Goodbye, old clothes

Sixty pounds later, it was time to really clean out my closet. The old clothes are no longer in the house. Big Pile #1 is gone. Big Pile #2 is gone. The bottom drawer is almost empty. I say "almost" because I did not want to throw away these ginormous pants or what I used to think of as my "skinny jeans". I think it'll be good for me to have the pants around, and I am still a cheapskate who cannot throw away jeans that are only a size too big.

I'm not sure why I kept the old clothes around for so long. I would make plans to get rid of them, but I'd never do it.

This is all still very hard for me to believe. A lot of people want to talk to me about diet issues now, and I know that many of them have a lot of trouble losing weight. People are constantly asking me for advice. Not here on the blog -- most of you have never met me -- but people who know me seem to feel freer to talk about dieting than they did before. Maybe they were worried I would take it as a subtle suggestion that I needed a diet.

For me, the key was portion control: I used to eat healthy food, but I ate too much of it. When I cut back to a normal portion, I didn't miss the rest of it. I also made sure to treat myself every day with a little bit of chocolate or something else. I never felt deprived because if I wanted to eat something, I ate it. I can't promise that this will work for you, but it's what worked for me. I have friends who've done very well with low-carb diets or Weight Watchers, too. It all really comes down to calorie counting, but if Weight Watchers makes it easier for you and it's something you really want, go for it. Make sure you're doing it for yourself, not because you think someone else wants it. There will always be someone who is thinner than you are, and it's not healthy to measure yourself against other people, anyway. And remember that you can't change certain things about yourself. I was curvy last June, and I'm still curvy. I will never be "thin" in the same way some other women are.

I started doing this through the SELF Challenge, which is a free three-month eating plan. It was really my sister-in-law's idea: she was doing it and was looking for an online buddy, so I volunteered to sign up with her. Thanks, Princess. :)