(Not) Losing Weight In Europe
Healthy eating is quite possible in America
After two weeks in Sicily, I couldn’t wait to get back to America and start eating well again and keeping my weight down.
I was thinking about this because of a Wall Street Journal article I’d seen before our trip. It was about Americans who vacation in Europe, eat a lot, walk a lot, and lose weight. I definitely have not experienced this any of the three times I’ve been to Europe (twice to Italy, once to Croatia).
When we travel, we walk a lot: 8, 10, 12, occasionally 15 miles a day. We also wake up early, so we probably have another hour of awake time in which to burn calories. But we also eat a lot: breakfasts which often include pastries and cured meats, deep-fried lunches and street food, afternoon gelato or granita, multi-course dinners with wine.
However natural or healthy the ingredients might be, that volume of food and that amount of walking obviously represents a higher overall calorie intake than our typical one at home.
So it makes me wonder if this phenomenon of people losing weight in Europe doesn’t say more about American habits than about European food. The folks in the WSJ story aren’t exactly fasting while traveling. So if the combination of increased low-intensity exercise and healthier but increased eating while on vacation in Europe leads to weight loss, how unhealthy must the typical eating/exercise habits in America be?
There’s no magic in European food, in other words, at least not that you can’t capture by buying raw ingredients and cooking at home in America. And there’s no secret poison in the American diet—no sinister answer to what are they putting in our food?—beyond the cumulative effect of consuming so much refined oil, refined sugar, and otherwise empty, nutrition-free calories.
It’s true that the typical soda or ice cream in Europe is small, and that’s a hint at what’s going on. It wasn’t always like this in America, either; when my dad was a kid, they had little 6oz Coke bottles. And the thing is, nobody says “I want 6 ounces of Coke” or “I want 24 ounces of Coke.” They say, I want a Coke. And however big it is, you’ll drink it.
I remember, years ago at a food conference in college, a worker from the dining hall wistfully recalling (even more years ago) when the kitchen crew used to prep fresh vegetables. At some point they switched to frozen or pre-cut ingredients. We can have a much healthier food culture, because we did.
As far as eating well at home: you don’t need the organic stuff. We were chatting with some friends about cooking, and one of them said it’s cheaper to buy those meal kits (like Blue Apron or some clone) than to buy raw ingredients at the store. I asked him how that was possible, and he said, “Well, chicken thighs are like, $6.99 a pound…”
I buy chicken thighs on sale for $.88 a pound. Yes, 88 cents! We buy farm-raised salmon, Norwegian if possible. We buy mostly conventional produce. We use extra-virgin olive oil (Wegmans brand, from California) for Italian cooking and drizzling, and sunflower oil for deep frying, stir-frying, and Chinese cooking (I buy the organic expeller-pressed sunflower oil from Trader Joe’s, which actually costs less than the more processed canola oil).
My own routine is a little atypical: I try to walk every day, and I only eat dinner. At some point I got tired of feeling full and thirsty and sleepy all day, or at least all afternoon after lunch; I would much rather be a little hungry. I find that being a little hungry keeps me mentally sharper and more awake, too. (A friend of mine who’s also a writer feels the same. I wonder if there’s actually something to it?) For me, it works beautifully.
With that routine—cooking from scratch with basic, conventional ingredients; eating one meal a day (but occasionally lunch, especially on weekends); dining out rarely; and walking frequently—we maintain pretty healthy weights and fitness levels. I guess we’re sort of eating, to the extent that you can here, a “Mediterranean” diet.
I did mention walking 10-15 miles while traveling. One day, if I recall, we walked almost 20 miles (I think that was in Montreal). It’s a hell of a lot easier and more pleasant to stroll all day around pleasant, visually interesting, and relatively quiet old cities than it is to walk around a track at a gym or along an American sidewalk with cars whizzing by you. Even walking around the block a few times in the neighborhood feels like a chore in the way that a stroll through an old town doesn’t. It’s absolutely true that we’re too sedentary.
But I do what I can, and it pretty much works. Europe is fun, but it’s not a cost-effective way, or a way at all, to drop a few pounds.
Related Reading:
What Else is Walkable and Mixed-Use?
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Just drink diet soda. I’m a very fat guy, 280 lbs right now and in vastly the best shape of my life at 33. I used to be 350. But I’m not diabetic nor have ever been pre-diabetic. I drink diet soda like it’s water.
My brother is six years younger, much thinner, much more active, but drinks regular soda. He’s on the verge of pre-diabetes and is having to change his habits.
One meal a day?! That is some strong willpower.