Does my bum look big in this?

My wife went after my favorite t-shirt the other day with a pair of scissors. It's now enjoying life as her night shirt instead of , as she refers to it, part of my badly dressed scarecrow ensemble. After losing a lot of weight, my clothes don't fit me very well. I know I've still got a long way to go, but it turns out, it took quite a bit of fabric to cover the 50lbs of lard I've shed so far. My jeans are only held up with a belt and the aforementioned t-shirt looked like I was a kid wearing his dad's shirt.

Whilst loose fitting clothes help conceal unwanted bulges, baggy clothes do you no favours at all. If anything they can make you look bigger than you actually are. They are also quite uncomfortable. My jeans had an extra 3 inches of fabric on the waistband, that bunched up under my belt and dug into me when I sat down.

I'm guessing I'm not the only (slightly less) fat bloke out there that has older clothes, in smaller sizes, that were grown out of, in the pursuit of ridding the world of pepperoni - one pizza at a time. So out came the storage boxes and we began mining the strata of clothes that had built up over time. At first I felt a little down by the thought that I had put on the weight in the first place. Thinking about each year that I added more clothes to the pile. But then remembered that I had managed to undo the last couple of year's excess in six weeks. In another couple of months I'd be down to the fashion mistakes of the 2010 layer or possibly lower.

It would be nice to go shopping for new clothes, but as we are on a budget this will have to do. The other thing I don't like about clothes shopping at my size, is that the high street shops don't cater for big chaps. You get dirty looks just approaching the door. There are a few specialty stores, but they know they have a captive market and seriously overprice their stock. I'll go clothes shopping in the new year when I'm back into sizes that don't need a number in front of the XL on the label.

After trying on many different t-shirts, shirts and trousers I felt great. I now have some clothes that fit properly and feel comfortable. My neighbour stopped my a couple of days ago and complimented me on how well I looked. The strangest discovery is that I feel thinner. I am aware that the main reason I feel thinner, is the weight I have lost, but now that my clothes fit me, it makes me feel thinner.

I have found that having clothes in a smaller size is a great motivator. I have another reason to stick to my plan and lose more weight. To renew this feeling I have by getting into a smaller pair of jeans.