Like Crack

Well, I have to admit that I love trying on new clothes.

I finally let go of my size 32 jeans today. It's really tough to do because I worry about sliding back to 350 pounds. I made my 10% (34 pounds lost) at Weight Watchers, but I gained half a pound back a week later. I still feel great and want to get under 300 pounds by January 1st.

Anyway, back to a new passion. I've shopped at Lane Bryant since I was a teenager. I've always been big and have never really been happy with the selection at the big girl stores.

I actually got down to a size 10 once in my married life (I was on Nutrisystem) and I LOVED shopping for new clothes. I was able to go into any store and wear anything I wanted. It was heaven. Of course with prepackaged food diets, once I got off it, I went nuts and gained everything back, and of course the wonderful bonus pounds.

Since I went in to Lane Bryant a month ago, I ended up earning some awesome coupons - essentially everything was half off up to $150.

I am an engineer and I am very "girly" impaired. I work out of my home and most of my contact with business people are with men. I guess the best way you can describe my "uniform" is that I wear knit shirts with collars (the standard 80's polo shirt) and a pair of jeans (since they don't rip as quickly as the Docker type khaki pants). I also wear a ratty pair of suede brown tennis shoes. I've been described as being very "dykey" by many people.

Flash to walking into Lane Bryants. I'll walk into a LB and look around and not like anything I see. It's either really old looking or too young. I get intimidated very easily so I usually just leave. I'm normally looking for my standard uniform and they just don't sell stuff like that.

Yesterday I just walked up to one of the girls who work there and showed her how much I'm able to spend and let her pick. It was great. I ended up spending $118 on clothes (I wanted to only spend $75), but the clothes I bought looked great. I initially rang up $280 worth of clothes (and that was with the $75 off coupons). I had to cut. It was really hard to do and I ended up with two pairs of jeans, a raspberry shirt, and two tee shirts. I'm still fat, but the clothes make me feel pretty. I wore the raspberry shirt, the brown cammy, and the new jeans I bought today. I felt really great.

Those Lane Bryant sales ladies are GOOD. I think I need to stay away from their stores for a while because I end up wanting to spend over $100 every time I go in.