Woe is the Bridesmaid

I have to wear a bridesmaid dress in four days and counting. For most people, a bridesmaid dress is something to be worn at a friend/family member's behest and represents little more than (frequently) poor fashion sense or (possibly) a desire to make everyone else look worse than the bride.

I'm not sure which category my dress falls into, since the bride actually works in the fashion industry and will automatically look better than her bridesmaids in all of our couture gowns because she's about 110 pounds and 5'8". That said, she still managed to pick out a horrible bridesmaid dress. It's a babydoll dress that flares out in brown pleats from just below the bust. It probably looks bad on everyone (including all of the 5'2", 100-pound bridemaids), but on me it looks ridiculous. At 5'6" and 192 pounds, let's just say it doesn't exactly flatter.

And the thing with this dress is, it actually means a lot more to me than just being an ugly dress. Back in December when my friend first asked me to be her bridesmaid, I had just gotten off a drug that had made me gain a whopping 40 pounds in a year. I was an exceedingly uncomfortable and hefty 242 pounds and closing in on size 22 (US) clothes. And I desperately wanted to lose weight. I'd been through many attempts in the past (the most recent only a few months before - more on that later), but I could never get myself to stick with anything.

A bout of cluster headaches and an increasingly pressing migraine problem had convinced me that I needed to do "something," but for some reason, despite nearly chronic pain, I couldn't find the extra push I needed to get started. When the friend asked me to be in her wedding, the prospect of 250 people watching me lumber down the aisle in a size-22 Vera Wang gown (does she even make gowns that big?) was enough to prompt me to put down the chips and ice cream and start a gym routine.

That was about 7 months ago, and I've lost 50 pounds so far using a modified South Beach-based diet of my own creation. But I've only lost about 10 pounds since June, and while I know that's not bad, I can't deny I haven't been trying very hard. It's like, once I got back under the 200-pound mark, I lost my drive. And that's part of why I'm here. Hoping to find it again.

I say this having just gone to get my bridesmaid dress fitted and been so traumatized by the experience that I immediately went to the grocery store and bought a huge brownie (with sushi! It's healthy!) Honestly, the way the dress is designed, I feel like it looks like I haven't lost any weight at all. Obviously that's not true, but it's hard when this thing that served as the spark for this journey I've been on since the end of January turns out to be so disappointing. Ugh. Even the BF admitted it wasn't the most flattering cut, and he's alway the first to tell me I look great when I don't think I do.

Ok, enough of the whining for now. Not much I can do about it at this point. I just need to try and eat healthy for the next few days (but not starve!), enjoy the fact that the dress fits and is three sizes smaller than it would have been in January, enjoy what I'm sure will be a lovely wedding with wonderful friends, and get back into the swing of things next week.

If anyone out there is reading this, I promise not all the posts will be this whiny.