The Incredible Shrinking Wardrobe

Do you know what sucks about losing weight? Especially if this is the first time you've ever really lost weight and so you have lots of clothes that you love all in one size? What sucks is that your carefully-constructed-over-many-years wardrobe starts to become useless. At first you'll just notice one or two sweaters that are looking kind of baggy, and a skirt that's sitting lower on your hips, and then all of a sudden it's like a big rush of hahaha all your favourite clothes from last fall? They don't fit you anymore. They make you look like you're wearing a gunnysack, and that is NOT a good, or professional, look.

Don't get me wrong--I need to lose the weight, and I'm so glad it's working, and I understand that this side effect was to be expected. The fact that some of my favourite clothes no longer fit is not a reason for me to give up on Weight Watchers and start eating fried rice and a tub of ice cream at every meal. And I'm also not comparing this loss of good-fitting clothes to anything like the magnitude of Clink's tragic denim disaster. After all, I still have my clothes. Some of them still fit. And the ones that don't, well, I can admire them hanging in my closet. And I suppose I could get my absolute favourite pieces taken in.

But still. I can't afford to replace my entire wardrobe, and also I am nowhere near done with the weight loss, so everything I buy to fit me now will hopefully not be fitting me in a few months. Which means it should all be cheap, but I don't want to LOOK cheap, and also I don't have space for all these clothes. And yeah, the logical thing to do would be to get rid of the clothes that are now too big, but people, I'm scared to do that. Because what if I gain the weight back at some point? Then my clothes won't fit and I'll have to pay for all new ones but there won't be the silver lining of weight loss--it'll just be miserable. And I'll feel sad about all the pretty clothes I used to have that I stupidly threw away in a fit of optimism.

So. For now, they're staying, at the back of the closet and in the bottom dresser drawer, all my former favourite clothes. Oh, and also, on the tailoring thing? I can't get the clothes tailored now because, like I said, I'm not done with WW yet. I have to wait until I'm at my target weight, or until I've plateaued and given up on the target weight and accepted some other weight that isn't quite the target weight, but hopefully in the vicinity of the target weight. And even then, I'm just CONVINCED that as soon as I get all my clothes taken in, I will gain ten pounds and they'll all be too tight and then I'll cry and cry.

But? On the plus side? This weekend's trip to New York could not have come at a better time. We definitely spent multiple hours at the giant Macy's. Yohan was overwhelmed by all the options, but me? I was IN MY ELEMENT. I bought three sweaters, two skirts, a coat, and a fancy dress. I spent more money than I have ever spent on clothing at one time before in my entire life. (Torsten swears it wasn't that much; I am just used to being poor and wanting to cry whenever I made a purchase with a total cost in the triple digits.) But the amazing part was that I actually needed ALL of it. Well, except the dress.