Cleanin’ Out My Closet

My Post-Baby Body

This year, the change of seasons forced me to face the reality that it was time to clean out my closet. Like many moms, the body I have today is quite different from my pre-baby body. I have struggled with body image issues for years, which made the journey of pregnancy weight gain all the more challenging. I am working on accepting my body the way it is, but more than that, loving the body that carried and gave me my two beautiful boys.

Body Image and Body Love

The National Eating Disorders website, among others, lists ways to help you love your body the way it is and here are a few of the things that stuck with me the most.

Think back to a time in your life when you felt good about your body. Loving your body means you get to feel like that again, even in this body, at this age.
Wear clothes that make you feel good about your body.
According to the co-author of “The Beauty Prescription,” Eva Ritvo, MD, you are 20% more beautiful to other people than yourself. Because when you look in the mirror all you see is your physical form and flaws. Others take into account your personality, style, intelligence, sex appeal, and wit.
Think about how you’d want your kids to see themselves when they grow up and look at yourself that way.

Facing the Music

I was talking with a friend the other day about my pregnancies and we started talking about gaining weight. I gained the same amount of weight with both of my pregnancies, 39 lbs. With Rocco, I lost all my baby weight in 3 months. With Declan, despite doing everything the same, and having a toddler, I plateaued around the time Declan was 3 months old with 10 lbs to go. I don’t know if 10 lbs is the same on every body, but I can tell you on mine, 10 lbs is enough that I can no longer zip my pants, most of my shirts are snug, and I went up 3 sizes. I held off cleaning out my closet or buying too many new clothes, becauseI thought “I’ll fit in these again,” and I couldn’t justify spending money on new clothes to only loose the weight and have to get rid of brand new clothes. However, when 14 months went by and I hadn’t lost any more weight, it was time to face the music and get clothes that fit.

You may be surprised to learn that I consider Eminem to be an amazing and talented musician of our time. He has a song titled, “Cleanin’ Out My Closet,” that came to mind when I cleaned out my closet and wrote this article. While the lyrics are a bit less PG than we’re talking here, ultimately, he’s talking about how everyone has skeletons in their closet, things they hang on to and let haunt and torture them. Things no one can see, but can be there always reminding you that you’ll never be enough. This applies to women and their closets too, even mine.

Most women have at least 4 sizes of clothing in their closet: skinny, skinnier, the clothes that fit, and fat.

Skinny clothes are the ones you wore about 10 lbs ago. They remind you if just worked a little harder you could fit back in these beautiful clothes.
Skinnier clothes are the ones you wore when you was rocking your hot body. They just SCREAM and LAUGH failure every time you look at them.
The clothes that fit are the ones that may not have the greatest style, don’t really express your personality, cover all your “trouble” areas, and are usually darker colors so you don’t stand out.
Fat clothes are the ones you wore when you were 10, 20, 50 pounds heavier. They warn you don’t get too carried away, you been here before.

So, basically all the clothes in our closet are reminding us that we were once beautiful, that now we’ve failed, and that today is just another day of hiding what we’ve become. The clothes we really like in our closet are the ones that don’t even fit us. There’s a saying that you should never date a man that sleeps in a twin bed, because it means he doesn’t have room in his life for a woman or a relationship. How are our closets any different? If we don’t get rid of the old to make room for the new, how will we ever move forward.

Jennifer was Baumgartner, PsyD believes that the way we dress is closely related to how we feel. There’s science that supports the idea of dressing for the body and fitness level you want to have.

Out With the Old…

So, I bit the bullet and purged all the skinnier clothes and some of the skinny ones too, so my closet isn’t a constant reminder of the good old days but rather a reflection of woman I am today and want to be in the future.

Hopefully, exposing and disposing some of my skeletons haunting me, will inspire you to do the same.

References