Since the school year has ended, I’ve been watching a lot of TLC and their fashion shows, like “What Not To Wear” and “Say Yes To The Dress”. Beacuse I have zero fashion sense, I find these shows fascinating and often informative, because I still dress like I did ten years ago. Anyway, I started noticing a running thread throughout the shows: person loses weight, person wants to get new clothing to celebrate, person is devestated when a certain size doesn’t fit or doesn’t look good.
It made me realize that while there are a lot of resources for losing weight – motivation, tips, workouts, nutrition guides, whatever – there aren’t many for what happens afterwards. Perhaps that’s because the whole thing is intended to be a journey rather than a destination, lifelong and sustainable. This, of course, all depends on why you want to get in shape or lose weight in the first place. While it may not be the main reason to lose weight, one of the obvious side benefits of getting in shape is looking better, too. But no one tells you how to deal with this when you get there.
I suffer from this problem. After losing about 40 pounds through diet and exercise, I was excited to go try on new clothes because my old wardrobe didn’t even come close to fitting me. But when I got into the fitting room, I was extremely disappointed. I wanted to feel skinny and I wanted to look skinny. But I definitely didn’t feel that way looking at myself in the mirror. It made me want to cry – I had accomplished so much yet I felt like when it finally came to the point where it was put to the test (my looking skinny), I failed utterly. I mean, while I started to lose weight to look better, it wasn’t long until I was doing it so I could just kick some major ass like running in an obstacle course.
This is where my TLC marathoning has come to the rescue. Several shows drive the point home that it truly is not about the size of the clothing but about looking and (more importantly) feeling your best. This means buying a pair of jeans that fit, rather than making a big deal about a certain size and trying to squeeze into them and making myself look bigger than I actually am. Allow me to blow your mind – clothing sizes are completely arbitrary. They aren’t the same from manufacturer to manufacturer – and they aren’t even consistent within a brand. Not all body types are flattered by the same cut, either, and your accomplishments are not negated just because you don’t look great in a certain piece of clothing.
In the end, all you can do is be proud of your accomplishment – losing weight is not an easy task – and remember that there is more to all of that then fitting into a medium or a smaller size.
