The next step in recovery – letting go of clothes that don’t fit

Too small

I’m selling some of my favourite clothes. Some of them are definitely too small. I bought them when I was at my lowest weight last year. Fitting into a smaller size was an unhealthy but irresistible boost to a fragile self esteem that had narrowed to focus only on my weight and ability to exercise to exhaustion.  They hang in my wardrobe now and remind me, daring me to go back there. It would only take some long runs and a few weeks of restriction. They are better off living with someone who is naturally a smaller size.

Close fitting

Some of them still just about fit. They’ve always been close fitting, that’s just their style. As a result they are often barely worn – rejected because my muddled mind translates their constant pressure on my skin as a sign of being too big.

But now I’m working to reduce my exercise without restricting my food. My body is softer and larger. Getting dressed is one of the most difficult times. Tight and restrictive clothes risk triggering an avalanche of recrimination, irritation and anger. Yesterday I threw a banana at the wall. It’s funny now but at the time I was so angry at my mind for telling me I had to choose fruit over toast until I had run (on a day when I wasn’t supposed to be running at all).

My favourite clothes are a tangible reminder of change that doesn’t always feel welcome. I’m trying to learn to like a softer, curvier frame but it’s hard. I’m scared of losing control.  I’m fighting to stay away from unhealthy patterns of thought that started carving deep grooves in my mind when I went on my first diet aged 9. It will always be much more comfortable to let go and slide back into them than to resist and live day in and out in a body that feels heavy and uncomfortable.

It’s easier if I don’t risk it, if I say goodbye to those clothes and that time and look forward.

Letting go

I can’t afford to buy a whole new wardrobe but I’ve bought a few larger sizes, baggier clothes. They help me forget the discomfort and move my focus to all the other brilliant things in my life – work, family and friends I love.

In the past the fact I KNEW they were a bigger size would ruin this comfort. That disordered inner voice would keep reminding me that wearing a larger size meant I’d failed. That I wasn’t in control. Ridiculously I would rather be uncomfortable and sad in clothes too tight than admit I am bigger and be happier in clothes that fit. But this time I’m determined to make real change – for my mind, for my body and for the hope of conceiving.

In her brilliant memoir of anorexia and bulimia The Time in Between, Nancy Tucker writes about a pair of shorts…

“One of the most painful things about this period is The Shorts. I have a pair of denim shorts whose label bears the glorious declaration ‘Age 6-7’ and they become one of The Voice’s favourite instruments of torture…. eventually it is a panting struggle to pull them on and when I take them off I have crusty sores on my skin where the denim has rubbed me raw. I don’t know whether it is because I need reassurance that my body is still acceptably small or because the pain of wearing them serves a hair shirt, self flagellation purpose, but from the time I hit my lowest weight to three, four, five months afterwards, The Voice insists I wear these shorts every day”.

Her anorexia was far far worse than any disordered eating I have experienced. But her words show the incredible power that the warped voice of eating disorders can give to clothes and clothes sizes. After 23 years of letting buttons, zips and waistbands rule my life, it’s time to start letting that go.