Sweatpants are bad for morale — Why your daily uniform matters
There was a stretch of weeks — maybe longer, I wasn't keeping track — where I wore the same two pairs of leggings and baggy sweatshirt on rotation and considered it a victory if I made it into a clean shirt before noon.
Nobody tells you this part out loud. They tell you about the sleep deprivation and the feeding schedules and the way your body feels like it belongs to someone else for a while. But they don't really tell you about the slow, quiet way you can start to lose the thread of yourself — not dramatically, not all at once, just gradually, one skipped shower and one inside-out shirt at a time.
To be clear: I wasn't depressed. I want to be clear about that. I was just... disappearing a little. Into the couch, into the routine, into the version of myself that existed only in relation to the baby. And I didn't notice it happening until one morning I caught a glimpse of myself in some photos my husband had taken and genuinely didn't recognize the energy I was seeing swiping through the phone.
That was the morning I washed my face with a few more products than normal, brushed my hair a little longer and fully braided it instead of throwing it in a messy bun, and put on pants with a button and zipper.
Not for anyone else. We weren't going anywhere. The baby didn't care. The dog certainly didn't. My husband was at work all day. I put on real pants because I needed to remember that I was still a person who did that — who got dressed, who showed up for herself, who existed outside of survival mode.
It sounds so small. And it was small. That's the whole point.
Here's what I've come to understand about getting dressed: it's not about the clothes. It's about the decision. The act of choosing — even something as low-stakes as jeans over pajama pants — is a tiny declaration that today is a day you're participating in, not just enduring. Your brain is listening to everything you do, and what you wear first thing in the morning is one of the first signals you send it.
I think about this now when I pull on my running gear at 6am — just kidding I’m not running at 6am, but saying I do this at 2pm while my daughter is at daycare doesn’t quite hit the same, but I digress. I'm not just getting dressed — I'm telling myself something. I'm a runner. I'm someone who moves her body. I'm the version of me that shows up even when she's tired. The shoes go on and the shift happens almost immediately, before I've even made it out the door.
It works in the other direction too. On the days I stay in yesterday's clothes a little too long, I can feel it. A low-grade drag, a kind of ambient meh that I used to attribute to tiredness or the weather or the general weight of everything. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that sometimes the meh was the sweatpants — or more specifically the sweatpants I wore yesterday and the day before that and the day before that.
So this is what I'd tell you, if you were sitting across from me right now and you mentioned, almost in passing, that you couldn't remember the last time you'd worn anything with a button: get dressed tomorrow. Before you do anything else. Before you check your phone or start the coffee or see what the baby needs. Just for five minutes, make yourself the first priority of the morning.
It doesn't have to be impressive. It doesn't have to be cute. Heck it can still be stretchy pants but make sure they are clean and not ones you pulled from the corner chair we all have in our room, whose sole purpose is to hold the clothes too dirty to be put away but not dirty enough to be washed.
It just has to be chosen — something you put on with intention rather than defaulting to because it was on the floor, excuse me, the chair. That intention is the thing. That's what you're actually putting on.
Sweatpants aren't the enemy, for the record. I still wear them. I just try not to wear them as armor anymore — that particular kind of armor that's really just a way of telling yourself you're not worth the effort of getting dressed.
You are. Even on a Tuesday when nobody's coming over and the baby just spit up on the one clean shirt you had. Especially then.
Put something on. See how the day changes.
Talk soon, Britt ✿
Talk soon.
— Britt
I spent years being very good at exercise and having almost no idea why I was doing it outside of competition. A Division I athlete who lost her relationship with movement the moment the sport ended — and had to find her way back to it entirely on her own terms.