No, I'm not going to make this into a weightloss blog. It's not so much about weightloss in this case, but more about a very terrifying prospect:
The moment your dresses won't fit anymore.
Bam. Imagine that. All my dresses are the same size and tailored to fit, so if I gain - all of them will become too tight at once. I highly doubt I'm alone fearing it, and for me it's become reality, so I really have to do something. The problem has been padding my footsteps since Christmas, and followed me into Spring with flus and busy days.
So right now I am, sadly, on a diet. You know the thing about diets - you can never keep them, and I didn't want that, so I was trying to come up with a long term strategy instead. While I was ill, I ate a lot of cookies and drank loads of juice, both of which I know really isn't good if you don't want to gain, so I'm guessing I ate quite a lot more calories than my BMR allowed.
So I started there. What do I have? What do I want? Along the way I stumbled on a blog ( http://blog.japancentre.com/ ) and a post discussing rice vs bread and why Japanese people tend to be slim. Seen as I love Japan, I found it a very interesting read, and dug deeper into it. I found that the average Japanese woman (I've got no proof - just what the internetz says - but after trying it I've found this definitely plausable) eats about 700-800 kcal á day.
That kind of shocked me, since I'm used to seeing recommended numbers around 2000 kcal á day. Shuffling around I found the reason. You see, rice actually isn't bad, calory wise. And since everything is served in small bowls/portions, it isn't very much at all. And since it's always served with okazu ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okazu ) it's isn't boring at all to eat every day. Since I'd already decided I need to drop a few pounds (well...), I decided to keep a calorie diary, and started noting down the ingredients I was most likely to use if I was going to keep a Japanese diet.
And do you know what I discovered? The most common vegetables - such as leeks, egg plants and such - are hardly any calories at all! Not vinegar either, at least not the kind I use, nor Japanese soy sauce. And salmon isn't high in calories either, something that delighted me since I love fish. Putting it all together, I found that each meal was just about 200-300 kcal. Which makes the claim about 700-800 kcal very plausible indeed!
So, yeah. For six days now I've been eating Japanese food and a lighter, more western breakfast (varying between strawberries with yoghurt and strawberries with banana and milk), and I feel so much better. Not only because the scales have already started tipping, but because finally - finally - I've found a diet that really works for me. I've always had trouble sleeping - but I fall asleep right away now. I've always felt queasy at breakfast - no more. I've never been hungry when it's time for lunch - I sure am now! And the same with dinner. It's such a fullfilling feeling to feel that each meal is enough to keep you up and running until the next meal. Having food when you are hungry is really so much better than eating although you don't really want to.
On a side note I read that rice quells the want for sugar and sweets. Not sure if that's true, but so far I've not really wanted any sweets at all.
Oh yes, before I forget. If anyone is interested, I've found the ultimate recipe site for Japanese recipes. A translated version of the Japanese "Cookpad": https://en.cookpad.com/
2 comments:
I know the feeling!
And yeah Japanese women really do struggle to stay small! I read at one blog about a westerner that worked in Japan noticed that her female co-workers often ate one rice-ball (100 kcal) or a piece of ice(!) for lunch, so to save their calories until they got home and had dinner... Westerners really do need to be more calorie-restrictive and most of all we need to eat REAL food (aka lots and lots of veggies XD) instead of all the snacks, buns, juice, soft drinks, crisps, candy, milk chocolate etc :) I think you Japanese diet sounds very healthy and really tasty! We're doing the iso-diet at the moment, which is somewhat boring at times (lots of kvarg :P *yuck*) så I might just make some Japanese food inbetween! ^^ Thanks for the tip! BIG HUGS!
Indeed! Western food is really high on calories, and the biggest culprit of all (which no one seems to think about) is lemonade. x.x I was shocked to see it was about 120kcal á glass!
Needless to say, we are now drinking water with lemon or lime in instead...
Though eating ice doesn't sound like a very good idea - their diet is already so low on calories. I'd go for the rice ball any day. ;)
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