Thank you, @MoneyJo and well done on your progress.
Those (last year) were the first things I had ever bought from Seasalt, and it was a total thrill for me. I’ve just checked and seen that they do a 26/28, so I could have bought from them before….. but I think I just assumed they wouldn’t cater for women like me, only “normal” ones, you know?
When I first had to wear size 20’s and above, when I was still in my teens, obesity rates were much, much lower. Big women had very little choice. It was either a very limited range at C&A, or Evans Outsize Stores. Or men’s cords, which I wore for quite a few years in my late teens and early twenties. And I think something inside me died. So while the world was changing, obesity rates were rising, and the fashion industry responded, I was still stuck in my mental corner. I’m a big fat woman, I can’t have nice clothes.
I am glad for younger women that they now have a huge choice of clothes in sizes to fit them. At the same time, I’m sad that we’ve arrived at a point where, in my age range, the most common category is overweight, with obese not far behind, and healthy weight lagging behind both. That’s nothing to do with willpower or moral failing. It’s everything to do with the huge change in food supply and eating habits, IMO. Driven by economics and the profit motive.
Our genetics predispose some of us to gain weight easily, and some of us are particularly sensitive to eating high carb and high GI food - it drives excessive appetite in some people and not in others. Change the food environment, and some people remain slim with zero effort, because their genetics means their appetite regulation works just as well on processed food as it does unprocessed food. Others are more susceptible, but are able to exercise enough self-control to avoid significant weight gain. And others of us are doomed if we continue eating that sort of food….. but since it is addictive, it’s incredibly difficult to resist.
But now there’s MJ, which makes our appetite control work better in the context of easily available, cheap, hyper palatable foods. That’s a gift. Though some of what it does can also be done by changing what we eat. Whether that’s enough to keep someone at a healthy weight having got there is going to vary from person to person.