I've started and stopped this post several times. I truly wondered if it would...actually help people. At the same time, I felt..like I wanted to sort out my own feelings on this matter so below are my rambly thoughts and anecdotes.
The Trip
I flew from Chicago to India and spent two weeks there before coming back and landing in the polar vortex (yay!).
Weight Before trip: 134.4 Weight After: 134.6
The Food
I pretty much had home cooked food Indian food with access to an all you can eat buffet for 3 meals. There was also one day where I visited 8 households, which if you know anything about Indian hospitality, was terrible.
Ramblings
- Full fat unpasteurized milk. At one of my grandma's house, the milk man came around at 5:30 in the morning. He'd call up your name and my Aunt would lower a bucket attached to a string down the balcony where the milk would get put. It came in bags. Then the milk would get boiled just in case and they would skim the fat off the milk. Holllly craaaappp. I tried the milk with coffee and got full after 3 sips. This shit is no joke.
- Self control: I started diluting my milk with water. Lots of water.
- The tea culture. Wake up? Tea. Nap time? Tea. Bored? Tea. Some one comes over? Tea? It's been two hours since the last tea time? Tea. Let me tell you, Indians are sugar fiends. They buy that large granulated sugar because the ground nonsense is bad right? >.< ---- Fun fact: Tea includes that unpasteurized milk from above.
- Self control: I started drinking my tea out of shot glasses. Only that 1 serving. Mom got made fun of for requesting no sugar. I just shrunk my serving size massively lol.
- Indian food is made with oil and ghee. There's enough oil that America would even consider a pipeline I swear. I also visited the state of Gujrat. Has anyone seen a Gujrati thali? Google it. They serve that for lunch and dinner!
- Self control: 1 roti. IDC how much people made fun of me, only 1 roti. No rice at dinner (also received some hate). SERVE YOURSELF. Indians have this mentality of being served usually by the housemaker in family. I've seen full grown Indian men not eat even when food is in front of them because they won't serve themselves. Even if you get weird looks, control your portion and SERVE YOURSELF. I also ate slowly and drank water during my meal. I noticed a lot of Indians don't drink water until the end...
- There's a mentality with my family and extended family that I noticed. At the end of a meal, if there were a few servings left, they would be like, "you take this and I'll take this and we won't have to save anything." I get the feeling this comes from when my families didn't have fridges. (These got added in the last decade.) They will force themselves to eat. It's terrifying.
- Self control: I just refused to participate in this.
- All you can eat buffet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a 5 star hotel. That was an experience. Very few people will get my excitement but THEY HAD A PANI PURI BAR!!!!
- Self control: There's a few controls I exercise here. First of all, when I sit down, the napkin is always on my lap. This slows down me getting up significantly. I sit facing away from the buffet always. I get 1-2 tablespoons of everything I want to eat. In their dessert line, they had cake to slice. I made a quarter inch slice. I try my best to not drink my calories. (besides milk because I do get crabby without milk but idk if this subcontinent has heard of fat-free yet...)
- 8 households in one day. I asked my mom if I had to drink 8 teas. She said if it wasn't tea, it would be ice cream. Or snacks. Typically fried. Though one kind Uncle did get me baked samosas.
- Self control: Shot glass tea. Share ice cream with mom. Only eat baked/cooked snacks. Eat only 1 piece. Skipped dinner entirely. I had an Uncle that chauffeured us to every house. He ate at every house and then went home for dinner too! He's like, "You have to eat at home!" This was met with a resounding "YEAH!" by everyone surrounding him. Ha. Ha. No. I ate like nothing the next day I was so full.
Conclusion
So all in all a few things I noticed. I drink a lot more water than they do here. I drink a lot less tea. I do not have more than maybe two items for meals. Having multiple items can really serve to help you over eat. I don't use oil or ghee. Most of all, I LISTENED TO MY BODY IF IT WAS FULL. People eat and drink here as a social activity. And they just keep going. They eat out of principle, culture, and "home." I had such a mental struggle to loose weight at home; I did not realize how much of my eating happened now because it's what I needed and how little it happened because it's a social activity.
This trip helped me the most in that it made me realize I did develop good habits. I just didn't notice because it's a mental fight to eat at 1.2k cal. I'm finally proud of myself. My loss might be slow af but I'm doing good and I'm building better habits along they way.
Ty to anyone who actually read this!
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from loseit - Lose the Fat http://bit.ly/2Tpp3wQ
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