Further along commenting on my weight

So. Ever since I asked people to stop commenting on my weight, I find myself in situations whereby I had to explain myself on the following things.

1. I did not set out to lose weight. 
A lot of you are probably rolling your eyes right now. Yes,  I know, I am vain, I am obsessive about my looks and yeah, okay, something along those lines. I am also of view that a lot of people are in the same boat as I am, they are just not as vocal about it. It's like who doesn't want to be beautiful. Most people in this planet actively seek out ways to beautify themselves, it is just that for some, it is more obvious and more physical than others. Hey, don't judge, okay. I readily admitted that I am superficial. I am superficial and I am proud of it.

I started running because of this competition called the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge. My boss made it mandatory for his team (which is basically like everyone in the firm) to participate in this challenge. That was back in October last year and I have written a gazillion shit about it so you can scroll past the archives if you want to see them. Long story short, I couldn't stop running.

Because I am a doctor, research on anything and everything I am interested is a natural extension of ... my life. Of course I did not like running to begin with, but I was curious as to how people enjoy it, how they manage to enjoy all the associated discomfort of running. So off researching I went, and I also experimented on various things. I am not going to detail everything here because what works for me may not work for everyone. If you want to optimise your running, go and research and experiment yourself, thankyouverymuch.

Do I push myself hard every running session? Of course not.I am not that motivated yet. The speed of my run is contingent upon how much time I have and how far I want to run. When I wake up late (trust me, despite my best effort, it happens), I can only run a shorter distance albeit at a faster speed. My fastest 5km run was done when I woke up late and I wanted to run, and prior to that run, I had never run harder in my life. But this is rare. Most of days I wake up and then do an enjoyable session of running whereby I don't push myself that hard. Of course I still push myself, just not that hard.

Because of all these running, the weight loss happened.

2. The message on people who are fat
One of the reasons as to why I was hesitant writing about telling people that it is rude for them to tell anyone that they are too skinny is that I knew that there were going to be some fat people out there who were going to, well, be irrationally offended. To these people, who were quite frankly just taking anything and everything waaayyy too personally: if I am too skinny, you're too fat.

3. Kindness and human connection
The nicest and kindest of all people who read the blog and realised that they had at some point made observations about my weight have spoken to me and apologised about being rude, albeit unintentionally. These people and their simple acts of kindness have restored my faith in humanity. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I love you so much.

In fact, most people who read the blog stopped commenting on my weight altogether, which is really nice. They changed what they comment on though, to the fact that my clothes are falling off me. That brings me to my next point.

4. The battle with my wardrobe
Ah the transitional wardrobe period. The perfect excuse for shopping, literally. I have never had my boyf encourages me shopping like he does these days. (Case in point: he bought me a dress the other day, and yes, it fits me perfectly.)

If I were to describe my relationship with my wardrobe, it would be a ongoing love-hate relationship, with more love than hate. At the moment, we are quite unfortunately in the hate phase because most of its contents do not fit me like they used to. I guess this is a relatively nice problem to have.

I have two options: alter them (and since I have zero sewing skills and zero patience, I gotta go to the tailor for this) or give them away. I guess I have a third option that is to sell them, but I have not considered this seriously out of ... er... laziness? If I am really pushing it, I have the option to store them, but I am not comfortable with this option right now. I try not to get too attached with my clothes despite loving them a lot. Yes, I know it's weird but it's true.

It seems like I am perpetually building my wardrobe. The only difference is that in the past, it has always been out of desire rather than out of necessity, like it is right now. Doing this out of desire means I have the luxury of time, which I don't really have right now, unless if my current clothes shrink. Plus I am also not in a position to shop because I am somewhat rather time poor (read: do not have and have not made the time to go shopping).

As part of wardrobe cleaning, in light of the recent building collapse in Bangladesh, I've been petrified when I discovered that some of my clothes were made in Bangladesh. I realise that there is nothing that I can do with regards to clothes that I already own except to keep on wearing them until they can't be worn any more so that ... err... I don't know how to explain this. So yeah, you kind of have to guess it. Jean from extrapetite wrote a blogpost about this, so if you want to see a fashion blogger's perspective, please go and read her post.

If I were to step back and think about this, this is an exciting time - I get to indulge in an activity that I like, I get to formulate new looks and tweak my style, or even change it altogether. I would like to make better choices and purchase items that I am excited about over and over again to prolong their use. I admit that given I have limited finances as we speak, price does play a rather important factor in my decision. The thing that bugs me the most is that these days, price is not always necessarily an indication of quality, or social and ethical stance.

I am also of view that it is not sufficient that a company has a piece of paper that states that it observes a certain social and ethical standards - especially when I do not know how credible this piece of paper is. This depends on the issuers, and how stringent they are in maintaining their standards and their reputations. Preferably, they conduct audits or something similar to ensure that their members do maintain their stated social and ethical standards. Preferably members do abide by this and observe this as a basic requirement of business practice and we can bring lasting changes to the way these textile workers are treated. Does such an organisation exist by the way? Does anyone know?

Of course I like shopping, but I am a slow shopper and I like to think about my purchases instead of just buying them impulsively. Or at least, that's what I am trying to do. Changing a habit is hard, but this is one of those habits that is actually useful to tweak. .

Ok, I am exhausted so this post is going to abruptly end here. Good nite peeps!