(This is part 2 of a series of posts discussing my thoughts on my current “glowing up while slimming down” journey.) Clothes shopping, as a fat man, isn’t joyous. Before I get lynched in the comments, let me clarify. By “clothes shopping”, I mean in-person high-street retail shopping. Y’know, the bread and butter clothes shopping experience, partly dictated by finances. I’m sure, with the right billfold and a stacked rolladex, employing a suite of bespoke artisans to tailor-drape me in fibrous regality would be quite the uplifting moment. Alas, funds allow what funds allow, and being fat and hitting the outlet village can be sobering at best, and dehumanising at worst. There’s a few reasons for this. The main reason is lack of options. Stores, in their wisdom, keep stock to cater to a bell curve. The majority of their lines will bell curve their garments, with the biggest fractions for those median-shaped people that surround us all. Average height, build, and so on. Sure, there’ll be some outliers to the sizes, curving down. But that means us “extremes” will have a playbook of maybe one or two items to choose from, while “normies” will have the whole store. And if Big Alan has been in an hour earlier and bought a pair of trousers, you’re just bang out of luck. (I realise there may be a UK filter on this comment. Presumably in the US, there’s a much wider and flatter profile of stock options, with the bell curve topping at some number of XLs. Everything is bigger and better there, right?) So the main stores have limited scope. What of shops that cater entirely to the Higher and Mightier folk out there? I mean yes, these are okay, but they are few and far between, and the ones in the UK at least seem largely generic in their designs. They also, in my experience, make a few assumptions in ratio that means people like the Historical Me miss out. Tall and Wide? All good. Small and Skinny? Covered. But us Short Kings with Extensive Circumference are told to just roll on by.

I have been experimenting with white + navy blue (and white + black/charcoal) combination. I think these contrasts are too visually striking. I did find some fashion videos that concur with my opinion. What's your take? Here is the poll.

There are times I feel I prove the definition of insanity, “ Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” And the reality is I am fighting myself by trying make major changes that I really was not ready to make and expecting it all to work out. So how do I make changes without failing or making a fool out of myself? How can I make changes that people don’t think that I’m faking or that I am trying too hard? This is what I learned, if I can work on getting 1% better every day, most people think improvement requires massive change. They wait for motivation, they plan for tomorrow, but ancient philosophy teaches us something; radical greatness is not built in leaps, it is built in barely noticeable steps repeated with relentless consistency. Think about this, clearly 1% better every day doesn’t feel like progress, it feels like nothing and that is exactly why it works. Your mind doesn’t resist small changes it resists revolution. The stoics understood this deeply Marcus Aurelius didn’t become wise overnight. He wrote one reflection at a time, day after day, year after year, small deposits into the bank of discipline. Gentlemen, here’s the truth most miss; if you improve just one percent daily for one year you don’t just improve, you also grow, learn, and make tangible gains in your life.