So, one of the weird, healthy (but unhealthy, sometimes) benifits of being here in Ecuador is losing weight. When I came down here I weighed about 225 pounds...now, after four months, I´m down to a slim (relatively so) 195. That´s the difference of about 30 pounds. The healthy schedule of weight loss is about 3 pounds per week per person, and so since i´ve been here for about 16 weeks, that actually isn´t that bad. And I feel a lot healthier, too: my food intake has been a mix of beans, rice, with the ocassional homemade pizza sneaking its way into my diet.
This is an unintended consequence of being here. My goal of being in Ecuador, nor did any of my thoughts go into, losing weight. It´s just an added consequence of being from the United States and loving to eat. I am able to eat like I do in the States because I have the option to choose the food that makes me heftier. Here, I don´t have that choice, which is an interesting reflection to think about. Living down here with people who eat this way everyday shows me that one can live on this little amount of food and still have not only a good life, but a very active and strong life as well.
And I see Ecuadorians doing manual labor everyday. They use the energy given to them by their food to good use. And when I ate, I would eat and sit, eat and sit, then walk around a little bit, then eat and sit some more. No wonder I ended up the way I did. No wonder there´s an obesity epidemic in our country. People have the option to eat and sit or eat and walk around and be active, and a lot of people eat and sit. I know very active people, so it´s not everyone. But the other reflection is that I´ve lost all this weight just by walking around my neighborhood, meeting people, allowing myself to experience the life of Ecuadorians daily by taking buses and actively choosing to walk places.
Of course, I don´t really want to loose more weight than this, although I probably will. And that´s not a bad thing, so long as I´m losing it doing this like I said above. Perhaps people in the States should just get out of their house and meet their neighbors, walk, and share in their lives. That sounds healthy to me.
