Want to Lose Fifty Pounds by Doing Almost Nothing? Leave America.

Traveling the world for the last eight years has me questioning some of the conventional wisdom on weight loss in America.

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

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Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Brian, a nomad friend of Michael’s and mine, was still in his twenties when he began putting on extra weight, but diet and exercise didn’t seem to make any difference. Despite his best efforts, by the time he was in his thirties, he was heavier than ever.

When Brian reached his late thirties, a series of unexpectedly lucrative job opportunities had left him financially independent, and he and his girlfriend decided to become nomadic retirees. They left America to travel the world.

And within six months, Brian lost forty pounds. What was interesting was that, at this point, he wasn’t especially trying to lose weight.

Even more interesting is that a few years later, he returned to the United States to spend a summer with friends and family — and promptly regained thirty pounds.

And at the end of that summer, when he and his girlfriend left the country to once again travel the world, he soon lost the extra weight again.

Over the last several decades, there has been a radical shift in how nutrition scientists understand the relationship between food and weight in humans. Previously, scientists assumed weight was a simple function of calories: your weight was a result of the food you ate, minus the energy expended in exercise and the like.

To lose weight, you simply had to expend more energy and avoid high-calorie foods, especially those with lots of processed sugar and saturated fat.

But this wasn’t what scientists were seeing in real-world observations. Sometimes, people would cut saturated fat from their diet and drink “zero-calorie” sodas but still gain weight. And others could eat food heavy in saturated fat and even some natural sugars and not gain weight.

Scientists began looking more closely at exactly what people were ingesting and made a fascinating discovery: weight gain was less about caloric intake and more a question of the kinds of things you ate and drank — precisely, whether it was “ultra-processed” food. This is food that has been radically altered from its natural form via industrial processing and the addition of chemicals, to make it more convenient and/or to “improve” its appearance, texture, and taste.

Unprocessed, left, and ultra-processed potato chips. Photo by Elena Leya on Unsplash

In America, ultra-processed food became widespread in the 1980s, and it’s no great secret that Americans have grown dramatically fatter since then.

And sure enough, when scientists began exploring the effects of certain ultra-processed foods, they found a strong correlation with weight gain.

It is partly a question of calories: ultra-processed food seems to change how people eat. It’s less satisfying than food in a more natural state, so you eat more of it. And it’s addictive too: the more ultra-processed food you eat, the more you want. This is the vicious cycle that new weight loss drugs like Ozempic break.

But our bodies also react differently to ultra-processed food, which are exactly the kinds of easily digestible things most likely to make us fat.

Avocados are full of fat but not necessarily fattening. Photo by John Vid on Unsplash

More alarming, scientists found a host of negative health effects associated with ultra-processed food: high blood pressure, heart attacks, cancer, premature aging, early death, and even mental issues like dementia and depression.

Ultra-processed food doesn’t just make individuals fatter; it could also essentially be poisoning people.

For most of the 20th century, lead was standard in gasoline and paint in America. Recent research suggests that exposure to lead in just gasoline and its exhaust may have reduced the IQs of about half the U.S. population and created tens of millions of additional mental health conditions.

Others have provocatively argued that exposure to lead may have caused the rise in crime rates and social disorder in the 1960s and 70s — and the banning of lead in the 1970s caused the dramatic drop in crime rates in the 1990s.

Ultra-processed food now makes up sixty percent or more of the American diet. In addition to affecting the country’s overall health, could this also be affecting the nation’s mental health — and even its national mood?

The idea that food is less healthy in America comes as no surprise to most American expats — or nomads like Michael and me. It’s almost impossible to leave America and not be quickly struck by a number of things.

First, there’s the food itself. Even before we became aware of the concept of “ultra-processed food,” Michael and I frequently commented to each other how different food tastes outside of America — more satisfying and somehow more “real.”

For example, here in Mexico, where we’re living now, I bought fresh tortillas yesterday. They were delicious, some of the best I've ever tasted — but by this morning, they were stale. In America, they wouldn’t have tasted nearly as good, but because of preservatives, they would have lasted for weeks.

Michael eating crickets in Mexico.

Food in other countries often seemed to be procured differently too, with people more likely to get it from locally sourced markets. And I bought those great tortillas at a little local shop right down the street.

In America, the cheapest food was always ultra-processed — “fast food” and the like. But outside of America, the reverse tends to be true. A massive stack of those great Mexican tortillas was less than fifty cents USD — cheaper than the factory-produced tortillas you can also find here in big supermarkets.

And sure enough, we weren’t surprised to learn that the European Union has much stronger consumer protections on food than America, enforcing regulations that keep food more “natural.”

Likewise, it makes sense to us that virtually every country in the world consumes less ultra-processed food on average than America — from the UK, which consumes slightly less, to many Asian countries, where the residents derive only twenty-five percent or less of their calories from ultra-processed food.

This is probably why people look so different outside of America — how they tend to be so much thinner. For Michael and me, it is now, frankly, downright shocking whenever we return home and see how fat much of America has become.

To be very clear: I think fat can be beautiful, and a person can be healthy at almost any weight. And it’s not anyone's business how another person looks or lives their life anyway. I also think shame, ridicule, moral judgment, and references to “willpower” have virtually no place in discussions of weight and health.

But the fact remains: Americans tend to look less healthy than much of the rest of the world, with more mobility issues and other obvious health conditions that seem very directly related to weight.

Then there’s our own experience of how much easier it is to stay thinner and fitter outside of America.

Michael and I have found it much easier to stay fit outside of America.

Michael and I have felt this even on cruise ships, which are much less likely to serve heavily processed food despite their all-you-can-eat buffets and emphasis on overconsumption. In fact, most of the food on these ships is still prepared fresh from whole ingredients, as is the case in most of the world.

Maybe that’s why, despite living on cruise ships for months at a time, Michael and I never gain weight there — at least if we tend toward the vegetarian options and avoid the pizza, burgers, fries, and ubiquitous desserts.

Obviously, my take here is mostly anecdotal. And, of course, the reality of life outside of America is more complicated than the admittedly attention-catching headline of this article makes it sound.

In fairness, other countries are now following in America’s footsteps, eating increasing amounts of ultra-processed food — and becoming increasingly unhealthy as a result.

And our nomad-friend Brian isn’t simply eating less ultra-processed food; he’s also far more physically active. Life as a nomad usually involves a complete transformation of one’s lifestyle.

Then again, upon returning to America after time overseas, it’s also very striking how much more sedentary life there is. Automobiles rule, and convenience is king.

These days, I’m torn on the merits of America’s body acceptance and fat-positivity movements. On one hand, I think they’ve made some truly great contributions to the debate over how America should view and treat its fat citizens.

These are real people, after all, deserving of happiness, dignity, and respect.

On the other hand, I think these movements speak from a fairly limited, very American point of view.

One American friend of mine has long struggled with his desire to be thinner. He has an ever-growing number of health issues related to his weight, and he’s frustrated by how much less mobile he’s become over the years; there are things he desperately wants to do but now can’t.

But doctor after doctor — informed by the body-acceptance movement — has told him: You can and should try to change your relationship with food, but short of surgery or pharmaceutical intervention, it’s essentially impossible for you to ever lose weight. And if you do somehow manage to lose it, you’re almost certainly going to gain it back.

And sure enough, a case can be made that these “facts” are true — in America, for Americans living a typical American lifestyle.

But I can’t help but wonder if this new conventional wisdom isn’t the whole story — that if someone has a genuine desire to lose weight, permanent weight loss is possible.

All they have to do is leave America — or live more like those of us who have.

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com.