skinny jeans manifesto

About a month ago I received a voice mail from my dad: "Uhh... we're taking things to Goodwill and I'm bringing that bag of clothes you left in the basement." Panic and immediate call back: "No, Dad, those aren't Goodwill clothes, they're just clothes I don't really wear anymore but I don't want to get rid of yet, please don't take them." Pause. "What's the difference? If you don't wear them, get rid of them."

Whether my reasoning got lost in translation because of differences in gender or age, I'm not sure, but I didn't expect him to understand. (Will Smith was totally right.) Sure, that bag was filled with both too-tight jeans and old band t-shirts inscribed with angsty quotes that now make me cringe, but they had not yet sunk to the level of no return. There was still hope in some of that cotton.

And good thing, because about an hour ago, after lugging the bag back from his house, I experienced one of the greatest moments ever recognized in the history of womandom: I fit into my pre-college (and pre-weight gain) jeans, no shimmy necessary.

I've never experienced this elation. When I lost my childhood chub, it was because I grew vertically and just, well, straightened out I guess. My weight didn't actually drop. Since then, any weight losses were subtle and were countered by puberty-induced changes (I have hips now? What are these?). Because of all these other directional growths, my pant size has only gone up, not down.

Now, I know that I've said many times that I think it's important to focus more on over-all health than a number on the scale, and I'm sticking to that. (In fact, I have no idea what I weigh right now. I don't own a scale.) But--by this I don't mean that weight doesn't matter. It does, especially when it's in either extreme. So then what do I mean by this little credo of mine?  Well, it's sort of two-fold: what matters more than getting down to a certain weight is why you want to lose that weight and where you plan to go after you do.

For one, there is a colossal, often-overlooked distinction between wanting to lose weight to look skinny and thus more attractive (an externally-motivated desire) and wanting to lose weight to be healthier (internally-motivated). And for me, it took completely dismissing weight loss as a goal altogether to finally lose weight--counter-intuitive, I know, but this mindset worked. This seems like a difficult place to get to mentally, especially as a single twentysomething woman who would like to, you know, attract a nice potential-husband someday. But it's not, because my decision had nothing to do with the way I look: I wanted to get Healthier, and if Skinnier decided to tag along, so be it. Because of this, losing weight was even more satisfying; it was like an extra treat, the prize at the bottom of the cereal box.

But I wasn't always like this. I have countless memories of shocking glimpses in the mirror, tears streaming down my cheeks, scribbled lists of all the things I was no longer going to allow myself to eat. All such diet ventures have hitherto been failures. And perhaps rightfully so, because besides being superficial, they were punishments assigned during fits of anger toward myself, my body: "You let yourself go, now you have to suffer." All totally unrealistic. They were like those year-long grounding sentences issued by fired-up parents during high school, the ones that made you turn your head and snicker because you knew it was never gonna last.

Same with those diets, only this time it was my bad habits doing the snickering. Once my frustration toned down, so did my will to eat only salads for lunch, order from the "lite" menu at restaurants, pass on pizza with friends, etc. Everything about these "diets" was painted negatively: How many calories can I burn, how many can I cut out. These restrictions were so suffocating that when I didn't immediately see results, I gave up, thinking "Well if I'm not going to lose weight, I may as well eat what I want."

I focused on a tenuous destination, not a long-term journey. And as corny as it sounds, being healthy really is a journey, in that it is one little step after the other. Don't plunge in and expect to know how to swim; you have to toe the shore and allow your body time to accommodate. And it will. I found that the more healthy foods I tried, the more I craved them. Same with exercising. That my body loved me for it; I could feel it in my lungs and my stomach and my muscles and my heart, without a doctor telling me so.

And today, I felt it again in the empty space between my skin and the waistbands of those jeans. Without a guy's approval.