So even as my pants have gotten smaller (I've been wearing size 16), I haven't been able to wrap my head around my upper half getting smaller too. I'm still wearing mostly 3X tops.
Today I was trying to find something to wear for the warm weather we're having (it's been nearly 80 degrees) and couldn't find anything that looked right in my plus sized clothes. I wasn't thinking they were too big, they just looked wrong. For the heck of it, I grabbed a fitted XL button down top from my closet "knowing" it wasn't going to fit - I just wanted to see what a long way I still had to go. Well, it fit. Perfectly.
Thinking lightning doesn't strike the same place twice, I pulled out a short cargo skirt I just bought (for sometime later this summer) that is a size 14 thinking there was no way I would be able to zip it, but I wanted to see how far apart the zipper would be to see how long until it would fit. It zipped. Perfectly.
I still feel enormous. I still see "enormous" when I look in the mirror and at pictures of me. I apparently am still dressing like I weigh over 300 pounds. I KNOW this happens to most of us, but even knowing that my brain isn't going to be able to keep up with the changes, it's still really unnerving to know that I have such a warped perspective of myself!
It's like it's not my body. I don't know what to do with it, how to dress it, or what it really looks like. I'm so so so mentally uncomfortable with all of this right now. It's like living in a funhouse with wonky mirrors!
Anyway, I will be happy when my brain catches up. Until then, if you happen to see a crazy woman wearing inappropriately large tent-like clothing, come on over and introduce yourself - it's probably me...
Ohh man I could have written this, myself! It's literally like a funhouse. Everyone tells me that I see myself as larger than I am, but who am I going to believe, lol?! The scary thing is that in the mirror I look exactly as I looked 90 pounds ago, to myself at least. (In pictures I can see it, though). So what's really odd is that my mind told me I looked "normal weight" back when I was 255. I don't think the problem is that I see myself as too big now, but I believe that I saw myself as too small then!
Oh wow me too, sometimes I hold up my jeans and think "whose jeans are these" and wonder if they are my teenage son's!
It helped me to take a few hours one day and stand in front of the mirror trying things on. Anything obviously too big went in a box, away. And I put all the things that fit in front and the things I will fit in SOON in a rubbermaid tub.
I do the same thing, Lyn. If it is too big it is immediately tossed, and every ten pounds or so I try on my 'soon' pile to see if 'soon' has become 'now'. It has helped me keep things in perspective a bit, but I still have a hard time not feeling 'huge' all the time (which is funny, because most of the time spent at my high weight I did not, in fact, feel huge at all, even though I was!).
I think pictures are the best way to go if your brain needs a reality check. Take some pictures in your current clothes vs. the smaller ones, and whichever set of clothes looks best will be your new wardrobe. It is easier to get a perspective on ourself from an image, because our brains don't fill in any details, they just assess the whole. In the mirror we don't really see 'ourselves', as much as our expected perception of ourselves (and a severe version of this is body dysmorphic disorder, as an fyi ).
Wardrobe management tip (I only have clothes that fit or are too big, I am shrinking into long ago forgotten territory)
Anything which FITS: I put a safety pin in the tag. When it becomes so baggy that it becomes clown pants or tent shirt, we take the safety pin out. (I have gold safety pins, my daughter (who is now only about a size smaller than me) has silver. (in my daughter's case, when she grows out of a garment, she removes the tag.)
My husband does a lot of the laundry. he knows that if there is not a safety pin in the garment, it goes in the consignment/thrift box. when the box is full (or when a garment is missing) I go through the box to make sure that a garment's pin hasn't accidentally dislodged.
Last edited by weebleswobble; 03-18-2010 at 07:58 PM.
Oh yeah. I understand. I went through the same thing for a looong time.
Really, if it weren't for the clothing, I never would have realized just how small I was getting/am. Even more so than the pics, I think.
I would go shopping, try something on and it would be too big. Okay. Finally I would find something that fit correctly (in a much smaller size). Okay. But it had to be a fluke. Nope. All the clothing in that size fits me correctly! Huh? How could it be?
Next time I'd go shopping - pick out some clothing. Too big. I guess it wasn't a fluke. Back to the smaller sizes. Look at the clothes there. No way are they going to fit me. They're so tiny. But they do!
Go home. Wear those small clothes. Launder them. They come out of the wash. How in the world did this ever fit on me, it's so tiny? I guess it shrunk in the wash. Go to put it on KNOWING that there's no way that it will fit me (because it shrunk), but it does. Huh? How can that be? It's so tiny.
This went on for months and months and months (years?) on end. And I'm almost three years at goal (OMG - I'm almost three years at goal!) and there are still times that I will look at that darn tiny clothing and think - no way. Who am I kidding? How can it be? But it is.
It's very, very - weird. It's like it's my body - but it isn't.
It does get better though. Really.
Believe it or not, one day this new slim body will seem the norm and the old heavy body will seem ancient. Like it was decades ago. And than every now and then, it will seem like it was just yesterday (but really not all that often). It's all very, very - weird.
Oh, I have the EXACT same problem. In fact, I was upstairs trying on summer clothes today too, and I was SCARED to try on an old pair of 22 capris that were always a little too tight-- but they were ridiculously huge.
I've lost 80+ lbs and most of the time, I think I look exactly the same.
Make a big pile of all the clothes you have and try each one on. If it fits or is smaller than you are then keep it, if it is huge and baggy, throw it out (give it to charity for someone else who may need it). Never look back.
Another side effect of this is the mirror obsession.
I always check myself in mirrors and any reflective surface. I think I'm still trying to catch myself being fat. Like if I get a mirror that's at exactly the right angle, that is the one that will finally be truthful & show me what I really look like.
Is it vanity? I have felt guilty about it. I sometimes feel like a cartoon character being depicted as conceited. But I don't think so, really. It's like I am looking for a missing person. Or trying to get to know a near-stranger on an endless date. I'm looking for information in the mirror. Maybe my perception will finally synchronize with reality. But it's taking so long.
I still have to do the clothing try-on thing, as Robin has described. And that fascination with dressing rooms also makes me seem like a more materialistic, superficial woman than I actually think I am. I'm not buying much, though. I'm just ... well ... a little overexcited, and I am letting out this clothes-mad spoiled 16-year-old, because when I was that age, it wasn't like this for me.
The weird thing is that the space at the top of my thighs is starting to show up (as in, my "chub rub" is gone) and I keep looking in the mirror at my jeans because it is soo weird to see that, that and having a flat belly (well in jeans anyway)
Make a big pile of all the clothes you have and try each one on. If it fits or is smaller than you are then keep it, if it is huge and baggy, throw it out (give it to charity for someone else who may need it). Never look back.
I think a big part of my problem is that I can't see that some of these clothes are too big. I think I look fine, but I don't think I can trust myself right now. Part of it is that baggy used to equal "good" in my mind when I was really heavy - I thought it hid some of the fat (but probably didn't). I've got to let that go.
It's always nice to know I'm not alone in some of these weird feelings.
Hi, hello. Knock, knock?!?! You're 6 feet tall and you weigh 204 lbs. Guess what?! YOU'RE NOT FAT!!!!!!!!!!!! You're not. You're not. You really, really, really are not!!!! Wake up and smell the rose-flavored coffee! Do the happy dance!!! You're AVERAGE!!!! Congratulations!!!!
I think a big part of my problem is that I can't see that some of these clothes are too big. I think I look fine, but I don't think I can trust myself right now. Part of it is that baggy used to equal "good" in my mind when I was really heavy - I thought it hid some of the fat (but probably didn't). I've got to let that go.
It's always nice to know I'm not alone in some of these weird feelings.
Yeah-- that is absolutely me too. And I realized recently that oddly enough, I think I've had that problem for a really long time. Growing up, my mom had this weird "rule" that clothes had to "hang straight"... they couldn't touch your body anywhere on the way down. (I mean, she's actually a very normal person... but she had a lot of clothing rules...) I still think my 3x tee shirts look fine, even though I now wear an XL.
Messed up body perspectives
It's like living in a funhouse with wonky mirrors!
).
