Forget Atkins and Paleo — the Dressing Room Diet is best.
I’ve been shopping for new fall clothes because I feel like I have nothing to wear. The fact that my closet is packed is deceiving.
Trying on clothes can be a frustrating experience, but I go at it like I do everything — full speed ahead.
Anything that catches my eye that I think might possibly look good on me, I grab — usually in two sizes, just in case. I’ve been bigger in my life (a whopping 195 pounds when I gave birth to my second son), and I’ve been smaller (a too-skinny 110 pounds when I went on a major diet in my 20s). I am somewhere in the middle now that I’m middle-age.
On a recent shopping trip, I gathered a stack of items to take into the dressing room. Unfortunately, I hadn’t really planned well, and I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and tennis shoes with my workout pants.
It was 110 degrees in the small dressing room. The harsh lights were not kind to me when I looked in the mirror. My scars from a recent kidney surgery looked Halloweenish, and what happened to my waist? It was my best feature at one time in my life.
It’s my arms that are the trouble spots, though. That problem is common with the women in my family.
I had a cute plaid jacket that I had optimistically, or delusionally, picked in a size small.
Without taking off my shirt, I tried it on. I thought it was too small, but I really wanted to see what it looked like on, so I kept shoving my arms into the sleeves.
Then I was stuck.
I had it halfway up both arms, which were now immobilized behind me like a Houdini trick — before he escaped.
It was funny, but then panic set in. I wondered if I should call out to the sales clerk, who was waaaaay down the hall. I couldn’t reach my phone. I couldn’t move my arms more than a tiny bit.
That’s when you think, “Is there a camera in here?”
Somehow, in my contortion, I slowly but surely inched off one sleeve so I could free my other arm.
It was now 175 degrees in the dressing room. I was actually sweating, which I don’t even do at the gym.
I quickly gathered all the clothes to hand back to the clerk, and I bought nothing.
As a shopping warrior, I went to another store and tried on a stack of clothes there, too. One item that struck my fancy was a pair of red pants. They would be so cute at an ASU game, I reasoned.
And they had Spandex — yahoo!
They zipped without too much trouble, and I thought they looked pretty cute. Then I did the sit-down test.
Looking at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall of the dressing room, I saw what others would see — big red ham hocks on each side of me.
The pants went back on the rack.
When I got home, I did not have dessert.
And when I am tempted to eat something fattening, I go stand in front of a three-way mirror for a few minutes.
When the sales clerk asks if she can help me, I say: “No, thanks, just looking. I’m on a diet.”
Then I’ll go buy shoes.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.