Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I found this image of a pattern for a pioneer dress on Antique Dollhouse of Patterns. It reminded me of 7th Grade.

When I was a kid, my grandmother made me two or three of these dresses. I was in the middle of an intense Little House on the Prairie phase and I needed dresses to go to church three times a week. I LOVED these dresses.

I learned to sew that summer by watching my grandmother make those dresses. Since that summer, I’ve always made some of my clothes and altered most of my store bought clothes. Store bought clothes never quite fit me correctly. Finding the right ones usually involves hemming or altering them somehow.

I always thought it was because I was fat.

Now that I am approaching “normal” sizes and can buy large “normal” clothes instead of plus sized clothes, I am surprised that I STILL need to alter my clothes. They never seem to fit correctly, but now I don’t have fat to blame.

That is EXACTLY how a lot of things are for me. I have blamed EVERYTHING on my weight, when in actuality, it had very little to do with things. Just like the fact that I still have to hem my pants, despite losing 70 pounds, I have many problems in my life that had nothing to do with my weight.

Like self-esteem. I still think I’m fat. Honestly, I still AM fat. I have thirty pounds to go right now, but I still feel as fat as I did when I was seventy pounds heavier. The fat has NOTHING to do with it. I feel fat sometimes and it has nothing to do with my body and everything to do with my mind.

Just like hemming my pants, I still need to work on my mind, no matter what I weigh. Getting thinner doesn’t solve my problems, it merely shows me what problems were caused by my fat (like chaffing thighs and being out of breath) and which ones were caused by my brain.