Clown Pants

Today I tried putting on one of my favorite pairs of pants from a couple of years back. I still wear it occasionally, but today it really just struck me how poorly they fit now along the waistline.

Seriously, they look like clown pants on me now! They’ve got elastic, and if I stretch the extra space out in front of me I could fit a paperback book there, face up. I could not decently wear them with suspenders without exposing my briefs to passersby.

Not that I’ve worn suspenders in a good eight years.

Even then, it’s getting too bad to use a belt for; there’s simply too much waist material. They’ll probably have to go soon. They’re quite comfortable, but I don’t think the radical alterations needed to get them fitting properly now are feasible and worthwile.

The funny thing is, two years ago I wore pants along my hip rather than my waist. Back then I found size 46 pants comfortable at my hip, now I find size 38 pants comfortable at my waist.

Half of what’s scary about this is that I’m clearly still overweight. My belly sticks out a fair bit, and my upper legs are quite flabby. That said, my skin clearly thanks me; the stretch marks are fading. As I close in on 100 pounds down from my peak of 310, it’s becoming quite clear that my ideal weight (without major muscle gain) is somewhat below 200. I wasn’t certain that it was below 220 when I started this whole thing.

It all started with someone pointing me at The Hacker’s Diet. I didn’t even follow advice in it that aggressively, but just took away the single realization that dieting is a game of small differences. Cutting out non-diet soda and cutting back my diet a little and my weight started dropping a good 1.5 pounds a week; I was amazed at the sheer amount of food I was still eating. And now, a little over two years later (with a good 9 month hiatus at around 250) it’s dropping below 220. I didn’t take a good “before” picture, and really only now am noticing the differences to my appearance. Still, there’s incidental things, like being able to do a single (just one) push up without daily training…

My biggest New Year’s resolution this time is to see this through; continue dieting until I hit my ideal weight. Like any good resolution, it is a “continue,” just as it was two years ago.