骨を抜かれる大きい (Big Boned)
The United States of America is the second fattest nation on the planet, and after living in Japan for so long it's easy to see why. Unless you're some rich fucker buying all your groceries at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, or Yes! Organic Market, chances are that you're gonna consume a whole crapload of highly processed, chemically enriched, high calorie bullcrap in the course of a day. That's definitely how I rolled. Ten years ago I was 250 pounds, and I probably would have weighed far more than that had I not been broke in college and forced to practically starve myself to afford text books. After that I was down to 200, and three years later, when I got to Japan, I got all the way down to 159.
Now I'm back in America, and guess what? I've already started to put on the weight that I quickly lost when I lived outside the country. Here's why:
Chinese food - One of the things I missed while I was living in Japan? General Tso's Chicken. You know that shit is delicious. Unfortunately it's also high in sodium and extremely high in calories. General Tso's Chicken and all the other Americanized Chinese dishes at your local carryout do not exist in Japan.
Potato chips - Salty as fuck and available in big ass sizes. The biggest bag of potato chips available in a Japanese grocery store is 170g. In America it's 397g. And once you eat one, you know it's hard to stop.
Other snacks - Tostitos, Chewy Chips-a-hoy, guacamole, spinach dip, salsa con queso. Unless you have base access, all of that shit is hard to come by. Now that I'm in the States, though, I can't go grocery shopping without picking up some chips and dip. Just two more fatty things to say, "Get in my belly!" to.
Soda - I used to drink a bottle of soda in Japan a day, much like I did in the US back in the day. The difference being that a bottle of soda in Japan is around 500ml, while a bottle in the US is 709 ml. As Japanese and American bottles look roughly the same, I didn't actually notice there was a difference until I was bored one day and closely inspected the label. Sneaky bastards!
Fast food - Fast food in Japan is about as unhealthy as it's American counterpart...it just comes in infinitely smaller portions. Except at McDonald's, apparently, where the fries are actually higher in calories than in the US. Who would have thought?
I'm trying very very hard to get back on some semblance of my Japanese diet, but it is proving a lot easier said than done so far. It's funny, though. When I was in Japan and skinny as fuck, my Japanese friends thought I was hot while my American friends thought I looked like an alien crackhead. Now that I'm slightly larger and in charger, my American friends think I look good while my Japanese friends would probably call me fat-ass. Cultural differences, I tell you.