Diet & Fitness 

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Staying slim the Japanese way

Celebrities such as Victoria Beckham have quietly followed Japanese style diets in order to keep their svelte figures. Now authors Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle reveal how it's done

Extract taken from Japanese Women Don't Get Old Or Fat (Vermillion)

My first day in the United States was a series of shocks. I landed at O'Hare Airport at 6 a.m. The drive from Chicago astonished me. I had never seen such huge highways, not to mention the flat land and a sky that seemed to go on forever. No matter which direction I faced, the sky took up almost my entire field of vision.

By 7 a.m., I had arrived at school. I was escorted to the student dining room and asked what I wanted for breakfast. 'Orange juice,' I said. I was offered a very large glass of orange juice. My eyes widened in amazement. I wondered, how could anyone possibly drink so much orange juice? Before I could recover from the shock of the super jumbo orange juice, I saw a student cut up several thick layers of pancakes and pour syrup over them until they were completely drenched, soaked and luxuriating in puddles of the sweet, sticky liquid.

Nobody ate like this in Japan and I assumed I never would either. Little did I know this was the beginning of my journey through the American way of serving and eating or, more precisely, the beginning of My Fat Years.

Though I loved practically everything about America, the food was at first an unpleasant jolt to my system. Japanese food and Japanese portions were what I grew up on, but Lewis University was in rural Illinois and there were no Japanese restaurants or Japanese ingredients nearby.

And soon I started to eat like my American friends too. The result: within a few months of arriving in America, I had gained more than 10 kilograms (and I stood five feet tall). Now I was pushing 57 kilos and bursting out of most of the clothes I had brought from Tokyo, especially my tight jeans.

I tried to work off the extra calories by running on a stretch of field behind the dorm. But it was in vain: I couldn't lose a gram. Soon it was winter and the Chicago area seemed buried in snow for half the year. I stayed indoors most of the winter. I got very little exercise.

Despite gaining more than 10 kilograms and missing veggies, I was thrilled to be going to school, making friends and acquiring American habits. Weeks and months went by fast. I spent two years in the Midwest without ever going back to Japan. Finally, after many happy days in the midst of the cornfields of Illinois, I returned home.

My family came to meet me at the airport and I immediately began gushing about how much I loved America. One of my aunts interrupted with a blunt question: 'How could you be so happy there? Look at you - you've got fat!' She was right.

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