I was awarded the chance of a lifetime in 2018 in the form of a fellowship that has allowed me to go on an nine month around the world trip. While there's many aspects that are much more interesting, something I've been thinking about today is how this trip has contributed to my weight loss journey.
Background: I was a lightweight rower in high school and bottomed out at 130 lbs at 5'8 (female). With a combination of college, after college stress, and then cooking a lot of I-love-you-honey type meals for my now wife, I topped out at 196 over three years. I know those numbers aren't as intense as a lot of people here, but I think this community can understand how bad it felt to live in that body. My knees hurt, nothing fit, every picture was from a bad angle.
I initially lost 30 pounds over about a year when I started grad school. A combination of walking more, counting calories and being at home less accounted for about 20 lbs over ten months. Then I did an internship in a small town with nowhere to buy food but from the Amish, and nothing much to do but work out, and that knocked out about 10lbs in 2 months. I graduated at about 165 and was feeling pretty good about myself
When I departed on this long trip (nine months, 12 countries, currently in Japan), I was initially concerned about weight gain. I shouldn't have been. While I haven't been able to step on a scale, the size large leggings that were uncomfortably tight on me when I left are now pleasantly loose. I'd guess I'm at 145 pounds or so at seven months in, which is comfortably in a healthy BMI range for my height. I've eaten everything I've wanted on this trip with no restrictions: spit roasted lamb in Argentina, conveyor belt sushi in Japan, hella street food in Vietnam.
Here's what I learned:
- Loosing weight means that you have to build a life where food isn't the most fun thing. In the period where I gained sixty odd pounds, my life was pretty tough. I was working a lot of jobs, we moved every year, we had some major life setbacks. Sometimes food was the most fun part! I distinctly remember the bacon pierogis I ate after I broke my elbow and had to quit my very physical job. But my life has changed a lot since then, and I have a lot more pleasure in my life that doesn't have cheese on it. While I've eaten some great food on this trip, it absolutely has not been central. I've worked hard to make sure that the experience of the day itself is the most important thing, not what you eat in it. Stay out of your kitchen: go for walks, order a tea at Starbucks, pick up a hobby, watch Netflix, masturbate. Anything that enriches your life that isn't a compulsion is better than eating boredom crackers.
- If you don't have it around, you can't eat it. I've spent most of my time staying in hostels, which are not places you want to store snack food, if they have a kitchen at all. And so the handful of cereal grabbed as I walked through the kitchen, the dregs of the bag of shredded cheese shaken right out of the bag and into my mouth,- I just don't have access to it. I'm currently volunteering at an inn in Japan that has a kitchen while I job hunt for the return home, and I keep wandering in, looking for something to distract myself. I think when I come home I'm never purposefully buying "snack food" again. It is not hard to get enough calories at a meal, and if you live like most people in the West, you don't need extra.
- It's okay to skip a meal. I've found that the routine that works best for me is to eat whatever's available for breakfast, head out and live my life, and then sit down for a bomb lunch. Like, I had a steak sandwich with avocado and fries in Johannesburg, and ate every bite. Delicious. Probably a thousand calories. But I also didn't eat dinner, and probably had toast for breakfast. I think we get really stuck in the ruts of what's normal for our culture's eating habits, and don't pay attention to whether we're truly hungry at any given meal time. Eating a big lunch and skipping dinner has worked well for me, and I hope to keep it up when I come home.
- If you're not hungry...don't eat. When I'm traveling in a foreign country, it takes some effort to find a store that sells food, navigate the language barrier, figure out what the snacks actually are, and so on. Most of time, it's just not worth it to go through all that for a fleeting moment of "I could go for some chips". I've been traveling solo, and so I don't have the pressure of another person to keep me on a normal schedule. My goal for coming home is to eat whatever for breakfast (I would kill for some exotic American cereals right about now), a big lunch, and then just eat the veg at dinner with my wife.
Stepping out of my context has given me the freedom to reevaluate how I want to eat. Try treating your own life like you're a foreign traveler. Are you really hungry at this culture's mealtimes? Did you have a good day today, or did you try to make it a good day with takeout? What would be fun to do, instead of to eat? And most of all, I hope you live a life that's so fun and engrossing that it keeps you out of the dregs of the shredded cheese bag.
If you're curious about my travels, I have an instagram I've been keeping up! I'm not sure about the rules regarding that, but you can dm me for the name.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2ZzZDPC
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