My American Diet

Here's my diet plan for the remainder of my life in America.

• No prepared food: that means no pudding cups, Campbell's soup, pre-breaded anything, frozen pizzas and nuggets of meat, etc.


• Nothing that tastes at all salty or has any notable amount of sodium in it: since coming back to America I have been struck by how salty everything tastes to me now, including potato chips, french fries, steak at Boulder Creek, and even ketchup. From now on whenever I eat out I'll be asking for half the normal amount of salt.


• Half the salad dressing: you don't need every lettuce leaf to be completely drenched to enjoy your salad, and if you do, you've probably blasted your taste buds with salt.


• Observe fat people: last night at the airport I watched a fat woman count the hours until her plane was to arrive, then call someone at her destination and make sure there would be somewhere to eat when they got there, and then seconds later her fat husband arrive with some big big McDonald's hamburgers and fries and chow down lustily. It was disturbing.


• Eat at McDonald's: Mickey D's has a couple of healthy, cheap and convenient options that I look forward to eating, including their salads and grilled chicken sandwiches.


• No drinks: This is the most important rule, I think, because it puts you in a different state of mind. I am talking no juices, soft drinks and diet beverages. Even diet cola has a lot of salt in it, which is important to avoid, even though you can't taste it. I only drink water, black coffee, tea, and occasional alcoholic beverages.
  
• When my wife and I go to restaurants, we order one meal and one salad: we have literally not been able to finish a single meal at any restaurant since arriving, except McDonald's, where the servings are very reasonable.


• Dress smartly: That means clothes that fit well, shirts tucked in, etc. A lot of people let themselves get sloppy fat because they disregard their personal appearance and let the 'It's what's inside that counts' message go to their heads (and gut, and butt . . .)


• Don't take escalators if you can avoid it: You may be thinking this is something that is too insignificant to make a difference. What, is walking one or two flights of stairs going to help me stay healthy? No, but it is a first step to putting yourself in the right state of mind, and that's the really important thing.

I was lucky, because living in Korea forced me to discover some of these ideas. I had no idea that American food was so salty. When I lived in Korea my mother-in-law would let me taste the soup that she made. If I said it needed salt, she knew it was just right, and if I said it was just right, she knew it was too salty. I still eat my food a little saltier than the average Korean, but I bought a bag of Ruffles Sour Cream and Onion potato chips the other day and I had to throw them out because I could not handle the saltiness.

Other things I found out by watching my own self take Korean eating habits too far. Go to any office or house in Korea and you are likely to find lots of juice, honey water, ginseng essence, and rice milk, both in 1.5 liter containers and little personal-sized bottles.

I used to drink three or four of the little bottles in a day, defeating the purpose of putting them in little bottles.
Hey folks, take care of yourself and live a long time.

Dieting

People like Sydney Spiesel at Slate seem to be completely missing the point of a recent study that shows that people who have dieted tend to gain weight in the long-term. The title of the article is

Beware of Diet

What if counting calories makes you fatter in the long run?

I've heard this chalked up to 'dieting changing your metabolism' and all sorts of nonsense, but naturally people are making the same mistake they always make, confusing correlation with causation.
As a former fatty fatty fat fat who lost 180 pounds through lifestyle change, I'll tell you why people who go on diets, even successful ones, gain weight in the long run. It's because they were never taught will power and have terrible eating habits that they don't know how to break. Perhaps they have the 'soft will power' necessary to stick to a strict diet plan, but they don't have what it takes to live a life in which they exercise control over their own actions on an everyday basis. People talk about going on diets and all the will power that it takes, but in the end that effort cannot extend into the long term. The most important thing of all is developing new eating habits, which people on the whole don't know how to do. The most effective way for an out-of-control fat person to change their eating habits is to take the choice out of their own hands in one way or another, because just like you can't expect a wild dog to be a good babysitter, you can't expect what amounts to a feral person to plan out a balanced diet and administer it to themself.
In Korea, there was a fad a couple of years ago called welbing, from the English 'well-being'. Basically welbing consisted of sprinkling green tea powder on everything and frying stuff in olive oil. That's how ridiculous dieting sounds when viewed with a detached eye (gross image, I know).