Wide Feet

2026-05-31

I have pretty large feed, it is a little annoying since I have larger feet than my dad but am shorter than him. Anyway I remember in high school I wore really big shoes, like size 12, and they would have a little bit of extra room at the end. I thought this was really normal, things didn’t fit me right anyway, I wore really baggy jeans, a really baggy sweatshirt.

Since I have become an adult I am trying to wear things that fit me better. My body is no longer growing and will only shrink (unless I get fatter). And so I have found my correct jean size (I think my legs are a little short), and a better shirt size. Definitely in Asia I am an extra large and in the US I am a medium. I still dont know how to buy Indian clothes but perhaps one day I will learn. So since high school, and even college, I have replaced my entire wardrobe with better fitting clothes.

But it took me a lot longer, maybe until just a few years ago, when I figured out my shoe size. I tried to find shoes and brands that fit. One thing that always fit very well were Birkenstocks and I wear those a lot, probably too much. I really like boots and sneakers as well, but my shoe size would range from 10 1/2 to 12, and they would often not fit very well. And it sucks to walk around in shoes that dont fit all day, and it also sucks to throw away shoes. And some part of this is due to my own laziness and the rise of the internet, I bet if I went into a nice shoe store they could have helped me figure this out a while ago but I often buy shoes from the internet and would rather be uncomfortable than to return them.

Anyways I think the root cause of this issue is that I have wide feet. When I buy sneakers I need to buy size 11 wide. The shoes would always be tight in the toe box area, I guess my feet are wider than average. Anything smaller than 11 is too small, and anything larger than 11 the width becomes ok but the length becomes too much and it starts to feel like I am wearing clown shoes. Well armed with this new knowledge I will slowly replace my shoe collection and try to have only good fitting shoes.

And the big thing that kicked off this blog is that I think our youngest son is afflicted with this too. I think he wears size 6 in kids shoes but they are really hard to get on his feet and he can’t wear socks that are too thick. He has plenty of room lefts to grow length wise but I think he is maxed out width wise. I will start to look around for wide kids shoes, hopefully he will have slightly better fitting shoes growing up than I did.

-Gary