When to Eat in a Survival Situation

When it comes to any survival situation, one of the important things to remember is to make sure you eat. Eating is fuel for the body. When you are in a survival situation, you will tend to burn more calories than normal. This will require you to balance carefully your diet. Eating all throughout the day is not the best advice. Eating smaller meals several times throughout the day can be good, however. In the morning, it is a great idea to start with high protein foods such as eggs or breakfast meats.

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Even granola works great. Throughout the day, it is more important to watch what you consume. When you eat food water is required for the digestion process. If you are not careful, you can end up doing yourself more harm than good. Eating foods that are full of juices such as fruits and vegetables during the peak hours of the day is the best for the body. During survival situations, you will want to try to stay away from salty foods.

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These type of foods will cause you to become thirstier as well as dehydrate your body faster. When it comes to the question of being in a survival situation and when the right time to eat is the answer is easy. Any time can be the right time to eat as long as you're eating right when you choose to eat. If you limit your salt intake and increase the amount of juicy fruits and vegetables you consume your body will thank you and it will make any survival situation a little bit better. Don't eat too much fruit though you could end up with a belly ache.

 

If it is survival time, it is survival time you will not have time to have your regular five meals a day or three!
If you are in a permanent secure location or not dinner should be the only meal, a morning cuppa and maybe a lunch cuppa and that should be it!
What you eat will be what you have! and it will get boring fairly quick!
One meal a day reduces time effort and resources by 60-80% except for the actual food bit!
Actually if one has a bit of body fat available that should be utilised first!
The less you eat the less water you need the less you need to stop and shit! etc etc!
But don't dehydrate and a laxative pill every few days works well! one poop every three days instead of every day
will save 60% of toilet paper use if you have it and agrivation if you don't!

One meal a day in the mid afternoon lets you sleep with food in the belly so you sleep well, in the morning a few sticks on hot embers and the kettle is boiled
for a quick brew then into the day!

I went 10 days once with just a muslie bar a day plus water, not ideal but not that bad either!

 

I think that the sooner you could start developing some routines, after the dust settles, the better. When thrown into chaos, the best way to regain some normalcy, would be to enforce some structure into your day. That being said, it should be good to eat at regular times of the day as much as possible. Eating is about the most important thing of the day and to make it something you can depend on at a regular interval would bring calm and comfort in the midst of all the turmoil. It would be replenishing and I think it would help with the overall task of just getting through the whole deal.

 

Even now I don't eat at regular times of the day. I think grazing is the biologically default way to eat for humans, as we are animals after all, it's only because of society and civilisation that we have established routine meal times such as breakfast, lunch and dinner. I know that I feel healthier if I eat a small meal when I am peckish or hungry, which could be anywhere between 2-8 times a day, than eating large meals three times a day.

 

In a survival situation, things might need to be more regimented. Consider war time. Soldiers are taught to fall in line and do things according to the rules. This is for their protection. It is the best hope they have for survival. I think this mindset would hold true in any survival situation. It's a way of bringing order to a chaotic situation.

 

It would also depend on what you have.

Initially of course [after an event] you'd have to do some rationing so two meals a day would be fine. Get up do some work. Have your brunch at around 11 AM. Do more work and have your next meal in the evening. It's something your body will get conditioned to after a few weeks.

 

Those are really some good nice tips, but what if you don't have those foods in a disaster situation? It's really hard to get a pan to fry eggs and cook your breakfast in, unless you have everything prepared in your shelter, in case you have one.
Anyways, eating in small portions can be a good strategy, but you need to eat at meal times. So you could consume less at breakfast and at an afternoon snack, but focus your calories on lunch and dinner.

 

I don't know, I'm high carb. I get that some people want higher protein breakfasts, but I'd rather just have a mass stockpile of oatmeal and ideally organic coconut sugar, but any sugar would do if I'm feelin it. I ate meat & eggs and all that jazz for most of my life, the switch over to fruits & veggies and a primarily carb-based diet has been a huge leap forward for me in terms of my energy levels throughout the day.