Cheaper than going to a gym

I had a little epiphany about a week ago when I neglected to do all my laundry and had to wear a pair of my elastic-waist pants to my job at Staples.  Without the belt that is a required part of the uniform for any pair of dress pants that has belt loops, I was constantly pulling my pants back up to where they're supposed to sit.

Now, I'm not someone who never gets on a scale, but, like Aloriah in "The Tiger's Cub", I didn't equate the lowering numbers on the scale and the slowly changing dimensions of my body to the need to check my clothing size.  Over the past several years that I was working as a veterinary receptionist, I had been watching my weight slowly climb, and when my clothing would get too tight for me to continue to work comfortably, I would grudgingly go up to the next size scrub.  When I got up into a size 14 and was heading toward a size 16, I started policing every bite that went into my mouth, started doing things like Yoga and walking for extra exercise, but didn't seem to be able to stop gaining.

Then I quit my job at the veterinary office a year ago, finally figuring out how much the stress I was under was hurting my health, both mentally and physically.  When I got a "holiday" job at the local Macy's, I went to my local Goodwill (because I HATE buying clothing at full price) and picked up a couple of pairs of black dress pants, two with belt loops and one with an elastic waist.  The size 14 pants fit skin tight, involved me holding my breath to get the zipper up and the buttons at the top hooked, but I also had purchased a black suit jacket to go with them to hide the little bit of a muffin top look I was sporting.  My thought at the time was that, because the retail job was more physically active than what I had been doing for the past 10 years, I would start to lose weight.  Of course, because they also allowed skirts to be worn, I used my supply of black skirts for those days when I felt particularly bloated, as they were loose over the area that I was most self-conscious about.

My theories about why I wasn't losing weight at the veterinary office have obviously been proven correct. 

The easing of the stress was an almost immediately noticeable change.  Between quitting one job and being hired for the next one, I spent a lot of time walking my daughter's dog while she was in her college classes, and each day, I felt a little more of the mental weight I had been living under ease.  By the time Christmas rolled around, I was getting up each morning willing to face the day instead of wanting to crawl under a rock and never see the light of day again.  As time has gone on, I find myself more apt to roll my eyes and grumble "Seriously?" when something upsets me at home instead of wanting to go out and shoot something over the same minor issue.  As an old toothpaste commercial's tagline used to say, "It's a great feeling."

Then there's the physical aspect of the retail jobs.  At Macy's, I was primarily putting clothing back out onto the racks from the fitting rooms.  When I first started there, I would wake up every morning "feeling the burn" - mostly in my arms and lower back.  I had started to notice a slow reduction in belly fat in my mirror when I got out of the shower, and each time I put on my dress pants, it was less of a struggle to get them zipped and buttoned.  By the time I saw an opening at Staples - which is closer to my house, therefore cutting out 30 miles of travel each day one way - my business suit was fitting in the way that it should fit.

Staples has proven to be more active than Macy's was.  Each week, they get a shipment of plastic totes filled with products that need to be brought from the back room out to the racks.  Some of the totes are light, others can weigh up to 50 pounds.  A recent change from my only working the front end (cash registers and taking care of the food and ink that came in) to being cross trained to work in office supplies (basically taking care of all the products on one half of the store) means that I'm getting a more "all over the body" workout while at work - so after an 8 hour shift unloading a pallet and sorting product according to which aisle it needed to go to, I'm "feeling the burn" over my entire body, but it's a good kind of a burn....

Which brings me back to the elastic waist pants that I had to keep pulling up last week.

The two pairs of dress pants that I own, both size 14, have a belt that keeps them where I need them to be, but I started stressing a little about not being able to wear the elastic waist pants on the days that I'm doing office supply and my dress pants are both dirty.  I took a little trip into the local Goodwill and pulled a bunch of black dress pants off the rack to try on, some in a size 14 and some, just for the jollies, in a size 12.  Like a scene I describe between Chase and Aloriah, I was expecting to not be disgusted.  Instead, I found myself in shock.

The size 14 pants, when tugged gently, slid down to an indecent level on my hips - even the pair that had a waist that I would have sworn would have stayed at my waist level.  Then I tried the size 12 pants.  Wonder of wonders, I didn't have to hold my breath to zip and button them, the waistband didn't feel like it was trying to cut off my breathing, and when I tugged gently, they stayed right where they should.

Convinced that I had somehow managed to find a size 12 that was cut to be closer to a size 14, I put the 14's back onto the rack to be returned and grabbed a few more pairs of size 12's - not really finding more than the one pair that would be "work suitable", but just trying to prove a point to myself.  Every pair of size 12 pants fit around my waist the same way, and as I walked out to make my purchase, I was in awe.  It really WAS my work situation that was making me keep getting fatter despite the healthy diet and exercise!!

By the time I got home, excitement had taken hold.  Since the size 12 pants already fit like the size 14 pants did when I first started working at Staples in June, I'm hoping that I can continue to improve my body and get down to a size 10 in a reasonable amount of time (which is where I was when I first started working in the veterinary field).

My advice to those who, like me, find themselves on a diet and exercising, but unable to lose weight?  Consider the mental aspect of your life.  What might be causing stress in your world?  Is it something absolutely necessary for you to live, or can you eliminate it and do something else, as I did when I quit a stressful job and got into something that has me almost stress free?

I'm hoping next year to be able to post some bathing suit photos to my Facebook account along with a new pic of the wet suit I wear when I go out in my kayak, which I've been calling my "sausage suit" because it has always felt like I'm stuffing a sausage when I try to zip into it.  Maybe by next year, to paraphrase a Plasmatics tune called "Monkey Suit", in my sausage suit I won't feel like a sausage......