Dieting in Hong Kong: Portion Control

I am back in Honkers but sadly this time I am on a diet. I have been struggling to maintain my weight in my year abroad. In fact my insatiable lust for food has caused me to steadily balloon over time. I generally eat very healthily but I have realised that I eat too much and possibly too often. Greed for good grub is my excuse.

It is an universal truth that you are what you eat and the only way to loose weight is to eat less and exercise more, right? Well I spent 6 months hauling my backside to the gym at least 3 times a week [and even saturday mornings for Body Pump sessions!!] in Melbourne, but going to the gym not only increased my appetite and my need for more food but it became an excuse to indulge. In Australia the portions are enormous and I really have no self control over portion size - 'eyes bigger than my belly' as they say!  All that exercise also turned most of my fat into muscle which actually weighs more than fat - so I was constantly getting heavier! Over the last few months I have had to give up the gym due to lack of funds and travelling around. So all the toned muscles I built have now settled into flab! With the ol' metabolism slowly grinding to a halt with age, it means that I have to eat less, much less than before, if I want to reduce. However I love my food and I refuse to starve myself [hungry = angry and irritable] so what is a girl to do?

The other worry is that I know that I am an apple shape by nature ie my body shape is such that I put on weight around the tyres around my middle. The buddha bellies and muffin tops that the experts lovingly call central obesity, puts apples at higher risk of high cholesterol and heart disease, as all the fat lies close to the main organs like the liver and the heart.  If you are a pear shape then you may not like your thighs but it is a much better shape for your heart!

I decided to take note of the eating habits of the impossibly slim and trim Chinese ladies in Honkers and look into what they eat. They all eat out. Everywhere you look there are restaurants teeming with people, all the time. Most people don't have great cooking fascilities at home. So eating out is very common. So how do they do it? Well the most obvious thing I noticed straight away was portion sizes. People eat Dim Sum and share plates of food with each other a lot more here - so small portions divided into even smaller mouthfuls. They take a little bite size portion onto a small bowl and they don't have a large plate for themselves. Spanish style Tapas is also very popular here. When they go for a pizza - it is shared between a group. Someone overheard my converstaion about pizzas the other day and they nearly choked when I admitted that I had a whole one to myself... oh the shame and the guilt!

I was misty eyed and nostalgic when I found a Pret a Manger in HK. It was a reminder of home but I noticed that they only serve single slim sandwiches here! I have spied on office workers at lunch and all the women come in and have one slim sandwich and they eat it very very slowly ....

Even the supermarket portions of meat or fish are packaged in smaller portions and meant for sharing between people.

I have also observed that they hardly eat that much meat - especially red meat... No great big juicy rib eye steaks for them and certainly not washed down with a gallon of red wine! Weirdly they don't go for many raw salads either - apparently many people believe that raw food is harder to digest and makes you bloated. Cooked salads seem to be popular instead as is blanched/steamed greens like choi sum/ bok choy, served with a little soy.  Rice and noodles are a staple but I have observed that they don't eat much of it, especially at night. They like soups as fillers and believe some are good for digection like miso soup which is though to be a probiotic. They do have tofu [good for calcium I guess] but very little dairy/eggs.

More importantly, they hardly ever drink alcohol. They mostly consume gallons of green tea which is full of antioxidants and helps increase the metabolism apparently!

I dare say the ultimate diet control is actually using chop sticks - it is very hard to shovel in too much food too quickly with 2 bits of stick. 

So wish me luck - I am trying my hardest to stay away from the yummy dim sum places until I learn not to over order. I am also going to follow the Chinese rules that I have observed and see if I can get back into my little black dress by New Years Eve! Oh. Hang on. I forgot about Xmas. Oh dear.