Not Killed By My Pants

A couple of weeks ago my trainer looked at me in my stretchy workout/yoga pants and told me I need to buy some smaller ones.  Really?  Stretchy black tight pants that have not worn out are just fine with me especially if they are not skin tight.  I am never going to wear a pair of those things out when I only wear them to work out and don’t live in them like real athletes do.  I also have no need for total body hugging since it is not like I am running so fast and am worried about drag.  The only drag I like is the kind that my Washington friends do when they borrow my old formal wear.

I had noticed that I had a little more room in the thighs of my yoga pants, an area that is almost always the tightest spot on me, but I was kind of enjoying non-thigh-clinging pants.  The idea of having to go try on athletic wear, even in a smaller size is not my idea of fun.  In the world of tight bodies I am still a non-performer.  The women who work out for a living and work at workout wear stores just for the discounts look at me as a failure athlete.

If I had a giant paper cutout of what I used to look like a hundred and forty five pounds ago they might treat me differently, but since I am still not a hard body and probably never will be, I am dismissed as a person who is buying yoga pants because they are stretchy and forgiving and not because I might actually do yoga, or lift weights or walk 20,000 steps a day, which by the way is over nine miles of my pitiful strides.

I continued to wear my baggy pants.  That was until yesterday when I was walking at my treadmill desk at a brisk 3.2 miles per hour that is almost running for me and my pants fell down.  I am happy to report I was coordinated enough not to have been dragged under the belt of the treadmill and strangled by my pants.

So my trainer was right.  I needed to stop wearing those too big pants.  I went to my trusty closet of dreams where the too small clothes live and found a lovely pair of barley used workout pants that seemed to fit the size I am now just fine.  The thigh area is a little tighter, the butt is definitely not as lose, but hey I did not have to go to one of those stores that makes me feel badly about myself.

I wish that the same people who conceived the Dove beauty campaign that celebrates all types of women would move into the workout wear segment.  If all women were praised for working out the body they have and not made to feel like they are unworthy if they don’t already have a perfect body then the sales of workout clothes would soar.  I doubt I will get to be a smaller size in yoga pants than the pair I am wearing now so I am going to have to baby the few ones I have.  I am happy with myself and don’t need to go in a store and have an hourly worker make me feel otherwise.