Stretchy Pants

  When I was a teenager, I proudly declared that I would never wear elastic pants to my mom and her friend. I had a few reasons for such a declaration - the first being just how unflattering and unstylish elastic waist bands were. It sort of felt like you were giving up on life if you went that route. Another reason I thought they were terrible was because you really never knew how much weight you were gaining. They are a perfect recipe for hiding all your indiscretions - I mean who walks away from a double chocolate chip cookie. I mean really. If we are being perfectly honest, I take one bite (maybe two) before I walk away...

The majority of my life I have fulfilled this vow with pride. Every pair of pants I have owned had a button and a zipper with a defined waistband. I even wore belts there for a while. My closet boasted a variety of every color and pattern. I was the poster child for style and fashion.

Well fast forward all of these years and let's just say how the mighty has fallen. My teenage self never considered what abdominal surgeries would do your abdomen nor did it consider one of the pesky parts of endo is what those of us afflicted with endo affectionally refer to as the "endo belly".

Now if I have failed to enlighten you over years of what exactly this is, I'll fill you in now. It's essentially when your stomach blows up for no rhyme or reason and you look several months pregnant. The crazy thing is it can just happen over the course of a few minutes. You can get this endo belly from running or other forms of exercise, from eating, general inflammation, fluid in the abdomen, etc. Hashtag #endobelly on Instagram or twitter will give you a little bit of an idea.  For a lot of people, when they go for a run, they sweat and lose water weight and will look generally "trimmer" afterward. Me? I may go up 2-3 pants sizes afterward. But not every time. Just sometimes. Like I said - no rhyme or reason! Eating is a whole other ballgame. Some foods are safe one day and then the next day, the body reacts to it. So needless to say, this weird battle with the endo belly has contributed to the continued weakening of my resolve around stretchy pants.


Abdominal surgeries also wreak havoc on how anything constricting on your waist feels. Sometimes even yoga pants can be uncomfortable and how do you wrap your brain around THAT? After the open abdominal surgery, I lived in yoga pants. I think it took about a year before I could stomach jeans again but by then, I needed another surgery! After the 2nd surgery, it was back to yoga pants again. My poor husband has pretty much only seen me in yoga pants or dresses for the last 3 years.


Every now and again, I'll put a pair on if I know I only have to wear them for 1-2 hours but if it's going to be a long day in them, I'll opt for something else. As surgery #3 is approaching, there is little hope I'll be in jeans again in the near future so I've been on a quest to find a new pair of black leggings with a wide waist band (because narrow waistbands on yoga pants still constrict and put painful pressure on my organs).  Something that I can dress up and down with the fall weather and look a little more put together than my traditional workout leggings.


The quest for these black leggings I imagined would be easy. Leggings are still in style I told myself so this should be quick and easy. Wrong. Oh so wrong. Workout leggings were easy to find but not so much a good quality, non-see-through, stylish pair. Maybe it just has to do with where I live? After looking at a few stores, I decided to try Kohl's although I rarely shop there.






Well, let's just say it was worth the trip.

While there were no black leggings to be found, I found something better! Rock & Republic Pull On Jeans. They fit like yoga pants. They look like jeans.

Did I mention THEY FIT LIKE YOGA PANTS?! 

They have the wide waist band so it doesn't cut into my organs and scar tissue and make me feel miserable! They expand when my stomach goes berserk which is all the time. I am just a little excited. I mean how often do I write blogs about pants? It should tell you something. Now I can look stylish and put together all the while feeling like I am wearing yoga pants. It's a win-win situation. (I just had to throw in a gratuitous, overused business phrase for good measure)

I think even my teenage self would be ok with how they look.