Thoughts on Healthy Geocaching

Ok, our typical geocaching day -

1. Discuss where we want to cache
2. Discuss the level of difficulty and terrain we want to tackle
3. Setup, run and install the pocketquery
4. Get some coffee and get in the Cahe-mobile
5. Geocache!
6. Eat
7. Geocache some more!
8. Discuss the world's problems and formulate solutions
9. Maybe get desert and more coffee
10. Discuss our next geocaching outing


Looks like a fun day!!

Unfortunately the way we've been caching has been eliminating any slack space I have left on my belt.

I think with some simple tweaks we can turn this pattern around and make this a healthy event.

First off (an obvious one) - pick caches with harder terrain. A higher terrain equates to more physical exertion which leads to more calories burnt.

Next is to replace my typical Starbucks grande raspberry mocha (440 calories) with perhaps a grande nonfat sugar-free vanilla latte (160 calories). Good start - same caffeine kick.

Along similar lines, I think a well outfitted Cahe-mobile needs a lot of cold water and low-cal munchies in it. Look under that parking lot lampost cover, chug some water. Divert a muggle, eat a carrot stick. Also packing your own snacks means more money for geotoys!

Now the hard part. It's been a hard days cache with higher terrain, we're all tired (but hydrated) and have a feeling of accomplishment finding these harder caches even though we now smell like sage (as we always do after climbing the hills in southern California). We deserve a good meal!!!

Well, the sage helps with us being to gluttonous because we don't want to stink up a REALLY nice restaurant. The trick here is to not feel like we get to eat more because we did the harder caches. I think the smart thing to do might be to save a particular cache we've been wanting to do for AFTER dinner. That way we won't want to eat that much and feel bogged down with rich food. We'll still be running on adrenaline and this will put less emphasis on the eating part of the day.

I think this cheap trick might work on me. As we are talking about where to get dinner, chug a bottle of water and eat a couple handfulls of those aforementioned carrot sticks. Then by the time we get the the restaurant, I'll order less food.

Then after dinner we can grab that last cache of the day with a feeling of accomplishment both in caching and being more healthy, and of course grab that second low cal starbucks because we're going to be good and skip desert. I suppose we could skip the starbucks too, but c'mon, baby steps here!!!

Please comment!!!