One of my MANY motivators

I have a lot of reasons for wanting to lose weight. I'm sure I'll blog about many of them. I collided with one of those reasons today: the dreaded bridesmaid dress shopping. My sister is getting married in October, and I am standing up in the wedding along with my husband and my oldest daughter. Clearly, I want to look decent. Clearly, being of the huskier variety, I have a bad attitude about dress shopping.  Well, any shopping really. It's just not a lot of fun when you're a bigger girl. But, I digress ... let's just stick to shopping for bridesmaid dresses. 

First of all, let's just say this ... a designer's idea of size is a lot different from the sizes that are out there in our department stores. So while shopping at a store like David's Bridal is somewhat nice because they carry the larger sizes that you can actually try on, you mostly are trying on a dress that is numbered sometimes two sizes up from your normal size. Thank you for that. Nothing makes you feel fatter than trying on a dress that is sized bigger than you actually are. Then you have the "other" bridal stores, the ones that only carry dresses for the toothpicks. So all you can do is be an innocent bystander while the "skinny bridesmaids" take to the runway and hope that if a dress is picked from there, by the time yours actually comes in and you try it on, you don't look too terrible.

So after the humiliation of either trying on dresses that are too small for you or dresses that just plain look hideous, you get the fun task of being measured. The seamstress should have an expense budget in which to take you out to dinner afterward. Then comes the decision ... and boy is it a big one: What size do you actually order? Your measurements clearly tell you what you SHOULD order, but what happens to someone like me? Someone who is trying really hard to lose weight? I was told by the seamstress that you only have a two-size span before a dress is unalterable. Research shows that you lose a size every time you lose about 10 to 15 pounds. So my goal is to lose at least 1 pound per week. I have roughly 36 weeks — almost three dress sizes if I stick to my goal — so do I chance it and order the dress one size smaller? Is that setting me up for failure??? Well, I have decided that I will order the dress one size smaller. I figured one month before the wedding, if for some reason I have fallen off the wagon or for other reasons I am still the same size as I am now (I'm kidnapped and forced to live on nothing other than Dr. Pepper and Cool Ranch Doritos), I can do a lovely crash diet and lose at least 15 pounds to fit into that dress.

There is no point on me touching on the subject that I could go above and beyond my goal and screw myself by losing too much weight. I'm just a "glass is half empty" kind of gal.

One of the many styles of dresses that was tried on. Yes, folks, that is a POCKET!