How to Eat in Sri Lanka

I have a vegetarian pal who's been hanging out in in Sri Lanka the past few years. After she moved there, she got into a tropical state of mind, lost a few pounds and looked so good she could pass for 29.
Then, for reasons known only to the gods that rule middle-age spread, she gained back more weight than she'd lost, and she doesn't like the way she looks in a sarong anymore.
She tries her best to exercise and eat right. She even has a personal trainer. Who knew you could have a personal trainer in Sri Lanka? And now, she wants to know why all her good efforts aren't working.
Of course, I don't know the answer to her question. All I know is what happened to me.
I've never even been to Sri Lanka, but I was a "vegetarian" between the ages of 22 and 48. I put quotes around vegetarian because at times during those 25 years, I still ate fish, dairy products and eggs. Otherwise my diet was mostly fruits, veggies, tofu and whole grains.
I did pretty well on this diet for about 10 years. I was strong, had energy, and wasn't particularly overweight. But I was ALWAYS hungry, always thinking about food and always craving sweets.
I knew that sweets weren't good for me, and I pretty much stayed away from them, but I spent a lot of time thinking about them.
Still I was not TOO overweight for a few more years. Then, after about 15 years of being a vegetarian I started to gain weight. I wasn't eating more. And I wasn't exercising less. But somehow I couldn't keep from gaining. When I would try to eat even less, I had more and more thoughts about food. It seemed that the very thought of food caused me to gain weight.
It could have had something to do with turning 40. In the few years after I hit that milestone, I gained 65 pounds while trying to be very careful with what I ate, while walking 4 miles every day, and while doing other kinds of low-level cardio exercise recommended as the perfect thing for my age.
I thought I had a curse.
My husband was also a vegetarian when we first met. He was tall and thin, and spent a lot of time bicycling, but even he gained quite a bit of weight once he turned 40. He went from 150 to 200 pounds. On his 6'2" frame that meant he went from being skinny to normal. But he was always hungry, so he ate more and more.
One day I had an epiphany. I asked my hubby if he would go down to the corner grocery and buy a rotisserie chicken. He looked at me like I was crazy. We were vegetarians!
Somehow I convinced him, and he said okay. He went to the store, praying that no one would see him buying a chicken. Any kind of meat had been so out of our reality, he said it felt as if he were buying a pound of heroin.
We ate that chicken, felt good afterward, and that was it. We quit being vegetarians.
I'd like to say that we lost all the weight we had gained over the next few months. We didn't. We each lost about five pounds, but that was all. The good news was we stopped being hungry all the time. And we both stopped craving sweet things. And we both stopped gaining weight.
My husband was fine with the change, but I still needed to lose a lot of weight and wasn't sure about how to do that.
Then it was my husband's turn to have an epiphany. He said, "Guess what, we're going to join a gym."
In addition to walking and cycling we added weight training and yoga at our gym. After a year, my hubby was a lot more muscular. I lost 25 pounds. This isn't any magic weigh-loss formula, but I managed to lose that much weight without eating any less than I had been. Now I'm working on losing the rest.
I have more energy and strength than I've had at anytime in my adult life, even more than when I was 22 and decided that I would be a vegetarian.
Looking back I'd say one of the stupidest things I ever did was to give up meat. All my adult life I ate lots of good wholesome foods, but I believe the shortage of lean, high-quality protein in my diet messed me up for 25 years.
If my friend in Sri Lanka actually asked my advice on how to be healthy, I'd say eat lean protein (fish, chicken) at almost every meal. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Eat whole grains. Eat other things too, but consider sweets to be poison. Do yoga. Do some other kinds of exercise. Drink plenty of water.
I don't know what I'd eat if I lived in Sri Lanka. My friend says there's plenty of fish to eat. So if that was available and good, I guess I'd eat a lot of fish.
I hope it works out for my friend. Anyone who has the guts to run away to Sri Lanka deserves to look great in a sarong