Jul
7
I decided to reward myself for continuing to stick with this whole exercise-and-diet thing — even while on vacation! People, I got a pass to the local gym and I took two Turbo Kick classes last week, for which I felt I deserved some sort of high honor, perhaps a knighthood or honorary Harvard degree or at the very least a large portion of magical calorie-free creme brulée, shot directly into my open maw with a robust Burnt Cream Expulsion Device (OH YEAH FILL MY MOUTH WITH CREAM) (What?) — and so I visited our local fancypants retail mothership on Sunday in order to try on approximately eleventy billion pairs of “premium denim” jeans.
(My beloved pair of Joe’s, the ones I’ve used as a weight loss goal all along, have actually gotten a little too loose, which is craaaaaaazy and also, wait, oh yeah, fucking crazy, and listen, I am sure you are tired of hearing me yap about fitness stuff but DUDE MY SKINNY JEANS GOT TOO BIG, and holy shit, WOOT. Thank you Turbo Jam and fat free Cool Whip and Hip Hop Abs and Inhale yoga and GoLean breakfast cereal and sugar-free Red Bull and 24 Hour Fitness and Fuji apples and my beat-up old Nikes and my silly new Pumas and shelled edamame and Lululemon pants and South Beach peanut butter bars and the blessed ability to stave off the utter exhaustion brought on by two small children by RUNNING AWAY FROM IT ALL [literally]).
I tried on all sorts of crazy styles and eventually found a glorious pair of 7 For All Mankinds (the A-pocket Flip Flops, if you’re curious, which is a ‘petite’ style, meaning the legs are thankfully not designed for human giraffes), which the salesperson convinced me to buy in a size TWO sizes smaller than my Joe’s, a size I would describe as really quite snug if not downright sausagey. True to her word, after several hours of wear the 7s somehow relaxed a bit and expanded to allow my belly to do something other than explode over the waistband in giant terrifying rolls of unfurling fleshy muffin-topedness, but for a while there I was fairly convinced she had played a mean, mean joke on me.
“Oh, I know,” she kept saying while I turned this way and that in front of the mirror making hurt-puppy whimpering sounds. “They feel like ‘OH MY GOD’, right?” And I was like, “YES! YES THEY DO. DEAR LORD YOU CAN SEE MY SPLEEN,” and she talked me through it like a labor coach until I was doing Lamaze breathing and saying little affirmation prayers and handing over my debit card in order to buy a pair of insanely expensive too-small jeans on purpose.
Anyway: fierce new jeans, you guys. Fierce. Although I have learned that it’s a very bad idea to drink carbonated beverages while wearing them, unless I want to experience something like a Diet Coke-and-Mentos effect inside my midsection (a disturbing sensation that brought this video to mind all too clearly).
Lastly, I give you the 5 Stages of Rolling Over, as performed by Dylan:
Stage One: Flirty Preparation
Stage Two: Grunty Full-Body Effort
Stage Three: Shocked Holy-Fuck-Will-You-Check-This-Shit-OUT-ism
Stage Four: Groovy Self Accolades
Stage Five: ABORT MISSION! ABORT MISSION! SYSTEM FAILURE RESET RESET! FAIL.
** Edited to add photos of the JEANS, since some of you asked, and I am nothing if not . . . well, apparently someone who’s a little too trigger-happy with the camera, jesus.
Warning: do not consume fizzy drinks while wearing.
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Love the pics… what an awesome sequence!
BUT where is the photo of you in the new jeans?? HELLO!
Aww!!! You have the cutist baby EVAH!!
Congrats on the jean thing. You will need to post up pic for us all!
Just a word of warning… Be careful which brand of jeans you buy to small. I did this with a pair of Luckys and I was told they would stretch three sizes. THEY NEVER DID!!!! and my fat fat legs split the seam along my inner thigh after about 6 months. :( they were my “bar jeans” as I could never sit down in them!
Yea, I kinda wanna see the new jeans ON you too, you know, as inspiration! :)
Holy shit. Your skinny jeans are not SKINNY ENOUGH! You, my friend, rock the hizzy. You have to be so very proud of yourself. Now produce the pics of you in the new jeans.
The Groovy Self-Accolades made me snort. Awesome.
Yay! Jeans and baby… both awesome.
I already commented on the pics on flickr, but my goodness, here I’ll just say that sometimes that baby’s amazing faces and cutest-dimple-ever kinda make me almost wanna steal him and love him and chew on his cheeks. nomnomnom. but only “almost,” because otherwise that might seem creepy and blog-stalkerish.
also, yes, where is the picture of your new awesome jeans?
I happen to like human giraffes.
wow, the faces that baby makes are priceless. Also, I think we all deserve to see some photos of your skinny ass in those jeans :)
wow, congrats on getting skinny, those jeans are hot, you are now a MILF! :)
that is the most amazing progression of the “rolling over” — great eye there photographer and even better baby model!
ps HAWT jeans! JB must be lovin it
He just keeps getting cuter!
Way to go on the jeans. So awesome!
Turbo Jam seriously? Because I bought the DVD about a month ago and haven’t lost a pound or come anywhere NEAR looking like you. What’s that you say? You have to DO the workout, not just WATCH it? Hmmm. Interesting. I’ll have to try that, especially if it gets my ass looks like your’s.
Damn cute baby too. He’s a keeper alright.
wish I had something witty to say…. but WOW! awesome job on everything. You deserve some groovy self accolades too. I am actually motivated to get my ass back to the gym.
Love the jeans! They look so awesome! Also, Dylan is so adorable…where did the red/auburn hair come from?
Yay, yay, yay!
Dylan’s hair, boy, I’m not sure. JB has a lot of red in his beard when it’s grown out, and he’s got an aunt who is a redhead. My mom has auburn tints and my aunt has a strawberry blond vibe. Other than that, who knows? Riley’s hair was reddish for a while, but nothing quite like Dylan’s. I love it beyond all reason and hope it doesn’t change.
WOOT! Hot jeans!
Dylan is just too adorable for words! NOM NOM NOM NOM!
holy hell woman you are tiny
Your boy is just TOO DAMN CUTE for words. Seriously.
Awesome work on the jeans – you look great in them, and you’ve definitely earned ’em.
Cute kid. (duh!) Hot mama. (also duh!)
Just as an aside, I printed out the pic of you posing at the beach in your 2 piece, and put it up on my wall over the mirror where I work out as my inspiration. Methinks the pic of you in the skinny jeans might make a worthwhile addition to the motivation collection.
Oh my god, Dylan is way too cute!!!!
It’s so funny to see the pictures of Dylan with Riley’s old stuff in them. I have recently drug out that old turtle too, for my new girl. Those pictures are great!
Good lord woman you look HAWT in those jeans. You mean for me to lose weight I actually have to WORK at it? It just doesn’t fall off by me TALKING about exercising?
Damn. *takes out Turbo Jam dvd*
Okay Linda, next step… tapered jeans. I’m not even kidding, all new levels of hottie hot hot legs are on the horizon…
I would pay CASH MONEY for redhead genes.
Also, I love the stage labels on those photos.
You look farking HOTT, woman! Damn!
And that is one ridonculously cute baby, even when he’s screaming his little red head off.
okay, maybe you’re tired of hearing people tell you how AWESOME you look, or maybe other people are tired of hearing you talk about how HARD you’ve worked, but I love talking about both (I constantly bore my boyfriend with healthy food and exercise talk, so I totally feel you). You look great. Wear dem jeans! yah dick is long!
Damn, girlfriend, you look Awesome, just amazing and very inspiring.
Dylan is so cute, my boy also had the red for a bit like Riley, so cute, but didn’t last.
Just wanted to say that I LOVE your fitness posts. . . they are really an inspiration! You look great.
Damn… you look GOOD.
7For all Mankind are the best jeans ever. WICKED expensive, but AMAZING. I had the same issue and Try not to eat or drink at all until after a few hour of wearing them and deep knee bends.
I’m so glad you keep talking about this health stuff…I need to keep hearing it and seeing your pictures and getting inspired. :o)
You look fantastic! I can’t wait to join operation drop baby weight beginning in November, though really could there be a worse time of year to be on a healthy eating kick?!?
Good god Linda! You just keep posting this shit, it helps me stay on track! You look amazing.
Dylan is perfect, as usual- that gagging one made me snort my water.
Damn, you look HOT! :-) I have those same jeans but I look much more sausagey in them than you do…I’m so freakin’ jealous! Thanks for all the inspiration. Maybe I should go to the gym tonight instead of sitting on my couch eating ice cream. Now there’s a brilliant idea!
I’m pregnant now and I am TOTALLY using you as my inspiration when I pop this kid out.
I think its time we take a break. I’m not breaking up or anything just a break. You see, your just to Hawt for me now, and I feel to frumpy next to you. But, maybe when I finish dropping this baby weight (10 lbs to my goal only 30 more till I look like you) we can work it out!
Dylan is one seriously expressive little dude. I can’t get over his hair.
Also, there is something so satisfying and porntastic about finding a nice pair of jeans. Why can’t regular jeans makers figure out whatever the hell designer jeans folks are doing to make my ass look better.
Ass-magic should be common knowledge.
The jeans are MAGICAL! Or maybe you just really have skinny long legs and serious bootay.
I snorted (snorted!) at the fill my mouth with cream what? part.
Thank you so much for the laughs, I needed them today.
Awesome jeans too! You are one seriously hot mama! :)
Dang, girl. Coming out from lurking to say I am very jealous. I had a baby a year ago and I look nothing like that. Good for you!
I love 7’s, they really are the perfect jeans if you can just get through that first stretching experience. Kind of like sex, in a way.
Did I just say that out loud?
I have those jeans! I love them. The A pocket makes the ass look good! Is it rude to ask what size you bougt? (Yes, it is rude and I know that, I’m just curious.)
teee heee heeee ehee hee heee! i love the “rolling over” sequence. kills me!
and dear god, that picture of your new jeans has officially inspired me to rid myself of my fat-ass ways. thank you.
Holy cow. You look hot!!
What’s more interesting than the jeans or even hot incredibly hot you look in them, though, is how well you manage to write about this.
This topic is not easy to write about. An example of how not to do it is a website called “Morphing Into Motherhood” where this woman actually writes about how husbands have a “right” [yes, she says they have a “right”] to know what the hell is going on if their wives gain more than five pounds post pregnancy. [She will permit you five pounds, but no more than that.] She tells her readers that any woman who has any SELF-RESPECT will have the DISCIPLINE [a concept that made me want to ask her if she’d ever heard of hypothyroidism, or SSRIs, or Cushing’s, or arthritis, or any number of other medical conditions & treatments that can make it IMPOSSIBLE to lose weight] to diet & exercise her way back into the tight pre-pregnancy body that snagged her man in the first place because to “let herself go” after having kids would be “FALSE ADVERTISING” and unfair to her husband. Yes, that was the title of her post: “False Advertising.”
(Because, according to Morphing Into Motherhood, we all agree that marriage is about “advertising,” e.g., a woman SELLING HER ASS to the HIGHEST BIDDER: the would-be suitor with the biggest bank account who can afford to buy a wife with a tight bod. And because we all agre — don’t we ladies? — that a woman’s body is important not in terms of how SHE experiences it — not whether SHE is healthy and happy in her skin — but rather, what matters about a woman’s body is how the man in her life reacts to it. If she’s not pleasing her man, then she’s not doing her job.)
Ahem. Where was I? Oh, right. Yeah. This body image stuff is a difficult subject. It’s really hard for women to write about this kind of thing without sounding all self-hating (“I’m a fat pig”) or brainless, shallow, and stuck in the 1950s (Morphing Into Motherhood).
But you manage to hit the right note. You write about getting your body back in a way that is really appealing, likable, humane. You’re responsible, self-respecting, realistic, and honest. Your writing is really likable.
I think that’s why you have so much success as a writer. The topic of “losing the baby weight” is well-worn; every popular weekly magazine has articles about it in every issue, usually about some celebrity who bounced back from labor & delivery in about 20 minutes. But your writing is more intimate, and funnier than those “Get Your Bikini Body Back After Baby” articles that scream out at me in line at the grocery store.
Also, you inspire me to change my way of thinking about this topic, to approach diet & exercise not as a “punishment” for past indulgences but because I want to be healthy & strong.
If I weren’t already 9 months pregnant, the red-hair and the rolling over would have made me spontaneously ovulate.
And not that you don’t look fantastic in your jeans, but am I the only one who wants to see more of that hot pair of shoes?
Hi Linda,
I’m going to back in Bellevue this fall for work and I really want to treat myself to my first pair of premium jeans, and that kind of service is just what I am looking for. I have a whole slew of places to hit at BellSquare – where did you go for the jeans? Nordstrom? That sounds like the kind of service I get when I buy my bras there, and I’m holding out until I can go back for new bras. Bras and Jeans – two terrible things to shop for but if you have the right service, much less painful.
Those are great jeans — and they don’t look too small AT ALL!! I want. (Except I haven’t lost weight and therefore, cannot justify…)
Holy shit those jeans rock the house! That cute cutey pie of yours ain’t too bad either! Congrats on the jean victory! Yeah FFCW!