The wurst has gone...

...no, not a typo!
When I was at my top weight, I was feeling rather miserable in my skin and desperately trying to find clothes that would make me look less fat and jiggly than I was.
Enter shapewear. Those stretchy, elastic-loaden underthings that are supposed to take at least ten kilos off your looks. I became an avid fan, buying a whole drawer full of those. What they did do, in reality, was make me look as if I´d been built from a bunch of sausages. Besides, at least the bottoms were supposed to reach halfway down my thighs, which they did, but they just cut into the flesh there, causing a roll of flesh to accumulate right underneath so visibly it even shows on pictures from that time. So, no wearing pants with these. I turned to long skirts, which didn´t show that inverted muffin top but had the additional danger of being so loose that I could gain another couple of kilos. Besides, they were plain frumpy.
When I started losing, I stopped wearing those "slimming" panties, putting them into the farthest corner of my wardrobe.
This weekend, out of curiosity, I tried on a pair.
I was flabbergasted to see that the same panties that used to literally cut off the flesh on my thighs were, by now, so loose that their leg part was wider than the legs I have today to fill it with. Instead of sausage-skin tight, they were about half a hand´s width too big!
So, it really seems that the "wurst" part of the excess on my legs has gone.
What this meant, of course, was a panty raid. I went through all of my underthings, eliminating everything that has gotten too big for me.  In the end, I had one plastic sack full of worn-out things that went to the trash, and the joy of having an undie drawer that finally closes again, with only things that fit me now.
Holding, while sorting them out, the old to the new was a real eye-opener, in more than one way. If I think of pictures from the time I kept wearing that stuff, one thing is very clear: they didn´t fulfill their promise to make me look slim. A stuffed sausage doesn´t look slim. And the illusion I had of looking better probably kept me in denial about my weight even longer.
Today, I´m glad I managed to turn back my weight in time. And I´m glad to be rid of my sausage casings.


Julia