Looking your best at all times helps to transform you both inside and out.

Many people wait to buy new clothes until they’ve reached their goal weight. While this is understandable, don’t wait. Buy clothes that fit you now. Look your best at all times. That includes both during the weight loss process and when you are gaining weight.

If you are squeezing into your old clothes, you will just end up feeling sad and bad. If you are wearing your old baggy clothes while losing weight, then you are keeping your old self around instead of building up your new self.

Clothes can make an amazing difference in how you feel about yourself. Your chances of staying on a diet are a lot higher if you feel good about yourself and the direction you are heading.

What Not to Wear Shows the Power of Clothes

The immense power of this strategy was brought home to me by watching the TV show What Not to Wear on BBC. In What Not to Wear, hosts Trinny and Susannah, a pair of brutally honest fashion writers, select a woman (and sometimes a man) who has been nominated by her friends and family as needing a complete style makeover.

The contestant is given about $4000 to buy a complete new wardrobe. All her old clothes are thrown away. It’s a fresh start.

The hosts don’t just give her money and tell her to go shopping. They give her a set of rules about what clothes will look best on her and why. The rules teach her how to look the best she possibly can given her strengths and weaknesses. For the rest of her, life she’ll know how to buy clothes that make her look her best.

You might think this show is mainly about fashion and clothes, and it is about those too, but what it’s really about is the inner transformation these women must undergo before they will accept that they can be attractive, vibrant women again.

The women usually resist any change. They have reached a comfort zone with their clothes and their lives and they don’t want to change, even though it’s obvious to everyone around them that they could look so much better. And at the end of the show they usually look astonishingly better.

The before and after shots are dramatic. Selecting clothes that hide what needs hiding and emphasizes the strengths of each woman makes a stunning difference. What’s clear from watching the show is that these women were never really as bland as their before picture. They had just given up and needed Trinny and Susannah’s tough love and excellent advice to get going again.

We hide behind our clothes. We become invisible because we don’t think we deserve any better. We lack confidence. We think looking better is impossible for us. What Not to Wear shows that’s not true.

At the end of each episode, it’s not the change of clothes we notice, but the change in the women. We see them smiling and happy, strong and confident, amazed at how much better they look. We see them with hope.

That’s the transformation proper fitting and well styled clothes can help to make in you.

This was a very hard strategy for me. I’ve never paid much attention to clothes. I never liked clothes and I hated shopping for them. But What Not to Wear made a big impact on me. Seeing these women bloom motivated me to give dressing better a try.

And I do try now. I’ve upgrade my wardrobe and I feel a difference inside. I feel more confident in myself. I still hate shopping though. J

Clothes Help Prevent Kids from Being Teased

Clothes are important for kids too. For kids, looking “fashionable” with clothes that fit is especially important because it will help reduce teasing and bullying. Being overweight with comical clothes is like putting a big “tease me” sign on a kid’s back. Look good, don’t look dumpy and the other kids will move on to another target.