how bali made me thin

I was always active as a child. I used to play outside, ride a bicycle, roller skate. I was always on a soccer team, in a dance class or part of some sort of organized sports club when I was growing up. As I got older, I joined sports at school, I was a member of a paddling club and used to race kayaks and war canoe. I played offensive tackle on the flag football team in high school (only because they wouldn’t let me try out for the real football team). But even my with my activity, I started really gaining weight in high school. I gained even more weight after graduation despite playing both 7 and 15-a-side rugby. The extra weight served me well as a tight head prop, but sucked for pretty much everything else. I continued to gain weight throughout my 20’s. I hated having my photograph taken and shopping for clothes became an exercise in self-loathing. I didn’t like the way I looked and I didn’t like the way clothes looked on me. 

 

I was in denial and tried to convince myself that it was the big-boned German side of my Dad’s family genes that were to blame. That, couple with the fact that as a Canadian, I had evolved to have more meat on my bones to survive the cold winters. I remembered reading an article in Reader’s Digest in the dentist’s office waiting room called: “Fit & Fat”, about a woman who was heavily into exercise and in great shape, but her BMI was still in the obese range, despite passing all sorts of cardio tests. Maybe I was like her. Maybe I was just never meant to be thin. Regardless of the excuses I made and the ways I tried to console myself, I didn’t like how I looked and I didn’t like how I felt.

I had always been self confident in every other aspect of my life. No one intimidated me, physically or psychologically. I was well-read, able to hold up my end of an interesting conversation, though thoroughly unhappy with the way I looked, managed to have my share of boyfriends nonetheless. I started travelling so you can add wordly to my list of appealing attributes. So why did being overweight overshadow every other positive aspect of myself? I would go through periods of time where I actually convinced myself and quite possibly others of my attractiveness. But it would take just catching an unexpected glimpse of myself in a mirror or seeing an impromptu photo taken of me for the reality of the situation to shatter the fantasy and I would be back to self-loathing.

I was smart enough to figure out that new-age diet trends were non-starters. There’s no way anyone will be able to maintain a diet of either eating a specific food or by cutting out a macro nutrient that has been a diet staple of every civilization since the dawn of mankind. That’s just stupid. Besides, I love food. It’s one of the joys of life and I somehow always seemed to be hungry.

Of course it didn’t help that my mom is the best cook I know. She’s what I would call a decadence chef, routed firmly in the belief that everything is better with butter - mayonnaise in the guacamole, sour cream and parmesan in the mashed potatoes, whipping cream in the carbonara. Maybe this was all my mom’s fault! There was no low-cal, light or diet anything in our house when I was growing up. It was almost as if eating that stuff was some form of sacrilege. I remember asking every evening ‘what’s for dinner?’ in anticipation, because regardless of what it was, it was always great. But every now and then, she’d crush my expectations with the dreaded four letter word: RICE.

I had always hated rice, from as far back as I can remember. I don’t know why, I just did.

Alright so here’s me – overweight and hate rice. And where do I choose to go and live? Asia! Indonesia, specifically. Although there are other Asian races that are typically thinner on average than the Indonesians, they are still comparatively small to North Americans in stature. 

I’d met Kadek (my now husband) when I came to Bali the first time. He would introduce me to someone new and they'd say to him: "Oh, gemuk sehat!" (fat & healthy!) and give him the thumb up. I then moved to Medan, North Sumatra for 4 years. Medan is the third largest city in Indonesia, after Jakarta and Surabaya.  In Medan, there is a really great mix of Indonesian, Chinese and Indian food.

I had gone home to Canada for a visit at one point and when I got back, Aswan, the school bookkeeper, says to me: “You got fat!” Okay so I had put on more weight while I was there – probably from all the cheese, but really? Did she just say that? Indonesians love to state the obvious that I really don't think is necessary, but they really seem to feel the need to point it out regardless. If you are anything over a size small and you come to Indonesia, be prepared for someone to comment on your ‘fatness’.

The tropics are not easy on clothes. Sun-drying fades and wears clothes quickly and just everyday wear seems to be a lot tougher on clothes here, so even if you abhor shopping, sooner or later you have to break down and go shopping for clothes. You might think that especially in Indonesia where the exchange on the dollar is so good, shopping, even if it’s not your favourite pastime, would be at least satisfying in a monetary sense.

There are a few things, however that make shopping in Indonesia an exasperating experience, especially if you are overweight. For those not a size six and flat-chested, and not living in an ‘International’ city, don’t even bother unless one size fits all t-shirts and mu-mus are your style.

It’s not just the clothes themselves, the sales people add to the unpleasantness of the shopping experience. Working on commission, they tend to follow you around the store grabbing random things off hangers and shelves saying: “You want this? How about this?” Not to mention they do little to help your self-esteem when, as you pass by the store, they yell out: “Come into my shop, we have big size for you!” When the Asian L size is small by foreign standards, the XL is medium and the XXL is large, most people are embarrassed to ask if they have anything in an XXXL.

I was at my heaviest right around the time I got married, tipping the scales at… well that’s not really that important, but suffice it to say I was big. I then moved back to Bali from Sumatra. 

We then moved up to North Bali as I had just accepted a job as the general manager of a retreat centre in the north. I was living on-site at first, eating restaurant meals everyday, usually buffet. That job lasted almost a year before it was very apparent that [this is me being diplomatic] that was not the place I should be. In that time I had moved off site and I’d found another job as Business development Manager/Retreat Facilitator at another resort 15 minutes down the road, where Kadek had already been hired to manage their transportation and activities and later hired as the manager. We both spent a LOT of time there building them up from no business to 13 groups a year by the time we left. Not unlike the previous place, I was putting in 14 hour days and eating all my meals there. 

We both quit to start our own business. That’s when everything changed. 

When Kadek wasn’t driving our guests, he was fishing, so I was left to my own devices to feed myself in a rural Balinese village.  The morning market here opens at 1:30am and closes at 6am. The day starts early for the families of farmers and fishermen. Unless you get to the market at silly o’clock, you have to get your food from a local warung. That’s all fine and well as a take-away meal costs between 40 and 80 cents. You’d think that with food cheaper to get out than cook yourself at home, I’d have been eating all the time.

I’d get up and think okay time for breakfast. What to eat… rice or… rice. There is no bread, there is no dairy, there is only vegetables and meat and of course, rice with everything. I can’t do rice for breakfast. Okay lunch time! Time to eat. What should I have? Rice or …Rice. I guess it’s rice! Dinner time. Time to eat. Rice? I guess. It got to the point where I would think that I’m not hungry enough to eat rice again – I’ll wait until later.  I started eating only when I was hungry. Low and behold, the less I ate, the less I was hungry and I eat now once or sometimes twice a day. Guess what - I lost so much weight. After all the excuses, turns out I just ate too much.

I haven’t been a size 8 since I was … well, 8!

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been on a diet in my life and I wouldn’t turn down a chocolate brownie or an entire pizza, hungry or not. It’s also not because of the nutrition factor of Balinese food. Balinese food is SO bad for you. It’s high in fat, cholesterol, salt and sugar. Everything is deep fried.

Losing weight has nothing to do with what you eat, just how much you eat. You want the secret to weight loss? EAT LESS!

I know that’s not always as easy as it sounds and if I hadn’t moved here and just got bored of eating rice for every meal, had no other options and hadn’t started eating only when I was hungry, I’d still be overweight and unhappy. Although I don’t think I’ll be posing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition anytime soon, for the first time in my life I can remember, I feel good in my own skin.