Some nice NSVs to open my eyes

I guess I’m still learning.

I’ve been going at this for almost a year now, and I’m very close to hitting the 2/3 way mark. As of this morning, I have lost 97 lbs.

The thing is, my original weight gain happened very quickly. Starting midway through my 17th year, I gained 150 lbs in a year and a half. Because of this rapid weight gain, I flew through the sizes pretty quickly, but I never got rid of any of my clothes. Expressing myself through fashion was an enjoyable part of my life back then, and I couldn’t bear to toss all my favorite clothes. I still have plastic bins full of the clothes I wore when I was 16, and all the sizes I went through in the 14 years since. The bad part was that as my size increased the selection of clothes available decreased. They just don’t make plus-size clothes that are “me.”

It has been nice in the months since I began seriously losing weight: I’d get to the point when my clothes were just too baggy, and I’d have to go to the bins at the back of my closet to dig out smaller clothes. The REALLY nice part has been bringing my old clothes, the ones that are too big now, to the Salvation Army, freeing up space in my closet, and saying goodbye for good to size 26, 24 and 22.

Recently my size twenty jeans were getting to the point that I’d have to pull them up after standing, and periodically while walking. I finally decided to dig into the bins for better fitting clothes. Unfortunately, I only had two size 18s in the bin. That was one of the sizes that I flew through pretty quickly.

I am pretty uncomfortable with the idea of buying new clothes now, since I know my weight loss journey is only 66% over. I decided to go through the bins I have, searching for any hidden size 18s and repacking the bins so that similar sizes are all together, making future expeditions for smaller sizes easier.

I was doing this over the Christmas holidays, my mother decided to help me (she also gladly took all my too-big size 20s, which is what she wears). I was complaining about the lack of 18s, and she threw a pair of 16s at me and told me to try them on. I held them up and looked at them, thinking there was NO WAY those narrow jeans would fit over my hips and *kitten*. For the last 14 years, I’ve been looking at size 24/26 jeans. She said they looked like they would fit, I told her she was crazy. Then I tried them on.

They fit.

Even now, a few weeks later, after wearing them for a whole day, when I take them off, I hold them up and think there’s no way they could possibly fit. Despite the obvious fact that they do, my brain just won’t compute.

At 100lbs I plan on posting another set of progress pics (like I did at about 50lbs lost). When I posted the others, I didn’t feel smaller, though I knew I was wearing smaller clothes. Now I do actually feel a difference. There’s more space on either side of my hips when I sit in a chair, or in the bathtub. I can comfortably cross my legs at the thigh now, which I never did when I was bigger. I can see the tendons in my hands and wrist when I move my fingers, and in my neck when I turn my head. And my old face shape is starting to peek through, where it used to be hidden under fatty cheeks and double chins.

Well, three more pounds to go, and I’ll be sharing my next set of progress pics. I hope to make it in the first few weeks of January, and I hope others can see the differences I'm feeling.