The Restaurant Made Me Fat. The Restaurant Made Me Thin.

The first thing the restaurant gave me was hunger.

Not the kind that lives in the stomach.

The kind that lives in the future.

I was twenty-eight when I started working there, a narrow Cantonese restaurant wedged between a laundromat and a closed pharmacy on the edge of Chinatown. The sign above the door was faded, the red paint peeling like old skin. If you didn’t know what to look for, you would walk past it without noticing.

Inside, everything was alive.

Oil snapped in the wok like applause. Orders were shouted in overlapping languages. The floor was always slightly wet, always slightly dangerous. The air was thick with garlic, soy sauce, heat, and survival.

I did not belong there at first.

My body announced that immediately.

I was already overweight when I walked into the kitchen on my first day, my new black uniform stiff and unfamiliar. The other workers glanced at me briefly, their eyes trained by experience to evaluate usefulness quickly.

Not judgment.

Assessment.

Could I lift heavy containers?

Could I move fast?

Could I endure?

In a restaurant, your body was not a symbol.

It was a tool.

My job was simple.

Prep vegetables.

Carry supplies.

Clean everything.

Repeat.

The hours were long. Eleven in the morning until midnight, six days a week. Sometimes seven.

The first lesson the restaurant taught me was this: exhaustion silences thought.

At home, before this job, I had lived inside my mind. I thought about my weight constantly. Every meal was a negotiation between desire and guilt. Every mirror was a courtroom.

But in the restaurant, there was no time for negotiation.

Only motion.

Cut. Carry. Wash. Move.

My body was no longer something to evaluate.

It was something to use.

The second thing the restaurant gave me was food.

Unlimited food.

This was the paradox.

We were always surrounded by it, yet we never truly sat down to eat.

Between orders, when there was a pause in the chaos, the chef would gesture toward the counter.

“Eat.”

Not a question.

A command.

I ate quickly, standing up. Rice. Fried pork. Noodles slick with oil. Whatever was available, whatever was fastest.

Food tasted different in exhaustion.

It was not pleasure.

It was fuel.

But after twelve hours of physical labor, my hunger was enormous. I ate more than I needed, more than I noticed.

No one stopped me.

No one counted.

No one judged.

In that environment, eating was not a moral act.

It was survival.

And slowly, quietly, I gained weight.

At night, after work, I returned to my small apartment and sat on the edge of my bed, too tired to move.

My feet throbbed.

My back ached.

My hands smelled permanently of onions and oil.

Sometimes I ate again.

Not because I was hungry.

Because I was empty.

The restaurant consumed everything: my time, my strength, my attention.

Food became the only reward I allowed myself.

A small, edible comfort.

My body grew heavier.

My life grew narrower.

But I did not notice immediately.

Because in the restaurant, no one cared.

Everyone was tired.

Everyone was surviving.

Fat was not unusual there.

Fat was common.

Fat was irrelevant.

The customers were different.

They arrived clean, rested, temporary.

They sat, ordered, ate, and left.

Sometimes they looked at me.

Not unkindly.

But distantly.

I was part of the machinery of their evening.

Invisible and essential.

One night, a young couple sat near the kitchen entrance. They laughed easily, their voices soft and confident. They shared food slowly, savoring each bite.

I watched them from the corner of my eye as I wiped down tables.

The girl leaned toward the boy.

“You work too much,” she said.

He smiled. “It’s temporary.”

Temporary.

The word stayed with me long after they left.

I wondered what it meant to believe that your life was moving toward something better.

In the restaurant, time did not move forward.

It repeated.

Day after day.

Order after order.

Plate after plate.

The restaurant made me fat in ways that were visible.

But it also made me thin in ways no one could see.

It made my world smaller.

I stopped seeing friends.

I stopped walking for pleasure.

I stopped existing outside the boundaries of work and sleep.

My life became functional.

Efficient.

Empty.

Fat on the outside.

Thin on the inside.

One afternoon, during a rare quiet moment, I stood in front of the stainless steel refrigerator and saw my reflection.

The surface warped my image slightly, but the truth was still visible.

My face was rounder.

My uniform tighter.

My body heavier.

But my eyes were different.

Duller.

As if something inside me had been slowly consumed.

I realized then that I was not just gaining weight.

I was losing something else.

Something less measurable.

Something essential.

The turning point came unexpectedly.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Snow fell outside, muting the city into silence. Business was slow.

Mr. Liang, the head chef, stood beside me while I cut carrots.

He was in his fifties, thin in the permanent way of men who had worked their entire lives without rest.

He watched me for a moment.

“You tired?” he asked.

I nodded.

He did not respond immediately.

Then he said, “When I was young, I worked fourteen hours a day.”

I waited.

“I thought money was everything,” he continued. “I thought suffering was temporary.”

He paused.

“But suffering becomes habit.”

His words were quiet.

Not dramatic.

Not instructional.

Just true.

He walked away without explaining further.

But something inside me understood.

That night, after work, I did not eat.

Not out of discipline.

Out of awareness.

For the first time, I asked myself a question I had avoided:

What was I becoming?

Not physically.

Existentially.

The restaurant had given me income.

Stability.

Survival.

But it had also taken something.

Time.

Energy.

Possibility.

I realized then that fat was not just about food.

It was about inertia.

The slow accumulation of habits that kept you from moving toward your life.

Change began quietly.

I started walking home instead of taking the subway.

At first, it was painful.

My legs resisted.

My breath was heavy.

But walking gave me something the restaurant could not:

Space.

Time to think.

Time to exist outside obligation.

The city at night was different from the restaurant.

It did not demand anything from me.

It simply existed.

And in that existence, I began to return to myself.

My eating changed too.

Not through restriction.

Through attention.

In the restaurant, food had been unconscious.

Automatic.

Now, I ate deliberately.

Slowly.

I began to recognize the difference between hunger and emptiness.

One needed food.

The other needed life.

Weeks passed.

Then months.

My body began to change.

Not dramatically.

Not suddenly.

But steadily.

I lost weight.

But more importantly, I gained presence.

I stood differently.

Moved differently.

Lived differently.

The restaurant still exhausted me.

But it no longer defined me.

It was part of my life.

Not all of it.

One evening, a new worker joined the kitchen.

He was young.

Overweight.

Nervous.

I recognized the way he moved, carefully, apologetically, as if he expected rejection.

I saw myself in him.

During his break, he stood alone, eating quickly.

I walked over.

“Take your time,” I said.

He looked surprised.

As if permission was unfamiliar.

I understood that feeling.

The restaurant had made me fat.

Through exhaustion.

Through unconscious eating.

Through survival without awareness.

But it had also made me thin.

Through labor.

Through repetition.

Through confrontation with myself.

It stripped away illusions.

Forced me to see what I was becoming.

Forced me to choose.

On my last day, I stood in the kitchen and looked around.

The same sounds.

The same smells.

The same motion.

But I was different.

Mr. Liang nodded at me.

“You leaving,” he said.

Not a question.

I nodded.

He did not congratulate me.

He did not ask what I would do next.

He simply said, “Good.”

Because he understood something important.

The restaurant was not meant to hold you forever.

It was meant to reveal you to yourself.

Outside, the air was cold and clean.

I walked slowly, feeling the unfamiliar lightness of my body.

But the real lightness was not physical.

It was existential.

The restaurant had taught me that fat and thin were not opposites.

They were symptoms.

Of how you lived.

Of how you moved through your life.

You could be fat with purpose.

Thin with emptiness.

Or thin with presence.

Or fat with absence.

The body reflected the life.

Not the other way around.

The restaurant made me fat.

Because I stopped paying attention to myself.

The restaurant made me thin.

Because it forced me to see what happened when I didn’t.

And in that realization, I learned something more important than how to lose weight.

I learned how to return.

Not to a smaller body.

But to a larger life.