The snacks started before dawn: A pair of cookies tucked onto a tray of coffee delivered to my tent. Eyes barely open, I picked one up and inspected it—shortbread, the really good kind that leaves a faint trace of butter on your fingertips. Better not, I thought, before taking a bite and returning the half-eaten cookie to its tray.
There’s no shortage of food on safari. There would, after all, be snacks on the morning game drive. And then back at camp there would be a hearty breakfast, followed by more snacks in my tent, and then lunch, followed by scones with clotted cream at high tea, then an afternoon game drive with, of course, sundowner gin and tonics paired with shreds of biltong and heaps of spiced nuts before, naturally, dinner.
I’ve spent enough time on safari to know that the bush routine involves a lot of sitting and eating and eating and sitting, but the 5:30 a.m. shortbread took me by surprise. Well, maybe surprise isn’t the right word—at a five-star establishment like Natural Selection’s Jack’s Camp, I would expect no detail to go unnoticed, so of course a coffee wake-up call would include a little something to nibble on.
What set this safari apart, however, was that it was my first long-haul trip since embarking on a serious body composition journey—my nutrition coach doesn’t like the term “weight loss”—and after four months of revolutionizing the ways I eat and work out, I am, for the first time in my adult life, finding real success at achieving my fitness goals. Things are fitting better, energy is at an all-time high, the muscles are muscling and, if I can stay the course, there might—might—be abs in the near future. This was also the first trip where my anxiety was so bad that I had a hard time getting on the plane.
I’ve never been immune to pre-trip jitters. What if I leave a faucet running before I leave the house? How quickly could I fly home in case of a family emergency? But the build-up to Botswana was like nothing I had ever experienced. I woke up intermittently in the middle of the nights leading up to my departure, I went stricter on my diet and worked out harder, and found myself unable to get any meaningful work done. Safari is one of my favorite things to do in the whole world, but my anxiety about leaving behind my newfound routine was diminishing what should have been genuine excitement.
“Consistency is key,” my coach would say to me throughout our program. Over the last four months, my days at home revolved around a series of checklists. Chug twelve ounces of water upon waking? Check. Workouts five times per week with plenty of sleep for recovery? Like clockwork. The right balance of macronutrients throughout the day? Measured to the gram. And having achieved so much success with my routine, it was difficult to relinquish control.
Relinquishing at least some control, however, is what we often need to do. That’s what psychiatrist and executive coach Dr. David Brendel shared when I asked for his expert opinion. He’s noticed an uptick in clients experiencing pre-trip jitters, especially those who established very stable home routines over the recent pandemic years. The secret, he said, was to not “try to to interpret” pre-trip anxiety by ruminating on how anxious you feel, but instead try to “understand it.” “Anxiety can be a useful prompt to think and plan,” said Dr. Brendel. “Start with, ‘How can I make use of anxiety, and what can I learn from it,’ without necessarily pathologizing it. People often short-circuit that step and almost get anxious about anxiety. But I like to start by framing anxiety as messages to one’s self that are opportunities for better planning.”
Advanced planning could involve scoping out restaurant menus ahead of time. It could mean packing your own snacks to keep on track with your macronutrient targets. Or it could also mean accepting that a single week away from your routine, after months of being on it, isn’t going to reverse your progress. In my case, carrying a suitcase full of protein bars that would only melt in the Okavango heat wouldn’t have been a practicable solution.
“You need to be realistic, because it isn’t possible to completely recreate a home routine when traveling,” said Dr. Brendel. “I usually suggest that people pick one thing to start a routine on the road, and from there they can build and add something else. For many, if not most people, usually the suggestion is to start with a sleep routine.”
Long-haul travel—especially trips that cross time-zones and hemispheres like, say, America to Botswana—can easily lead to not only falling behind on your nutrition routine or skipping workouts, but to dysregulated circadian rhythms and disrupted sleep cycles. Studies show that when people sleep well, they are much better able to manage other parts of their life. The solution, Dr. Brendel shared, is to take things one step at a time—and learn to control the things that we can control given our circumstances. So while I certainly felt anxious about deviating from my nutrition plan while in Botswana, I decided to control that which I was able to: slipping away from dinners early to make sure I got a solid eight hours of sleep; staying extra hydrated; sneaking in even a short workout whenever I could; and maybe skipping those pre-dawn cookies.
Was I able to 100% recreate my home routine on the road? Not even close. But by integrating the smallest pieces of it, I felt like I had control over my own anxiety. By having even those snippets of routine sprinkled throughout my day, I felt more present and focused on our game drives, and like I had really arrived in Botswana without being too worried about missing life back home.
My biggest souvenir from the trip—in addition to countless wildlife shots—was learning to leave wiggle room for the realities of life, while controlling the things that I was realistically able to control. It's the best that any of us can do.
