This past week I spent the week down on the Jersey Shore at my familys’ beach house. Our beach house is on Long Beach Island. It’s an island with very little chain stores or restaurants and when you get on the island you usually stay on the island. Midweek I was coming to the conclusion that I was running low on wipes. Sure I could have run to our island grocery store to get whatever brand they stocked but the particular wipes I like were at Target, about 25 minutes away, off the island. The biggest incentive to take this trek, there is a Starbucks in this Target. So maybe I was just looking for an excuse to get my Starbucks BUT lucky for me my aunt, who also spends much of her summer on Long Beach Island, offered to take a ride with me.

We headed to Target, got our Starbucks, picked up the wipes and then continued up and down the rest of the aisles, running up our bills in the way every great Target trip goes. At one point, we found ourselves in the clothing section because my aunt remembered she needed to pick up an article of clothing for an upcoming trip. She was in between sizes and decided to just buy the bigger size. That moment was the inspiration for this post today. We both acknowledged in the car ride home that that decision to buy the bigger size wasn’t a moment of defeat but a moment of triumph. I was proud of her for making the hard decision to go bigger. Yes, we all know, its one of the hardest decisions to go bigger. It should be a no brainer, but sadly, it’s not.

It’s because sizes are a lot like the scale. We let them define us. We’ve come up with a certain size in our heads that we believe we should be and when we aren’t that size, we beat ourselves up. We spend way too much time and energy trying to get into that certain size. We think people know what size we wear. We think our lives will be better if we are the smaller size. We think everyone we pass on the streets knows what the tag on the inside of our clothes reads. We give the size too much power. In fact, how many times have we been in a dressing room and we’ve been in between two sizes? We get the smaller size JUST because it’s the smaller size. We squeeze into the smaller size, wear it even though we’re uber uncomfortable simply because it’s the size we want to be. Or we buy the smaller size thinking it will be a vehicle to motivate us. From my personal experience, any clothes I buy that are too small, never motivate me. They actually do the opposite. They haunt me in my closet,  collect dust and make me eat more.

I know how hard it is to make the decision to buy the bigger size. It feels like a defeat, a failure. And it’s a reminder of the progress we haven’t yet made. But in NO way whatsoever does the size of clothes you wear define you.

Being 4 months post baby, I’ve acquired a pair of jeans that are two sizes bigger than my pre-pregnancy jeans. These jeans are beyond comfortable, they fit, they look great and I basically wear them everyday. However, every time I slip them on, I do have that moment where I think of the jeans tucked away in my closet from before the baby that I haven’t made any progress to get into yet.

So I decided I need to own my bigger jeans. So I decided to “build the case for the bigger size!” I tried on my pre-pregnancy jeans and took pics. And then took the same pics in my comfy, 2 sizes bigger jeans. Unless I need a new glasses prescription, I think we have our answer and a case built for the bigger size. We look better, we feel better and we lift a huge weight of pressure off our shoulders. And it’s moments like this, when I rock my bigger jeans that are more effective than any fruit or veggie.