I don't think of myself as fat.
Out of shape? Definitely.
A bit flabby around the abs? Absolutely.
I wear a size 10, sometimes a 12 depending on the brand. In general, I'm content with that, despite being pretty close to the upper weight limit for my height.
I once read the clothing sizes in America were adjusted because Americans are fatter. An American size 10 is larger in the rest of the world, I heard.
But I never really believed it until I tried on some clothes at H&M in Mannheim, Germany. I picked out some pants - the tags helpfully had both German and American sizes.
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I discovered the size 10 pants were actually something between a 6 and 8 in the United States. The pants weren't mislabeled, as I determined after trying another pair of size 10 pants.
As I left the dressing room and passed the long line waiting to try clothes on, I noticed how trim everyone looked.
After that, I began to realize I didn't see many overweight people at all - not even at McDonald's, which was always full of customers.
When I did see them, they were invariably American tourists.
I watched one family consume a wide variety of junk food while we waited to check in at the Treviso airport in Italy. Over the span of more than two hours, I saw them devour large bags of chips, sodas, a bag of Twizzlers, candy bars and several sandwiches. When the son pulled out the Twizzlers, I glimpsed a large assortment of other candy.
I never really thought about it before, but we eat a lot in this country.
When I came back to the States, I was amazed at how much food I got at restaurants. The portion sizes in Germany, Italy and France were nowhere near as large as the ones here.
Even McDonald's is different in other countries. The fries and drinks in the large combo meals are the same size as the medium combo meal in the States.
Europeans also don't go out to eat very often, I was told by people I met there.
People seem to walk more, too. In the larger cities and towns, if you want to go shopping, you have to walk around a huge shopping district. You don't get to park outside a store in a multilevel mall. You have to hoof it at least a few blocks from your parking space.
But maybe it's not that Americans eat more and walk less. I knew I wasn't in America anymore when I walked off the plane and turned the corner into a thick cloud of smoke.
For three weeks, I breathed in more cigarette smoke than I had since I was a smoker. Coffee houses, restaurants, bars, airports, outdoors - smoke was everywhere.
When I quit smoking, I put on more than 20 pounds.
So maybe that's really the answer. Maybe the United States isn't really a nation of out-of-shape overeaters. Maybe we just don't smoke enough.
