Slipper socks - MEDIUM!

OK, that heading (a Christine Baranski quote from The Ref) has nothing to do with my post, it's just a phrase that always springs to mind when I hear the word "medium", which is what my post is about.

I've written about the behavioral changes I've been making with regard to food over the past 11 months and while weight loss has not been my focus, it has happily become a side effect. I don't know what I weighed in January when I started treatment and when my food therapist weighed me the other day I told her not to tell me the number; if I start thinking in terms of numbers I have no doubt that they will hijack my focus and all the old expectations & anxiety will come flooding back and derail my progress. So I don't know what I weigh, but I do know that I've lost 35 pounds.

I didn't need to get weighed to know I was losing weight. All my clothes fit differently - thank God I never throw anything away, I don't have to buy new clothes because I'm starting to fit into my old ones! - and I can feel the difference in my hips and belly. I'm happy that it's happening but it's not what my life is about; my life is about making healthful choices and positive changes (and movies & television, of course).

That being said, I had a pivotal clothing experience today: I FIT INTO A MEDIUM SIZED T-SHIRT! I whole-heartedly believe that size is just number; I don't aspire to a specific weight or size, that's not what this is about - this is about not owning a medium sized garment since I was about 12 years old.

Granted, it's a large medium. My friend Linda gave me a couple of shirts a while back because they didn't fit her right. I literally laughed in her face and told her it didn't matter how big they ran, they would never fit me. I tried one on just to be sure and it was airway-restricting tight. The only reason I didn't throw them away was because I figured I could use them as car cleaning rags (and also because, as stated above, I never throw anything away). And there they've sat all these many months - geez, maybe even over a year - crumpled up in the backseat of my car - until tonight.

One of the perks of having a ridiculously cluttered car such as I do is that there's often a solution to any last-minute wardrobe emergencies. I wasn't planning to go out after work tonight so I didn't bring a change of clothes. When my plans changed and I was too lazy to drive all the way (i.e. 3 miles) home, I started excavating.

Since I recently (i.e. in May) cleaned out my backseat (i.e. reduced a 3 foot pile of clutter to 1 foot), my options were limited to a yellowed white T-shirt and the aforementioned medium. There was also a zippered sweatshirt back there, so I figured even if the medium was too tight I could cover most of it up with the hoody. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the shirt not only did NOT restrict my airway anymore, it actually FIT! Like in an I-don't-necessarily-HAVE-to-cover-this-up-with-a-hoody kind of way. Mind you, I still wore the hoody, but it looked better that way and besides, it was chilly out.

There is no real point to this story, only that I fit into a medium sized T-shirt today, and it was extremely gratifying. I'm also reassured by the fact that I had a stronger emotional response to how I felt in my clothes than to learning exactly how much weight I've lost. I don't need or want my existance to be validated by weight loss but the fact that something so mundane affected me so profoundly is significant, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I feel a sense of accomplishment.