Stretching the Truth
This morning I weighed in at 196.50 pounds, down 54 pounds, or, for the metric in the crowd, approximtely 25 kilos. Twenty five or fifty four. As of this writing, I am 78.28% of my original body weight and so comfortably in size 14 jeans that I bought a new pair today and slipped them right on, with nary a tug nor a grunt to be heard. The next time I buy jeans, I'm going to skip the 'stretch' section and go straight for the suck-it-in-and-suck-it-up, old fasioned no-stretch denim. I'm through with spandex, except perhaps in lingerie, and I'm through with denim s-t-r-e-t-c-h.
Stretch is a lie. It's one of those marketing gimmicks designed to lull us into complacency. See, madame customer? You're not a size up. You're older; your mature body isn't shaped the way it used to be. You're the same size, you just need a little room in a few places. Try the same size in a stretch. You know what happens when you stretch something? It gets bigger.
So it goes when you switch from size X regular to size X stretch. That's a size larger, folks. I've seen it all the way down the scales. When I was a size 20W, I could fit into a size 18W stretch. Same thing here. I'm a 14 stretch, and a 16 regular. If you really just want more room or fewer seam marks on your thighs, go ahead and get the lycra-supported pants. I did it for 5 years and 6 sizes. I'm coming down the ladder now, and it tempts me sorely to get the size 12 stretch. Size 12. That's pre-pregnancy, Me in My 30s, I Wear What I Want Rather Than What Fits clothes. Except a size 12 stretch is a size 14.
So I'm making the leap. I'm switching to size 14. It's enough for me that clothes are cut larger than they used to be, and that my size 9 junior pants are probably size 7 now, or maybe even size 5. I'm not heading toward those clothes; in fact, I think I'd be laughed out of everywhere with my Jordache or my Gitanos, or (gasp!) my Bill Blass jeans on my 2-dimensional butt--and rightly so. What I'm saying is, I'm already a little deluded, in aiming for my size 8 pants when they're really an old size 10. I don't want to delude any further and make them an 8 stretch, which is really a 10, which is really a 12. Sigh. Sometimes I wish women's clothes had numbers that meant something, like the men's clothing. But then we'd have to start spitting and scratching ourselves. It's not worth it. Guess I'll just stick to the delusion-but in its proper size. No stretching allowed.
Apart from all this denim dilation, the big news is that I'm off that frigging plateau from last week, when my body pitched a tent on a 0.60 pound loss and declared, "good enough!" Well guess again, bucko. I ate too little this week, and of course I have had no exercise other than the ahem cardio activities with my WW buddy, but I'm down 2.5 pounds from last Saturday. And, thanks to said 'buddy', I now have a treadmill in the house. Good thing, too, since it is about 50 degrees below normal around here, and it's hard enough to get up at 5:30am without facing the prospect of Walking While Freezing in the dark. The treadmill is in a spare room, and wish me luck that I use it more for cardio than for hanging up my new size L blouses.
AND even though Howard warned me that the flat/light weight loss could last for weeks (WHAT?!), it didn't, and so since I am still below 200 pounds and I'm off the Devil's Tower plateau, I went ahead and rewarded myself with a 1.7 oz bottle of Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle eau de parfum spray. I'd really wanted Chanel No. 5, but it didn't work on my skin, since I am not Dorothy, and Chicago is nowhere near that poppy field on the outskirts of the Emerald City. I will go to work tomorrow wearing my new parfum and sporting my newest pair of jeans. The're size 14 stretch, since Kohl's apparently does not sell Standard Denim in the Misses section--that place is a Devil's Tower all it's own, a topic I will discuss at some length in the next post. But for now, and until I can find a place that sells standard-issue dungarees, I'm dancing with the one that brung me.
A the S(tretch--for now)
Stretch is a lie. It's one of those marketing gimmicks designed to lull us into complacency. See, madame customer? You're not a size up. You're older; your mature body isn't shaped the way it used to be. You're the same size, you just need a little room in a few places. Try the same size in a stretch. You know what happens when you stretch something? It gets bigger.
So it goes when you switch from size X regular to size X stretch. That's a size larger, folks. I've seen it all the way down the scales. When I was a size 20W, I could fit into a size 18W stretch. Same thing here. I'm a 14 stretch, and a 16 regular. If you really just want more room or fewer seam marks on your thighs, go ahead and get the lycra-supported pants. I did it for 5 years and 6 sizes. I'm coming down the ladder now, and it tempts me sorely to get the size 12 stretch. Size 12. That's pre-pregnancy, Me in My 30s, I Wear What I Want Rather Than What Fits clothes. Except a size 12 stretch is a size 14.
So I'm making the leap. I'm switching to size 14. It's enough for me that clothes are cut larger than they used to be, and that my size 9 junior pants are probably size 7 now, or maybe even size 5. I'm not heading toward those clothes; in fact, I think I'd be laughed out of everywhere with my Jordache or my Gitanos, or (gasp!) my Bill Blass jeans on my 2-dimensional butt--and rightly so. What I'm saying is, I'm already a little deluded, in aiming for my size 8 pants when they're really an old size 10. I don't want to delude any further and make them an 8 stretch, which is really a 10, which is really a 12. Sigh. Sometimes I wish women's clothes had numbers that meant something, like the men's clothing. But then we'd have to start spitting and scratching ourselves. It's not worth it. Guess I'll just stick to the delusion-but in its proper size. No stretching allowed.
Apart from all this denim dilation, the big news is that I'm off that frigging plateau from last week, when my body pitched a tent on a 0.60 pound loss and declared, "good enough!" Well guess again, bucko. I ate too little this week, and of course I have had no exercise other than the ahem cardio activities with my WW buddy, but I'm down 2.5 pounds from last Saturday. And, thanks to said 'buddy', I now have a treadmill in the house. Good thing, too, since it is about 50 degrees below normal around here, and it's hard enough to get up at 5:30am without facing the prospect of Walking While Freezing in the dark. The treadmill is in a spare room, and wish me luck that I use it more for cardio than for hanging up my new size L blouses.
AND even though Howard warned me that the flat/light weight loss could last for weeks (WHAT?!), it didn't, and so since I am still below 200 pounds and I'm off the Devil's Tower plateau, I went ahead and rewarded myself with a 1.7 oz bottle of Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle eau de parfum spray. I'd really wanted Chanel No. 5, but it didn't work on my skin, since I am not Dorothy, and Chicago is nowhere near that poppy field on the outskirts of the Emerald City. I will go to work tomorrow wearing my new parfum and sporting my newest pair of jeans. The're size 14 stretch, since Kohl's apparently does not sell Standard Denim in the Misses section--that place is a Devil's Tower all it's own, a topic I will discuss at some length in the next post. But for now, and until I can find a place that sells standard-issue dungarees, I'm dancing with the one that brung me.
A the S(tretch--for now)
posted by Former Fat Girl Gone Skinny | 6:10 PM
1 Comments:
You smell GOOD!!!
And, while the Jeans may be "stretch", you sure do look good in them!
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