Gotta Have Faith

I went shopping on Friday and bought lots of cute new clothes. I was very happy. Shopping is a lot more fun when you have less excess weight on you!

Many people talk about how it’s better to judge your size based on the fit of your clothes rather than your weight. While weight is a very imperfect measure, clothing size has always been a problematic gauge for me. Because of my frame and the places where I hold and don’t hold weight, my pants size changes pretty slowly even if I’ve put on quite a bit of weight. Even at my heaviest, a lot of the clothes in my closet were size 6. Size 6 is a completely respectable size to be, so it was easy to rationalize away my weight gain. I’ve lost 13 pounds now, but I’m still defeinitely a size 6. If I wasn’t weighing myself, I probably wouldn’t have any idea how far I’d come.

That said, shopping at my current size is a LOT more fun! When I gain weight, I go up a size in some clothes, but many clothes just stop fitting me, period. No size fits me properly. I don’t carry extra weight well…it creates odd lumps and bumps that just don’t sit well on my frame. I used to go into the store and not be able to find anything that fit me and was flattering. Bigger sizes would look tentish or would hang oddly due to my small frame, and smaller sizes just wouldn’t fit at all. I ended up having a closet full of clothes cut in “curvy” or “loose fit” styles, and none of them looked very good on me. When I went into stores on Friday, everything that I tried on in a size 6 fit me. Dresses, skinny jeans, the works. Granted, some were flattering and some weren’t, but it was such a relief to be able to buy the things that look cute rather than the things that even remotely fit!