The 90 Day Challenge has commenced and I am down 10 pounds.
Old me would have scoffed and been disgusted with a 10-pound weight loss in three months, but the new and informed me is deliriously happy over it. Sure my goal was to lose 35, and while those are the results I typically aim at and can achieve, they are the kind of rapid results that lead to rapid weight gain and this time I am losing it for the last time.
Besides being on an utter high over making all sorts of changes in the last three months including Paleo, two days a week of Alpha, more cardio, finding out I need to eat more not starve myself, I have also gotten to a place where I feel very comfortable in my eating habits and pretty comfortable in my skin considering I still have an inner tube of cellulite around my mid-section.
The other day before getting in the shower, when I normally scrutinize every extra morsel of pudge and fat-shame myself for good measure, I stood in my underwear staring in appreciation at what I don’t know. I couldn’t visibly see any results that I looked different, or skinnier, or more firm, yet I felt different. I felt good. Really good. I started shimmying my wide hips and sashaying around the bathroom. I raised my arms. I danced to music that wasn’t there. All while feeling like I might really be keen on myself, inner tube midsection and all.
It was astounding.
Then later in the week I decided to do something I rarely do. That I have rarely done in my life as a whole. Buy jeans. In high school, it seemed that every time I broke down and bought a pair, they were too tight because I refused to admit I’d gone up a size and so I would never wear the jeans I bought because they hurt me and created an intense muffin-top situation.
In high school I lived in those velour work-out pants that J.LO had luckily made rather popular. In college, I mostly lived in sweatpants or anything with a drawstring until the leggings craze hit and I have happily, if not begrudgingly, resided in those ever since. I have had one pair of jeans in my recollection that fit just the way I dreamed and looked fantastic on me and that was during competition on “The Biggest Loser” and they were a size 9. I still have those pants in my closet as a reminder that once I could rock a pair of jeans sans muffin-top.
But lately I have been sick to death of staring at my favorite part of my body clad in leggings. I wanted faded blue skinny jeans, preferably with some man-made tears for extra hipness. I went to Old Navy preparing for the nightmare that is buying jeans. It’s not just that I am curvy in all the wrong places; it’s that my legs are rather slender for someone my size. Add to the fact that my butt is flat as a frying pan and just as wide and it’s not a task I relish in.
I prepared for the worst and grabbed several pairs of pants in size 18 as I had no idea my size anymore and 18 was a size that I wore for a long time pre-TBL. I hoped I wasn’t an 18 as it sort of made me want to cry, but I accepted that if I was I didn’t need to sob into a burger; it was just a number and one I wasn’t planning on setting up camp at.
In the dressing room I pulled on the size 18’s. … They were much too big. I quickly disrobed and grabbed the one 16 I had picked up in hopefulness. I pulled those on and they too sagged all around my legs and butt. Well, well, well; isn’t this promising.
I quickly darted back out into the store in search of a beautiful 14. 14 was the size I was all through high school and though I hated it then, I loved it now. Besides it was said Marilyn Monroe was a size 14 and I have always warmed up to the idea of that number because of her.
I found the perfect faded blue, torn skinny jean in a size 14 and quickly went to try it on. They fit, however, they were a little snug, creating the dreaded muffin-top situation, but the legs were still too baggy. They couldn’t be slenderizing skinny jeans if instead they looked like tapered mom-jeans.
I decided to end the search for the day on the complete high of being a size 14. I would find a pair of pants that flattered my midsection and also held snug to my legs, but for now getting into a 14 felt like a major coup.
So this week, not only have I found that I lost 10 pounds, I am actually starting to find more comfort and delight in my own skin—cellulite and all—but I also fit into the same size I wore in high school. What more can be said over all of this except: Hooray for me.
-Cassandra