I’m sitting in a van in China, full of people who are speaking in Chinese, so I can’t really be part of the conversation. I speak just enough Chinese that if I strain with sufficient effort I can get the gist of the conversation, which is exhausting after a while. As I zone out and retreat into my thoughts, I think about food.
I really like Chinese food, specifically Sichuan food. Our first couple days had been in Sichuan, so I was eating a huge amount of food. The first thought that begins a whole two hour train of logic is, “wouldn’t it be amazing if when I ate the amount of food I wanted to eat, my body needed and could use all of that food?”.
Next I think, “but if that were the case, I would just adjust and overeat.”
Growing up I was always very skinny. I would eat a lot at times, but I was a picky eater so I didn’t eat a ton of calories. When I went to college my friend Terry (similarly skinny) and I had a contest to see who could gain more weight in the first year. I gained seven pounds, mostly by eating ice cream sundaes every breakfast. It was funny to me to eat a lot of food, because it didn’t affect me.
I’ve never been overweight, but I notice now that my natural inclination is to gain weight while I’m away from home, but then when I’m back I naturally settle back in to my daily routine of nuts and warm and brown, and I start losing weight again.
To be fair, I’ve always been a healthy weight. During the pandemic (no travel), I settled around 150lb, which is probably a bit light for my height, and I’ve never been over 170. One seventy is apparently a healthy weight for my height, but it I start feeling a bit soft around the edges when I get near it, so I tighten things up.
If I would just adjust to eating more, I think, why couldn’t I just adjust to eating less? What’s so magical about the amount that I’m currently adjusted to? I bet I could adjust to less.
Then I have what is, to me at least, a huge epiphany. The first bite of every meal is both the most enjoyable and the best for my body. The last is the least enjoyable and damages my body. Why am I eating those last bites?
If I just eliminate the last 20% of whatever I eat, I am still probably getting about 95% of the enjoyment from the food, but I’m no longer damaging my body. Maybe I will adapt to eating 80% as much as before and it will feel equally satisfying, be almost as much fun, but will also serve my body rather than be at odds with it.
And… wait a minute… why is eating a lot of food fun anyway? Is it really fun? When I think back to good meals I’ve had, it’s always the quality of the food that was enjoyable, not the quantity. Even when I’d eat 16 lobster tails on a cruise, I didn’t actually enjoy the last few.
I decide that I will eat only 80% of what I would have otherwise eaten, and I’ll stick with it until Christmas. I want to make sure it has time to have an effect, but I don’t want to feel trapped forever if I hate it. I think about the most difficult meals and decide in advance how I will adjust. I’m heading from China to Japan, where there’s a lot of food I like, so I plan those meals.
I love Tonkatsu from Katsukura Shinjuku and I always get the biggest one. That’s easy, I’ll just get the one that’s around 20% fewer grams. I’m not going to worry about the cabbage or miso soup. Sushi and Gyoza are easy, I’ll just eat fewer. I love Japanese ice creams from convenient stores, and I used to eat one or two per day. I’ll eat a maximum of one and make sure I eat none some days. At Savoy I’ll eat one little pizza instead of one and a half.
Then I have another realization. Over 80 percent of Americans are overweight, obese, or severely obese. Restaurants serve us all the same portions. Sure I don’t eat breakfast or lunch, but still… why am I accepting this standard portion as the correct amount of food when it’s making everyone fat? This makes me decide that when appropriate, I will leave behind extra food rather than accept this default portion size and avoid “wasting” food.
Also, some part of me thinks that it’s cool to eat a lot. I think it comes from when I was a kid and couldn’t gain weight so it was a novelty that I would eat a lot of food and still not gain weight. My parents fed us healthy food in appropriate portions, so maybe it was some small act of rebellion. But IS it cool to eat a lot? Have I ever once thought it was cool when someone ate a lot? In this moment I realize that eating a lot of food is sad, not cool.
Our first dinner after my realizations comes, and I eat a lot less. I’m shooting for 80%, but Chinese food is communal and I want to err on the side of less food. It’s hard to know for sure. Everyone notices and tries to give me more food, but I just say I’m full. I’m actually a little bit hungry, but the satisfaction of enacting this change makes me feel good anyway.
The next meal I eat the same amount and it’s even easier. After a few meals the amount I’m eating feels totally normal. I adapted much faster than I expected, though I’m wary of it just being wishful thinking.
I’m known for liking ice cream, so someone brings me one. I’m at a hotel with no freezer, so the options are to eat it or to let it melt. I have never once turned down an ice cream that was handed to me, but I let it melt. The weird thing is that I don’t even want it. I’ve brainwashed myself.
In between China and Japan I have a one day layover in Hong Kong. I’m craving non Asian food and I pass by a Shake Shack. Normally I would order a double cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake. I resolve to throw away 20% of whatever fries I get, and not get a milkshake. I waver between a double burger and a single, but it’s my only meal of the day so I get a double.
When the burger comes, I take a generous 20% of the fries and put them on the tray. I won’t eat those. The burger is great. This is the first time I’ve really had unhealthy food since deciding to eat less, so I’m anticipating being very tempted by those extra fries, but I know I’ll resist. Something strange happens, though. As I eat the fries, I end up putting more and more of them on the tray. I eat one, put two on the tray. Eat one, put another on the tray. I left half of them.
Japan is easy. I eat the smaller Tonkatsu and feel just as satisfied. I eat about half the gyoza I would have eaten. At every meal I think about which part of the meal I care the least about and I don’t eat it. Normally I’d eat some of the rice that comes with gyoza, but I don’t eat any. One day I cut an ice cream sandwich in half and split it with a friend. Another time I just eat 80% and throw the remaining 20% away. One day I eat the whole thing, but another day I ate none. In the past when eating sushi I’d feel compelled to eat a huge amount because it’s so good and such a good value. I go two or three times and probably average 60% of what I used to eat.
I get home and weigh myself. In just under three weeks I’ve gone from 165lb and 19.5% bodyfat to 157lb and 17.7% bodyfat. The weird thing is that I don’t feel deprived at all. The meals in the second half of the China trip are as memorable as those in the first. My memories of the great food I ate in Japan are the same as any other trip. I don’t feel like I missed out on anything.
I intend to eat the same amount of warm and brown as before, but I can’t finish it. I put some away for the next day, anticipating being really hungry, but I feel the same as usual. For future warm and browns I eat a third of the batch instead of my usual half. I reduce my luxury nuts by 10-15% as well.
I was hesitant to write this post, because I think if I read it I might think, “yeah you ate less for a few weeks… who cares?”, but I’m posting it because a simple line of logic has had a profound effect on me. I think the amounts I’m eating now may be too little and I will have to carefully adjust up, but I predict that I will never go back to eating as much as I did before.
Something I’ve learned about myself, and maybe about other people, is that lasting change often comes from a new perspective. Usually it’s from a book, in my experience. Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Difficult Conversations, and Die With Zero, instantly created long lasting effects in my life. Sometimes that change can come from within, though, taking time to think about things from a different point of view and digging to find a more accurate perspective on something.
###
The boat is finally fixed and has been running great. We had a little cookout on the lake the other day and I made 1/3lb burgers instead of 1/2lb and had salad on the side instead of chips. I wanted to post a picture of the food, but I didn’t have any in landscape mode.
Leave a Reply