Why It's Optimal to Gain Weight on Vacation: Lessons for Daily Life
I gained five pounds in Europe. And it was optimal. Partly, that’s just because the food was both good and different from what I can easily get in Virginia. The fundamental reason I gain weight on vacations, though, is that hunger is a greater risk when I’m away from my home base.
During my average day in Fairfax, I never worry about being hungry. If I get hungry, I know a dozen easy ways to solve my problem. On vacation, things aren’t so easy. The restaurants may be closed just when my tummy starts to grumble. I might be in the middle of nowhere. The people I’m with may not be hungry when I am. Etc. Filling up when food happens to be available is a good insurance policy.
The flip side of this lesson, though, is that there’s little excuse for stuffing yourself when you’re at home. You can safely err on the side of under-eating, because hunger is so easily sated.
As I’ve explained earlier, my fundamental dietary strategy is never to eat unless I’m hungry. On vacations, that strategy is a little too risky for my taste. But during the rest of the year, there’s very little downside to moderation.
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There are two other reasons I gain weight while traveling.
The food in restaurants is typically richer than what I eat at home. Eating in restaurants with others takes longer so there's more time to look at the food in front of you and eat a bit more.
I'm sorry, but I feel this is rather silly on two counts.
Count 1: you discount the difficulty some people have losing weigh once they've gained it. As you commonly do, you implicitly treat yourself as the standard model, ignoring variation among humans. It's a self-satisfied smugness that's rather ugly.
Count 2: " hunger is a greater risk when I’m away from my home base." A little short term hunger isn't a serious risk. Fretting that for once in your life you might go to bed without supper - after a good breakfast and lunch - is the epitome of a first world problem. An occasional fast in fact is good for you. But if you're truly worried, tie market has provided a thing called snacks. Keeping a few in your bag will do wonders at preventing the horror of not being able to immediately alleviate an unimportant hunger.