Can't Button My Pants.

I feel HUGE!  I had a parka on in this photo but I feel this big even without it.  Weighed myself this morning.  OMG.  All the exercising, the healthy eating and 3 mile daily dog walks haven't had any effect other than adding weight. Each day I find clothes that fit last week (3 or 4 days before) no longer fit. My waist and butt are expanding at a very fast rate as I can't button or even zip the pants I wore last week.
I just emptied my closet and the storage container.  I found size 20 pants which fall off my hips and I found my weight loss pants (12-14) which I can't pull up past my knees.  I also found a handful of pants that I CAN wear and I am feeling better now.  I can fit into all the work pants from last summer. I just can't wear them until summer. All the 12-14's are going to Goodwill.  All the 20's are going to Goodwill.

Needless to say, all this weight is causing much unhappiness.  I continue to do my Pilates exercises everyday.  I watched a series of videos and have been doing them "more" correctly than I did the first time around.  I can feel the burn now.  Pilates is all about the correct posture and use of the abdominals.  I struggle with the leg extensions and need to really work on stretching the muscles at the back of my legs and thighs.  Hamstrings?  I am pointing my toes, flexing my feet, pressing my navel into my backbone and breathing in and breathing out.  Doing the 100 with legs in tabletop position.  Someday I will be able to extend my legs and do the 100 that way.  Not. Yet.  Eight Days And Counting.

Yesterday was my first full day back at work.  The big greenhouse is open.  Sunshine warming it up.  The high school boys have worked hard to scrub the floors.  I threw away the dry kinked, leaking hose that bedeviled me all of last season and now have a new hose (which is kinking and bedeviling me in new ways) so I feel right at home.  I don't like working Sundays.  G's day off.  But I guess that is the weekend day I will be working unless I am teaching a class. I have four days this week.  A good start.

I had wondered if I really wanted to return to work.  I was trying to figure out if the positives outweighed the negatives.  One day in and I am still wondering.  It's very close.  The positives are not overwhelmingly ahead of the negatives.  Where else would I work?  Where else would they let me wander around doing whatever I want to do? And what would I wear to work?


I feel a bit better now that my closet has less in it.  Why keep clothing that doesn't fit?  Why don't I use my clothes as an indicator of the way I am eating?  The first time I had to inhale to button my pants, should have been the first day of eating less food and doing more exercise.  Not months or years later. Keeping my "skinny" clothing and thinking that, without work, they would someday fit again, is ridiculous.  I may never wear a 12 or 14 again.  But I will try to look good in whatever size I am wearing.  I will continue to try and eat whole foods.  I will do my Pilates and walk the dog.  I will learn to love who I am.  And button my pants. Eventually.