6

Dress to Determine Excess

Copyright 2002, Terry Duschinski.  

What is your investment in nice clothing that no longer fits? Perhaps it’s a great business suit that magnifies your power persona, or the dress you wore to the wedding or charity ball, the one for which you crash dieted and worked on your suntan during the prior weeks.

Do you try on these clothes often, or just push them to the back of the closet and cringe at the thought of what you can no longer squish your body into?

Let’s get them out. Reach way back there. We need a wardrobe session with zippers that don’t come all the way up, snaps that can’t be fastened, and buttons straining to reach their holes. This may be painful but it pays.

Second only to photos (the ultimate candid camera), another benchmark to establish is what I call the tight-pants test. Actually, I suppose it could be any garment you’ve outgrown by at last one, preferably two, but not more than three sizes. Select this specific garment during your wardrobe session. The wardrobe session is a benchmark event; the tight-garment test is a repeated measurement.

Incidentally, how much of the clothing that no longer fits is still in style? What would you be wearing if you could fit into it? If there is a way of estimating the value of what you’ve temporarily reduced to closet fodder, please put a dollar figure on it. This will help you assess the value of your initial 6-Week Fat-to-Muscle Makeover and subsequent long-term fitness regimen.

In the wake of the wardrobe session, review and revise your mission statement, the vision of what you expect to happen. See yourself in those clothes again. Find pictures of the thinner you to crystallize this vision.

Return the clothing to your closet, but set aside the specified tight garment that we’ll use for a weekly progress assessment. It has to be within 3 sizes of what you now fit into comfortably; any smaller might encourage drastic dieting. To avoid shrinkage, make sure you’re not going to wash or dry clean this garment while you’re using it for measurement. Don’t be wearing it and stretching it to your new size either. Merely try slipping it on every week and rejoice when you slide into it comfortably.

One other stipulation concerning this too-tight garment – place it in a conspicuous location. Although you’ll try it on only once a week, you’ll want to see it often – as a reminder of what you’re working toward. Place it in a location that catches your eye frequently.

If you don’t have clothing that no longer fits, buy something. There is lots of debate among authorities about whether someone intent on slimming down should incentivize their efforts with smaller clothing. Where is the line between worthwhile commitment and undue pressure?

I do not encourage purchasing an expensive too-tight garment, something specifically that you plan to wear. We don’t want to get into a quest for thinness at all costs; one of those costs being suspension of good sense and long-term sustainable success. Purchase something cheap from a discount store. We’re building an infrastructure with plenty of incentive. The garment should be a measuring tool, not something that makes fat-loss imperative. Please do not make drastic measures tempting.

Two other staples of fat-loss programs are bodyfat assessments and circumference measurements. I would like to make these optional, and would even discourage them unless done by someone experienced at it. Perhaps your physician or your fitness facility can perform these functions, and if so, please take advantage of their services. But don’t try executing them yourself.

I’m sorry, but I don’t trust any of the bio-impedance or electrical current gizmos that claim to provide an assessment of body fat percentage. If you’ve purchased one of these devices, you can use it if you so desire but I’m skeptical of the reliability of the information it provides. Try testing with it several times in a row to gauge its consistency.

I’m also opposed to the bathroom scale. Scales can only tell body weight; they are incapable of measuring fat. If an outside service is assessing your bodyfat, they will also weigh you, and calculate percentage of fat compared to lean body mass, or what researchers tag “FFM,” meaning fat-free mass. Otherwise, at least during our prescribed fat-to-muscle makeover period do not step on a scale.  

The kind of physical training you’ll undergo builds muscle while simultaneously shedding fat. Exchanging a pound of fat for one pound of muscle doesn’t change the sale reading. But the pound of muscle is compact, and fits in tight against your body. The fat tends to hang in a huge glob somewhere. The scale won’t register a difference but your body will surely improve.

Once we reach the point where we wouldn’t expect much ongoing gains in muscle mass, perhaps after 6 months of diligent training, weighing once a week at a standard time such as first thing in the morning may provide meaningful information. Until then, ignore the scale.

The tight garment provides the ongoing feedback that’s really important. The scale can not only mislead, but also there is often psychological baggage associated with a number corresponding to a person’s body weight.