Three times before I lost a pile of weight. I mean a pile. The first time almost 90 pounds, the next time about 50, the last time (about 9 years ago) about 60. Scary.

Each time, I happily gave away, threw away, or sold all my fat clothes. "I'll never wear a 2X again!" And that was the conventional wisdom: don't keep the fat clothes "just in case". Get rid of them!

And three times I went out and bought the same clothes all over again when I gained weight. Adding insult to injury.

I've lost about 30 pounds so far this time, and guess what? I'm NOT going to get rid of all the fat clothes. Not just yet. Some would say I'm programming myself to fail, but I did it right the first three times, and I failed anyway and had to shell out money I could ill afford to spend on another round of fat clothes each time.

I have about 8 favorite sweaters that I wore when I was working--Lands End classic sweaters. Similar ones now sell for $40-50 each. That's $300+ worth of sweaters I'm going to hang on to for a while. They aren't going out of style, ever, and if I don't blimp up again in a couple years, I'll call it safe and give them to the Goodwill.

I figure in a year or two, I'll know if I'm going to make it this time. In the meantime, I'm keeping one big box full of each size that gets too big, just in case.