A little back story: I have been struggling with my weight since I was 12 years old and I noticed that my body didn't look the same as the other girls' at school. When I say struggled, I mean I fucking STRUGGLED. So many times I stayed home and didn't go out with friends because I was so uncomfortable with my body. By the time I was a teenager, I had tried several different kinds of diet pills from green tea capsules to ephedrine. Btw, I totally get why ephedrine was banned in Canada. It gave me crazy scary heart palpatations! I exercised for hours while everyone else in the house was asleep, or I didn't exercise and then chastised myself for being fat and lazy. I have been bulimic and anorexic, either vomiting up to 5 times a day, or rewarding myself with one apple to eat every three days, depending on how "in control" I was at the time. At my lowest adult weight of 145lbs (at 5'9"), I was a size 9 and I still felt I was too big. When I look back at pictures, I see that I was not big nor overweight. I cut pictures out of magazines and pasted them in a scrapbook in order of the thinness of the models. When I became thinner than a model in the book, I crossed her out with a great sense of satisfaction. I thought this was motivational, but now that I work with paediatric patients with eating disorders, I see how detrimental all of this was to my health and my self esteem.
Even at my ideal weight, clothes have never fit me right. Shirts have never been long enough, sleeves are usually too short, shoulders are too tight, waists pinch in too much or don't fit at all. Bras have always been too tight around my chest if they fit the front, or too baggy in front if they fit around my chest. At one point I went to 2 different plastic surgeons to have consultations regarding getting breast implants. I didn't end up getting the boobs I longed for because my bank loan was rejected. Jerks. Although I'm glad I didn't get them now, at the time it was slightly devastating for my 21 year old self.
Three years ago I got very physically active again and lost weight (again), being my thinnest in years. I worked out excessively, I counted every single calorie I ate and then used an app to figure out how many calories I had burned that day. If the results were to my liking, I gave myself a star in my calorie counting book. If they weren't, I gave myself a pig sticker. I was hard on myself. I was always hungry and always tired, but the more people complimented my weight loss, the more I wanted to hear the compliments, and the more entrenched in it I became. I was absolutely obsessed. Once again, I had no life. I couldn't go out to socialize and risk eating unplanned calories, plus I had to get up at 4;30 am to work out. On days I wasn't working, I would work out twice a day. Now, I have gained weight and I don't work out at all. I have this crazy all or nothing mentality. I either do it all or I do nothing at all.
So onto my story: I needed a new winter coat as my old one didn't fit anymore. I went to all of the places that would sell one at a price I wouldn't freak out about. Also, truth be told I didn't feel that my bigger body deserved to have much money spent on it (my poor body :( )Nothing that I could afford fit me properly (there's that problem again). Sleeves too short, coat too short, too tight to zip up over a hoody. My mom convinced me to go check out Penningtons. I'd never been there because I didn't want to shop in the "big ladies store" as we had always called it. We went in and I was greeted by Jess, who showed me some winter coats. I ended up buying one that not only fit, but it makes my bum look fantastic. The sleeves were long enough, I could zip it up with my hoody underneath it. What more could I want? I had always (even at my ideal weight) been a weird size. Just a snick above a ladies XL, but definitely not big enough for a 2XL. This has always made me feel crazy self conscious. I'm not self conscious about the width of my shoulders, but I'm devastated about the size printed on the tag on the inside of my clothing. How insane is that? I went back to Penningtons a week or so later and met Sarah. I haven't worn jeans for a couple of years, opting for the stretchy yoga type pants, and I wanted to try on some jeans to see how they fit me from this store. They were too short (an easy fix), but Sarah could sense my frustration. She showed me how I should be dressing to make myself look my best, and I learned some tricks of the trade. As mentioned earlier, the hugest bane of my existance has always been not finding bras to fit me properly. I recently had one custom made that's primo, but other than that I wear something akin to an old cut off undershirt. No one makes a bra in a 42A, and that's just the unfair way it is. Then Sarah told me about bra extenders. You buy the bra that fits your front and then you use this thing that clips onto the back to extend it to fit your measurement around. AS IF!! No, it's true! And if they make these, that means that I'm not the only person out there with this issue. If, in this store, they make sleeves longer and shoulders bigger, then I'm not alone with my long arms and wide shoulders. I'm not the only person on earth who can't fit into "normal" clothes! The feeling of relief was so overwhelming that I got a little bit teary and gave Sarah a hug. Instead of the instant frustration of clothes shopping, I felt nothing but acceptance. It may seem like a small thing, but to me it opened a whole new world of self acceptance.
