Put on Your Big Girl Pants

Holding: size 20 jeans. Wearing: size 12. Feeling: ecstatic!

I had a seriously rotten day yesterday, one that I didn’t handle well at all, because of negativity I brought to a challenging situation. The day started with not enough sleep, continued with a late break, and seemed to have no end in sight.

I simmered with frustration for the bigger part of the day, and I had a lot of trouble shaking off that feeling on the way home. I got home and recounted my rough day to my husband, but still had residual negativity with nowhere to go.

Still sulking, I began to get things ready to start my day off right in the morning. I decided to try on my smallest pair of jeans to wear today, a size 12 from Old Navy that is considerably smaller than the other size 12 from Old Navy that I have. (Old Navy’s inconsistent sizing rears its ugly head again!) They fit fine, which is good news, as I have been pushing myself to get back into the weight loss groove full-time. (I’ve pretty much been maintaining my weight loss for the past few months. It’s definitely a good thing to have gotten to a point where I can successfully keep off 40 lbs. for three  years, but now is time for me to push forward on the second act of weight loss, and get to maintenance at a new, lower level.)

And then I had another idea: I pulled out the last pair of “before” jeans that I have and gave them a good look. The pants, a size 20 from Lane Bryant, looked much larger than I remembered.

I stepped inside of my “big girl pants,” and was amazed at how much they didn’t fit me anymore. It sometimes doesn’t register how much weight I’ve lost, but this absolutely put things into perspective. After I stepped out of the pants and put them back in my closet, I went on with my evening, sticking to my eating plan and getting in some laughs from new episodes of Community and 30 Rock. Later that night, I sat with my feelings a bit to try and understand what bothered me so much. With contemplation and prayer, I was able to make a break from that negative energy. I plan to follow up this morning with some journaling, to explore further.

As I continue to develop a good relationship with food, and find and commit to ways to positively cope with the ups and downs of life, I now know that I can figuratively–and literally–put on my big girl pants and get back to what I need to do.

Winter Survival Guide

Can I borrow someone's time machine to go back to this moment?

Tomorrow marks the first day of winter. The shortest day of the year, otherwise known as probably my least favorite day of the year.

I am not a fan of winter by any means. Put me somewhere where the temperature is always between 70 and 90, and the sun shines more often than not, and I’ll be happy. I don’t like cold or snow very much, and I don’t like kissing the sun goodbye before dinnertime. And mornings? I am a morning person, but this time of year, the call of my cozy bed is often too strong to ignore.

I am familiar with seasonal affective disorder–a relative has been diagnosed with it. Part of me thinks that people without a formal diagnosis start to get a bit sluggish during the winter months, too–cabin fever, anyone? And you can’t forget how so many people struggle right around the holidays, over family issues and loneliness. When things get dark in the physical environment, they get dark for many in their minds as well.

One way to cope with this is through eating. The 30-plus day stretch between Thanksgiving and the new year is probably the most socially acceptable time of year to gorge on goodies. But eating is not the most effective way to cope with all that’s going on, if we are honest with ourselves. It is only a temporary band-aid over a gaping, invisible heart wound.

I want to try to nip my winter blues in the bud this year–and to not throw excess food at them. Here are some things I’m going to do to nab a little more joy this winter:

Dream of the tropics. I think I’ll try to think warm thoughts when the temperature dips. But if/when that fails, I’ll queue up some equator-adjacent episodes of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (I’m still making my way through all the seasons on Netflix) or escape with a good fiction book–a change of pace from my typical reading habits.

Plan a mini getaway. The lack of major holidays between January and May is brutal. I won’t be able to inhabit the Caribbean for a week, but I can whisk the family away to an indoor water park/resort for a day or two–there are several to choose from in my area. Or even a walk through the gigantic heart at the Franklin Institute would warm my heart, with me hoping my son enjoys it as much as I did as a kid.

Get some activity in. Speaking of No Reservations, one episode I’ll never forget is the one in Iceland. There are times when there is no sun to speak of on that country; yet, natives seemed incredibly good-natured, considering the circumstances. Bourdain indicated that one of the favorite pastimes is getting in exercise. Dancing away the blues and some calories sounds like a good way for me to do that.

Pamper myself. This time of year, it’s easy to get caught up in holiday tasks, or to sleep in and quickly throw yourself together for work without much thought. This is definitely my M.O. But taking some extra time on self-care may make me feel a little more at ease when I have to scrape a few inches of snow off my car or trudge through the supermarket in search of rock salt.

Laugh more. I’ve mentioned recently that I’ve been enjoying many moments of silliness with my husband. It’s worked wonders on my outlook, as have the times I’ve gotten to play with my son lately. Thankfully I’ve found that several of the new TV shows this year are entertaining enough to further keep me in stitches. There is lots of laughter to be had; the challenge is choosing to embrace it. Mastering that will definitely make the dark winter days a little brighter.

Reach out to the great people in my life. Again, this is something I’ve been making a conscious effort to do more regularly, and the benefit has been fewer feelings of loneliness. Continuing to make calls and visits will help to make the winter months fly by a bit faster.

Embark on some color therapy. I’ve been wearing a lot of gray and black this season, but I think is high time I add some more color to my day-to-day outfits to lift my mood. I think some neon nail polish is also in order, to literally have a splash of color at hand.

These are the things I’m going to double-down on in the hopes of making it to March with a smile on my face. What will you do to cope with the winter blahs? Or do the cold, dark days not faze you at all? Do tell.

10 Things I Learned About Weight Loss From NaBloPoMo

Today is the last day of NaBloPoMo blogging for me. One month ago, I started blogging daily. It was a good experience. I developed 30 days’ worth of topics, but somehow I only use about two-thirds of them. Instead, I wrote on whatever other ideas came up that seemed interesting.

Harder than coming up with ideas was finding the time to write them out. At the beginning of the month, I was a day ahead with developing blog posts. This week, some of the posts didn’t go live until 10 our 11 at night or so. (I hope to get back to posts going live at 6:30 a.m. by next week. And rather than a 3- or 7-day schedule, I’ll be blogging five days a week–during the weekdays.)

Despite the challenges, I had fun, learned a lot about myself (all good) and my tolerance for blogging (thankfully, quite high). I also “met” a bunch of wonderful people on the BlogHer site, and I got to reconnect with some friends on the blog. Thank you, all of you, for regularly visiting the site!

Aside from what I’ve mentioned so far, here are 10 things I learned about weight loss during this period.

1. There are still dishes to be cooked. I posted a number of recipes, but I’ve been inspired to keep experimenting. You can definitely expect more spice alchemy from me!
2. It’s been a month with a lot of ups and downs. I’ve eaten well, and I’ve eaten poorly. I’ve been content with love, and I’ve lost loved ones. I’ve met family members, and I’ve battled isolation. The things that I’ve experienced will help me to find balance in life and in eating, even when things aren’t going smoothly.
3. It’s been helpful to open up with talking and writing. Reaching out to others has made a difference in many ways.
4. I’m (slowly) learning to adjust my eating better. There have been times during the past month when I’ve not tracked my eating, or when I’ve eaten more than I normally would. But, in a small slice of intuitive eating, I’ve tried to balance out these negative behaviors by adjusting my eating when possible.
5. Physical activity isn’t so bad. I wrote on Monday about run/walking up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and I have to admit that I enjoyed it! Even though I became winded, I was proud of myself, for someone who doesn’t exercise regularly.
6. You really can eat what you want and lose weight–with modifications. For this, I’m reminded of what I learned from Oldways’ African Heritage Pyramid Diet, that many “soul food” dishes can still be enjoyed, with a few tweaks.
7. What I’ve learned about weight loss carries over into other areas of my life. The problem-solving I’ve used to eat better and stay on track can also help me to deal with complex emotions.
8. Read labels! I consider myself a careful label reader, but I was aghast to learn about the filler-filled hamburgers. Those burgers will make me read labels a little more closely.
9. The month wasn’t a failure. Despite eating with lax discipline, as of this morning, I am about 45 lbs. down.
10. A lot of people have the same challenges that I do. Being an introverted person, I tend to think that what I’m going through is different from what others in the same position are feeling. But it’s not true. Many people struggle with weight loss or with damaging self-talk, and they all need advice as much as I do. I would like to continue with this blog to give us a chance to talk through our fears, frustrations and challenges (and to also celebrate victories).

Thank you again for visiting my blog, and thank you for venturing through the wilds of the words I’ve posted, from easy recipes to trying to refocus myself away from negative behavior. I will have to take the daily blogging challenge again someday!

Uncover Your Fashion Philosophy

For Black Friday today, people will leave the comfort of their warm beds to venture out into the extended darkness of a November morning to stand in line behind equally ambitious sales hounds. This effort is for the privilege of buying goods in quantities that test the limits of their savings (or credit). The sheer amount of money to be spent by all today reminds me of the amount of money one could spend on buying a new wardrobe after weight loss.

As I mention here, many (myself included) believe that you should ditch your “before” clothes as you lose weight, to remove a convenient way to stay mired in a weight gain, and also to further bolster your confidence as you lose weight. But if you do this, you are faced with the prospect of having to start from scratch on filing your closet.

I give advice here on clothing staples to focus on first, and ways to extend the life of big clothes, but another way to save yourself is to not get caught up in expensive clothes to start out. I absolutely encourage you to splurge every now and then if you have the means, but you’ll have plenty of time to stock up on extravagant clothes once you reach your goal weight.

Because I have expected to transition to progressively smaller clothing sizes, I make a point of shopping at places like Old Navy, K-Mart, Walmart, Fashion Bug, H&M and Target to save money. My philosophy on fashion can be summed up by a line in a song by Theophilus London: “The clothes don’t make the man; it’s the man that makes the clothes.” I buy things that appeal to my sense of style and flatter my body, but that also fit into my budget.

One thing I’ve enjoyed about losing weight is being able to reinvent myself. Obviously weight loss results in a physical makeover, and I’ve been in the throes of a mental and spiritual makeover as well, but I’ve also been making myself over when it comes to the clothes I wear. I’m more likely to wear bright colors and patterns, to mix ladylike features with edgy flourishes, and to top things off  with a really cute pair of flats.

Now, with you living in a smaller body, is the perfect time to do a gut check on how well who you are inside matches who you are on the outside. (And if you are being frugal with your clothing purchases, it won’t be quite as costly to experiment.) Take the time to develop a fashion philosophy to guide all the clothing purchases you’ll make as you continue to lose weight.

Where do I get my inspiration from? Here are some ideas:

• Magazines: my favorite is Lucky, but I also like checking out the fashion spreads in Essence and Glamour.
• Web sites: I used to like visiting Boutiques.com, but I just learned that the site was shut down. (Google, who managed Boutiques.com, wants to funnel Boutiques user into searches of Froogle, the shopping-focused portion of Google’s search instead.) I haven’t found a good online fashion magazine; if you know of one, do tell!
• Store Web sites: not only do I find ideas, but it makes my time in the store more efficient because I have determined beforehand what I want to buy. Because Boutiques.com is dead, I think window shopping at Zappos.com may be the next closest thing in some ways.
• Other people: It’s  always helpful to look at how others have put themselves together. You never know when you’ll gain a new perspective on how to wear something you have.

If you are one of the brave people to venture out early on Black Friday, consider starting your trip with a quick assessment of your style preferences to guide your purchases. And if you go out later shopping today, or during any of the other times of major sales before Christmas, have fun and be safe!

Changing Seasons, Changing Sizes

If you get into a zone with eating healthy and begin to lose weight consistently, another challenge arises: what do do about a wardrobe that no longer fits.

I know your pain. I’ve always loved clothes, and if you’re like me, it’s bittersweet to part with your “before” clothes. There are memories in those clothes! There is security in those clothes–the ones that made you feel confident and attractive in the body size you inhabited for years. You may feel like now you’re being forced to shed your old wardrobe staples for a new identity and look that is still evolving as you lose more weight. Then there’s the matter of the hundreds of dollars you’ve spent on those clothes, if you’re talking about doing a big purge.

Now, with the changing of seasons, is a good time to make a fresh start with your wardrobe. If the clothes are no longer hanging properly on your body or giving you a polished look, it is time to move on, time to snatch the clothes out of your closet, yank them off the hangers, and toss them in a box for Goodwill. After this, your challenge will be to find things to wear every day that will still look flattering on you, even if you intend to continue losing weight. Here are some strategies I’d like to suggest:

Make sure you have basics. For example, when I gave away my “before” clothes it was winter, and I loaded up on turtlenecks in several colors. The following spring, I did the same with T-shirts and polos. Don’t forget belts and pantyhose as well. Focus on these kinds of items first. You can always add a trendy or special occasion item here and there, but it’ll be more important to feel comfortable in the clothes you’ll be wearing every day under normal circumstances.

With any larger clothes you’re keeping, improvise for as long as the clothes look neat. I didn’t give everything away when I first junked my closet, and since that big purge, I have things that are getting too big that I intend to wear a bit longer. I have been able to wear my basic shirts tucked in or out, alone, with blazers, vests or hoodies, or under jumper dresses, or with shorter skirts (with leggings underneath). Layering too-big shirts under something can help them to look streamlined for longer. Additionally, I cinch with a wide belt when long shirts get big or shift or shirt dresses look too shapeless.

Regularly replace bottoms and bras, going for the bargains. I’ve gone from 18s to 16s to 14s to 12s, and I can say that it’s much more important to keep up with skirt and pants sizes as the size number goes down. Poorly-fitting pants and skirts that drop well below your waist are the worst offenders in ruining an outfit, in my opinion. ll-fitting bras are second worst. I strongly advise getting fitted for a new bra, rather than guessing yourself, as it’s hard to know if your chest measurement changed or your cup size (or both). If you’re like me and intend to keep up with changing bottoms and bra sizes more frequently, don’t worry about spending a lot of money until your reach your weight loss goal. Sears and JC Penney have good clearance sales, and I have also bought jeans from Wal-Mart, Old Navy and Target at decent prices.

Give yourself at least one spurge item. I tend to be frugal with most of my shopping, but I’d encourage you to buy at least one nice item–a dress, a coat, a piece of statement jewelry, a killer pair of shoes or a bag–to pull your outfits together, and also to reward yourself for the hard work you’ve done by losing a significant amount of weight. Such a splurge may not end up being as pricey as you think, because you can often find excellent markdowns at department stores. In my first round of clothes buying, I bought a Calvin Klein dress. (Unfortunately, it wasn’t on sale, but it was less than $150. Since then, I’ve found bargains, like a Ralph Lauren dress I bought for about 50 bucks; its original price was $130.) It felt great to know I could fit into the dress, and it felt great to feel so poised and professional in it–kind of like I did in my old clothes.

You may be fortunate to have had unshakeable self-confidence in your larger body, but if you’re like me and feel the confidence growing as you shrink physically and evolve mentally, I think being satisfied with your look in your clothes is as valuable to your self-perception as being emotionally and spiritually grounded. A fashionable, size-flexible wardrobe can be achieved with a keen eye for which of your clothes will still work (and which won’t), and a keen eye for bargains.

A Little Red Dress…And a Way of Life

With temperatures consistently in the upper limits of the thermostat, I have been wearing dresses nearly every day. All of my dresses had made an appearance at my job except for three: a clingy, leopard-print Ralph Lauren number, a close-fitting army green shirtdress from H&M and a red shift dress from The Limited. I had deemed these dresses to be best left for “off duty” times.

I have worn the animal-print and green dresses out on dates with my husband, but I never found the right occasion to wear the red number. As a result, this dress has been languishing in my closet for two years–until this week.

Emptying My Closet

And if you think about turnin’ back, I got the shotgun on your back”–Erykah Badu, “Soldier”

Above is a picture of the biggest clothing purge I’ve ever made. Getting rid of my “fat” clothes. Or, let’s call them my “before” clothes, to avoid the negative F word.

I love clothes. More specifically, I loved my clothes in that pile. The Layne Bryant bootcut pants that I wore to conventions in New Orleans, Palm Springs, Tuscon and other locales, for an old job. The Tommy Hilfiger shirt dress I wore while on honeymoon in Miami. Cool jeans. Cozy turtlenecks. All kinds of funky fresh stuff, from whatever atelier was kind enough to make something fabulous for a size 18 chick.

Spring Cleaning

I’m going to switch gears with this post a bit and talk about clothes. Our weather here in southeast Pennsylvania finally has settled nicely into spring, so I thought it was a good time for me to get my closet ready for spring and summer.

It was about time, because for a few weeks, we had yo-yoing temperatures, where several days would be in the 60s and 70s, and then things would go crashing back to the 40s. Due to the schizophrenic weather patterns, I needed to pull out my warm-weather clothes ahead of time, without putting anything else away. My closet was overflowing with all of my clothes.

I had already gone through my spring/summer clothes a few weeks back, when the need for them first came up. These are the criteria I used to determine whether clothes should stay or go:

• Which clothes fit? Thankfully, after losing more than 25 pounds on Weight Watchers, my problem was clothes that fit too big, but if you find clothes that feel too small, of course you would get rid of them as well.
• Which clothes have problems? Assess whether these clothes can be saved or not. You may be able to take clothes with busted zippers or loose or missing buttons to a tailor (or fix them yourself), but a shirt that has a hole in a prominent place after losing a battle with a bra hook in the washing machine will probably need to be scrapped.
• Which clothes best reflect me now? Consider your likes and dislikes when it comes to fashion, and think about whether those preferences have changed since last year. Don’t be afraid to donate any clothes that you can’t see yourself wearing anymore. Properly-fitting clothes that you find stylish are indispensable to positive body image as someone losing weight, in my opinion.

I would do the same thing for my shoes and clothes. After going through my warm-weather clothes and hanging them up, I also edited my winter clothes in the same manner, so there will be less work when the temperatures start to dip at the end of the year.

What do you do with the clothes you no longer want? I like to take them to my local thrift shop, but you could also donate professional clothes to organizations like Dress for Success (for women) and Career Gear (for men). I was lucky enough to have worked for the past 2 years at a place where I could wear jeans every day, so I don’t really have business gear to give away.