Getting Back In The Game By Not Playing Pretend

This weekend I cleaned out my closet, one of many parts to Operation: Get My Head Back In The Game. I took everything out and tried it on and then each item either went back on a hanger into the closet, in a donate pile, or was fit only for the trash can. Honestly guys, only about half or even a little less than half of my stuff survived. I decided to do the clean out because I noticed that it was taking me forever to find something to wear in the morning yet my closet was stuffed full of things. Once all the unwearable items were out I could see why I couldn’t find anything to wear. I just don’t have that many things that actually fit me. I have a hard time getting rid of clothes that I don’t fit into anymore because there’s always this “what if I need it?” thought in the back of my mind. This thinking applies both to things too big and things too small to be worn. I’m always hoping that I’ll get back down to a size that will allow me to wear some favorite shirt or I’m secretly afraid of ballooning up to a size and I’ll need pants that can accommodate the gain. There were things in there that I thought I was saving because they were still too small yet when I tried them on, they were already too large to be worn. That sucks because there have been times in the past few months where I really needed clothes and could have used them! Alternatively, there were things that were way too big and I hope that I’ll never wear again. For some reason, these were the hardest things to get rid of. Getting rid of all the larger sized clothes was like saying that I’m not that person anymore and am committing to never being her again. After they were all piled up on my living room floor I looked at them and wasn’t sure how I actually felt. I think I hit the nail on the head though when I told my husband, “There goes my safety net.” Keeping all that stuff was like insurance for my binge eating ways. I remember last Thanksgiving I was so uncomfortable; I had started with Halloween candy and then just never stopped eating. By end of November I was wearing baggier shirts and my jeans had become way too tight. My way of dealing with it was to go into my closet and get the next size up pants. That allowed me to go back to living in denial about my weight gain. At the time, it was just easier to go on eating and pretend that I hadn’t gained back all my weight. I’m pretty good at that kind of pretending considering that I went from a size 5 all the way back to a size 13/14 before I admitted to myself that it was time to do something. And I think that’s typical me, some people freak out when they gain five pounds, I don’t freak out until I’ve hit the forty or fifty pound mark. It takes that much for me to realize that the weight gain has gotten out of control. Maybe that’s why I’ve always had a weight problem, sometimes I can’t see past the food and what it symbolizes to me. Sometimes the food is even worth the sacrifice of what it does to my body and I have to be so miserable and unhappy in it that I can’t go on pretending that the weight isn’t there any longer. The first step then is getting rid of that safety net, or what it more accurately is, that crutch that I’ve depended on: There are no bigger sizes in my closet to fall back on, no bigger clothes to play pretend in.