My closet is filled with 'aspirational clothing' and a failure to understand incentives

Weigh-In Wednesday: March 6, 2024

Photo by piotr szulawski on Unsplash

I used to be more into fasting. The hunger pangs felt like progress, and, with weight loss, there are many long stretches when nothing happens so it’s nice to feel anything at all because you want to believe progress is occurring. Yes, I respond well to positive reinforcement. (If you agree, please leave a comment saying how much you adore my writing.) 

With fasting, the results used to be worth it – in the past, fasting helped me accelerate weight loss. 

Now, I keep getting stuck at these plateaus. 

Fasting is not helping the way it used to. 

In fact, I wonder if it’s hurting. 

Last week, you may remember that I wrote:

Feeling: Great, every day, until around 7 PM. Then I hit the wall. It happens right after I eat dinner, which is when I eat most of my calories for the day, and I’m starting to think those two things are connected. I like fasting through breakfast, but maybe I am doing myself a disservice later in the day. It’s something to play around with this week.

The time has come to change things up. 

I’m going all in on two more changes:

1. Spread my calories throughout the day more evenly

2. No booze until St. Patrick’s Day

I am hoping these two changes will bust me through this plateau. I am not trying to feel sorry for myself. No complaining in the buffet line! I’m just eager to hit my goal of looking less like Augustus Gloop and more like someone who can pull off a dress shirt. It’s not a lot to ask. The rest of my many flaws I am fully prepared to live with until my soul shuffles off this mortal coil. 

Drum roll, please...

Starting weight: 187

Last week: 178

This week: 178

Goal: 170

Feeling: Mature enough to recognize that something that worked before may not be doing me any favors now.

Shoutouts:

Laura wrote: I did not gain this week....I'll leave it at that.

You touched on something this week that I recently noticed. My style of clothing changes depending on my weight. I have a closet filled with long sweaters that I have not even touched this winter. They feel - and are - too big and baggy on me. My style is not (and never will be) tight, clingy clothes, but rather, and here I use that word again, normal clothes. Blouses, t-shirts, pants that do not have elastic waists. My goal is to actually be able to tuck in a shirt again.

And knowing my history, I am boxing up those long sweaters and hiding them in a closet somewhere in my house where I hope I will never need them again. But I am not giving them away because it is humiliating to have to buy bigger clothes. Shopping is fun when the size is smaller. :)

Hey Laura: You reminded me of something I don’t think I’ve shared before – my aspirational clothing. My hatred for shopping is by now well-documented. It’s a struggle for me. Why can’t they make a shirt size in extra medium? Why can’t pants come in 36/29? And why do all of the shirts and sweaters I want to buy have big dumb clothing label logos on them and turn you into a walking billboard for menswear at Dillard’s? I can go on and on…

In the past, to cut shopping short, one of the tricks I used to play on myself would be to purchase what I call aspirational clothing. Pants that were a little too tight. Shirts that still made me look like a sausage. Many times – probably dozens – I told myself, I’ll buy these clothes as a motivation to get thin!

If any of you would like to try this, here’s what I’ll tell you: It’s a great way to throw away money.

When I’m staring down the business end of a meat lover’s supreme pizza, I’m not saying no to it because I want to fit into some shirt I might wear twice a year, I’m shoving the pizza into my pizza hole. I own many clothes that failed to ever inspire me to fitness. Yes, it’s definitely the clothes’ fault and not mine.

Looking back, it was all a delusion to get me out of the store and to task some future version of myself with having to lose the weight so that present me didn’t have to deal with any of it. Feeling good about committing some other version of myself to weight loss, I’d go off and get Asian Chao at the food court.

Laura continued: Good luck this week. I am hosting a baby shower and hope that I can give away any leftover lasagna and pierogies. Parma....need I say more?

No, you do not need to say more. Parma with its strong Eastern European roots is the Carb Capital of Cleveland. Stay strong. With God as my witness, you will tuck in a shirt again.

Gaéts wrote: Given that us women have been told for countless of years not to define ourselves by the number on the scale, I am passing on that same statement to men out there striving to be healthy. You can easily gain 2-3 lbs. in one day simply by eating high sodium meals (restaurant, fast foods, bread, processed deli, etc), and It can then take another couple of days to lose that. I weigh myself once every two weeks just to keep things in check. Trying to keep myself at 1,300 mg of sodium per day for my age-group (60) is next to impossible when you consider the average medium bagel has 450-650 mg of sodium. And, here in Canada, rather than tell manufacturing companies to lower the level of sodium in their products, they merely increased the amount people should eat. And, don't be fooled by the Lower Sodium labels because they often increase the sugar to compensate which doesn't help.

Gaéts – thank you for writing. Your point about weight fluctuations is well made, and I appreciate it.

Sorry to hear about Canada. It’s one of those countries like Denmark that some Americans think we should mimic, so it’s comforting to know that no matter where we live, we’re all doomed by a government tied inextricably to the Corn and Salt Industrial Complex. Now, I don’t have to move. 

I will keep an eye on the sodium, but this will be hard because all of the things I like have sodium, to the point where I’m pretty sure if you piled up some sodium on a plate and put it in front of me I’d grab a spoon and go to town thinking that with all that sodium there is probably some food I like at the bottom of the pile.