There’s A Lot More Than the Size We Wear

I’ve experienced going to shops and eyeing a very cute outfit or dress and when I wanna try it, my heart simply breaks because it’s only up to a MEDIUM size or their biggest is a size 12. It’s like I have the money to spend but nothing fits me. So what happens next (true story) is that I go out of the shop, find a coffee shop and get a slice of my favourite cake and sip my coffee. We used to joke that wala akong karapatang mamili dito (I don’t have the right to buy clothes here,) because the people are generally slim and I’m not.

These were the times when I kinda blamed myself for being too careless, letting myself get bigger but after a while, I move on. It’s like having a petty self-argument and after every shopping heartbreak like this, I would promise myself that I’ll fix my diet. Char! Of course, that didn’t happen.

Instead, I searched and found shops that carry my size and it was like my AHA moment for me! Shopping clothes from these stores were like a rebellious act that every 2 weeks, I would visit them and check new dresses & skirts & tops and much more.

Truth is, our confidence is (most of the time) based on the size of the clothes we wear – 8 or 12 or 16 or it can be M, L, XL, XXL. The lower the number, the higher the confidence.

Everyone wants to be a size 2 or a size 0 (if there’s such a thing) and stay that way forever and as if being sizes higher is something to be ashamed of. It doesn’t matter if you eat just carrot sticks, so long as that number doesn’t move! I mean, seriously….

I used to wear a US size 8 in 2011, then come 2014, I’m already on UK 14 / US 12. In less than a year after that, I’m one size up – UK16/US 14. But the change in size didn’t bother me for long, especially now that a number of stores are carrying plus size clothing. In fact, I’ve embraced the body changes with positivity, but now I’ve realised that that acceptance was incomplete. Surely, I’ve accepted that I’m already a plus size, but the act itself lacks the overall awareness of what’s going on inside my body.

In a society that feeds with people’s vanity and self-consciousness, we tend to forget that there are more important things than the size we wear.

Acceptance is good. But there’s a lot more than those size numbers & letters. That health precedes your size number.

What a lot of people don’t realise is that HEALTHY comes in different shapes and sizes. Just because someone is fit or slim doesn’t mean that they are in perfect health and vice versa. So while we become more concerned with the size of our clothes, one should also consider their health stats because being a size 2 does not exempt you from potential health risks and diseases.

Now, having a lower dress size just a cherry on top, because nothing beats a good & healthy body from within.