If you live in the United States and think there is a conspiracy to keep you fat, you might be right.

I’ve tried to follow various weight loss plans and failed.

Then I moved to China. And I lost 30 pounds in the first year. Without really trying.

How did it happen? Read on.

I moved to China because of a few reasons: I was bored, I was scared because I hadn’t found a decent job, and I was fed up.

Fed up with working anywhere from two to eight part-time jobs just to survive. I co-owned a home with my brother but didn’t have a husband or a spouse. I had nothing holding me back, so after getting fired from a factory job (after getting my master’s degree) I uploaded my resume online to a popular ESL website. Talk about popular! I had six emails in the first 24 hours.

Then another six emails in the next 24 hours.

In a year, I was in China. I chose a southern Chinese city. It was hot from April through October.

My first day didn’t go so well. I vomited in class—food poisoning. I should have thrown those strawberries away. Or was it the street food?

So food poisoning was probably the number one reason I lost so much weight. I became scared to eat. Understandable, if you’ve had five bouts of food poisoning the first year you’re overseas.

I managed to survive on my favourite childhood meal. Mom used to fix me a ham sandwich and French fries when I came home from school for lunch. She usually included some fruit or a small salad. I found some wonderful white, mushy, probably nutritionless bread, and ham that tasted just like it did at home. I also found frozen French fries, and that became my go-to food for months.

The school where I taught didn’t like us bringing food to school. But I wasn’t about to partake in the free lunch offered. Even the kids weren’t allowed to bring lunch to school. They had to go home if they wanted outside food. So I brought my own. I’m sure I didn’t make any friends that way, but I noticed I didn’t get sick when I prepared my food. Avoiding school-prepared food was justified when after we came back after Covid, I saw a kitchen worker come out of a bathroom stall and rinse her hands off. No soap. Just water. Cold water.

Increased activity helped too. I don’t have a car here in China. I walked to and from my bus stop every day, twice a day. An extra 20-30 minutes a day of exercise, five days a week in hot weather made a difference, I’m sure. And that doesn’t count the hours I spent on foot exploring my new city.

Unfamiliar food and limited culinary choices helped too. My food poisoning spooked me, so I was reluctant to check out local restaurants and street food. There are McDonald’s and KFCs everywhere, but that gets old after a while. Wendy’s and Taco Bell are not here. I’ve become hooked on Wendy’s Apple Pecan Chicken Salad, but good luck finding artisan greens and Granny Smith apples. Mexican food is scarce too, and a bit expensive. I didn’t make a decent replica of Wendy’s salad until I’d been here four years. Tacos came a bit sooner, but I wasn’t expecting to have to buy taco shells online. And the quality isn’t great. The first time I bought taco shells online, they tasted like they were soaked in machine oil.

Food choices were limited, but I was okay with that. It meant if I wanted Lay’s Classic chips, I’d have to hunt for them. I’ve since been able to find them online, but it took me a while to figure out how to shop online. Baopals is a Godsend, but it took me a while to find out about it because everyone here uses Taobao, which is the Chinese Amazon. Why not eat the Chinese version of Lay’s? That’s because the “Classic American Version” has a mildly rancid aftertaste, and does a number on my stomach. 

Chocolate is pretty limited at the convenience stores too. Snickers is the default candy bar, and if you’re lucky you can find peanut M&M’s. Chocolate-covered raisins are available via Baopals, or if you don’t want to wait, you go to Olé and buy several tiny bags.

Portions are also smaller, both in the restaurants and in the grocery stores. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Less food goes to waste. Fewer calories to consume.

Those things were all factors. But I’m less focused on food because there isn’t the same kind of food to focus on. I’ve had to live with my cravings or try to replicate them via copycat recipes on the internet. A favourite that is hard to make here is Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen Monte Cristo sandwich. Back home, I’d just get into my car and go and get one. Here, it’s a different matter. Most of the basic ingredients are easy to get except turkey. You can’t find it in the stores. I have to order it from a speciality food shop.

Also, I’ve noticed that my appetite has gone down. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’m still hitting the things I liked/loved at home: Coca-Cola, potato chips, French fries, McDonald’s, pancakes and bacon. Not exactly diet food. Yet I’m the closest I’ve been to my high school weight in a long time.

But there are things I miss that at home I wouldn’t miss because they are always accessible: Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, pretzels, cheese popcorn, Target’s popcorn/soda snack combo, Red Lobster, Red Robin, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, cocktail sauce for shrimp, hot dogs, Granny Smith apples, grilling out, chicken fried rice (!), Panda Express and a huge assortment of well, everything. I miss going to the grocery store and being able to find everything I need without having to go to three or four stores. 

Pastries are something else I took for granted in the States. Brownies, snack cakes, and cake mixes with a huge assortment of cake frosting are something not readily available in the stores. I have to buy frosting online. The local Metro used to have a cake mix, but I haven’t seen it for months now. Little Debbie and Hostess are not a thing here. And sometimes, I just want a taste. I don’t need to buy an entire box (like I have to do on Baopals and wait 4-6 weeks for it to arrive.)

Despite the 35 pounds I eventually lost, I still have a pot belly. It’s obvious where I store my fat. If I gave up regular soda (and I should, I’m diabetic) I’d lose a few pounds. But do I want to do that? I should. I know I should. 

Food is probably my major vice right now. I don’t drink regularly. Alcohol sometimes upsets my stomach before I go to bed. But I look forward to going to Subway sandwiches at least once a week. There’s something about my favourite combo of honey oat bread, ham, cheese, lettuce and onion that tastes like Heaven. I stop to pick up Lay’s potato chips on the way there, so I can replicate the taste I perfected in my hometown. I’ve eaten at Subway way too much since discovering where it is here in Xiamen. It takes me a 35-minute subway ride and a 15-minute walk to get there, but I do it. It’s better than taking a Didi (Chinese Uber). That drove up the total price of my Subway addiction even more, but buying imported chips is bad enough.

Despite it all, I’m eating healthier. I’m eating more fruits and vegetables because they don’t need to be cooked. Sometimes breakfast is fruit. Same with lunch. I’d rather nap than eat sometimes. So lunch can be more fruit, dried fruit, or sometimes peanut M&M’s. There are plenty of places where I can buy food, but I’m wasting my money. Getting lunch for $3 or so is a great bargain, but saving a few bucks and taking naps take priority.

So I’ve changed my eating habits a bit, but I’m still consuming a lot of crap. Yet I’ve lost weight. Conspiracy? I’m wondering how much it’s that, and how much of it is personal willpower. Not to mention all the chemicals in American food. Canned goods are extremely hard to find here.

If you’re wondering if there’s a conspiracy to keep you fat, you may be right. Healthy people don’t make any money for big pharma.

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Gloria Diaz has written professionally for over 30 years. She was recently featured in Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World’s Richest Country, an anthology of working life in America. Her essay on working at a potato chip factory was one of Barbara Ehrenreich’s favorite pieces, which appeared on the Economic Hardship Reporting Project website, and in In These Times. Ms. Diaz also writes “humorous erotic fiction” and describes her second finished novel as “Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Fifty Shades of Grey. She blogs about her life at Nowaylaowai.home.blog available on WordPress. When she isn’t writing, looking for an agent, or making videos for her YouTube channel (Nowaylaowai) she likes urban exploration, eating French fries, getting a good night’s sleep (rare) and taking pictures. She currently lives in Xiamen, China.