A few years ago when I initially lost nearly 100 pounds I recall “the moment.” Those that are familiar with trying to lose weight pretty much all have a “moment” – that experience, encounter, etc. that breaks them down and makes them realize they absolutely have to change their lifestyle. My moment was clothes shopping, post-breakup. My heart was still healing, I was still dealing with it by eating my emotions, and I went shopping with my mom and sister. After hitting all of the plus size stores and coming home empty handed, I went into my room, laid on my bed and sobbed. I felt fat, hopeless, and completely dejected by so many things.
I ended up shedding nearly 100 pounds in less than a year just by diet and exercise. I could, for the most part, shop wherever I wanted to as I was down multiple sizes. Then I got lazy/cocky. I started dating a guy that liked me how I was, he was a super picky eater which had us eating out 2-3 (or more) times a week, and we were a super lazy couple. My weight was slowly creeping back up. The relationship ended, I struggled for over a year to really move forward and ended up regaining everything I had lost.
So after many times of dusting myself off, I once again decided to get healthier. Heck even in the past month it’s been really rough with staying on track but after REALLY sticking to healthy eating I lost 5.2 pounds this week. Let’s just say I was pretty darned excited. Now in the grand scheme of things 5.2 pounds is merely a drop in the bucket but hey it’s a start!
Looking at the forecast for this week I decided I needed to get some new shorts. I’m back to shedding pounds so I didn’t want to head to Lane Bryant and drop $60 on a pair of shorts so I headed off to Wal-Mart. I grabbed a pair of dark wash Bermuda shorts and a dark wash skort (yeah that’s right I said it s k o r t), then headed off to the dressing room. After determining the door was legitimately locked (why are there no locks on the inside of the door?) I sloughed off my jeans and pulled up the Bermudas, I got them buttoned but the zipper was just not happening. Not only that but it accentuated parts that DO NOT need to be accentuated. Okay no biggie there’s still the skort, right? And they were on sale for $11, so cool. Um. No. I couldn’t even get them over my butt. Seriously? Who is designing these clothes?! I get my jeans back on and wander, mildly defeated and dejected at this point. As I start to wander away I find another rack of “stretchy” denim short/capri things, I grab a pair and head back to the dressing room of doom and gloom. These stupid things wouldn’t even go to my hips, let along the calf area being squeezed like a lemon. SERIOUSLY?! At this point I was done. I was back to feeling horrible about myself and just left. I could not deal with this.
It’s my last week of graduate school, I’m raising financial support for my internship at my church this fall, I’m going to my family reunion in a couple weeks and, of course, stressing about money. I could absolutely not deal with a stupid pair of shorts not fitting even though I wasn’t even at my highest weight. This left me in a pretty crappy mood the rest of the day, honestly I kept dwelling on it even though I knew nothing could be changed. I dwell-ed so much that while preparing dinner I dumped an entire bag of frozen stir fry veggies into the garbage can instead of into the pot. Ugh.
Tomorrow morning I’m going to the gym and Wednesday after my meeting I’m going to go find some dang shorts that fit and make me feel amazing.