The Big Squeeze

One of the things to look forward to when losing weight, is feeling your clothes get looser and knowing that you can drop a size. I sometimes hear people talking about wanting to get back into their ‘skinny jeans’ or an outfit they wore when they were younger. While my primary reasons for dieting this year are health and family related, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t part of me that was looking forward to fitting into some of the clothes I was wearing a few years back.

My Gap jeans are nothing particularly special to the naked eye, but to me they hold more value than just covering up my pasty legs and unattractive underwear. The importance lies in the waistsize. Size 36L. It isn’t particularly skinny, but fairly respectable all the same. More to the point, when I bought them some five years ago and proudly wore them, it meant I had managed to lose a whole foot off my waist.

At my largest I was wearing 48 inch trousers, which I had to order from a mail order company specialising in oversize clothing. I couldn’t buy them on a typical high street. The transformation I underwent to scale down from that size to being able to walk into Gap and buy jeans off the peg involved month after month of diet, exercise and commitment. Even though my journey in 2013 is less dramatic, that feeling off success still lingers.

Last December I was splitting larger trousers down the seam in a garage forecourt because I had filled out again. That incident has been a driving factor in my quest to downsize this year. It reminded me of what used to be a regular occurrence when I was huge, and the embarrassment that went with it. Never again if I can help it.

My sides were splitting with laughter. Not!

So those jeans are in my wardrobe, just waiting for me to fit into them. Hopefully it won’t be long now before I can dust them off and get reacquainted.