My new workout look

As I kept gaining weight through the years that would eventually lead to a long-term existence as a morbidly obese person and as my clothes kept getting bigger and bigger as a result, in my personal life I only wore baggy, stretchy pants and long, baggy T-shirts. 

In my younger years I lived in jeans, but as I got fatter and fatter, I stopped wearing them because they became too constricting.  Up to a few years ago, jeans were made of very thick, heavy denim fabric and they were just too uncomfortable to wear on a big body.  Nowadays jeans are made of much thinner, lighter fabric and, in many cases, even stretchy denim.  In any case, when you're very big, you're more comfortable wearing very loose, stretchy clothing and not necessarily because you think the extra fabric hides anything - although the illusion (or is it delusion?) that it hides your true body shape helps. 

For work I dressed in stylish, expensive suits and other dressy business attire which included some color, too.  In my personal life, however, I only wore things that came in black, dark blues, or grays.  The most daring I got was wearing white shirts now and then.  My personal life wardrobe contained nothing outlandish.  It was all baggy and boring, nondescript.  Who cared, really.   I never went anywhere anyway and even if I did, I didn't care what I looked like, I just wanted to be comfortable even though I was already self conscious about my size.  I realize now that unintentionally I preferred boring clothes in dark colors because they reflected my emotional state about my appearance:  dark, gloomy, boring, and depressing.  Every aspect of my life then reflected a woman who had given up on herself.  Not only did I wear these boring, depressing clothes, my hair was usually in a boring pony tail and I stopped wearing make-up years ago as well.   Who cared, there was no point in caring when you're physically huge.  You already look awful and you feel awful.

One of the unexpected consequences of losing so much weight has been that I started gravitating towards colorful, splashy clothes, started fixing my hair, and even (gasp!) wearing make-up when I went out with friends.  It wasn't intentional at all, it just happened.  As my body kept shrinking and I felt better about my appearance and myself, I wasn't as self conscious anymore about bringing attention to myself by wearing colorful clothes.  The happier I got, the brighter and more colorful my clothes got.  I started wearing jeans last year, too.  Then came the make-up because I wanted to look better. 

Several trainers at Total Woman ("TW"), my regular gym, including my own trainer, Flaminia ("Fla"), used to tell me to stop wearing "ginormous" clothes when I worked out, but I felt comfortable and I didn't think my clothes were that oversized anyway.  Plus I was shrinking so fast that I'd buy a smaller size only for it to become baggy in a couple of months.  One day when I was working out, a trainer came up behind me and clipped my T-shirt in the back with binder clips to show off my smaller body.  Once she finished clipping it, she told Fla, "Now that's better!"  Fla wanted me to wear activewear clothing that is body-hugging, but I was way too large and way too embarrassed to wear that type of clothing, even at an all-women's gym.  That was then… 

Nowadays, activewear capris pants are the only thing I wear.  I still don't feel comfortable enough to wear tank tops so I opt for my cotton T-shirts, but now they're in a much smaller size.  I'm now wearing shirts in a medium (and in some cuts I can wear a small), down from 3XL/4XL at my largest.  As for my capris activewear pants, I wear a large or XL, depending on the cut.  The more outlandish my capris are, the more I like them.  I first started wearing them only to TW because that required me to only walk from my car to the gym and back to my car and it minimized my exposure of wearing these in public.  In fact, I had 3 pairs in my closet for a couple of months before I dared to wear them out my front door.  Even when I started wearing them to the gym, I was still too embarrassed to wear them out in public anywhere else.  That was then…

Now I wear capris activewear everywhere!   My biggest problem these days is which pair from my vast collection do I wear on that particular day.  I was just telling a friend the other day, "I need to be stopped!  I keep buying activewear capris!"  

Since I work out twice a day (sometimes thrice a day), I wear my crazy capris as I run errands between workouts, too.  I wear them to walk around my neighborhood and when I walk my mother's dog in her neighborhood; I wear them to spin class; I wear them to train with Tunde; I wear them to my regular gym, TW.   I've worn them to doctor appointments, the market, the bank, etc.  Basically, I wear them EVERYWHERE, and since I work out pretty much every day, these are my daily outfit.   

A friend told me ages ago that she hates it when women wear their workout clothes all the time and I recently had to confess to her that I had become one of those women she hates.  She said, "You're different, you actually work out throughout the day.  The women I'm talking about are those who you know  haven't been to the gym in years, the ones who fix up their hair and are wearing make-up while running around town wearing workout clothes.  You just know  they haven't been to the gym."   In my case, I'd have to change clothes several times a day so it's easier to just wear my workout clothes everywhere.  I chuckle now when I remember how embarrassed I was the first time I wore them to my all-women's gym and here I am now wearing them all over town without a care.  I normally have gym hair (which is pretty awful) and no make-up as I run around town, but that's okay.  I still feel better about my appearance than I have in decades.  Whether other people think I look ridiculous, who knows.  All I know is that I'm perfectly pleased with myself.

At the spin studio I go to, I take the same spin class every Sunday because I love the young woman who teaches that class.  We always hug each other and she started commenting a few weeks ago how she liked my latest capris design so now I find myself making it a point of wearing a new pair to her class to "model" my latest purchase for her.  We both laugh that I do that.  I know, it's silly, but what the heck!  When you've been in a social coma for almost 20 years because you hated your body and appearance, it's fun to be silly and have fun with it now.  Plus my silliness motivates me to go to Sunday's spin class, too, if for no other reason than to show her my latest acquisition.

Below are a few photos of some of my latest workout wardrobe choices.  These were taken between March and April 2016.  My weight was between 177 lbs. and 169 lbs. in these.   I sent these photos to Fla and her response was, "I had to leave the state before you started wearing these?!"   

What's interesting is that my body continues to shrink (proven by dropping clothes sizes, lower body fat percentages, and smaller measurements) even though the scale numbers didn't really change that much.  This goes to what both Fla and Tunde, my trainers, keep telling me:  stop worrying about the scale numbers!  You're building muscle, which weighs more, so look at how your body is shrinking and not at what the scale reflects.