Aaaah, the dressing up box!

I'm sure you'll know the one I mean. That box at the back of Mum's wardrobe stuffed full of old clothes for 'pretend'. Beautiful colours, luxurious textures and a pair of Mum's old stilettos which, although way, way, way too big for you, made you feel like a princess teetering along in them. Wasn't it a fabulous feeling to try something out of the box and feel great!

Childhood days came to an inevitable end and, especially in my fattest days, I quite lost any sense of delight in trying on clothes. To be frank, no matter what the garment, however luxurious, in my mind at least, my obesity overwhelmed it. I cannot remember looking in the mirror and feeling pretty, or ladylike, or fun, or anything positive at all. No matter if lovely hubby said 'you look nice', I felt inadequate, and usually like a big, unsightly lump.

You know the worst part? I kind of thought that was just a pretty normal thing in life. Yep. I thought it was 'normal' for a woman (me) to try on/buy clothes and feel unattractive. Sure I knew that my weight did me no favours, and tried to hide/mask/disguise it in lots of ways, but I couldn't see past it (yeah, quite literally sometimes!) to the fact that this wasn't the case for everyone. Somehow, a simple pleasure in life was missing and I didn't even see that.

There have been lots of positive reasons for losing the weight I have done, and I've mentioned a fair few in the past. Still, and always, the biggest benefit of all has been to my health, but I'll now add another one....

I have regained a little of that childish delight in the dressing up box. I now find pleasure in trying on clothes once again. Some of them look nice, some truly hideous, but the pleasure in trying on 'something new', even when I have absolutely no intention whatsoever of buying it has returned. That's really, really nice, and it can give me a little boost when things get tough in other ways.

(and yes, I used to dress up my doggie too - he was very patient, bless him)