When Your Clothes Don't Fit
It's easy to talk about body positivity. It's harder to actually believe it.
Current Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Reading: ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ - Oliver Burke
Listening To: ‘Oceans’ - Kenna Childs
Every now and then, there are moments in your life where the universe pulls you out of a stupor and into the cold reality of adult existence. For me, I went through one of these back in June.
After living in sweatpants for basically the entire pandemic, I was heading to my first wedding and had to pull out my suit. After dusting it off, I moved to put it on to plan what shirt and tie I was going to wear, only to find that it didn’t fit me at all.
There was that moment where staring in the mirror, I finally saw my body for what it really was. I saw how far I had let myself go over the various lockdowns and realized that those sweatpants had been hiding a nasty reality. I was grossly out of shape.
I won’t lie, it stung.
I had to race off to a shop to buy an entirely new suit in a size that I hoped never to get to - just so that I had something to wear for the wedding. Pulling out my credit card hurt more than normal and I went home with my tail between my (rather chunky) legs.
I can’t be the only one. This pandemic has been stressful for everyone and I’m sure that you too have indulged in some well-deserved comfort food and general laziness.
What has been more worrying though has been my own self-talk in the months that proceeded the suit disaster. On reflection, I’ve been incredibly hard on myself and it’s been a serious hit to my pride/ego. I don’t have many insecurities, but this has been a big one for a while now. For all the talk about body positivity, it’s very difficult to crawl out of the darkness once you start to believe negative stories about yourself.
That’s where we have to be kinder to ourselves.
That’s where I have to be kinder to myself.
We have (almost) survived an entire global pandemic for goodness’ sake. A bit of a belly is a small price to pay for that and it’s incredibly superficial to tie your worth to the size of your clothes. There is so much more to being a human and we sell ourselves short when we let these things get to us.
The older I get, the more I realize that so many of the things that we worry about on a daily basis, actually don’t matter at all. And the more I beat myself up about it, the worse my life is going to be.
Yes, I want to get fit and healthy again. Yes, I’m working on getting back to where I was. But it’s going to take a long time, and if I’m going to be miserable until I get there, then what’s the point?
The goalposts are always going to move. And if we constantly live with our minds in the future, imagining a time where everything in our life is in place, we’re going to live in perpetual disappointment.
Instead, let’s try to love the body that we’re in now. Let’s focus on staying in the present and focusing on what really matters. Let’s work on building the daily habits that can get us heading in the right direction, but let’s not beat ourselves up when we fail. We dust off and try again tomorrow.
Because every day that we spend in a state of self-loathing is one that we lose to the sands of time.
And we don’t have much of it left.
Links:
This is bound to put a smile on your face. Spend some time looking at these animals dropping mixtapes and you'll find that extra bit of motivation that you need to face this week. (Link)
Lots of good wisdom in this eschatological laundry list. (Link)
How much work do you do before coming to an opinion? (Link)
I loved this connection between cringe comedy and the Jungian shadow. (Link)
Long live the Tyler Cowen production function. (Link)
Sending you plenty of good vibes for your week ahead, be kind to yourself and I’ll see you again next week!
Barry