I gained weight since my move to the USA. I noticed this in how my clothes stopped fitting well and how bad my families joke were about me getting chubby.
I agree that my eating habits were not the best; I was eating out a lot, free soft drinks at work, and In-n-out isn’t exactly healthy food. But the eye opener was when I travel back home to mexico. Going back home always means tons of eating out and good food. This includes all the staples of mexican food including fresh made tortillas, bread, pastries, sweet drinks, greasy tacos,tamales etc.
Here’s comes the twist. Ready?
While I was eating a lot of unhealthy mexican food, I lost weight.
Shocking! How bad was the food I ate that I lost weight on a mexican greasy food diet.
I promptly started my quest into eating healthier, though it was much harder in this country. Back in mexico dieting was ridiculously simple: Stop eating tortillas and corn food like tamales, soft drinks, and pastries. Insta-weight loss in a couple of months. I did the usual cut backs but still I wasn’t loosing weight. I even gained a couple of pounds more. The biggest problem was that in the US I’m not eating tortillas, no more In-n-out, stopped drinking soft drinks, and pastries. Yet I kept gaining weight.
Something had to be wrong. Horribly wrong. I discarded my body since I lose weight when I fly back home. I also started running recently so It was not the lack of exercise. It also could not be eating out since I cut my dinners in restaurants and cafes to every week or two.
It had to be the food.
I researched on nutrition and started label reading. The amazing thing is how most food ingredients resemble more and more to my shampoo label, and there’s 2 things that constantly pop up:
- There’s sugar in food you’d never expect. soup, beans, plain yoghurt, milk, condiments. And lots of it.
- There’s corn everywhere. Mainly corn syrup .
So in completely unscientific and subjective terms:
I was having blended tortillas in pretty much all food including yoghurt, and sprinkling pastries everywhere including mustard and beans.
The easy solution: I’m trying to stick to fruits and veggies, some chicken, and shop for organic stuff. Seems to be working fo far!
Some other notes:
- In mexico: there’s no need to distinguish between megacorp fruit and local farmer fruit. It’s all mostly local and organic. It’s better business for farmer to sell fruit themselves than sell to big corps. And additives costs extra money which farmers don’t have.
- There’s junk food, but it’s expensive. You can find it all, McDonalds, Pizza hut, Krispy kreme, Cinnabon. The key is a BigMac combo costs 6 dollars in the Us. 6 Dollars in Mexico. 6 USD in Mexico get you a full meal in a way better restaurant or food for 2 or 3 in a taqueria.
- There’s plenty of sweet treats, but they’re more filling and less sweet.
