How to Clothe Yourself on the Way Down!

Losing 55 kilos in the space of nine months meant I was going through clothing sizes at a great rate of knots. It took maybe six weeks for my clothes to start getting stupidly too big after surgery but after that I dropped sizes like nothing else.

There was a while after surgery when I was going down a clothes size every six weeks. That is actually just ridiculous. To be honest I completely missed some sizes (hello goal size 12) because I didn’t try anything on for a little while and by the time I did it was too big and I had to go down another size altogether. I was working full-time since three months post-op and I had to dress appropriately for work, this was challenging but I did find a few ways to get around it.

I was not prepared to go and buy a whole heap of new clothes every time I dropped a size and to be honest the amount of money you could spend doing that would be insane so I have a few great suggestions to do it on the cheap.

If you’re anything like me you will have a range of clothing sizes in your wardrobe. I was, like many others, always up and down with my weight so had some things stashed away that I was dying to get back into. I went through the entire contents of my wardrobe before surgery and anything that was okay I put in size order with the biggest at the front so I could work my way down through them.

I have some friends and family with fairly extensive wardrobes in terms of size ranges so I borrowed things from them for a couple of months at a time to help me get through. Even if the things they have are not quite your style or preference you aren’t going to be wearing them for long so grin and bear it sunshine and it will help you get through.

Op-shops are a fantastic gold mine. When things are on the specials racks you can get some amazing things for basically nothing. The beauty of shopping at op-shops or charity shops is that when the things you got are too big you can take them back and get some new more suitable things. Op-shops can be a bit hit and miss but if you have one near stopping in once every week or so you should have some successes.

There are a few signs that your clothes are getting too big and you need to look at smaller sizes. If you can’t walk without your pants falling down it’s new clothes time. Once you get to the point where don’t have to unbutton them to get them on you know it’s going to be game over for them soon. Girls, if you are having trouble keeping your boobs to yourself it’s probably a good indication you need to go down in top size!

I found it really nerve-wracking every time I tried on smaller sized clothes than I was currently in. Even if they were hanging off me and were clearly too big I was still not necessarily convinced that smaller ones would be big enough. This is one of the biggest mind games I found after surgery. I think the reason why I missed a few sizes on the way down was that I put off trying on the smaller size and then completely bypassed it.

My biggest piece of advice is try stuff on ALL the time. At some points one or two weeks was enough to make the difference somewhere to fit a smaller size. There were a couple of the things I already had in smaller sizes that by the time I tried them to see if they fit I had missed the boat and didn’t end up wearing them again.

Have you got a plan for keeping yourself clothed in the rapid weight loss phase post bariatric surgery? Are you already post-op and have a great suggestion I haven’t thought of? Comment below and let me know!