being a fat person in summer

2019, fashion, lifestyle

Hello!

Now the main reason I wanted to use a word like ‘fat’ in the title of this post is because so many people have negative associations with it when it’s actually just a description – it’s just a kind of cell that is in every single person’s body and it shouldn’t be detrimental!

I’m fat! Am I okay with being fat? Not really! Am I promoting being overweight? Of course not! But should we be afraid of the word fat? Most definitely not.

And back onto the topic of the post! Being a fat person in summer has it’s own set of challenges – the biggest is chub rub, the second I think is feeling hot and sweaty all the bloody time and then third it’s definitely how every gosh darn person will judge you whatever you’re wearing. Something with sleeves? Why are you wearing so much?! Something without sleeves? Wow, it’s so brave of you to where clothes like that! Daring to wear a crop top? ‘I don’t think that’s very flattering for someone with your figure’. There’s no winning!

There’s so much pressure on women at this time of year anyway between ‘bikini bodies’ and celebrities getting shamed on the front of magazines for having the most natural belly rolls and thighs that actually touch, but there is something about summer that is extra difficult for those of that carry a little bit more insulation.

As well as getting judged for everything we wear, it is physically uncomfortable – it’s not just chub rub when you walk, it’s becoming so much more aware of your body and everywhere skin touches. I’d offer tips and tricks but anyone who’s experienced any of these problems knows the best way to handle it, but I’d recommending watching Hannah Witton’s video trying out lots of chub rub products and not wearing clothes that are too baggy because there can be a lot going on under there.

I wanted today’s post to be an outfit post but I didn’t have time to take photos – I love wearing summer clothes and experimenting with fashion and whilst figuring out new ways to wear my snuggliest jumpers is a thrill, figuring out how to love my body in nearly cropped tees and outfits that aren’t as floaty or flattering is a challenge that I’ve willingly embraced this year rather than hiding behind the one outfit that I could bare to look at myself in.

This post was more of a ramble than a point with a conclusion and I think sometimes those are the best posts because we can all vent and unite about how crap it is being sweaty in summer! Under boob sweat is the only reason I bother with a bra anymore! Tell me about your least favourite thing about summer and how you cope with it in the comments!

Don’t get me wrong – I love when it’s warm, when you go outside and it actually feels warm on your skin. My favourite ever time of day is summer evenings when there’s a chill in the air but it’s comfortable and it’s light but it’s getting dark and you’re in the garden with an ice cold drink and good company (and preferably a fire pit) and I wouldn’t get that without a bit of heat and uncomfortable sweat.

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx

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fitting into my old clothes | outfit

2019, fashion

Hello!

I’ve only mentioned it approximately six billion times but I’ve been making lifestyle changes to lose weight for over six months now and consequently (obviously) my relationship with my body and my wardrobe has changed.

For starters, I feel more like me than I’ve felt in a very long time – I feel less like the Michelin Man and more like myself, I’m working on being more comfortable in my skin both in terms of making my body somewhere I like to live and addressing my mental body confidence. Overall, I feel better in myself.

But also, I’ve been refining my wardrobe ever since I started packing to move out of Southampton – I’ve been getting rid of clothes to donate to charity shops/sell/whatever since I packed that first box, to when I had a sort out before Christmas, after Christmas and this weekend just gone. I’ve slowly been cutting down and refining my wardrobe in a sort of capsule-esque way, but thinking more about what I need from my wardrobe and detaching from sentimentality (because no one needs to keep clothes 1) because ‘I love it so much even though I never wear it’ and 2) because they were expensive and it feels like a waste).

And then I had a box of clothes on top of my wardrobe that I’ve been saving for summer/when I lost weight and I got them out during my last clear out and there’s only two or three items that I feel like I need to lose more weight to wear and that is so motivating.

So here are some clothes that I didn’t feel I could wear before!

The leather jacket isn’t one of those items – I bought that for a wedding I went to in January, but I don’t have a lot of jackets. The jeans I bought for when I went to New York last year – they fit okay, but they were a bit too big when I stood up and far too tight when I sat down and they went back into the drawer until now. Now they’re far too big when I stand up and they’re comfortable when I sit down – I’m not going to let go of them just yet because they still fit but definitely need a belt with these ones.

The yellow cropped shirt is a dodie shirt from her ‘you‘ EP release (now on sale, if you’re interested!) and this is the first time I’ve worn it – I’ve loved the design ever since I bought two whole years ago but I’ve never felt ‘skinny enough’ or confident enough to wear it. Some would probably say I’m still not skinny enough but I don’t care – I feel absolutely adorable and whilst I’m not the huge fan of dodie I was when I bought it, it’s still a cute yellow crop top and I love anything yellow.

omg cheeky bit of tummy 😱

Reclaiming the few items that I kept for a time when I could actually shift the weight I hated has actually motivated me more than ever to keep working to lose as much as I can – I’ve come a really long way in the last year, especially the last six months and I knew when I put those clothes into a box a year ago that they would be the motivator I needed, not a sad reminder of what I’d lost (or gained, depending on how you look at it…).

That’s not to say you have to lose weight to feel good about yourself or keep your old clothes as an inspiration – if you feel fab as you are? You’re rocking it, you go girl. If you need to throw the clothes that don’t fit away (or donate them) to help you accept who you are now – you do you, whatever empowers you. Everyone is on their own journey (however pretentious that sounds) – personal growth is exactly that, it’s personal.

I’ve still got a long way to go – I’m not anywhere near my goal weight or a healthy weight for my height yet and I’m still learning and developing every day to do all I can to continue losing. But I felt cute – I can comfortably wear almost everything in my wardrobe and I’m not dreading getting these wobbly arms and legs out in the summer, in fact? I can’t wait to sit out in the sun with a good book and get away from screens for a bit.

Despite the fact it’s basically winter in the UK right now and sunny summer seems a loooooong way away, I’m not dreading the summer heat and wearing more clothes than is comfortable for the sake of covering up.

I’m making progress! Summer healthy eating is so much easier and I’m actually enjoying running (and hopefully exercising more)! And I don’t feel at war with my wardrobe anymore! Yay!

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx

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I could hear a bee in the plant behind me…

trying something new | outfit

2018, fashion, lifestyle, photography

Hello!

This summer, I’ve been trying to be a bit more adventurous with what I wear – now that the heatwave seems to have (finally) drawn to an end, I feel like I can experiment a bit now that I’m not sweating constantly.

And last week, my family and I went to a market in a local town and I spotted this gorgeous elephant print floaty top on a stall and it was only £10! Elephants are my thing so whenever I see anything with elephants on it’s difficult to leave behind.

When I got it, I didn’t think I’d get much wear out of it – it’s very long, my sister described it as looking like a hospital gown and she was right. But with these high waisted plus sized jeans from ASOS, I actually loved it – I could pull it out so it was still airy and light but I loved the contrast of having it tucked in.

It’s comfy, it’s perfect for summer because it’s so thin but it would also be perfect for the transition months because it’s so easy to layer. I’m excited to figure out other ways to wear this top and I feel like being excited to wear an item of clothing isn’t a bad thing.

I have a pretty awful relationship with my body – I really don’t like my appearance and I’m very aware of my attitude to food and desperately trying not to let it develop into anything worse (I talked about it a little bit in an instagram post the other day).

I don’t want to make every outfit post about body image, but talking about the clothes I’m wearing involves showing how they look on my body and that takes a lot for me to feel comfortable sharing – the truth is I don’t feel comfortable sharing them. Every photo I edit to include I pick apart every last possible flaw about myself. I don’t look at my body a lot and the image of myself I have in my head is a fair bit slimmer than what I actually look like so sharing the pictures with my tummy pouch and my big arms and my face that can’t just seem to manage that sultry, moody face without looking like I actually want to commit murder.

And I hope that other people don’t see those things when looking at the same photos. There’s the little part of my brain that says ‘don’t be stupid, everyone thinks you’re disgusting’ but then I think ‘well maybe they don’t’ and then I think ‘who are you to be cocky enough to think that’ and it goes on and on. Maybe I shouldn’t share these things, but if I read a post about someone who thinks the same way I do then it would be incredibly reassuring. But already I’m thinking ‘but no one cares enough about your writing to be reassured by it’.

Long story short I really like this top and I wanted to share it. Long story long I have a tricky relationship with my body and maybe sharing it is helping?

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

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one day, I’ll love you | outfit

2018, lifestyle, photography, student

Hello!

Let’s be flat out honest here – I really enjoy doing outfit posts and talking about body image and body confidence, so I wanted to do a follow up to this post, which was quite negative in conclusion and I got a fair few messages from people who were worried about me after that one.

I’ve always had a mixed relationship with my body – as soon as I hit secondary school it’s like my brain suddenly flicked a switch and I labelled myself as ‘fat’. The battle began with hating myself, comparing myself to my stick thin friends and staring at myself in the mirror at dance with nothing but pure resentment for myself. I reached a sort of peace in 2014/15 when my tumblr blog was a thing and every time I posted a picture I got lots of strangers on the internet telling me they loved how I looked (also my hair was lush).

Then I came to uni and got a boyfriend in second year I piled on a whole load of weight. Like 4 stone of weight. And I don’t say that to evoke reaction or sympathy (though there’s nothing to be sympathetic for), it’s mostly for my sake – I can’t be as ‘ashamed’ of my weight if I put it in writing, right?

Cardigan: Primark (mens). Long sleeved t-shirt: Long Tall Sally. Culottes: Primark. Sneakers: Primark.

Whenever I see people talking about body image, I see them talk about good days and bad days and I think the thing that hits me the most is I don’t have ‘good days’ with my body. There’s no point anymore where I like or feel happy in my body. So when I was thinking about what I wanted to wear for my next outfit post, I decided I wanted to wear something that made me feel fabulous.

And I couldn’t think of anything.

I don’t feel that surge of confidence in an outfit anymore, I have days where I feel less self conscious but that’s mostly because I’m wearing something that drowns me and no one can tell what kind of body shape I have in the sack I am wearing. But that’s not the same. I don’t ever feel that surge of self confidence that I used to get when I looked like this.

Heels: New Look. Jeans: M&S Tall. Top: Primark. Jacket: Probably Primark, I don’t know it was 2015.

But you know? This feeling isn’t necessarily a bad thing and it’s definitely not the end of the world (hear me out) – because it’s knowing that it won’t last forever that’s important.

Recently I’ve been coming to terms with my weight in a way I haven’t done since I was about 12 – 9 years ago. I’m not happy with it and I don’t like my body (at all) but doing anything about it right now isn’t a priority – I know I fairly recently wrote a post called ‘you can keep your health kick‘ but other than trying to eat a bit healthier, making time to go to the gym and workout isn’t something I have time to prioritise right now.

And if it bothered me that much I would prioritise it, so I’m deciding not to.

Just this week I placed a rather large ASOS order exclusively from the Plus Sized range and I’m really excited to have a bunch of new clothes that will fit me more comfortably! I’m slowly phasing out my wardrobe so I 1) have less clothes because wow I can hoard for Britain and 2) have clothes that actually fit me! Rather than a half a wardrobe I don’t entirely hate and half a wardrobe I’ll ‘wear when I lose weight’.

I’m working on getting my fabulous back.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

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Snapchat: SophieALuckett

I hate that my boyfriend is so silly when he takes pictures for me because then the photos that are actually okay (like this one) are at dumb ass angles.

becoming plus sized | outfit

2017, lifestyle, photography, student

Hello,

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a really long time – ever since my last outfit post I knew this is something I wanted to continue and then I picked up this gorgeous yellow, floral playsuit from Primark and I knew I wanted to do an outfit post in it, talking about the size I had to buy it in.

It’s a size 20 – I’ve been putting on weight like a small freight train this year and it’s something I’ve been struggling to cope with. It’s not the first time I’ve bought something in that size – I’m a lover of baggy, over sized clothes anyway – but it’s the first time I’ve felt I’ve really needed that size. And I won’t lie, it hurt.

My weight has always been a sensitive spot for me – as I spoke about in the self confidence post – I can’t remember a time of my life where I didn’t feel like I wanted to be smaller. All through school I was always too tall and I felt like every part of me wobbled. Everyone I seemed to know was someone who was stick thin without trying and could eat whatever they wanted without ever putting on a pound, especially since I spent my whole life dancing I’d get home from school, go to dance and all of my dance friends were the same. They’d prance around like dainty ballerina’s and I was the comic relief elephant in a tutu, or at least that’s how it felt.

Having tried to document healthy eating and fitness routines and whatnot on my blog before, I feel like the phrase ‘the heaviest I’ve ever been’ has been cycled around quite a lot, but it’s also a sign of the massive amount of weight I put on this year.

I started a new Instagram to try and document healthier eating and at the beginning, it worked – I put up videos of the ab challenge I was doing (and gave up on), I was making a conscious effort to eat a lot better and I had time for it all. Now I don’t – I wrote about it all on Instagram last night so I won’t repeat myself here.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYKxUQDghaP/?taken-by=ahealthiersophie

I have no problem with buying big clothes – I tend to buy the biggest size I can for comfort anyway and I once bought a 6XL t-shirt just to see how big it would be, but even in my baggy clothes I don’t feel happy. Sitting at my desk right this second I can feel the weight of my stomach and my thighs in my chair and I don’t feel healthy, it genuinely makes me want to cry.

I wanted the conclusion of this blog post to be ‘but look at this photos! I’m happy look at me’ but I have to be honest – I hate all of these photos. Picking out the best ones was so hard because I don’t like any of them, I can pick out flaws in all of them and I really hate them.

The real game changer for me was that when I was chubby in school, I knew how to work angles in photos to be the most flattering they could be and now, I can’t feign skinny from any angle – my tummy shows in every photo and I just hate it.

I feel like I’m fighting against an invisible wall – I can see myself in the distance looking healthier, I know what I have to do to get there but there’s something holding me back. Whether it’s lack of motivation, lack of will power to resist unhealthy food or people putting me down and not supporting the changes I want to make, I sit at my desk feeling like I can’t do it and drowning my sorrows in food.

Slimming World has been brought to my attention recently – I’ve spoken to a few people who’ve done it and I’ve had a few people reach out to me and say that it works in ways they never thought it would but I just don’t know if I’m strong enough to stand up in front of a bunch of strangers and have someone read out my weight. I can’t do it. I just don’t think I can.

Hopefully if I do another outfit post it will be in a happier tone from someone who’s lost weight, but for now I just don’t know. I’m going to work at Reading festival today where I will have no control over what I’m eating, but when I’m back I’m going to try again because that’s all I can do – keep trying.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

I don’t like it but this one does make me laugh, it’s so 2005

self confidence | outfit

2017, lifestyle, photography

Hello!

I keep talking about wanting to try new things on my blog and that’s precisely what I’m doing – I’ve talked before about how I love fashion, not in a sense of following trends but in putting outfits together and trying to recreate things I’ve seen on Instagram or Twitter with my own wardrobe.

Summer is a new challenge for me right now because I’m trying to balance the warmer weather and bringing out my more summery clothes, with feeling the lowest I’ve ever felt and being more insecure about my body than I’ve ever been before (and also my heaviest).

Basically, anything that shows off my arms or my stomach is a no, which isn’t easy in summer.

This outfit is made up of a dress I got from Asda (I think) last summer and a denim jacket I bought from Primark last summer, sometimes accompanied by a flower crown headband I bought from Flying Tiger and sunglasses I got from EE at Summer in the City, a YouTube convention, in 2015 for free. The main reason I wore my burgundy Dr Martens was because I knew I was going to have to do a lot of walking that day and they’re my comfiest shoes but also they look a little bit badass.

I’m really enjoying swing dresses right now because they hide my tummy and I still feel a tiny bit pretty and feminine. But I won’t wear them without tights and a jacket – I tend to go for this denim jacket, a white kimono with elephants on my mum bought me last year or an oversized checked shirt.

Self confidence is something I have basically no memory of having – there was a period of about three months in 2015 where I loved my hair and how I looked and how many notes my selfies got on tumblr but before and after that time I’ve really struggled to be comfortable with my body – I’m not a naturally skinny person, I put on weight by looking at food and I hate it more than anything. When I start to think about what I don’t like about myself I could do on and eventually list every part of my body, maybe it’s stuff that nobody else will notice but I rarely wear my high top converse anymore because I don’t like how they make my legs look even bigger than they already are.

I have about five pairs of high top converse that I just can’t bring myself to wear.

There’s a lot to be said for just loving what you’ve got because it’s what you’re stuck with and what I always used to say was ‘fake it till you make it’ because if I took selfies like I was one of the pretty girls at school then I’d start to feel like them and in 2015 that worked but I don’t think that would work anymore – I’m not jealous of how people look, I’m jealous of how skinny they are, how good they are at make-up, how much more creatively expressive they are than me, how much freelance work they’re getting; how happy they are. And that’s not really stuff you can ‘fake till you make’.

But I did like this outfit. And I love the sunny weather. It was a nice day out with my boyfriend and even though I’m struggling to find the good days right now, maybe one day it will get better – maybe I’ll lose weight and start to feel better about myself.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

Obviously can’t go without thanking my wonderful boyfriend Lucas for taking all these photos for me.