What Smokey the Bear can teach us about nutrition

Be proactive. Remember Smokey the Bear? Remember the lessons he taught us? Stop putting out fires and instead learn to prevent them. 

Success in diet, training, and life will become much easier. You will spend less time disappointed or stressed out. And, while it may be time consuming in the beginning, it will save you so much in the long term.

We have become reactive creatures. We wait for tragedy to strike before we develop safeguards. We get sick with lifestyle disease only to spend billions looking for a cure. We wait until our Dr’s warnings force us to begin exercise.

While hindsight is always 20/20, how much life could we save by being proactive about our health? How many Dr’s visits and prescriptions could we have prevented? How many dollars spent on fad diets and do-nothing supplements could we have saved?

So what does being proactive in health look like? Well, for one we prioritize nutrition. Stop saying you don’t have time to plan and prepare food for yourself or your family. Instead think of it as a weekly investment in your health. Your time spent now will have a return of exponential amounts both in time and in dollars. If you have trouble seeing the benefits of being a healthy weight than look to the economics of it. Less money spent in restaurants = more money in your pocket.

Reactive nutrition is waiting until you are hungry to figure out what you want to eat. Picking up a menu or digging through your fridge. 

So what makes proactive nutrition so much more effective for fat loss? 

1. Planning makes things “real”. Whether you are counting calories, macros, keto, or on the Twinkie diet; planning out your days in advance will show you just how much energy you are taking in. If you plan out 6000 calories and you are trying to lose fat that’s a pretty solid indicator that your reality and goals aren’t in line.

2. You remove the guesswork. If you know you have lunch out at a restaurant and can look at the menu ahead of time and choose your meals accordingly you will remove some of the guesswork from how much you are eating, what is in the dish, and what you should order. It will still be an estimate but at least you will eliminate some variables.

3. Last, you remove your emotional self from the equation. When we don’t plan ahead we will almost always make food choice based on emotion. The main drivers for eating are based in a part of our brain that predates logic and reason. It is evolutionary. It is true intuition. If you are proactive with your nutrition you will be able to logically set up your meals. You will better separate your food choice from the whims of your emotional self. If you are reactive you risk being indentured to it.

Proactive nutrition is about saving you time, money, and wasted opportunity. It will also save you years on the back end. All this for a small investment up front. Can you really afford to continue being reactive?