What I Did Today#

Footnotes#

1. Self-Story Introduction

   Interested in hearing my story, haha?

   Actually, the story isn’t very dramatic; rather, my first 18 years only had one turning point.

   The first 16 years were pretty much a blur.

   I just love listening to and telling stories, I’m addicted to it, and it makes me feel like the world is more real, that everyone is a real person.

   Back then, I was basically chubby my whole life, never thought about changing, figured it was fine. I just immersed myself in games and videos, the only constant being my social anxiety, haha.

   Then the turning point came one afternoon when I was sixteen. Maybe it was the exhaustion from climbing stairs that led to the thought, but I decided to lose weight.

   It’s strange, but in my first year of high school, people gave me insulting nicknames, but I didn’t really care back then. Sometimes I’d even play along with my own jokes to fit in. Although I did have a few small outbursts, they didn’t help, and all of that disappeared when we chose our majors and re-grouped in the second year of high school.

   But it was during one of those stair-climbing sessions in my second year of high school that I firmly decided to lose weight. No one was externally pushing me at the time, and I’d never even watched weight-loss videos before.

   So I started taking action, inviting friends to run. After a few runs, I caught the attention of the sports ace in our class.

   He was really nice and proactively handed me a note during evening self-study, offering to run with me.

   That’s how I initially relied solely on running to lose weight, going from a few laps to 3 kilometers, 5 kilometers, then 10 kilometers.

   I lost about 50 jin (approx. 55 lbs) within half a year. It still feels miraculous to think about, succeeding in one go, even though I heard online that it’s usually easy to fail.

   However, because I didn’t know how to research methods, there were some downsides. Only running and not doing strength training led to some muscle atrophy, and most of the 50 jin I lost was water weight. That’s why large-scale weight loss happens quickly.

   Later, in the second half of my second year of high school, another sports expert I’d known since my first year recommended I go to the gym.

   Because my initial weight loss methods weren’t very appropriate, working out was quite difficult for me. I couldn’t lift heavy weights and had to slowly rebuild my muscle.

   And all that running earlier might have taken a toll on my knees… but later in the second half of my second year, I started gymming, reduced my running frequency, and my knees recovered somewhat.

   So I successfully worked out for half a year. Although it didn’t look like I’d been training for half a year, I really did, and I kept the weight off.

   After that, I continued to exercise consistently and started watching videos on scientific exercise, right up until after my first major exam in the first semester of my third year of high school.

   The first major exam is a special type of college entrance exam in Zhejiang, where you take your chosen three subjects and English early ↩