Two summers ago I decided to make a change.
Before I go into any details, let me tell you a little bit of the back story.
Before coming to Japan, like most good college kids, I'd put on a bit of weight - about 20 lbs to be exact - over the course of 4 years at a college with a damn good cafeteria and access to pizza delivery 24 hours a day. But a year in Japan shaved off all of the excess fat and more. It's funny how easy it is to lose weight when you're 23 and in a new place, and also suddenly forced to walk 30min+ a day to and from work.
But as things go with a lot of people, I slowly but surely put all of that weight back on. I would diet occasionally and I did get into a workout routine, but the slow creep took its toll and by age 34 I was exactly the same weight I'd been at my peak in college. I even gave in and bought a stack of bigger pants and a more generous-waisted suit. I wasn't unhappy about being a bit chunky, not really. It was more me just being lazy and never bothering to try to get in shape.
Then three things shocked me into action. This was two years ago in the summer.
The first was a reunion. I took a trip down to New Orleans and was able to meet up with my roommate from freshman year in college. It was awesome seeing him again; he's a really cool and nice guy, but one thing he said clanged around in my head for weeks afterwards. "You haven't changed a bit." And he was right. I looked for better or worse almost exactly the same as I had when we'd last seen each other way back in college. That was when I first started to think about my weight.
The next thing was simple: a very subdued but persistent nagging about my weight from a coworker. When I got back from summer in the US she asked me if I'd put on weight. And of course I had. A week later when we were both in the same office she asked me again. And yes, I had then again put on more weight. And the same thing repeated for the first few weeks in September. She was never mean about it, of course; I've never seen or heard any truly nasty weight-based taunting in Japan.
Then the final shock hit me, and this time it was a biggie. Mid September I needed to wear something nice for a big meeting, so I busted out the black suit I'd bought maybe a half year before.
It was tight. It was shockingly tight. Not just in the gut region, but all over. And the neck of my dress shirt was tight enough I almost felt like I couldn't button it up all the way.
That was it. I had to do something about it, and something soon.
A remember thinking just that night after the meeting about a TV show I'd seen in Japan a few months before. There was a guy talking about being able to judge people's age based on the size of their gut, and he'd met a white guy who was 34 and guessed it exactly, and I remember thinking my gut was of a very similar design.
So I decided to get my ass in shape.
There is an old Japanese saying that comes from Okinawa that goes something along the lines of "Eat until you are eight parts full" (腹八分 - hara hachi bu in Japanese). What it means is don't eat until you're stuffed or even satisfied; eat until you're just not quite satisfied.
And that's what I did.
I got into a routine of a real workout using some cheap weights I got at home (3 days a week), walking on the weekends (if I could, do a 5k hike a week), and sticking to the hara hachi bu mantra.
I of course sometimes missed walks and frequently missed a workout session, but after getting used to it the hara hachi bu part wasn't that hard. I also stopped having my nightly beers: instead if I got a little hungry around 9 or 10 I'd have an umeboshi or two and limit it to that. I would still of course go out for drinks maybe once a week or every other week. So I wasn't giving up on fun completely - I know when you go too far it makes it that much harder to make a real commitment.
After just a month I had lost 10 lbs and looked and felt like a million bucks. 10 lbs. may not be huge but it was enough to make a difference, and it gave me a real boost in my motivation to continue. It ended up taking me about a half a year to get to the weight I wanted, and I've gone up and down a bit since then, but I've basically now maintained a nearly ideal weight for over a year.
***
This summer I went home again for a visit. I was having lunch in a Mexican restaurant and I heard a "Hey there!!" from across the room. It was the mother of a girl I'd dated in high school. She was always a super energetic, very friendly person, and it was nice to see her again. We talked a bit about our lives, she asked me about work and if I was enjoying my life in Japan, and talked about her family and their careers. She of course had known me from my thin high school days, and never saw me at my college plumpest. Then she gave me about the best compliment I've ever heard.
"Wow, you haven't changed a bit."
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