I was pulling up my white jeans in an airplane’s “lavatory” when I suddenly realized how much time I’d wasted in life. The tag had one of those European-numbered sizes stitched in. (So annoying, right? It’s hard enough trying on clothes knowing what the right size should be, let alone dealing with seemingly untranslatable equivalents. But anyway.) A small square piece of fabric with the number thirty was staring back at me.
There was a (long) time in my life when seeing the number thirty stitched into the back of my pants or even on a discarded item on a dressing room floor would ruin my day. My week. Perhaps, my month. I staked so much of my worth as a person on that number. The number on the scale too, of course.
But sizes, those seemingly permanent markers of my abject failures or, at overly restrictive times, hard-won successes, could undo me. Forget anything else that was going on. Forget school, work, friendships, relationships. It was as if I’d taken my forearm and dramatically swiped off all the plates and glasses resting on a four-top at a crowded restaurant. Instead, I’d replaced it all with a simple, tiny coat check claim with all the stage lights magnifying it for everyone to see.
My gosh. Who cares?
In my attempts to make that number different – a size two instead of, say, a twelve – I’d damaged my body and soul. I’d spent years counting every “BLT” (bite, lick and taste) and translating it into Weight Watchers Points. I’d spent every meal planning, plotting, recording, and measuring. I’d doled out one-quarter cup of brown rice with two carefully weighed ounces of plain grilled chicken, and steamed broccoli. I’d forced myself to work out every single day, no matter where I was or what was happening, finding sketchy backyard “gyms” when attending destination weddings. I couldn’t miss a day.
“Just have some scrambled eggs,” my friends would say, when I panicked, realizing a lower-Points egg white option wasn’t available at a post-wedding buffet. Are you kidding me?! But that would cost me five Points, instead of only one Point! Then I’d almost definitely exceed my twenty allotted Points for the day and then I’d have to dip into my weekly savings, and didn’t they know I was banking those for a piece of cake on Friday and the one-Point muffin-tops I had nightly to get my sweet fix? My head would conjure up my trusty spiral notebooks where I catalogued every single item of food I’d consumed for years with a proudly circled number at the end of every week. Nothing was just a bite of food. It was an input into a carefully orchestrated formula designed to keep me from – gasp! – gaining weight.
Never mind that my hair was falling out or that I’d stopped getting my period or that I was always freezing cold. Never mind that doctors couldn’t seem to figure out what, exactly, was causing my other bizarre symptoms. Plus, then, I was a size two or four. I wasn’t that thin, not thin enough to have an eating disorder. I didn’t even have the discipline to get there, that’s how pathetic I was, I thought. Was it all the chemicals, how I sprinkled Splenda on everything including my daily cucumber/vinegar salad (zero Points!)?
My mind was constantly filled with equations. Food math was my fuel, the antidote to the cravings, the defense against the sugar I hunted down like an addict from delis on Madison Avenue, eating chocolate chip cookies out of brown paper bags like a junkie.
What grades meant to me in school, sizes now meant to me in the world.
Of course, some brands were more lenient, so that’s where I shopped. Banana Republic, where I could even pull off a size zero occasionally, was my favorite. But then, oh, how terrible it felt when I’d gotten back to a size fourteen.
Fourteen? I’d think. How could I have let this happen?! I’d berate myself endlessly, punitive, cruel. You failure,I’d shout internally as I stared in the dressing room mirror in a size ten. You should wear a size four or six! You should be smaller! You should have more control. You should look like all your skinny friends. Your mom. You should have more will power! What is wrong with you? How could you let this happen? And now it’ll take months to get a better size. You’re pathetic, do you know that?
On and on and on. Until I’d restricted myself enough back down to the smaller sizes before the cycle repeated. Oh, the amount of time I spent chasing a number. A number! Stitches on a tag that no one could see but me. All that self-abuse, flagellation, and energy, for that?!
I’ve been on Mounjaro now for three years now. My size rarely changes. I’m happy being a size six, eight, or ten depending on the item and brand. I don’t think about food. I never tire of marveling at the fact that my clothes simply fit. For more than forty-five years, that just wasn’t the case. I never knew what would fit daily. I had jeans in every size.
Now, I don’t think about my size. Yes, I evaluate how I look in clothes, but I never put on a well-fitting dress and think, “If only it were two sizes smaller, then I could be happy.” No. I’m just happy. Full stop.
It wasn’t until I saw the number thirty tucked into the waist today that I realized I’d completely stopped putting so much importance on insignificant numbers. A size thirty probably would’ve set me off. I should be in the twenties, I would’ve thought. What’s wrong with me? Now, I’m just happy to be in comfortable, pants. (Although perhaps I shouldn’t have worn white pants on a flight. Lesson for another day.)
Now I’m left asking myself: why did I waste all that time? Why?! I wish someone had taken me by both shoulders and shaken me, saying, “Stop this right now. You are not the size of your pants! You are so much more than that.” I want to say that to everyone in a dressing room, ever, bemoaning the fact that they need a larger size.
Being bigger than your friends doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t. It doesn’t mean you’re less worthy, less smart, less driven. It means nothing other than what your body type is and how much you’ve been eating and exercising lately.
If I’d spent a fraction of my twenties and thirties focused on something other than the deafening food noise, think what I could’ve accomplished instead. Sadly, I chose to bash myself in the head, making myself feel terrible for something irrelevant.
Who cares what sizes we all wear? What matters is who we are. What we do. What we give back. What we create. It’s how we conduct ourselves in the world. How we make meaning out of the limited time we have here. How we treat other people. It’s the size of our hearts, not your hips.
The fact that we all come in different shapes and sizes is just a byproduct of being on this earth. All species, all plants, everything, comes in different models. Let it be. This is the moment to live, not to punish yourself. It’s time to button up and get back to doing the real stuff of life without another thought.
Sizes don’t matter. But you do. Treat yourself that way. Remember, it’s just a tiny little tag. It is not who you are. I just hope it doesn’t take you as long to realize it.