ダイエットしています。
daietto shiteimasu
"diet do am"
I am on a diet.
When I started trying to lose weight, I was hoping to post a few times about all the little wrenches Japan can throw in the spokes of a would-be gaijin dieter, but the truth is, upping my exercise to sixty minutes a day pretty much erased any time I had for blogging. And in retrospect, losing weight in Japan hasn't been all that different from losing weight anywhere else: no matter where you are, it's just a matter of consistently burning more calories than you consume.
The trick, of course, is in keeping track of what you burn and what you eat. As Nana mentioned in an earlier post, I've been using an iPhone app called LoseIt!, which has been pretty effective at keeping track of my exercise - but keeping track of my calorie intake has been a much more difficult task.
Much of this has to do with the language barrier: sometimes, it's hard to know what you're buying in the grocery store, and all that Japanese can make a nutrition label pretty opaque. But some of it is cultural. For example, whereas many American restaurants, and especially chains, have started to make some effort to publish nutrition information in some form or another, you almost never find nutrition information in restaurants in Japan. Even pre-packaged convenience store meals (a staple of the Japanese diet) lack nutrition info more often than not. Combine this with a work schedule that often precludes cooking at home, and it quickly becomes very difficult to keep track of how much you eat.
Now, if I were in the US, this would be less of a problem, as you can find rough nutrition info for most common restaurant meals, or at least for common restaurant ingredients, and the Internet is full of advice on what sneakily caloric dishes to avoid.
No such luck in Japan: if I want to know how many calories there are in a bowl of tonkotsu ramen, I have to find a home-made recipe in English (if such a thing exists) and calculate the calories from there, adding some wiggle room for the inevitable fact that restaurants are always fattening up their fare. I mean, you try finding nutrition information for saba mirin and assorted tsukemono, or the relative calorie counts of different varieties of daifuku. If it's out there, it ain't in English!
As a result, when Nana's mercifully delicious home cooking isn't an option, I've ended up depending heavily on labeled, pre-packaged foods. Onigiri, bento, and *gasp!* Calorie Mate Balanced Food Block, a kind of vitamin-enriched shortbread-esque energy bar. (I look forward to the day when I will never have to eat one of those things again.)
Other days, when I know I'll be going out for dinner, I've skimped heavily on breakfast and lunch, leaving a calorie budget for dinner that would be tough to exceed with even a big Japanese meal. Still, this level of guesswork is frustrating, and I know it means I've missed my target some days, either to the detriment of my health (if over) or my sanity (if under).
In any case, it seems the end is in sight, at least in terms of the dieting phase. But of course, as any weight-loser can tell you, sometimes keeping the weight off is just as tough. I expect I'll be calorie-counting for the foreseeable future. Doubly tough, when you're living in Japan, as the food is both delicious and incredibly difficult to understand.
The trick, of course, is in keeping track of what you burn and what you eat. As Nana mentioned in an earlier post, I've been using an iPhone app called LoseIt!, which has been pretty effective at keeping track of my exercise - but keeping track of my calorie intake has been a much more difficult task.
Much of this has to do with the language barrier: sometimes, it's hard to know what you're buying in the grocery store, and all that Japanese can make a nutrition label pretty opaque. But some of it is cultural. For example, whereas many American restaurants, and especially chains, have started to make some effort to publish nutrition information in some form or another, you almost never find nutrition information in restaurants in Japan. Even pre-packaged convenience store meals (a staple of the Japanese diet) lack nutrition info more often than not. Combine this with a work schedule that often precludes cooking at home, and it quickly becomes very difficult to keep track of how much you eat.
Now, if I were in the US, this would be less of a problem, as you can find rough nutrition info for most common restaurant meals, or at least for common restaurant ingredients, and the Internet is full of advice on what sneakily caloric dishes to avoid.
No such luck in Japan: if I want to know how many calories there are in a bowl of tonkotsu ramen, I have to find a home-made recipe in English (if such a thing exists) and calculate the calories from there, adding some wiggle room for the inevitable fact that restaurants are always fattening up their fare. I mean, you try finding nutrition information for saba mirin and assorted tsukemono, or the relative calorie counts of different varieties of daifuku. If it's out there, it ain't in English!
As a result, when Nana's mercifully delicious home cooking isn't an option, I've ended up depending heavily on labeled, pre-packaged foods. Onigiri, bento, and *gasp!* Calorie Mate Balanced Food Block, a kind of vitamin-enriched shortbread-esque energy bar. (I look forward to the day when I will never have to eat one of those things again.)
Other days, when I know I'll be going out for dinner, I've skimped heavily on breakfast and lunch, leaving a calorie budget for dinner that would be tough to exceed with even a big Japanese meal. Still, this level of guesswork is frustrating, and I know it means I've missed my target some days, either to the detriment of my health (if over) or my sanity (if under).
In any case, it seems the end is in sight, at least in terms of the dieting phase. But of course, as any weight-loser can tell you, sometimes keeping the weight off is just as tough. I expect I'll be calorie-counting for the foreseeable future. Doubly tough, when you're living in Japan, as the food is both delicious and incredibly difficult to understand.
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