Tuesday 28th July - Travel Eating

So on Thursday I am heading up to see my boyfriend in a very big city a few hour from the city that I live in. It is going to be a fun eaty, drinky kind of time I can tell and I am feeling a little nervous about it having only recently (as in three days ago) made it into the 140's.

However, It has started me about travel and the desire to eat eat and I have formed an opinion that there are two really different kind of ways to travel.

The first is the indulgent style which encompasses focusing your new experiences around food and alcohol. Finding those fab little places to get great eats or glowing ambiance filled places to sip at a creamy Pinacolada and listen to sick tunes is one of the greatest highlights of traveling to a new place. Breakfast, lunch and dinner can become the prime focus for people who want to travel in this fashion. But at the end of the holiday how do you feel? Satisfied? Or like you've 'blown it' to some extent?

The other way to travel is one that I find much more satisfying. This kind of travel is one where I let the arts, culture, sights, sounds and smells be my main 'food'. Food should never NOT be one the main focuses of being in a new culture and new city. I would feel so sad to go somewhere new and feel I couldn't try the local cuisine.

But I would much rather come away from a trip somewhere new feeling that I had dipped my fingers into as much of the rich texture of the culture and tradions as possible rather than coming away feeling as if fingers (or mouth) in too many pies.

If you focus on finding wonderful new things in a new place you will discover that you burn massive amounts of calories just by the sheer fact of having to get from place A to place B to place B, and that a lot of the time you are not even thinking about food.

This is how I plan to travel this weekend. I plan to be STARVING hungry and ready to indulge by the time the hot dark night comes. Ready to party. Not feeling fat and full and bloated from a day of pigging out but feeling like I have earned the great new food I am about to sample.

The great thing about this style of travel is that you can easily lose weight. Come Monday when I get on that train back home, I want to be feeling skinner than when I arrived. Walking all over the show, getting hot and bothered, eating for experience rather than indulgence, these are the keys to having an awesome time AND getting slimmer.