I have now been in Costa Rica for two months.  I intended to keep trying new diet plans during this trip.  I didn’t.

I return a week from today.  The plan is to do three days of light organic food followed by a 7 day water fast to reset my body and make it easier to start controlled eating plans again.

In any case, it has been interesting to see what has happened here.  In two months of completely uncontrolled eating (including dessert for both lunch and dinner every single day), I have gained only 6 pounds.

There seems to be a lot to learn from these two months.  Here are some things I’ve been pondering and considering as possible facts from this experience:

1. Eating real food may be a larger portion of the equation that even I imagined after my organic food experiment.  Costa Ricans still eat real food.  We pass the farms growing in little fields all over the country.  We see the produce delivered directly to tiny little local stores.  There are cows and chickens being raised right in the middle of most neighborhoods.  There is no real need for genetically modified food or massive processing.  Food is abundant in nature here.

2. Like most countries, Costa Ricans walk a lot more than their Norte-Americana counterparts.  We have been living the Costa Rican lifestyle without a car here.  We have walked quite a bit.  Although it is very difficult to lose weight from exercise alone (vs. diet), activity does seem to be important to keep your metabolism healthy.  Walking continues to be the worlds most popular and useful exercise.

3. Costa Ricans are starting to gain weight.  It looks like the 70s here right now in terms of weight gain.  In other words, it is only barely affecting the males so far.  It is becoming very common for females older than 25 to be overweight though.  However, obesity is still very rare here.  That is how I remember the 70s in America.  Why is it happening here?  Fast food is becoming more popular (but is still never a regular part of the diet here).  Processed sweets generally don’t have nearly as much sugar as their Norte-American counterparts, but the amount of sugar is increasing.  It is impossible to see all of the factors, but Costa Rica is no longer a perfect example of a lifestyle designed to stay thin and healthy.  It is becoming poluted with the same disease that affects the U.S./Canada.

4. Rice and fruit juice have always been extremely regular parts of the Costa Rican diet.  In the past, I have solidly seen that carbohydrates like rice and fruit juice cause quite a bit of weight gain in me.  That doesn’t seem to be true here.  Perhaps the other factors make these carbohydrates have a more minimal impact (such as the walking… or the default organic state of these foods).

In any case, 6 pounds of weight gain in two months with absolutely no attempts at controlling diet at all is quite a nice result.  It is very easy to imagine that if I had simply restricted dessert to dinner and skipped it at lunch that I would have gained nothing.   Or if I had skipped the french fries that are now extremely common in Costa Rican bocas (small meals), I could have had the same result.

Some of the doubters of a weekly change in diets claimed that the weight loss I had already experienced would immediately come back after I stopped the weekly diet changes.  Apparently they were wrong.  I lost 40 pounds in four months.  I then went two months with no control of my diet at all (other than simply living in Costa Rica) and regained only 6 pounds.

The weight loss rate was about 10 pounds per month with very simple to follow (and changing weekly) eating plans.  The weight gain was about 3 pounds per month when that was terminated and I ate to my hearts content anything I desired at any time I desired it.

I’ll start posting more here when I return a week from today.

-James D. Brausch