When most people move to Ecuador, myself included, they lose weight.
Its not that they get hit by a never-ending case of Montezuma’s revenge, but the food down here is simply more natural, you know, not so genetically altered as in ‘the developed world’.
But recently, primarily due to working the night shift at my hotel near the airport in Quito, I started to ballon up.
Your friends notice, and start to razz you.
You feel down.
So I decided to do something about it. But a lot of the info and diets I found online were not for someone that lives in a small Ecuadorian town like me. Good luck finding Quinoa and Chia and other wierd stuff in the tienda on the corner.
I had to find something that would work in Ecuador.
My journey started with a brief chat with a nutritionist from the States that stayed in my hotel.
He said, “there’s a lot of conflicting info online and people don’t know what to eat to lose weight. Just focus on three things…
1. Eat less (Mass can neither be created nor destroyed, want less eat less.)
2. Don’t eat processed food (anything that comes in a shiny rapper.)
3. Eat lots of fruits and veggies (they fill you up but are mostly water.)”
So I combined that with a little bit of a low-carb diet plus a twist of a Paleo diet. I do agree with the Paleo diet in that a lot of what we put in our bodies our bodies were not meant to ingest.
Think how did the cave-men eat.
That’s a good start.
So I cut out the pasta, potatos, rice and bread from my diet. I also cut out the sugar, refined sugars, dairy and other foods in the ‘grains’ category. We are, in fact, the only animals who drink milk after infancy.
And I focused on eating foods high in protein and natural fats, like fruits, veggies, fish, meat, poultry, nuts, avocados, olive oil.
Thankfully, fruits and vegetables are plentiful and CHEAP in a place like Ecuador. If you make that the focus of your diet, you could spend literally cents on the dollar to eat everyday.
So, to prove to myself I could do it, I went the first 24 hours without eating anything. One full day. And I was fine.
That proved to myself that we really don’t need as much food as we think we do.
Then I settled on a diet full of Ecuadorian recipes like…
Breakfast- Veggie omelet with fresh squeezed OJ (no bread).
Lunch- Chicken-stuffed avocado (veggies and chicken mixed with a hint of sour cream then placed in an avocado) or Chicken con palmito (Chiken baked with diced Amazonian palm heart), or Grilled Andean-Trout with veggies. Or maybe I’d have a Ceviche (Ecuadorian-style fish soup minced in lime juice with tomato and onion), or a Corvina fish (not farm raised, but from the ocean) cooked in garlic (al ajillo) or Encocado (cooked in coconut curry Esmeraldas-style).
Dinner – Something light like a vegetable soup, an apple or two, or maybe a salad with a bit of tuna.
Rinse and repeat.
The good news for me is I found exercise not all that important to lose weight, it helps, but more its the diet that matters.
I’m not a professional or anything so what I mention here should be taken with a grain of salt and cross-checked with your local expert, but I can only say what worked for me, in Ecuador, and I can say I lost 37 pounds in about a month dropping from 177 lbs to about 140 lbs.
And let me tell you, if you’ve never done it, losing 37 pounds makes you feel great, like superman or something! Totally worth it.
Now, how to find the best-priced properties in Ecuador? For that and more subscribe to my weekly Ecuador Insiders Newsletter below, you can unsubscribe at any time: