The Life-Changing Power of Underwear

You may be wondering how on earth underwear can be life-changing, but it is often the tiny, ordinary moments of life that create extraordinary shifts. Now hopefully we're all putting on clean underwear daily. I’m talking about brand new underwear! I quietly entered menopause a few years ago. I know, a bit of a taboo subject, but so is underwear. I thought I had made it through unscathed due to my ‘healthy lifestyle’, but then the unthinkable happened. Over the course of about 3 months, I gained 10 pounds. My body shape-shifted. Again. (Read my previous post: My Curvy Reality) I hadn’t started binging or eating junk food. I hadn’t stopped exercising.  I wasn’t even under an unusual amount of stress - quite the contrary. Now I had been hearing from women year after year wondering why they were gaining weight suddenly upon reaching a ‘certain age’, but other than the obvious hormone shift,  it was a conundrum I never had an answer for. I still don’t. (There are plenty of Health and Wellness experts that claim to though!)

The distressing thing about weight gain is that things stop fitting. You squeeze yourself into those cute jeans, but now there’s a bit of flesh that hangs over the top. The unfortunate result of this phenomena is that we, of a ‘certain age’ believe that this just shouldn’t be and wonder what to do to make those jeans fit again. Well, for me, the most distressing thing was that the top of my underwear now rolled down. It no longer laid flat against my abdomen. It was uncomfortable. And of course because of toxic diet culture and the subliminal messages we have absorbed from it all our lives, I somehow deemed the source of the  rolled over underwear, my new weight gain, as a character flaw. So I tried really, really hard to believe that the extra weight was not a failing on my part to be ‘healthy’ or that my worthiness as a human was somehow called into question. Because I know better and have spent years trying to undo those damning  messages I absorbed and allowed to rule me for so long. 

As a health coach, this was most perplexing though because isn’t weight gain a body’s protective response to keep me alive? That must mean that some internal system had gone haywire and maybe there’s a problem. While there are always new habits to be made in the name of health, I truly couldn’t think of what to do about this. When I truly sat back and assessed my health and habits, I literally could not think of a major, sustainable shift I could make to resolve this ‘problem’. So I started to wonder if it was actually a problem? A little research revealed that it is, in fact, healthy for women ‘of a certain age’ to gain a few pounds - it seems to have a health-protective effect. So I wondered? Maybe this is my new reality, even though I’m bumping up against the upper limits of my BMI (more on arbitrary metrics later). Maybe I just needed to settle in and accept it. After all, my weight does not define me. The level of discomfort I felt from the weight gain was a product of an ingrained message, and it was not logical. Easier said than done when your clothes - and underwear - no longer fit. But I faithfully continued to put on that old, ragged, ill-fitting underwear, and look in the mirror and tell myself that it was OK. That I am beautiful, accepted and I belong. The habit of telling myself the truth to rewire my mind was my new strategy. But the mirror belied my truth.

Now I’m one of those people who puts off buying underwear for years. Literally. I’m not sure what the procrastination factor is on that. I have no problem buying new hoodies or high tops, but underwear? As time wore on, my underwear literally started getting holes in it that I could no longer ignore. They were so holey they were almost useless. So one day, I just bit the bullet and went to the intimates store. And as I walked in the door, I thought, “maybe I should try the next size up?” So bravely I went in and immediately the clerk asked what size she could help me find. I would like to say that I was able to request my new size with no qualifiers, but I’m not quite that enlightened yet, as I did mention the new weight. Like really - why would she care? But long story short, I went home and tried on my new size. And over the course of a few days, as I looked in the mirror, I realized that I no longer had to work so hard to convince myself of my new mantra - that it’s OK and that I am beautiful, accepted and I belong. Because what I saw was something that fit my new body and made me look beautiful. Sexy even. Nothing about my circumstances had changed. Only my perspective. This one tiny ordinary everyday thing - underwear - had the power to shift my perspective from a perplexing negative energy to a space of freedom. It radically altered the way I viewed myself and talked to myself. New underwear changed my life!