Feel Comfy in your clothes

We’ve all been there trying to zip up jeans that are just too tight. First comes up squats and leg shimmies, then we jump up and down a few times hoping the zipper doesn’t break and we aggressively pull it up.

Let me ask you this: If your teenage daughter was having this experience trying on jeans, would you force her to fit into them, or find jeans that fit her body?

When clothes feel too tight, we might go into panic mode and start looking up fad diets and workout routines. The truth is that these searches typically lead to more disconnection with our body’s intuition. You’ve gotta give yourself permission to size up. Even if you know you’ve recently gained weight and know you’ll lose it, you deserve clothes that fit your body right now.

When I gained weight in graduate school, only about 10% of the clothes in my closet fit me. As I tried to squeeze into clothes that were smaller than my body, the tight clothes set up a false narrative that something was wrong with my body, when in reality, the size was wrong with the clothes. The clothes are meant to fit us, not the other way around. When we’re in this position, we can either adapt to the size that we need at that given time or change our bodies. Manipulating our bodies away from where they want to be often gets in the way of discovering the internal cues. I know it can be hard to buy a bigger size, but if you don’t feel comfortable in your clothes, then it’s really hard to be comfortable in your body.

If you lost weight and your clothes didn’t fit anymore, would you give yourself permission to get a smaller size? If the answer is yes, then think about why this might not be the case with weight gain.