Six-steps-to-motivation pants and an infinite bra collection

This post is going to be confrontational for anyone who used the Konmari Method. And I don’t mean in the half-assed way I did. I didn’t even bother to put all my clothes on one pile before I started, and just did it drawer by drawer.
And I didn’t go looking for clothes which she warned were “everywhere around the house, you’d be surprised!”
Which might explain why my collection of tiny pants, which up until 2015 had been hiding in the basement, was never fully purged.

First of all I don’t purge my basement very often.
I estimate once every two years. And those were years where I basically moved every one or two years, so now that I have a permanent address it might be less.
I know I purged the basement a year ago, when my best friend migrated to the USA and I offered her storage space. But even then my tiny pants were no longer there. They were already in a box in my wardrobe. The box does get opened and I inspect them regularly. And never with the intention to throw them out!
The reason I keep coming back to my box of tiny pants is that they’re absolutely fascinating.

I m so glad that Konmari’s decluttering method never worked to the level that I originally thought would have been ideal. That I never got myself to throw out this ever expanding box of pants I didn’t fit. They were both a reminder of my past, as well as hope for the future: I was convinced they would one day fit.

So yesterday, after writing my New Body Manifesto (aka The Sex Worker Manifesto I suppose, because it was pretty obvious which women I found most inspirational when it came to matters of self-care) I got my tiny pants out.

Now the box doesn’t just contain pants: it also has a wide variety of tiny bras!
I remember having my chest measured after losing ten kilos in 2005, and she said I had 75 centimeters, maybe even 70 centimeters, with a D cup.
Not C!
Smaller chest sizes have a different cup size. So when I lost ten kilos I had accidentally went from a C to D cup. I really needed time to come to terms with my new status as sex bomb and remember not buying a bra that day.
First I had to process this.
So from that time on, I started buying 75D. But as I gained weight, and my chest was strangled by the tight strap, I started increasing the size.
But I kept forgetting my size and bought too small.
I have a large collection 80 C bras, when I never actually had that size. I didn’t start buying new bras until I was a 85C.
So my relationship with bras is definitely more complicated than with my pants.
My pants are really motivational.

My mother was the first to use this trick on me, and maybe she created the root cause. Because when I got potty training she bought me three panties:
One dark blue, one red, one yellow.
They had contrasting prints on them (the blue one had yellow duckies and the yellow one green clovers) and a matching contrasting color on the borders as well.
She hung the panties on a line outside, it was summer. And my potty was also outside. We had a very secluded garden so it wasn’t like she was trying to make me pee in front of the whole neighborhood. But I vividly remember being motivated by the three panties that would be mine the moment I did whatever I was supposed to do on the potty.

Back to the pants.

In 2005 I dropped ten kilos and I remember just fitting the pair of Marlene Dietrich pants (do they call it like that internationally as well?) at the bottom of this pile.
See photo.
But it wasn’t very comfortable, and I never wore them aside from trying to fit into them.
Which is why I’m dating it “1998” because that is the year I was in Australia, and I wore them to work.
So I m positive they fit me then.

That’s how I will go through the whole pile:
I will date it the last year I recall they still fit me.

Marlene Dietrich pants, from Zij
color: dark blue
size: 38
last worn: 1998
how far I can get it on: 1/3 of my thighs
These were my first pants that had some sort of professional look. In the eighties I had a classmate who always bought her clothes at Zij. And she (unwittingly) inspired me to shop there as well.
I think these pants were bought in the early nineties.
In order to fit them I would have to weigh way under 60 kilos, and/or have a super toned waistline.
The last time I was this thin was one week in 2008 when I was totally stressed out because of medical shit that was going on.
So far, that has been the only thing that made me drop under 60.

Freesoul jeans
color: dark blue
size: 29 32
last worn probably in 2008
how far I can get it on: 1/3 of my thighs
Reconstructing my body weight and history, 2008 must have been the year I was at my smallest, and these pants are definitely extremely tiny.
I remember fitting them only for a very brief period.
Maybe as little as a few months.
Just like the next pair.

white Mango jeans
size: 38
last worn: 2009
how far I can get it on: 1/3 of my thighs
The post-it says 2008, but that’s the year I bought it, in the city where I was dating an Israeli spy. Or someone equally sketchy :p
Who knows.
But the added bonus of having that much anxiety attached to your dating, is that I do remember what I did the few days I was there. And one was buying these pants. They fit me more than one summer, and I have a picture of 2009 when I m still wearing them, so the post-it should have said:
2009

capri jeans Esprit
size: 38
last worn: 2012, fortieth birthday
how far I can get it on: halfway my thighs
On my fortieth birthday I posed for a photo in bikini top and these pants. Although I was happy with my body, I remember being surprised that I could still fit into these pants because I was at least a couple of kilos heavier than I wanted. I liked my body but I did hope the photo was me at my biggest, and that it would inspire me to shed the pounds once again.
Just like I had in 2005..
In retrospect that was me at my thinnest in many years to come.

pink capri Mexx
size: 38
last worn: 2016
how far I can get it on: 14 centimeters to close
This has been my absolute favorite set of pants for over a decade. I remember buying it April 2005, at a flea market. It didn’t fit. But then something happened.
I started losing weight.
It’s even safe to say these pants motivated me to lose the weight..
The pink capri, which I bought on Queensday so that’s why I know it was in April, were my first pair of motivational pants since my mother put the panties up to get me home trained 🙂
Last year I still fit them early spring. Then I got too big.
I dated the pants “2016” and not “2017” because they were not comfortable anymore.. I can’t wait to fit into them again.

Pall Mall Export jeans
size: 32-32
last worn: never
how far I can get it on: 8 centimeters to close
These were pants that were supposed to fit. They are the same size as my current jeans, so when I saw these, last Kingsday on the flee market, I thought they would fit me.
God knows I don’t need more pants that are too small! lol
But they didn’t. They will be the first that I can wear once the pounds come off. So they’re the first milestone.

My pants are my measuring system for this challenge. I’m not going to weigh myself, but I’m about 74 kilos. So that makes it 15 kilos to drop.
There have been two changes in my diet, which people say attribute to weight loss.

One is that I stopped drinking alcohol a few weeks back.
Which I did because I wanted full awareness for my work and life, and I know I m prone to balancing out work with drinking. Not more than six glasses a week. After having an accident at home and hurting myself, after a long workday, and writing an extra blog post with two glasses of wine, I was done with taking risks with my health this way.
No more accidents.
No more wine.
I have had periods where I didn’t drink in the past, and I ve never lost weight over them. I m just mentioning this because that’s what people will say attributed.

Same goes for my diet: I eat three times a day, no snacks. Not even coffee with milk if I can help it. I m not super strict with it. I believe in particular that a social life is also important and you can’t always choose what, or the moments at which, you eat.
Also: Way back in time, for about six months, I didn’t eat till noon. And that too didn’t make me lose any weight.
I ve been on this habit of eating three times all you can eat, and there are days where this probably cuts my calorie intake in half, and yet I ve lost zero weight.
So this (intermittent fasting) too is something that people will say attributes to (my) weight loss, when in fact it never did in the past.
Nor has it done any such thing the past six weeks or so.
It doesn’t have to either because I m fine knowing my organs have half the work to do. And I chose this diet because it protects my teeth from getting sugar all the time.

The most important inspiration, motivation and “plan” I’ve got, is that I ve come to realize that if I see my body as a commodity, something I need to keep fit and healthy for my work. I now see it and treat it entirely differently.
I coyly referred to it as the Sex Worker diet, but for me it really was a breakthrough to start taking care of my body in a non-emotional or attached way. But simply because that’s what you do, if you make money from it.
A writer writes.
A photo model or sex worker trains their body.
End of story.
That and six gorgeous set of pants that are waiting for me, down the road.
And an infinite collection of bras to choose from.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes, but this one took me 2 hours and 15 minutes }