I have come to accept the fact that I will never get back into my 'goal' jeans.
Mainly because I bought them when I was young and stupid and there are rhinestones all over the back end. Never a good idea. Also a contributing factor; I was underweight at the time, have gained about 100 pounds since then, and they are skinny jeans besides.
Jeans are just a staple of the American girl's wardrobe. Most of us have worn jeans, and more than a few at that. The trouble is, finding the perfect pair (or brand) of jeans that you can stick with while you go up and down in sizes (which we all do, don't lie) is really difficult.
To explain, when I was a teenager I had a very interesting relationship with food. I didn't get hungry or full. Some people don't believe me, but this has been the case for most of my life, until recently.
I am very tall, for a female. So my not being interested in food while I was growing became sort of a problem. I hit my full height early, but I had no real interest in food.
There were a combination of reasons for my lack of appetite. I may or may not have watched a documentary (guilty pleasure) about the process food takes through your body. The entire process. Someone swallowed a whole blueberry so a camera could follow it through their system.
It was an unfortunate decision on my part. I didn't need to know what happens to blueberries. Add that to a childhood incident with a blueberry muffin, and I'm really off of that berry.
So, I knew exactly how gross the process of the breakdown of food was. I wasn't getting hungry, so why should I eat if I don't want to? This led to my only eating what I considered tasty. I am a chocoholic, by the by.
What really didn't help is that everyone was complimenting me constantly about how pretty I was and that I should be a model, and on and on. I was a young teen, albeit with terrible acne, that was being told constantly that I was so pretty because I was thin.
I developed some bad habits and lost weight. The first loss. I ended up at 116 pounds at 5 feet 10 inches tall, and I was gaunt. I had hallowed cheeks and bird bone wrists and you could see every rib. My father finally had enough and took me to a doctor. I was very angry about it at the time, but the doctor told me that I had to gain 20 pounds by the end of summer, which was just starting, or he would put me on a feeding tube and pump me full of drugs that would swell my eyes so I couldn't wear contacts (that was the scare, honestly. My sight is so bad that the glasses were very heavy and would fall down my nose over and over and give me blisters) and that my metabolism would be ruined forever.
So I gained 20 pounds. And I discovered, while I still wouldn't get hungry, I really liked the taste of food. And the social and emotional effects of food. I just fell in love. My weight crept up slowly, but nothing that I was worried about, as I was still on the lower end of healthy.
Then I was in college and visiting my brother. I think (at least hope) he meant well, but he made some very pointed comments that I was getting a gut. It was a pudge on my stomach that really wasn't bad, but the words hurt my feelings. I laughed it off, but I started noticing and caring about my weight.
I slowly started losing weight again. Not by any unhealthy means this time, but I just let my lack of actual hunger allow me to eat less often and skip the things that were truly bad for me.
That is when I bought that silly pair of 'goal' jeans. My sister in law was throwing a party for a friend that was doing the multi level marketing thing and was peddling these really fancy jeans. They were on a size system I had never encountered before, little sheltered me. They were not a size 6 or 8 like I was used to. They were a different system that I didn't understand. So I just picked some jeans that I thought (wrongly) were cute and tried them on. It took a few to find something that fit on my bony hips. And they were slightly loose.
But they were 60 something dollars.
I know very well that a lot of women pay much more for jeans. That 60 isn't necessarily all that much for a good brand of jeans that fit you well. But I had never spent over 10 dollars on a pair of jeans, and usually much less. (We are bargain shoppers in my family) So over 60 dollars was a lot.
I consoled myself by saying that these would be my 'goal' jeans and as long as I fit these jeans I would be healthy and that I never wanted to get any bigger than that size.
Excuse me while I die laughing. It is okay to join me. It is hilarious.
I kept this weight for a good while. Well, a good while for me.
Others things started happening (Did I mention that I have extreme anxiety and Cyclothymia?) and I was put on a lot of different medications until I found one that worked. It worked so well and we kept with it. The problem? Side Effects! (Imagine me singing that. Badly.)
I gained near 100 pounds in just over a year. I ballooned so bad and so fast that I have stretch marks everywhere and my mother, who cares a lot about my weight and health, was even more upset than I was. I was dealing with the emotional conditions better, but I was just packing on the pounds, no matter what I did. I cut out all cake, ice cream, and chips. And even after the initial weight blow up, I kept slowly creeping up.
Also, the other side of not getting hungry was that I didn't get full. When you never get satisfied with a meal, you eat and eat until you can't anymore. I would only stop eating if I got bored with the taste, or, more often, when my stomach literally hurt because it was overstuffed.
I was able to see both sides of the weight issues and body shaming. When I had been stick thin I got so many compliments with the occasional thin shaming (Skinny B***h, that sort of thing). Some people sat with me and would go on and on about fat people and all the (false!) things about how they were gross, lazy, and slobs, yada yada yada. Then I got big fast. And suddenly I was on the other side of things. People that hadn't known me before were calling me these things and assuming I just didn't know how to eat or cook or take care of myself. Most people I talked to right out didn't believe me when I said that the weight was with the medication. They thought I was making excuses. Then the big girls would sit with me and try to go on and on about thin people and (incorrectly!) how they were vain, pathetic, and dishonest, yada yada yada.
I am sitting here living both sides, and let me tell you; there is never a good assumption to make about another person's size. You don't know what they are going through or what they deal with. There are more than likely valid reasons why they are the way they are. I haven't even touched on eating disorders. (These come on both ends of the spectrum.)
But, back to the jeans. I was then amazingly too big for those jeans. I was never going to get my now thunder thighs through those leg sleeves. I didn't even try. I'm not going to now.
But, good news. I have recently been able to get off of that medication, for separate reasons.
And I notice a change at once.
I took the last pill of that medication on the last day of November. It is now February 10th, and I am down 24.5 pounds.
Victory!
It WAS the meds.
Also, something amazing happened. For the first time that I can ever remember, I am getting hungry and full. More about that for a different story. But, it naturally limits how much I am eating, which helps.
While I do NOT want to get back down to where I was, and I do NOT want to get back in those jeans, I am hoping for a good healthy weight. The number I am looking at is the mid to higher end of my healthy range, according the the BMI charts. I am even okay if I am just on that 'overweight' color of the chart. I don't mind. I like my curves. My husband likes my curves. I will most likely always weigh more than he does. I am okay with that.
When I hit the number I want to be I will be going out and getting new clothes. I have been living on hand-me-downs since I started gaining so fast that year. I need my own clothes, no matter how much I appreciate the charity.
I will be getting a new 'goal' jeans. In a healthy size. That I would actually like to maintain the size of.
A pair of jeans that doesn't have sparkly stars on the butt.
What was I even thinking?
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