So what I am getting out of this is Hobbits had it right all along . . .

I have decided to adjust my eating habits.  The emphasis here is not to eat less or eat healthier options (although that is likely to happen at times), but rather to change how often I eat.  My bootcamp instructor led me to this epiphany a few weeks ago by comparing eating to fires. My ears perked up! A sure fire (pardon the pun) way to get the males in my family to pay attention to what you are saying is to start talking about fire.

The comparison makes since, I had just never thought of it that way.  But a calorie is just a way to measure how much energy it takes to burn something; we all learned that in high school science.  So the analogy of your body’s metabolism to a campfire is very fitting.  If you do not put wood onto a fire regularly and often the fire will die out, likewise, if you don’t eat often enough your metabolism will start to slow down.

Most people who camp in maintained camp grounds at one time or another have arrived at their campsite to see a large, half-burned log in the fire pit.  The people that camped there before them decided to put a large log on the fire and there was not enough energy in the fire to burn the entire log so it sat there smoldering and smoking.  The large log actually attributed to extinguishing the fire, rather than the intended function of getting the fire to burn longer.

In a sense, that is what happens when you eat three larger meals as apposed to five or six smaller meals.  You wait so long to add fuel to the fire, that when you do eat, it is too large and there is not enough energy in the fire to burn the meal completely and it just sits there, smoldering in your gut (so to speak).  So in order to create a healthier fire (increase metabolism) in me, I need to add kindling to the fire before it starts dying, rather than throwing on a big log on it when I start noticing the fire is dying down.

Now you ask, but wait?  Your instructor gave you this metaphor a few weeks ago, why did you wait until now to implement it?  Well, the idea of changing my eating habits seems a bit daunting. I mean it wouldn’t be called a habit if it were easy to change it.  I have found that I need to set a date in the future to start the changes in order to mentally prepare for the new goal.  I liken it to the start of a race.  If the gun fired to signal the start of the race without any warning you would lose some time because you wouldn’t be prepared for the gun to go off.  I need the ‘on your marks’ and ‘set’ to give myself the best chance of achieving the time I am looking for.

So let the experiment begin!

Until next we meet.