Belt Buckle Loops and a bit of my relationship with my health.

Physical health and appearance has always been a bit of an interesting area for me. As a baby, I was quite the big buy, 9 pounds and 1 ounce is what my mom always said. It was like some kind of badge of honor. A record that she probably held among her friends. As a kid, I never suffered from "baby fat." In fact, I was quite thin. I imagine it was because I was rather active as a kid. I did all of the normal kid things like afterschool sports, riding bikes, and begrudgingly eating my vegetables.

In thinking about vegetables, food is kind of where all of this stems from. During elementary and parts of middle school, my lunches consisted of catered lunches and home lunches I brought to school. I was fortunate enough to have a mom and sometimes grandparents who were happy to prepare food for me to bring in when I wasn't really interested in eating what was on the menu that day. Even though this didn't necessarily result in me eating the most healthy of things, the preset portions and the regular amount of exercise I was getting allowed me to remain pretty thin before I moved to China.

When I moved to China, it was a completely different environment and explaining that isn't necessarily within the scope of this post. The main thing to touch on is that I was given less oversight on how I conducted myself. My school had regular PE classes, but did not require people to have an afterschool activity that was a sport. That meant I sort of just stopped doing extracurricular sports for a long time. Instead, I did other things like filming school productions, choir, and sometimes just not even having an afterschool activity. Lunch was also different, the school I went to had an a la carte system where you would go to buy whatever you wanted from various restaurants with no limit on the amount of food besides money. This meant the first year was a long streak of buying one portion of food, then following up with a second + dessert combined with a big source of activity not being there made things not so great health-wise.

The second year of my time living in China would reveal to me just how much my health had slipped. During PE class, we had to wear these bands that wrapped around our chests which would track our heart rate. To pass, we needed to reach a minimum heart rate based on our own health for a set amount of time for it to count as exercise. I remember people talking about their own heart rates. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I do remember that my own active heart rate was much higher. So much so to the point where I didn't really tell people what it was, just that it was "around theirs." I couldn't quite understand why. I thought it was some kind of unfair targeting because the PE teacher hated me. It wasn't until much later that I understood it was because my resting heart rate was crazy high compared to what it should've been. The second incident where this became apparent was the mile run test. When I lived in America, I had to run mile tests. I had difficulty, but never felt like I would completely crash and burn. The same happened for my first-mile test in China, it wasn't great, but nothing too concerning. The second one was a different story. My body felt way worse, I started running out of breath way faster and my legs began to protest way sooner. It was quite the ordeal. I remember my time was pushing 15 minutes and I was basically dead last when I finished. Even though I had some friends who cheered me on, it was probably one of the most embarrassing moments that I remember from my time in China. 

After that, I never wanted something like that to ever happen again. I forced myself to be more disciplined within that next year. Following the advice of my favorite PE coach, I was more careful of what I was eating. I could get more portions as long as they had vegetables. Focus on finishing the main part of the meal rather than the fries or rice. Spend a little more time actually in the gym to maintain some level of fitness. To make a long story short. When I stepped up to the mile test for my last year in China, I ran a 10-minute mile. A 5-minute improvement. It wasn't a good time by any means, but it meant that I had actually accomplished somewhat of a goal. My body still burned and heaved, but I had done it. 

You would think that led to some epic story of me maintaining and even improving my health. For a while it actually did. When I moved back to America to attend a boarding school for high school. I was given back some balance that I had lost in China through required afterschool activities with at least one of them needing to be a sport. I did a lot of theatre and tennis in those four years. Both of which proved to be very strenuous activities. Our meal time throughout the week was family style with some amount of portioning which kept my diet balanced with a good amount of exercise. I still wasn't back to being thin by the proper definition, but my health was in a much better place as I went to College.

College hit me with two things. The first was the expected lack of oversight once again and a certain pandemic that shut down the world for a good amount of time. Freshman 15 was one thing, covid 19 was another. The sum of those weight gains hit me hard. I went to a worse place than I did in China. My college being buffet style allowed me to eat even more food than I should have and once again not being required to do sports to activities pushed me into being more lazy. The pandemic didn't help things either because now I didn't even have to leave my desk to go to class. I only left my room to get food or go to the bathroom. I like to think that I turned out fine after the pandemic, but even today I gain more perspective on my own mental state and wellbeing during that time period. The most relevant thing being my health of course. I heard a lot of "you look fatter" or "I think you need some exercise" from my parents and grandparents. In the moment it was whatever, but overtime I did begin to get affected. Towards the end of my time in undergrad, I did begin to put more effort into regular exercise. A free membership to the school's gym is something that I should not have taken for granted given the price of actual gym memberships in the real world. So for a second time, I had to begin thinking more about what I ate and focus more on exercise. It's something that I am still working towards today.

This brings me to a question that you may have if you have read this far: Why is the title of this Belt Buckle Loops and I haven't mentioned a belt once? Well, here it is. When I first went to high school, I was bought this belt by my parents to wear since my high school's dress code involved wearing dress pants. I wore these belts for many years, through high school, college, now my masters, and hopefully soon my job. My pants have stayed the same as well, but as I have gone up and down in weight, so too has the need to wear my belt tighter or looser. In the picture below you'll see the belt I have been wearing the most recently. you can clearly see some wear where the dark brown has become light brown.

The furthest up hole is the loosest I have ever worn the belt. The second hole down is where I was for most of my time owning this belt. A few months ago, I noticed that my belt felt a little funny. It was because I had unknowingly fastened the belt at the hole below. Since then, I have been able to fasten the belt their consistently, meaning that I have effectively moved on from wearing my belt as loose as the previous hole. This meant that my pants needed to be tighter, meaning that I was a little smaller in that area. It's a small victory, having taken many years to reach this point, but it's one that I find myself enjoying. Fitting for a post on a day where we eat massive feasts before trying to go on a frenzied shopping spree the next day. A big reminder that health is not about being the most fit, but it's about having a good relationship with your own body's health. Something that I am trying to figure out for myself.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!