8 lbs.

[tikistitch]

For those who have asked, no, tiki didn't gain any weight on the trip. Nor, in fact, did we lose. We're still holding where we need to lose 8 lbs to fit the Lilo & Stitch bikini, but kind of demotivated.

This experience has brought up again our longstanding conspiracy theory about the US food supply, and how we believe it is forcing citizens to be all overweight slaves to Nutrisystem. Here's the deal: tiki, the Goddess of Chub, doesn't watch her weight at all when on holiday. Quite the contrary, we consider it our vacation mandate to ascertain exactly how much foodstuff will actually fit into our digestive tract. (Like the how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know the answer to this question.) But, we also almost never gain weight. In fact, we often come home a few pounds lighter.

Now, like the Loch Ness Monster, there are rational explanations for this seeming anomaly. We've heard them. Mr. Tikistitch, for example, considers a day of touring a failure if we have not walked at least a marathon distance, and at a pace not much less rapid than a marathon time. Additionally, unlike the United States, most countries of the world still serve meal portions that contain somewhat less than sufficient calories to support a small African village for a week. Also, there's the tummy trouble (you don't want to hear about that, really).

But something tingles our spider sense. We actually spent the first week of this trip, not in Death March mode, but milling around lazily at a Sci Fi con, eating cholesterol-infused inedible-but-we-scarfed-it-anyway British foodstuffs plus Booze A-Plenty!, and then whiled away another entire week plopped on our fat asses in a train compartment, snacking on terrible fried Russian oddities from the dining car, plus dollar beer and dollar cookies peddled by the cheery capitalist Chinese train conductors. In other words, Jenny Craig would have a stroke at our calorie counts.

But, now we're once again in the U.S. of A., and tiki is back to weighing every morsel of calorie-stripped nutrition that passes her lips, after spending each morningtime chugging lugubriously around the muddy Volunteer Park jogging trail. Because, one too many soy chips, and we'll suddenly find ourselves once again sporting and extra 33% tiki.

This somehow doesn't seem quite right.

Perhaps the simple answer is, we need to spend the rest of our lives on vacation. It's a sacrifice, yes. But, it's for our health after all.

Comments

[middle-savagery.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I lost about 10 lbs in Turkey in a month. That's probably because I was pickaxing and shoveling over my head all day, 9 hours a day, 6 days a week and then eating rice and eggplant at night.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

How's your hand?

[middle-savagery.livejournal.com]

Getting soft, unfortunately.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Do you at least have a cool scar you can show off while you sing sea chanties? (Though I supposed you only sing sea chanties when you get a shark bite--I don't really know what archaeologists sing when they show off their scars, as the only song I know about digging goes "Hi ho" and I doubt it's that one.)

Every time I wish for a job that involves less butt-sitting, I think of your job, and realize I'm so klutzy that within a week, I'd have managed to chop off my own head or something.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Taiwan was awwwwwesome. I ate like a pig. Not just good Taiwanese fruits and veggies, either. BAKERIES. Fried rice. Fried whatever. I went to the Hilton brunch buffet like 12 times and ate all the cheese I could manage. And I lost weight!

I did walk like a maniac (except for the two weeks of leg injury, which is a lot out of only 3 months all together). Still, it was awesome. I have occasionally considered starting "Clarissa's Taiwan and/or Japan Geek Trek and Fat Camp." One of these days. :p

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

P. S. When I came back, I found I was unable to eat American candy bars anymore. Seriously. I still can't. They taste waaaaay too sweet, in a way that's far worse than chugging maple syrup or eating brown sugar straight (which I will still happily do!) and they have bizarre aftertastes. I can handle some Reese's Cups periodically, but that's about it. And I was raised eating at least a couple of candy bars a week.

Clearly I detoxed out some serious crack. I dunno...I think you're on to something with your conspiracy theory.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

I know American chocolate is really different from European--I was reading about a candy company (Mars?) where the Americans brought some of their candy bars to a business meeting in Europe, and their Euro colleagues couldn't even stand to eat them, even to be polite.

I've picked up several odd quirks. Like, we drank a lot of coffee on vacation, but I didn't really have any Starbucks, or even Starbucks-esque espresso, thingies for a month. Unless I'm at a restaurant, nonfat is all I've drunk since I was a teenager. But oddly enough, I now find I can't have nonfat milk in my latte. It just tastes....wrong. But, given what I've been reading about American dairy cows recently, I think US milk is probably just wrong, but I guess that's another story.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

You totally should do it--and be sure to write a book so you can be on Oprah. Those diets make a fortune. And, they don't even have to work.

[blythou.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine gained 12 pounds in two weeks in the USA without changing his eating habits. When returning to France, he read that a lot of fruit and vegetable in the US are genetically modified. Apparently, these modifications have caused weight gain on lab mice. Those surveys aren't very puch publicized due to a furious lobbying from the food industry.

You also have to take into account the fact that industrial American food contains more salt, sugar and fat than most European industrial food. If you eat a piece of cake or drink a latte in a Euro Starbucks, the calorie contents are much lower because the drinks and food are adapted to European taste.

I've long ago given up on a lot of industrial food. I never buy any cookies, candy, cake or pre-made dishes. I make a lot of things from scratch, using wholeweat flour, very little fat (I replace half the fat with low fat yogurt, for example). I eat few carbs and favor complex carbs. It's all little things, but it makes a change in the long run.

Oh, and vacations are also a stress-free period and stress can make you gain weight if you're prone to putting on chub (since life's an unfair bitch, it makes skinny people even skinnier).

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

You also have to take into account the fact that industrial American food contains more salt, sugar and fat than most European industrial food.

It's even worse than that! We don't even have real sugar any more, we have something called corn sweetener. There's this crazy arrangement here where the US goverment pays farmers to grow as much corn as they possibly can, whether we need or not, so we have giant stores of the stuff, and nothing to do with it! So, the "industrial food," all the ingredients are actually CORN!

And it's even more terrible for farm animals, since they're supposed to be out in a pasture munching on grass, but instead we force feed them CORN as well! So it makes the chemistry of the meat and the milk and the eggs all screwy. And the rules are such that, even if I go to Trader Joes to get, say, their "organic" milk, it might just be that the cows who produced it were fed on trucked in "organic" corn. We've really gotten ourselves into a mess.