Care to care?????

I did something out of the ordinary two weeks ago. Well, not that anything I do is ordinary, but rather out of the ordinary for me. I cleaned out my closet and got rid of EVERYTHING that didn’t fit. Yes, I stood in my closet for hours trying everything on and if it fit it got hung back up – if not then into the Goodwill pile it went. Three garbage bags were donated to Goodwill the next day – can you say “Tax Write-off?”. I can! Letting go of the “me” I used to be and accepted that the “me” (all of me) looking back from the mirror, is who I am, was rather tough.

My reasoning for cleaning out the closet (besides the fact that I could use the extra space) is that if and when I lose weight then the reward will be new clothes in a smaller size and not that Chocolate cheesecake I really want. When I lose the weight they will be even more out of style and hanging onto them is really sad and depressing and unrealistic.
I also accepted the fact that I won’t ever be a size 3 or even a size 5 or maybe a size 7 again and that is ok. Right now I would just settle for not having my thighs brush together anymore. That and the nasty roll/fold/flap that somehow grew on my back, below the bra but above the waist - it makes me feel like a Shar Pei. The clothes hanging in my closet were out of style.

Welcome to the real world of I Can’t Fit! It is like getting a bucket of cold ice water thrown in your face – only now you have fat rolls to trap the little pieces of ice in.

The epiphany was somewhere along the way I stopped caring. Once upon a time I was a rather nice dresser and enjoyed looking nice. Not wanting to face the clothes size creeping up into the double digits caused me to hate shopping and only buy what was extremely necessary. When my waist (and the rest of my ass) expanded even more and I couldn’t force my fatness into the dress clothes hanging in my closet then I resorted to wearing jeans. Jeans are perfectly acceptable where I work and I accepted that, except that I also stopped shaving my legs every day and sometimes wore a baseball cap because my hair was greasy from lack of shampoo application.

The picture here is that somewhere along the way I stopped caring about me. This created a vicious cycle of me not caring and the weight creeping up because I was no longer taking care of myself. Getting rid of the clothes was like exfoliating your skin it was a cleansing. A purging but not like the purging I did when I was anorexic as this kind of purging won’t eat at the lining of my esophagus nor deplete my body of necessary vitamins and minerals.

Then I did a horrible, horrible thing. I bought new clothes – yes I went shopping, and actually tried on everything I liked in a size 14 and bought some of it. That felt good and so did the compliments I started receiving at work so I bought some more. I tried on shirts in a XL – a size that wouldn’t fit so snuggly as to show off all of my currently owned *ahem* curves. Something that actually flattered my figure and I didn’t have to tug and pull at it all day. Finally I can sit at my desk without having the blood cut off from the bottom half of my body because my waistband is too tight.

And that my friends is a good thing.