Dealing with weight gain: growing out of clothes

Growing out of clothes is probably the toughest part of gaining weight over the last couple of years for me. As much as I try to stay in denial about the whole thing, when my favourite jeans stopped doing up, or my tops started riding up to expose my belly, it forced me to realise that it was happening. And I didn't want to realise it. 
This is so late on in my 'dealing with weight gain' series (they all come up if you type it in the search bar) for such a key aspect of weight gain. But I wasn't ready to speak about it in the past, especially not in a reasonable way. 
The feeling of walking into a clothes shop and flicking past all the clothes in your old size to find that even the ones the next size up are too small is something that I abhor. But why? Why does it matter how big my clothes are? It shouldn't, but the media and people surrounding me have always insinuated (if not outright said) that my worth is based on the way I look, and getting bigger makes me worth less. Up until recently I've always believed this. I thought being fat or gaining weight made me less loveable, less of a friend, less worthy as a blogger, and less worthy to just be a human being. But recently my opinions have totally shifted on the whole thing. A lot of it has to do with coming to terms personally with my weight gain, but it's at least in part down to watching/reading a lot from Grace Victory and the Bodyposipanda. These women are absolutely inspirational, and if you're struggling with negative thoughts about your body, I'd definitely recommend checking them out.
Clothes shopping for as long as I can really remember has been a bit of a minefield for me. Even way back when I was a lot slimmer than I am now, I was always convinced that 'X made me look fat' or highlighted my rolls or made my thighs look too thick, etc etc. I've spent so much time squeezing into clothes that are too small so the waist band pretty much cuts off circulation, and so that I constantly have to pull my top back down over my stomach. Although I don't want to admit that I've gone up a couple of sizes, forcing myself into these clothes was creating such a negative mindset. Every day it made me feel as though I was 'too big' for anything, because I was too big for those clothes, but it's not true.
After watching a tonne of videos and words from Grace and Megan (aka the Bodyposipanda), and really thinking about the fact that the change in my size doesn't, and shouldn't impact anyone but me, I had the best shopping trip of my life. I headed out in the Boxing Day sales with my sister and got some clothes that *actually fit*, and I look fierce in them. 
I reminded myself that sizes are incredibly subjective in stores anyway, and I'm rarely the same size in two different items from the same store, let alone in different stores. So I gave a massive FU to focusing on a clothes size, and simply picked out things that would fit me. I tried new styles, I bought myself some beautiful, sexy underwear and I went home feeling absolutely in love with myself. It's taken a long time to reach this stage, but avoiding focusing on the numbers on a label (which seems so petty now that I think about it, but was the most important thing to me for years) made me feel better than I could have hoped. I'm now heading into 2018 armed with a new mentality, bras that finally fit, dresses that absolutely sky-rocket my confidence, and I don't remember the last time I felt this good. Follow me on Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube | Facebook