Ms Green Jeans

[darkemeralds]

While I dawdle on a plateau as far as the scale is concerned, my clothes seem to indicate that I'm still heading steadily down the slope.

Last night I laid out several outfits from the back of my closet, then pressed everything neatly and put it all away, figuring that in another month or so I'd fit into most of it, and could photograph the clothes then.

On a crazy whim this morning, I thought I'd just try on one of the pairs of jeans.



They not only fit, but were already too big.

This stunned me so much that I couldn't talk myself out of wearing them to work even though they are, admittedly, rather ugly. (Seriously: avocado green jeans. I shouldn't have. Really.) The only reason I've hung onto them is that they Represent Something--the last good moment before my life went to hell in 2006.

These green jeans have been hanging in the back of my closet for five years saying, "Look, accept facts: you're never going to fit into me again, so just give me away and move on," while I said, "Noooooo! No! I want you! I hug you! I keep you! A tortured hope!"

And suddenly, in one day, they're saying, "Look, accept facts: you're never going to fit into me again, so just give me away and move on," on the other side of that divide. And oddly enough, part of me is still saying, "Noooooo!"

It's the strangest feeling! I've invested a lot in these ugly avocado green jeans over the last five years, and it never crossed my mind that I might actually become too small for them. I just wanted to fit into them again. Now, after one wearing, they're goin' in the donation bag.

Within another ten pounds, I will have entered body-size territory that I have never steadily inhabited. I passed through that country in my early 30s, and returned twice for flying visits before ballooning up again in bewilderment.

By the time I reach the end of this diet, I will be in territory that I set out from when refrigerators were avocado green. I have no adult frame of reference for life in that world at all.

It's very strange to think that nothing in my closet--perhaps not even shoes--will still fit me by then.

Comments

[cookiemom6067]

I don't want to say I'm envious, since you've put in the work and I have not.

I want to say - WOW!!! Congratulations!!! I know how weird that must feel, because I have clothes that I have clung to like your green jeans, and most of them are from my pre-baby (even pre-25YO!) days. The last time I was at 155 or lower was around the time of my wedding in 1983. I totally get how you don't have an adult frame of reference.

I'm also glad you're not focusing overmuch on just the scale - as the fit of your clothes is proving, it can lie.

Anyway - a fond congratulations - when I'm ready to take my own steps in that direction, I'll be revisiting your posts. It's always inspiring to know someone that's "done it."

[darkemeralds]

Thank you for the solidarity. I'm glad to know I'm not alone in having saved clothes and placed an arguably undue value on them because of all that they represent besides just a body size.

I'm keenly aware that I haven't "done it" yet, but am only in the early stages of doing it, and that only with the passage of one, two, three years at my goal weight will I be able to claim victory.

But still, every little milestone is important, and part of the reason I'm writing about them here is to keep them fully in my consciousness so that I don't ever have to repeat them.

[alex_beecroft]

I'm really reassured to hear that you're plateauing on the scale while still losing inches. I'm doing the same, and I'd almost convinced myself that I must be making up the feeling of being thinner when the scale showed no change. (Despite the fact that my belts are looser.)

I'm marking this down as one of my body's natural points for staying stationary, for future reference. However it's a good stone and a bit above where I want to end up, so I hope it starts to shift downwards again soon! It's very frustrating to do everything right and get no reward at all.

OTOH, my feeling is that after a couple of weeks of my own mental adjustment to myself, nothing at all in the world is different when I'm thinner than it was when I was fat. No one treats me any differently, none of my problems have magically disappeared. I just shop at different clothes shops and have a bit more energy. So I don't think you'll find that world is any different from this one.

[darkemeralds]

I remind myself daily to trust the laws of physics. As long as I'm being honest with myself about energy in (and I really, really am), then I can trust that energy out is proceeding apace. As The Hacker's Diet makes so vividly clear, over the course of a week in which an actual fat loss of, say, a pound or two is taking place, our bodies will have pumped eighty or ninety pounds of water through the system. The only way to resolve small variances on the scale is over time.

Your comment about nothing really changing has engaged my thoughts all morning. I was going over that exact question last night: what do I expect? And I can honestly say that at age 55, with several brief and disappointing sojourns in "relatively thin and fit" territory behind me, my expectations are very simple: I expect that I'll be able to wear better clothes and look well in them; I expect that I'll move more easily; I expect to fit into airplane and bus seats with room to spare.

Whether the world will treat me differently is hard to say--the world treats me rather well now--but there is a large social and aesthetic difference between a woman who is "Obese Class II," which I was when I started, and "Normal Weight". (I put the terms in quotes because I understand that they are loaded, fraught, politically dubious, etc.)

I can say with certainty that the bigger I got, the more invisible I became. Whether that was because my behavior changed with my self-concept, or because other people regarded me from the outside as a fat and therefore less insignificant person, or because I was coincidentally growing old at the same time, I will never know for sure. I do know that actually losing 100 pounds is proving easier than trying to alter my beliefs about the disadvantages of being very fat.

I can also say that I had "a bit more energy" after losing only about 15 pounds. At 35 pounds, I'm noticing very significant improvements; I see no reason why 65 pounds more will not profoundly alter my relationship with gravity.

But why am I really doing this? Because it's a project I've intended to complete all my life, and I've finally cleared the decks enough to do it. I want to find out what life--even Senior Citizen Life--is like in the absence of that particular project.

[alex_beecroft]

I guess that I may not have noticed any great change, because I think I was still in the range of "acceptable shapes for middle aged mothers" when I started dieting. But I started dieting because I had started to notice I was becoming physically compromised - it was getting too hard to do the housework in one go, and I couldn't keep up with the family on holidays. I was also getting swollen ankles, which were painful and distressing. So I think possibly I started to lose weight before the point where anyone else would have felt it necessary to start treating me differently because of my size - in which case naturally I haven't noticed much change.

The only change I have noticed is that the people in my dance side don't ask me if I'm feeling OK or whether I need a break any more. (Sometimes I do - so this is a disadvantage!)

OTOH, I'm privately much happier with how I look and how much energy I have - even though, for me, it is only 'a bit more'. That may be because I've lost weight but haven't added any exercise, so you're getting thinner and fitter, while I'm only getting thinner.

[darkemeralds]

I meant to return to this comment sooner. It has helped me answer the question that your earlier comment got me asking myself, to wit: what are my expectations from losing this weight?

The word "privately" here really nails it for me. That's the key I was looking for, in the face of a good deal of questioning about the purpose and value of weight loss. To be "privately much happier with how I look," it seems to me, is a perfectly adequate, perfectly complete answer to that question.

What's astonishing is that I didn't think of it! So thank you very much for providing it.

[alex_beecroft]

There is such a lot of politics around weight that sometimes I think you can feel guilty for selling out to the body-image police. (You know - it's anti-feminist to lose weight because it puts you on the side of fat shamers etc. But to gain weight is not to feel empowered.)

In the end I think it has to come down to whether you're happier or not. I don't think it's feminist to shame women into being fat any more than it is to shame them into being thin. And I don't think it's anti-feminist to say "I've *been* fat against the wishes of society. So society hasn't shamed me into this - I've done it because I want to."

It should be up to everyone to decide what level of weight and fitness they want to maintain, I think. If they like themselves as they are or are becoming something they like, then that's all good. (Bar the extremes of anorexia or the kind of obesity where you're unable to get up and walk around.)

[darkemeralds]

Very nicely stated. I have felt a bit guilty for "selling out," and though that guilt is as nothing compared to the satisfaction I'm deriving from getting thinner, it's there.

There are so many years and so much shame between my current self and whatever thinner self once existed as a teenager, that I couldn't begin to tease the strands apart at this late date. Have I been shamed into losing weight? I no longer know. I just know that the effort involved in losing the weight is actually less than the effort required to accept myself and be "happy" in my obesity. I know. I've tried both.

I suppose that's the very definition of selling out, isn't it? Oh well. It's my body and no one else's.

Thanks again for the excellent insights.

[alex_beecroft]

*g* Well, thank you for letting me talk about this. I want to, but I never get around to doing it, partly because "Alex Beecroft" is too public an entity to be able to discuss things that are quite private.

To sum up, I don't think you're selling out at all. I think you've just reached the point of going "I've heard all the arguments from both sides, and now I have decided to do with my own body what I want to do."

It sounds like liberation to me :)

[darkemeralds]

I have an icon for that!

Thanks again.

[karen_jk]

I am so excited to hear about your journey into new territory. Inside I'm jumping up and down and squeeing!

It seems so absolutely right to give away those green jeans now. Give the f---ers away!!! YAY!!!

I've been doing a lot more exercise and, though I haven't lost much in pounds, I feel a difference in my stamina and energy.

[karen_jk]

PS: Dearest, in what way did your life go to hell in 2006? ...if you feel ok talking about it.

[darkemeralds]

It's a subject that I might decide to write about later, an instance of a recurring and very bad theme in my life that I'm still coming to terms with, and something that I haven't yet found a way to articulate clearly.

[karen_jk]

I know you are a very private person about some things. If you ever feel comfortable writing or emailing about this bad theme, I'll be there with bells on.

[darkemeralds]

Thanks!

[darkemeralds]

Good for you! Exercise brings more oxygen, more endorphins, greater stamina: better health! I feel so much better with daily exercise, and I didn't realize till I started on this journey how many things count as exercise. For a sedentary, computer-focused person like me, anything I do on my feet counts. A short walk, an hour cooking or cleaning--anything that isn't lounging about on my ass.

So yay you!

[kis]

With avocado green jeans, you surely have to pay to have them taken away. ;)

Congratulations. It sounds like this is doing you a power of good beyond the weight loss.

I have no adult frame of reference for life in that world at all.

Yeah. Weird indeed.

[darkemeralds]

I chucked the jeans into the laundry this morning and shall fold them and hide them inside the giveaway bag as soon as they're dry. The Vietnam Veterans of America will have driven off before they realize what they've got.

The project is turning out to be profoundly healing for me, if I can use such a woo-woo phrase. It's akin, I think, to what other people do in becoming middle-aged triathletes or marathon runners: an internal conquest, a breaking through previously-accepted limitations.

Also, I realized last night, it has a lot in common with buying myself a Mercedes for my 50th birthday: it's something really cool that I finally have the resources to do for myself; I have no expectations of it except that it will give me pleasure and make it much nicer to move about in the world, and if the parking attendant treats me with a little more respect, well, dammit, I've earned it.

In Soviet Russia, Avocados Wear YOU

[executrix]

Congratulations! It's the same kind of assumption of Power when you can say "OK, those jeans are not only too big, they are HIDEOUS" as when you can say "Hmmm, these french fries are not very good. I am not going to inhale them because I am Wicked and have succumbed to Contraband, I am going to not finish them because they are not very good." They have ceased to be Talismanic, they have been tested as Clothing and found wanting.

Re: In Soviet Russia, Avocados Wear YOU

[darkemeralds]

Very nicely stated! It gives me tremendous glee to get rid of the damned avocado green jeans now.

And then to contemplate replacing them with some tasteful Levi's in dark indigo.

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't this the BEST feeling? I similarly have a jacket that i was saving and saving and never really wore - and now it's too big!

Treat yourself to the skinniest possible jeans at H&M. They're cheap, and they will be good as mid-journey jeans. (They don't need to be avocado. I'm a great believer in dark blue, not stone-washed.)

[(Anonymous)]

(This was Shezan, BTW. I keep forgetting my open ID isn't logged on at my office machine.)

[darkemeralds]

It is a very good feeling! Strange, though: unexpected, this letting-go so immediately after arriving.

Funny you should mention H&M: we just got our first store here a few months ago, and they're opening a second. Their look is really, really young, and it never crossed my mind to go into their store, but it's only a couple of blocks from my office, so maybe I'll have a look. I can always pretend I'm buying for a niece if I feel as out of place there as I suspect I will!