Clothes

 
I very nearly had an embarrassing moment on Saturday. I had just found out that my favorite bookstore (Borders, natch) was closing, and I wanted to take advantage of the discounts they were offering before the axe fell. I put on my usual pair of blue jeans. Now, I outgrew blue jeans with buttons and zippers years ago. These puppies were held up by a piece of elastic around my over-sized belly. I topped it all off with a Siegfried and Roy t-shirt, and I was ready to go shopping.

I got to the store early and started looking around. At first I was so focused on the books that I didn't notice anything unusual. Then I saw another patron giving me an odd look and realized that I was having a problem with...slippage. That reliable piece of elastic wasn't tight around my stomach...in fact, it was more than halfway down my abdomen, leaving my midriff bare. Even if I have lost weight, that is not a good look for a 40+ year old woman.

I gave the other patron an embarrassed grin and hitched up my jeans with one hand. At the same moment, I caught sight of a Harley Jane Kozak mystery I've been wanting for ages. I grabbed for the book, and my jeans took another tumble. The solution was obvious. I needed three hands: one to reach for books, one to hold my tote bag, and one to hold my damn pants up. Unfortunately, there was no sign of any third hand evolving (where is Darwin when you need him?), so I tried to hold the jeans up by pressing the material between my legs and walking stiff-legged.

It worked. Sort of. But I'm sure some of those amused looks I think I got were not just my imagination.

I finally gathered all the books I wanted, paid for them, got back home, and stopped to think. I'm not stupid. I knew before the surgery that if I lost weight, I'd need new clothes. But I hadn't really thought the whole process out. I'd planned on shopping for new clothes when I reached my goal weight of 150-160. It had never occurred to me that I would probably need new clothes somewhere between 307 and 160 as well.

So how to do this economically? I'm losing weight fast, so chances are that I'll ungrow anything I buy now within a month to six weeks. That's a lot of new clothes on a social worker's budget. Of course, I also can't walk around with my clothes falling off for the next year.

I finally decided that, next weekend, I'm going to hit the Goodwill stores and see if I can find a low-cost wardrobe that fits me. Failing that, I'll have to shop at a discount store and buy as little as humanly possible to tide me over while I'm working towards my goal weight. It's a pain in the...

Wait a minute! What am I kvetching about? I'm losing weight. Enough weight that my pants are seriously loose and even a few of my shirts are starting to hang off me. That is not a problem. It's...it's wonderful. It's unbelievable. It's amazing!

Thank you, gastric sleeve!  

Comments

[Abby@moncler pas chere]

These are so cool! Very cute and stylish!

[Lisa Cavacini]

I have been doing a lot of research on the sleeve, including following post sleeve patient reports via you tube videos and blogs. I am in the pre surgery stage. It seems to me, that the people who had a BMI of less than 40 or, the ones who were in the low 200lbs, seem to lose too much weight and look worse than the people who had higher BMi. Just my unscientific opinion.