity workouts a rest.

And then we hit the road.

So, there we are…  comfortably – and happily – back in the land of vegetarianism. Not a complaint in the world. We even find that veganism has sort of worn off on us, and we tend to eat a couple vegan meals a day. Do we crave bacon?  Heck no. We barely even think about sour cream.

And then it’s time to travel and things change.

Now, remember, up-top I said that we are on the road a lot. For us, even though we’ve started a virtual business that allows us to work from anywhere, we love having Seattle as a home base. We find that we are 100% in the fitness/nutrition groove when in Seattle.

When we leave, life tends to go into hyper-speed. Excited about wherever we have landed, we’re often running around like crazy. Our schedule gets tight, and eating can get pushed off until one of us is on the verge of passing out.

When we finally eat, we don’t have the time to scope out a vegetarian restaurant or to be too picky at all. We’ll often order whatever jumps out, including that cholesterol-busting hamburger with bleu cheese and caramelized onions.

Our names are Kent and Caanan, and we’re flexitarians.

There. We’ve said it. We’re flexitarians – part time (occasional meat eating) vegetarians. I don’t even know if that term makes sense, but it’s been coined so we’ll run with it.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not obsessed with this whole thing. We’re not militant vegetarians and we don’t despise people who eat meat. It’s just disappointing because vegetarianism is “the pocket” for us. When we dip into flexitarianism, some guilt tends to pop up – as though we’re unraveling something.

More than anything, it’s about being mindful. Far too many people around the world are far too hungry for us to justify too much thoughtless eating. Plus – because we have our own work gig – we don’t have comprehensive health coverage. Fitness and nutrition is, in a way, our health plan.

I guess that we’re multiple personality eaters in much the same way that we’re multiple personality travelers. There’s nothing wrong with that, so were going to keep doing the best we can. We don’t really care what we eat, we just want to do it deliberately. That’s the same approach we try to take with everything in life.

Plus, we need to give ourselves a bit of a break because nothing is derailed. All said, we eat pretty well on the road, and we maintain a solid exercise regime – running, going to the gym or whipping out those Insanity workouts.

The one thing we do know for sure is that running marathons has been easier for us than going without cheese, so we won’t be pondering full time veganism anytime soon.