Diets abroad

This picture kills me.  I'm on a diet.  I actually, often, just for the hell of it, put myself on crazy diets.  By "crazy", I mean that for one month at a time, I will not allow myself to eat any meat or sugar (well, I don't restrict all sugar-- just candy and stuff that is obviously going to make you fat-- I'm allowed to eat an apple, for example).  I do this to myself from time to time because, about three years ago, I got monstrously fat.  I'd say that it all started when I was living in France as a fille au-pair.  The family I lived with didn't think I ate enough, and kept pressuring me to eat more.  They told me that their last au-pair had lost weight when she was with them, and they didn't want that to happen with another au-pair, so every mealtime, the refrain was, "Eat, eat!"  I tried explaining to them that if I ate as much as they wanted me to eat, I would get monstrously fat, but they kept insisting, so, eventually, I started relenting.  And so began my love affair with French chocolate, Swiss chocolate, baguettes, Nutella (nutella spread on a baguette, orange slices dipped in nutell, nutella by itself on a spoon, etc), red wine, cheese (comte, yum! cancaillotte, an acquired taste, but I lapped it up), olive oil, pasta, white cheese (it has the consistency of yogurt), plain yogurt, rhubarb jam (Bonne Maman is the best brand), creme de marrons... you get the drift.  To make matters worse, we lived in the country-side, so it got kind of boring, so all I really ever did was eat and watch TV!

By the time I left France five months later, I had gained about 25 pounds, and none of my clothes fit me.  I figured, "This isn't that bad-- I'm moving to Kuwait next month, and I'm sure I'll take all this weight off when I live in the Middle East what with all that constant heat."  Ha!  The Middle East /is/ hot, but they LIKE fat women there.  Furthermore, they LOVE sugar.  I once watched a private student of mine put fourteen teaspoonfuls of sugar into his tea.  Also, it was too hot/crowded/dangerous (traffic-wise) to go outside for a run or for any kind of exercise.  And my job was really stressful, as well, so I turned to good old food for comfort.  I refined my cake, cookie, and cupcake-making skills and I learned how to make home-made ice cream.  There were days when, instead of cooking dinner, I'd bake something sweet.  And then I'd eat most of it!

By the time I returned home to Canada for my older brother's wedding, I was up another 35 pounds.  And I had to be in the wedding!  I just felt like an ugly cow.  After the wedding, I had been hoping to find another job abroad and leave Canada again pretty quickly, but it didn't work that way.  With the economy the way it is (and it was even worse back then), ESL jobs abroad were starting to be fewer and further between, and much more difficult to get.  So, I was stuck staying at my parents' house in Canada.  Don't get me wrong-- I love my parents, but I was 27, fat, unemployed, and living with my parents.  I was miserable, and I turned to my good old friend, food.  Then, I decided, I'll move back to Korea.  Koreans don't like fat.  In fact, I think they fear it.  And I like Korean food.  A lot!  But that's okay, because Korean food is all rice and vegetables.  It won't make you fat.  It will have you ship-shape in no time.  In fact, the last time I lived in Korea, I lost weight, and I didn't even think I had any weight to lose last time around, so this time, I figured it would go the same way.

So, I got a job and returned to Seoul, where my new employers and coworkers were understandably horrified by the whale they met at the airport (actually, they didn't meet me at the airport-- they made me take an airport bus by myself with all my luggage into the centre of Seoul instead of them coming to meet me-- pretty rude, but it's all in the past).  Anyway, my first month in Seoul, I was pretty broke, so I actually /couldn't/ afford to buy any sweets or fatty foods, and I did start losing some weight.  After about a month, my "fat pants" were starting to feel looser on me, but my regular pants (the ones I had worn when I was thin, which I longed to wear again) still didn't come up past my knees.  I had a hard time understanding how I had ever fit into them.  I mean, they even looked small to me.  I couldn't believe that I had ever been that small.  I convinced myself that maybe I had shrunk them by accident, but I still made it my goal to fit back into them.  After another month, I could fit back into one of my pairs of regular pants (albeit, they were very tight).  After another month, I fit back into another pair of my regular pants.  Then, I hit a weight-loss plateau.  So I bought some running shoes and started running four to six times a week.  At first, I jiggled when I ran, and it embarrassed me, but I forced myself to keep going.  After a month of that, I was feeling much better, but not losing any more weight.  So I looked up various fad diets on the internet.  Now, I know a fad diet doesn't generally work, but I was reading about cleanse diets, and I realised something about cleanse diets: even after taking all those yucky herbs, you have to seriously restrict your food intake and limit the types of food you can eat while you are doing the cleanse.  For example, pretty much the only meat that is allowed is fish, you can only have certain vegetables, and you can't eat any sugar.  I got to thinking, "Hmmm... I bet a person would still lose quite a lot of weight even if they only followed that strict diet and didn't take any of that yucky herbal stuff."  So, I put myself on a diet in which I wasn't allowed to eat any meat or sugar.  I made it last one month.  After one month of a very strict diet and running four to six days I week, I had lost 4kilos (almost 9 pounds-- in Korea, you weigh yourself in kilos).  I took a week off and let myself eat whatever I wanted to eat, and then I did another strict month because I wanted to look hot for my birthday.  After that, Seoul was too hot to even consider not eating sugar, and I lived on ice cream for pretty much the duration of the summer.  I think it was the heat, though, because somehow I managed to still lose more weight, and at the end of the summer, I found that I fit back into two of my pants that I only fit into when I was very slim.

I still have pants that I used to fit that I can't get into anymore, though, and I've hit another weight-loss plateau, so I've decided to do another month of no meat and no sugar.  So, when I walk around town and I see all that candy, it kills me, because I'm only four days into my newest no meat no sugar month, and I just want something sweet!  I'm gonna cut up a melon tonight!  Also, in Mongolia, you are supposed to eat meat three times a day, every day.  It seems like if you don't, you're some kind of heathen or something.  So my boss comes up to me this morning and says, "We noticed that you don't eat in the cafeteria."  I said, "Yes, I explained to you that I really don't eat much meat at all and the cafeteria only serves meat."  She said, "They can make a vegetable thing just for you."  I said, "That's nice, but I only get twenty minutes for lunch, and I would prefer to spend that time working."  She said, "All the other teachers also only get twenty minutes for lunch."  I said, "I'm not asking for a longer lunch-break, I'm just saying that it's my lunch break, so it ought to be up to me how I spend that time, and if I choose to spend that time working (instead of eating meat I dislike)*, I think that's okay."  The conversation ended shortly after that.  I'm not sure how much I'm fitting in here...

*bracketed quote was not actually said (but I wanted to say it).

Fruit and Candy Stand on Peace Ave in downtown Ulaanbaatar