Mashelle Week 6: A Size Smaller

This is me holding up a pair of my size 24 dress pants. They definitely don’t fit me anymore.

This past week I experienced something that I have not done in a long time; I got to go shopping for new clothes that were a size smaller. When I started on this journey a couple of months ago, I wore a size 24 in pants. Now that I have lost 16 pounds, my pants are falling off of me. I knew that my problem was bad when I would have to hold onto my waist while walking upstairs to ensure my pants did not slip down and I could pull the fabric away from my thigh area and it looked like I could fit another thigh in there. This is a great problem to have, but I hate having to buy “in between” clothes that I’m only going to wear for a month or two.

I went through my closet and donated clothes that are falling off of me or that I don’t wear anymore and then I went shopping. Keeping in mind my budget, I only bought three pairs of pants in size 22 and a few shirts that fit much better. I now have clothes that don’t make me look like a slob that I can wear to work. Since I have a dress code for work that requires me to essentially wear business casual clothes, I have to look presentable which in turn helped me to justify spending money on some new clothes. I did keep some of my larger pants, especially my jeans, because they are my more casual clothes and I don’t really care how they fit as long as they stay on me.

As for the donating, I figure if I continue to donate my larger size clothes that I will be less tempted to gain the weight back so that I can fit back into them again. This has always been a difficult prospect for me, but I can promise that I will no longer buy anything in a size 24 again. This is a difficult thing to promise oneself and have the courage to follow through with it.

Last week I wrote about my challenges with breakfast and I got a lot of great suggestions and ideas on how to better survive my most difficult meal of the day. I tried a couple of the suggestions, including eating fruit and cheese in the car and something a little bit more substantial when I get to work. I did this for a couple of days and I appeared to be more satisfied in the morning. This coming weekend I do want to try a couple of the healthy muffin recipes that were sent to me as well. I think that if I make the muffins over the weekend, that I can store them in the freezer and take them out the night before. Then in the morning, I can grab a muffin, a piece of fruit, and tea to eat while in the car. Thank you for the great suggestions. If you have any others, I would love to hear from you.

“It’s not who you think you are that holds you back; it’s who you think you’re not.” This quote, from an unknown author, fits with my idea of myself that I presented at the beginning of my blog series when I stated that I didn’t truly believe that I was fat or saw myself as being fat. Since I had that mindset it was difficult for me to lose the weight, but since I have started to think differently, the weight appears to be melting off of me.