Sara Does the Biggest Loser

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I've read a lot about diets and workout exercises. I once watched an entire workout video too (sitting down). Unfortunately, none of those activities help you lose weight. I've written about my weight before, so it's no secret that I'm not known for my skinny, toned bod. I'm not grossly flabby either. I'm somewhere in the comfortable middle with some pounds to spare. Anyways, we were talking about losing holiday weight at work, and BAM, we (well -- I didn't really do anything to help) organized a Biggest Loser competition.

It'll include sharing recipes, workouts and motivation. We'll bring in healthy snacks, take walks around the lake and verbally assault each other when we're trying to sneak some cookies into our mouths. All things I can get down with. I wasn't planning on taking it too seriously (I mean, I'll have to lay off drinking and eating donuts if I want to win), UNTIL I realized this is an outright competition. We're doing weigh-ins, sending around updates and paying a tiny fee so that the winner gets a huge prize.

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One Size Fits All, Except Me

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During my lunch break today, I went over to Party City to get a flapper costume. There were two different options, which was ideal, as my roommate needed one too, so I bought both of them. One was red and marked "one size fits all" and the other was black and marked "large." I neglected the gym to run them home to show my roommate before she headed out for work. We decided that we would each try them on and then pick whichever seemed to fit each person more appropriately. Since she is working, I was the guinea pig for trying them on. I put on the black "large" one first. It fit really well and was long enough that I didn't feel like a total slut. Then I put the red one on.

Let me take a pause here to elaborate on my body type. Full disclosure:

I'm five-six and a size eight.

I'm not a stick, nor would I even say I'm skinny, but I wouldn't say I'm fat either. Yeah, you can tell I eat candy on the reg and, as I already admitted in this post, I am pretty good at making excuses to not go to the gym. But I am by no means a beluga whale.

Now back to the dress. Me and my still-carrying-some-baby-fat-at-22 body got pretty excited to try on the red dress after the general success of the black one. I throw it over my head, and notice it's getting stuck a bit more. I pull it all the way on, and have the pleasure of getting to tug at it to make it sit right. It's shorter and tighter than the same dress in black labeled "large."

Well, shit. How good does that make me feel that a dress proclaiming that it fits ALL is nice and snug on me? On one hand, I'm like "whatevs I guess that costume company is just like Abercrombie and are assholes that exclude fat people," but then on the other hand I'm like, "I'm not actually fat, so why are they marketing this as fitting everyone, when clearly it's not going to?" And then if I had a third hand (so I guess maybe my foot), I'm like, "well, maybe I could hit the gym a bit more, and maybe I do need to lose a bit of chub."

While I try not to let weight-issues bother me, I did used to be a baby meatball and have always had body conscious issues. Little reminders like this always sort of suck. While I'm going to still wear the dress, and going to rock the shit out of it, there'll always be a bit of extra smug snugness there to remind me that everyone apparently is skinnier than me.