I hate to shop but have to bite the bullet

I hate to shop. I don't know how the aversion to shopping developed...maybe it's bad memories of shopping with my mom growing up or general dissatisfaction with selection, prices, etc. The irony is that I have a considerable amount of clothes. My approach to shopping is that the less time I spend in a store, the happier I am which means that I tend to go to stores that group clothes by size or genre in a small area; with that said, I have minimal patience with department stores where I have to go rack to rack for an outfit. In recent years, most of my clothes have come from Walmart and Burlington Coat Factory because I can hit a few racks, find some clothes that I like in my size, try them on, pay for them and get out of dodge.

I am looking to lose a considerable amount of weight and recognize that I will need to buy a few "transition" wardrobes along to way. Doesn't change the fact that I hate to shop. I'm also not crazy about the fact that I need to buy clothes that I know I won't be able to wear for more than a few months. Whatever. Fortunately, I work from home (or wherever I happen to be at a given moment) so I don't have to keep an extensive "work" wardrobe so I can get by on shorts. I basically buy dress clothes on as as-needed basis since I gave away a lot of clothes because they are too big.

Tonight, I'm meeting up with a group of folks I haven't seen since last summer. A number of them keep in touch with me through Facebook but we don't see each other in person. I wanted to buy shorts that fit so I can show off my weight loss (they've heard about it on Facebook & Twitter) so I went to Old Navy last night. I was annoyed by the slim pickings of larger clothes (must be the given location or all the bigger folks shopped there before me) and since I'm in between sizes, I usually try an item in two sizes & pick from there. I couldn't find anything in a size 18 so I grabbed a size 16 and hoped for the best. I was thrilled to see that the shorts I tried on fit and what I mean by "fit" is that I was able to zip them up & have room in them. What an awesome feeling!