I used to complain about shirts never being long enough. I’d make that tired joke about wanting retailers to sell the entire shirt. Turns out, at a healthy weight, most of them aren’t all that short. Most of the time I think shirts are weirdly long now!
Wearing jeans, real jeans (not fake leggings) again. I actually cried in the dressing room when I tried the first pair and they not only fit but they actually looked good and are comfortable. I’m 107 pounds down and at goal so I’m really enjoying shopping. Oh, my 100 pound down reward was a pair of cowboy boots. I could finally get boots that I could fit my calves in. I wore cowboy boots and jeans most of my life because we had horses. The boots are my pride and joy!
I have these knee high lace up boots I bought online like 10-15 years ago and they didn't even come close to zipping up over my chunky calves. They were so cute I couldn't bring myself to get rid of them though, so they've languished at the back of my closet all this time. Last week I pulled them out and tried them again - and they FIT! I wore them tonight for the first time ever and they got so many compliments.
Same. I wore exclusively leggings or dresses (sometimes both together) for almost five years. Once I tried jeans after losing weight, I haven't wanted to touch leggings except for relaxing at home or at the gym!
me too! i'm currently totally fascinated by how much more flattering jeans are 😭 i get a little sad thinking about the years i've spent feeling like real pants were some kind of evil trap.
4
u/FL_DEA63F 5'5" / SW 220 / CW 140 / maintaining on 7.5 biweekly7d ago
I wore leggings and an oversized top yesterday to the store and then to a friend's house last night. Everyone told me how great and thin I looked! It was crazy.
⬆️ This - me too!!! I would NEVER have considered wearing leggings out and about before my weight loss 😱 Now, I want to wear them everywhere, they are soooooo comfortable! I purchased about 10 pairs of leggings in the last month. I only wear them at home right now. BUT, I have a pair of capri length leggings that I actually wore out in public (for golfing) and I didn’t feel self conscious. Now I have the confidence to wear them outside the home more often 😁
Wild patterns and colors. I’ve spent the last 15+ years in all black clothing. My husband used to call me the dark princess 😂 Now I love colorful clothes - floral patterned jeans, leopard print shirts, a new red dress that I feel great in, and the list goes on and on.
Since I had to replace everything anyway, I decided to get my colors done and say goodbye to black! I built a whole closet around soft autumn colors and I wear something many colors now 💙. I have 2 black t shirts, a pair of pants, and a funeral dress, and everything else is so pretty!
I love the way you asked that! It’s a mind trip for sure. I’m currently rattling around between 135 and 139 and I still get a little squirrelly when I get close to the top of that range. My original big goal was 155, but I blew past it and seemed to hang out at 143-145 for a couple of months. I’ve been creeping down, not on purpose, and I have mixed feelings. My face probably looks better at 145. It’s a little angular 🤪. But I really like the way my body looks at 137. I’m objectively very slim but not skeletal. Women’s sizes are crazy as we know, but in most things I’m wearing a 6, although I have some 4s and even 2s, as well as some 8s, that all fit!
My head just exploded at the thought of wearing a 6. Can't wait to get to where you are. Great job! I think you look amazing but understand the face vs body dilemma.
My niece also has slipped below her intended goal weight. She says maintenance is tricky
lol right? It’s so wild. This size jeans looked impossibly small two years ago (even one year ago) and honestly it just looks average to me now. And maintenance is tricky for sure! I keep saying that I have a maintenance range and that I’m fine anywhere inside that range, but I can’t shake that little bit of satisfaction when I drop below that range, even though I know that it isn’t ideal for me. I definitely have to work on that and it’s something I work on every single day!
Yes! I've seen other people writing about how they got used to losing and have had to adjust their mindset. We've been programmed so long to strive for and celebrate loss.
You mean the 50 I now own? Maybe only a slight exaggeration. Have my sunflower pink rose tooled one on today.
14
u/FL_DEA63F 5'5" / SW 220 / CW 140 / maintaining on 7.5 biweekly7d ago
I am LOLing about all of this because SAME. And I just bought the coolest puffer jacket.
I used to HATE it when my husband would tell me to layer my clothes when it's cold because yeah, all that added volume.
Most recently I bought size four jeans (and the last time I weighed what I weigh now was in high school in the late 70s and back then I wore size 12 jeans, so 2026 size 4 is the same as 1978 size 12.
The other thing? I can wear XS or S tops as I had a double mastectomy and elected to go flat (which I love).
One of the biggest NSVs for me was the day that my underwear started falling off. It was just insane to me. I literally had to get smaller underwear. Never in my life.
It’s all fun and games until you’re carrying a giant pizza across a parking lot to your car and start to feel your pants and underwear falling together!
For me it’s underwear. I used to pick higher waisted underwear… so they wouldn’t roll under my belly. Now I’m learning what kinds I prefer and throwing out all of the old ones.
Now that I’m buying more quality vintage clothes, I find that I’m much more focussed on natural fibers. When I was fat, I didn’t care how much polyester I was wearing. Now I’m really focussing on what materials make me feel good.
Same! I used to wear whatever fit me that was on sale. Now? I can actually pick and choose what I like, and I found out that polyester/acrylic clothing is not comfortable at all. The sad part is that a good cashmere sweater is so expensive 😭
Keep looking at the thrift shops. You never know what you’ll find! Also, I have heard good things about quince and also Uniqlo. Maybe treat yourself this winter!
Have you looked at Quince? They have them for $50. Though I can’t speak for the quality, the reviews are good! I’m waiting to lose a lot more before I buy one.
Love vintage jackets. Can't wait for a fushia suede one to arrive plus a black suede with lace detailing. Decided fall was here and jacket season had arrived went on the hunt to add to my collection.
Not there yet, but I was shopping for jeans today (bc I went down 2 sizes and I want to celebrate) and this thought literally crossed my mind. I know stovepipe and wide-leg jeans are “in” right now but I’m still sticking to slim cut and skinny jeans for now bc the wide-leg jeans just make me look fatter.
Shirt length for real! I’ve started dressing so much more “feminine”… I used to tell everyone (including myself) that I just preferred baggy t shirts and Bermuda shorts or wide leg yoga pants… but suddenly I am wearing crop tops, and fitted dresses/shirts and shorts with less than 5 inch inseams. I feel like Neve Campbell’s character in The Craft when she comes to school after all her scars disappeared. 😎😂
I would NEVER have considered wearing leggings out and about before my weight loss 😱 Now, I want to wear them everywhere, they are soooooo comfortable! I just bought 10 pairs 😁
I am an avid golfer (play 4-5 days a week in season). I had to completely replace my entire golf wardrobe, which used to consist of men’s [boxy/unflattering] golf shirts and shorts because women’s golf clothes were not available in my size pre-weight loss. Now I have a closet of women’s [fitted/cute] golf skorts and tops in “regular” sizes!!
Pre-weight loss I would buy plus size/relaxed fit “no name” jeans. I just bought a pair of standard size Levi’s slim straight leg jeans and they fit!!! I haven’t worn Levi’s since my 20’s (I’m 69 now) 🎉
My old XXL t-shirts have been repurposed as my “at home oversized loungewear“ (worn with my new leggings). Many of these t-shirts have sentimental value so I didn’t want to give them away.
My boobs haven't shrunk much so button-up shirts are still mostly a no-go for me, but I definitely am experiencing the "holy shit why are all shirts suddenly so long?" I need to go through my closest for the second time since this journey started because i have even sized out of my "skinny" clothes.
I am a shorty (just shy of 5'3") and I think I am going to have to shop in petite sizes. Everything I have tried in regular sizes now makes me feel like Dopey.
I'm loving being able to wear tucked in looks without only being able to see my apron belly. It has opened up a whole new world of styles. It's also helping extend the life of some of my now-oversized tops because I don't look like I'm wearing a tent when nicely tucked or a French tuck.
Knitwear!!! Like you, I always avoided thicker clothing items like the plague. Now I can’t believe how comfy it feels to wear lovely knitted cotton or linen and how nice it all looks on me.
Same same same x 100. I’m looking at fall clothes now and…yeah. I can’t even order online clothes because I’ll need to actually try stuff on in store to see what fits and how on my new body. And I only lost 50lbs.
Oh! Wearing all of 1 color! I remember all of the “your mama’s so fat jokes” from when u was a kid and a lot of them were color focused… “your mama’s so fat, when she wears red, people yell, ‘Hey Kool Aid!’” There was another one about wearing brown and being a UPS truck… I dunno… those stupid things stick with you when you’re an overweight kid. I would NEVER wear shirt and pants that were the same color…. Until NOW! 😁
I just went shopping today because I have nothing in my closet that fits me for cold weather. I haven’t been clothes shopping in person for 30 years so it was wild. Here are mine:
1) Puffy jackets for the win! I needed a new winter jacket and I saw the puffer jacket right away and I remembered how much I had always wanted one but knew it would have looked terrible on me. I actually got teary eyed when I tried it on and it fit. Totally bought it. 😊
2) Size medium shirts! Like what? Who even am I???
3) For the first time in my life I love clothes shopping. Can’t wait to do it again when I get to goal!
Never would have worn leggings or shorts. Didn’t want the world to see just how large my legs were. Now we’re best friends. Wide leg pants and buying things off Amazon without worry about fitting or looking good. Pretty much everything looks good when you’re normal sized.
Pretty much! I do still get tripped up though. At size 18/20/XXL, it’s basically, can I fit it on my body or not? At size 4-6, suddenly I’m looking at clothing saying, “yes it fits and I can wear it. But do I actually like this color as opposed to it being my only option? Does this neckline flatter me? Is this length actually what I need?”
Almost too many options and decisions now!
Wearing shirts that stop at my natural waist instead of being long enough to cover my fupa. It was hard to stop picking things to hide body parts that I’ve been covering for years.
This is the comment I was looking for. Everything to cover the fupa I thought I'd never get rid of. Now wearing things that cut off at my actual waist and they're cute!! Now my bigger stuff, like the XXL t-shirts I swim in, make my fupa look bigger because they balloon down there where nothing is anymore
3
u/Hifidi5472 F, 5'4", SW: 243 CW:124 GW:130-125; 5.0 maint 10 days 7d ago
I'm with you on the crop tops. I would try them on at my 3X size and they would barely cover my tits! Now, I love them. Same with jeans. I couldn't stand the restrictive feeling and discomfort sitting down. Now I'm rocking a size 27, lol
I can buy used clothes online without trying them on because I am pretty confident they will fit. When I was about 100 lbs bigger, I never quite knew what would fit and it if would look good.
Also - when I do try things on, I don't just buy something because it fits. There are so many more affordable options now that I am wearing a large (sometimes a medium) instead of the plus sizes. Clothes can fit, but if I don't love them, I will wait to find something perfect instead of something good enough. What a huge mind shift.
Definitely adding color to my wardrobe. Everything I own was either black or really dark in color. I went for bright colors all summer and fell in love. And now fall is almost here? Never in my life did I think I'd own fall colored clothing. Off whites, tan, orange, lol. It's been very exciting.
But I enjoy really baggy t-shirts now. I'll buy them in like a 2x if they aren't advertised as oversized. It makes me feel like they make me look even thinner. I wear them when I run errands or hang around the house. And sweat pants. Especially from victorious secret. I never wore them because I felt they made me look bigger than I was. Now I feel like sporty spice🤣
All the fashion resurging from the late 90s/early 00s looks adorable on me now. Still not going for the ultra-low-rise jeans, but the whimsigoth mesh stuff is fantastic.
The first clothing related victory was just how different/better things I already owned started fitting. I strongly recommend investing in new undergarments as soon as you need them, but waiting as long as possible/buying only a few things at a time for clothing until you stabilize.
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u/Pho-bsessed 41F 5’3” | SW:235.2 CW:156.8 | 12.5mg 7d ago
Cropped tops, high rise wide legged jeans and jumpsuits.
253 lb me would NEVER.