Talking It Off

When I weighed 125 pounds and was running 8 miles at a time, I wore a size 10 and once, for about a week, I squeezed into a size 8.

Today, with 145 pounds of middle aged “shapeliness”,  my size 6 jeans are getting a baggy.

It’s wrong!  Nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy to keep the baby boomers spending money.

And I rarely miss the opportunity to rant about it.

However………

after reading a couple of articles, I have to confess that, just maybe, the only “wrong” is that women choose to believe that a size 10 today is the same as it was twenty-five years ago. If we are the intended dupes of this marketing strategy, then we’d better get smart and let them know that we’ve caught on.

The truth is that our old size 12-14 bodies are now size 6 or 8 and I need just to get over the new number and not be distracted by how small it seems.  If I need to be a Gap size 4 to have a healthy waist size, then I need to be a size 4.  And I also have to accept that, if I wear a size 10 today, it’s the same as the size 16 of my youth.  There’s no way around it.

Of course, in better quality stores, I wear a bigger size – which arouses my cynicism again.  What’s the motivation behind: “the cheaper the store, the more generous the sizing”?

I guess the bottom line is that we can’t rely on clothing sizes to let us know if we’re losing or gaining weight and we can’t actually say with confidence, “I’m a size____” without qualifying what that means.  All we can do is find clothes that fit us and flatter us and cut out the labels.  I will not be duped.

So what’s the verdict of the 3-way mirror?  In a word:  lumpy.

At least lumpier than I have been at this weight.

But I bought a dress and have decided to be less lumpy by Christmas though I can’t yet find it in me to make a major gym commitment.

It’s partly my fear of euphoria – whether diet-induced or exercise-induced – but that’s another post.

It’s also partly that, as soon as I start getting results at the gym, it’s time to pack my bags and head to Canada where I have no gym membership.  I need some help and a plan.  Maybe it’s time to hire a professional to help me design a routine that I can do no matter where I’m living, with a gym or without one.   Maybe that’s what I’ll ask for for Christmas.  (Lightbulb moment, perhaps!)

I’ve said more that once that I’m inventing the 21st Century Diet.  That is, if I can just maintain my moderately overweight body, I will eventually be overtaken by almost everyone else and finally be “thin”.  Looks like it could really happen.

According to this report, many obese people don’t recognise how overweight they really are.  One of the reasons is that, as society gets fatter, people compare themselves with those around them and don’t feel so fat any more.

In my view there is a very clear tendency for individuals with obesity to feel that they do not stand out from the crowd,” says Jonathan Pinkney, a consultant in endocrinology and diabetes from the Association for the Study of Obesity (ASO).

This is because the median BMI has increased so much. For example, if some 4% of women now have a BMI of more than 40, then arguably you need this sort of BMI to begin to look obviously obese when you walk down the street.

I guess it’s the same but opposite phenomenon as healthy sized celebrity-obsessed people who are convinced they are fat by comparison.