How to not lose the ‘foreign fifteen’

After removing the last jar of dulce de leche from my luggage, sending dozens of extremely emotional “chau for now” WhatsApp messages to my Argentine friends, and explaining to each and every one of my relatives where in the world I’ve been for the last four months, there’s little left to do but reflect on my whirlwind of a semester.

Unlike some of my friend’s journeys, mine are not as easily summed up in a Facebook post or artsy Instagram photo. In fact, out of context some of them might even seem pretty unremarkable, and just downright strange.

As I acclimate myself to North American life once again – and the realities of summer internship applications and my dismal bank account – I find hope in reminding myself of my Argentine achievements: eating empanadas, staying out until daybreak, refusing to plan ahead, and the greatest of them all, gaining the “foreign fifteen.” Now I’ve got some serious ‘splainin to do.

Eating empanadas

When I said farewell to Duke last Spring, I was a ghost of my former self, and not just in the figurative sense. I was quite literally frail, unrecognizable, and twenty-five pounds too thin.

Ghostly as I was, I was still scared of quite a few things myself. Specifically, I was utterly frightened by the consumption of anything and everything that didn’t resemble a vegetable. If evil were edible, I thought it’s name would be ‘carbs’.

So how on Earth did I manage to survive in the land of breaded meat, pizza, and empanadas? Quite anxiously. That is, until I dismantled the myths that I had created about certain food groups and began to see meals for what they truly were.

My Argentine meals were an opportunity to practice my Spanish, to engage in political banter, to gain new cultural insights, to share my latest goals, and to laugh at the absurdity of international conflict, in addition to many other topics.

At the South American table, the consumption of knowledge trumped the consumption of food. That’s not to say that I didn’t consume my fair-share of Argentine cuisine – I consumed a lot of it.

In fact, I became such a huge fan of empanadas, a doughy and sometimes fried piece of heaven, that I didn’t just spontaneously buy them multiple times a week, but I also learned how to make them myself in my host mom’s kitchen.

Talk about a 180.

Staying out ’til daybreak

This next impressive feat has little to do with the “coolness factor” and everything to do with my newfound capacity to live a little. Back at Duke, in my quest for physical perfection, staying out past 2am was an absolute no-no.

How could I be expected to have the energy for an early morning HIIT class at Wilson if I had returned to my apartment only hours before? Imagine my concern when I found out that leaving the previa (Argentine sang for “pregame”) before 2am is absolutely laughable.

I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t take a bit of positive peer pressure to convince me that keeping up with the Argentines was well worth the inevitable exhaustion, headache, and furious tummy, but I can now wholeheartedly confirm that that the memories alone were more than enough compensation for my post-party ailments.

I found that attempting – and failing – to dance like a porteño, laughing at myself, sparking conversations with strangers from all over the world, and bonding with lifelong friends far outweighed the muscle tone that I would have normally prioritized.

Don’t get me wrong – I haven’t completely thrown my healthy habits to the wind, but I do recognize that it’s okay to let a six-pack of beer take precedence over six-pack abs from time to time.

Refusing to plan ahead

Looking back at my previous semester at Duke, it’s clear to me that my dietary struggles had just as much to do with my need for control as they did my desire for a smaller dress size.

As my uphill battle with Orgo and a dozen extracurricular activities became unmanageable, I decided to take on a fight I thought I could win: the battle of the bulge. While I had no means of predicting the types of electrophilic reactions my professor would throw on an exam, I could certainly predict the number of calories I would burn running on the treadmill for over an hour.

When I arrived in Argentina, it was utterly terrifying to have my control stripped away from me, as it quickly became clear that my daily activities were primarily in the hands of my new Argentine companions and professors.

It was as if all hell had broken loose. Colectivos, Argentine buses, arrive more inconsistently than a mid-afternoon C4. 10am classes never actually start at 10am. Eating out is, at the very least, a three-hour affair. A lack of cold, hard cash will cut your buying power by at least half – a reality that I know all too well after having quite literally been stranded in an unknown town with less than a hundred pesos (approximately ten dollars) to my name.

There I was on the last leg of my adventure, alone, burdened by one too many bags, and nearly penniless at the Southernmost tip of the world, and strangely enough, making some of the best memories of the entire trip.

Because of my refusal to plan ahead, or meticulously schedule every detail right down to my pre-workout snack, I spent a relaxing afternoon with two of the coolest people I had ever met: a recent Puget Sound graduate en route to her new position at a Chilean environmental organization and a young Australian pharmacist whose wanderlust convinced him to defer his medical school entrance not once, not twice, but three times.

While I wouldn’t generally advise traveling with an empty wallet, I’m sure glad I did that day. No amount of planning nor organization could have brought the deep belly laughs, thought-provoking conversation, and pure joy that I stumbled upon that day.

Though my tighter jeans and rounder cheeks tell me that I’ve packed on a few pounds, I don’t actually know how much weight wait I’ve gained, and frankly, I don’t care. I think I’ll hang on to my “Foreign Fifteen”…or twenty…or twenty-five because it’s physical proof of a much healthier me.

Four months ago, if you had told me that a heavier McCall would be a happier McCall, I would have laughed in your face. Now, the only thing I have to laugh at it is the wonderful ridiculousness of my South American adventures once I decided to prioritize the right things.

Family pizza night over a solitary meal of salad at an overpriced cafe. Or a visit to the artisanal feria instead of yet another spin class. Or a chat about the challenges of migration with a quirky bartender until sunrise in place of a sunrise run.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that my weight will probably continue to fluctuate, depending upon my location in the world, but my sense of self-worth, my personal relationships, my passion for international relations, and my drive to achieve do not.

Like most of my peers, I’ve returned to the States more openminded and globally aware, yet I’ve also become more conscious of myself: my shortcomings, my strengths, my desires, my goals.

As I dive – or belly flop – straight into a semester back at Duke, and I memorialize the distant memory of Argentina via #TBT Instagram posts, empanada binges, and yerba mate breaks in Perkins, I’ll continue to tout my accomplishments and my love handles with mucho orgullo.