Clothes Drama At Any Size

Good evening boos! Did everyone have a pleasant evening? I spent mine dress shopping, but more on that in a second. Let’s cover the important stuff first, shall we?

Lunch was another take on a fast food classic… the McDonald’s Crispy Chicken Snack Wrap!

I made mine using a small tortilla, a cut up veggie chicken patty, half a slice of swiss cheese, lettuce, and honey mustard vinaigrette dressing. Devine!

For an afternoon snack, I had a snack bag of Sun Chips and a Cashew Cookie Larabar. The ingredients for the bar were cashews and dates. That’s it! It’s so simple that I actually felt inspired to try making my own bars someday. It seems like it would be hard to screw up a recipe that only has two ingredients!

I was craving carbs in the best sort of way tonight, but didn’t have much to work with in the house. Result:

Whole grain waffle with crunchy peanut butter and blueberry jam. As a kid, I refused to eat any other kind of jelly besides grape. I would literally pout and suffer the entire way through eating a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich. I’m glad I got over that so I could finally experiment with blueberry, strawberry, huckleberry, and even apricot preserves!

Dress Drama

After work, I schlepped it over to an outdoor mall to do a little bit of dress shopping. I’m attending a wedding this weekend and feel as if I don’t have any appropriate summer dresses. If you’re thinking that it’s a little bit last minute to be dress shopping for a wedding that is this weekend, I would agree with you. I actually brought a dress a few weeks ago, but it ended up not working out for me. Actually, it ended up busting open at the zipper while I was trying it on this weekend… which brings me to the point of this story!

After I put on weight in college, I was miserable with myself, but also in denial. As my hips got bigger, I still squeezed myself into my high school clothes. I was afraid that if I bought clothes that were a size larger, that it would somehow make me look larger instead of realizing that they were just showing my true size. I kept telling myself that the weight gain was just a temporary thing. I thought I kept telling myself that all I had to do was lay off the fast food or carbs for a couple of weeks and I would go back down to my old size without having to change my whole lifestyle. We all know how that sort of mentality works out for people.

Because of my refusing to buy clothes in the sizes that I really needed, getting dressed every morning became a stressful event. I would squeeze into jeans that were too small and left a waistband imprint on me because they were so tight. I would then have to try to find a top that was loose enough at the bottom that could hide the muffin top that I was sporting. That entire time, I kept thinking to myself, “if only I was a smaller size, things would look better on me. I wouldn’t have to try to hide my fat. Designers make clothes to fit small model girls… not me.“

Well, for anyone else out there that might be thinking those same things, I want you to know that’s not true! Size doesn’t matter when it comes to clothes and it is possible to look great at any size!!! When I looked back at pictures of myself in college (see some examples here) recently, the first thing I exclaimed to my mom was that I wish I dressed appropriately for my size instead of squeezing myself into everything. If only I realized that putting myself into a smaller sized dress won’t actually make my body appear any smaller and being smaller won’t solve any of my clothes drama!!

So back to the story of my dress for the wedding. After losing weight and dropping down a couple dress sizes, I thought that finding clothes that fit would be a breeze. Wrong! Even though I may be all around smaller, my body shape is still my own shape, and not that of a mannequin. With the particular dress that I had purchased a few weeks ago, it was too big in the chest area (I’m a pancake), but too small right across my ribs which made it really uncomfortable. So my dilemma was to try to make this current dress work or go up a size and stuff my bra like a 12-year-old to fill out the dress. I tried moving around in the dress to see how it worked, and that’s when the zipper busted open right in the middle. Immediately afterwards, I had a meltdown and drowned my sorrows in Nutella. Oh, well. I’m happy that it happened at home in front of my mirror instead of out on the dance floor in front of family!

Moral to the story: It’s possible to have clothes drama at any size or shape. Don’t wait to look a certain way before allowing yourself to feel sexy. The only thing that matters is if you feel good in your clothes! No one wants to go through life uncomfortable! And don’t be afraid to have clothes altered or tailored to your shape!

I’m happy to report that I was able to select a different dress tonight that fits extremely comfortable and doesn’t have any zippers on it, so no danger of busting open!

Well, this girl has some packing to do… I leave for my trip tomorrow!

Goodnight! ~B