When in America…
When Leslie Chen moved from China to the U.S. for college about 10 years ago, she learned a lesson she hadn’t signed up for: how to gain 50 pounds without really trying. “I didn’t have courage to look at myself in the mirror,” says Chen, who credits campus food and her lack of nutrition knowledge with her rapid weight gain. After trying American fad diet after fad diet without success, she began eating more like she had in China and lost the weight in 11 months. She’s kept it off ever since. “If you’re dieting but not finding results,” she says, “maybe there’s another approach.” Here are several from the other side of the globe:
1. Treat food as medicine.
Go on an American diet, and you’ll often be instructed to eliminate “toxic” foods like sugar, potatoes and yogurt. Not so in East Asian culture, where “every food has a medicinal value,” says Chen, founder of Rice Lean, which helps women lose weight using Asian food and nutritional wisdom. Take rice, for example. While many American diets shun it and other carbohydrates, Chen embraces it as healing. “Rice does not make you fat,” she says, pointing to its hefty water content, which promotes satiety and hydration, and its anti-inflammatory properties, which can combat chronic disease and aid digestion. Lesson: Respect food as nourishment — not poison — and healthy choices will follow.
2. Don’t count calories.
Food labels in China might contain an ingredients list, but they rarely include calories. “Most people think it’s strange [to calorie count],” if they’ve heard of it at all, says Chen, who lives in New York City. They have a point: Studies evaluating the effectiveness of calorie information on American menus, for instance, are mixed; one even found that including a recommended intake of calories alongside calorie content is linked to people ordering slightly more. It’s arguably healthier to focus on eating foods that fuel and satisfy you than to obsess over calories and wind up feeling deprived. “That eventually sabotages the effort,” Chen says. “In East Asian culture,” she adds, “weight loss isn’t a willpower game.”
3. Eat more plants.
Vandana Sheth’s cupboard holds 10 to 16 varieties of beans alone. “That’s normal” in Indian culture, says Sheth, a registered dietitian near Los Angeles who moved from India to the U.S. about 25 years ago. Eating a mostly plant-based diet is normal, too, and is associated with everything from helping to prevent diabetes to lowering blood pressure to, yes, losing weight. Ayurvedic medicine (a traditional Indian health care system that’s one of the world’s oldest) also emphasizes seasonal produce, says Sheth, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “It makes a difference as far as nutritional quality goes and satisfaction goes,” she says. “Food just tastes better when it’s in season and fresh.”
4. Enjoy ‘teassert.’
Speaking of not feeling deprived, desserts are regularly enjoyed in cultures with collectively smaller waistlines. The trick to eating them in China? Taking three to four sips of herbal tea with every bite. “You will find that craving of eating more dessert almost immediately gone,” Chen says. If tea isn’t your thing, any bitter flavor — lemon, grapefruit or arugula — paired with a sweet one may halt your desire to go on a sugar binge, research has shown. “The tea thing has been a tradition in Chinese culture for thousands of years,” Chen says. “People never thought of it as an anti-sugar type weapon.”
5. Eat a little of a lot.
Take Chen’s advice to pair two distinct flavors a step further by making sure your plate includes lots of taste variety in smaller portions. According to ayurvedic principles, Sheth says, “there is a strong emphasis on trying to get a lot of varieties of flavors into your food — something sweet, salty, sour, bitter — so when you take care of all these different taste palates, you’re more satisfied with the meal.” On the other hand, single-food fad diets popularized in America, such as the cookie diet and the lemonade diet, are neither enjoyable nor sustainable. When you eat a lot of different foods, Chen says, “you feel happy about it.”
6. Spice it up.
Whether you’re making a stir-fry, soup or smoothie, add a touch of ginger, Chen recommends. Research suggests the root promotes feelings of satiety and acts as a diuretic to combat water retention. One study even showed that obese rats lost weight and improved markers of cardiovascular health after 30 days on a ginger substance. Just a teaspoon of cumin, too, has been shown to help burn three times more body fat. “Eventually, you will have food that will help you naturally eat less calories and suppress sugar cravings and boost your metabolism and calm inflammation — and you can get all these benefits from one delicious meal,” Chen says.
7. Eat in good company.
Sheth encourages her clients to practice eating the way most cultures have traditionally eaten: together. “That may help with portion control,” as well as other pillars of healthy eating, she says. Indeed, research has shown that people who live (and presumably eat) alone have poorer diets with fewer fruits, vegetables and fish. On the flip side, research has also shown that family meals may help prevent obesity by encouraging emotional connection and healthier eating. Choose just a few meals — breakfast or lunch are options, too — to commit to eating with others each week, Sheth recommends. At the very least, she says, “food is more satisfying when you’re having a conversation that goes with it.”
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7 Traditional Chinese and Indian Eating Principles That Can Help You Lose Weight originally appeared on usnews.com
