Finally Choosing Me

It’s been about a year since I lost the weight.

You’d think that would have been plenty of time for my brain to update its records.

Apparently not.

When I look in the mirror, one of the first places my eyes still go is my stomach.

And God forbid I get bloated.

Logically, I understand bloating.

I know I did not regain 100 pounds between breakfast and dinner.

My brain, however, takes one look at my stomach and announces:

Well. We’re a whale again.

Excellent.

Thank you for your input.

There are other things I notice now too.

Losing weight uncovered parts of my body I hadn’t seen in a very long time.

For example:

I found my neck.

It had apparently been living underneath multiple chins.

Unfortunately, the chins didn’t exactly pack their belongings and move out.

They deflated.

So now I can see my neck, but I can also see the loose and sagging skin on my face and underneath it.

Not exactly the dramatic reveal I had pictured.

Nobody Warns You About the Leftovers

When people talk about losing a significant amount of weight, we talk a lot about what disappears.

The pounds.

The inches.

The larger clothes.

We don’t talk nearly as much about what stays behind.

Loose skin.

Sagging.

Wrinkles that suddenly become more noticeable.

A stomach that doesn’t look the way you imagined a 100-pound weight loss stomach would look.

Sometimes I look at the extra skin and think about having it removed.

I’ve thought about skin-removal surgery more than once.

There’s a part of me that wonders whether getting rid of some of it would finally help my eyes see what everyone else seems to see.

Maybe I’d look in the mirror and stop focusing on my stomach.

Maybe clothes would sit differently.

Maybe I’d finally see the smaller body instead of immediately finding what is still wrong with it.

And then the practical part of my brain arrives.

There are risks.

There is pain.

There is recovery.

And there is the not-so-small matter of how much it costs.

Eventually I come back to:

I don’t need it.

That doesn’t mean I never want it.

Those are two different things.

And I’m learning I can hold both thoughts at the same time.

I Changed Sizes Before I Changed Clothes

When I first started fitting into smaller sizes, you’d think I would have immediately gone running toward all the clothes I hadn’t been able—or willing—to wear before.

I didn’t.

I bought smaller versions of the same kind of clothes I’d always felt safe in.

Comfortable.

Familiar.

Colors that didn’t draw too much attention.

Styles that helped me disappear.

My body had gotten smaller.

My wardrobe was still hiding it.

I hadn’t realized how much of my clothing wasn’t really about fashion.

It was camouflage.

For years, I’d learned how to dress a larger body in a way that made me feel less visible.

Then I lost the weight and continued following the same rules.

It took time before I started wondering:

What if I don’t want to be invisible anymore?

Then Things Got Interesting

Slowly, I started experimenting.

Cute rompers.

Skirts.

Dresses.

Wide-leg pants.

And can we discuss wide-leg pants for a moment?

Because apparently there is a considerable difference between wearing wide-leg pants when you’re larger and wearing wide-leg pants when you’re smaller.

Same concept.

Completely different experience.

Before, I worried that anything wide would make me look wider.

Now I put them on and think:

Well, look at me being all flowy and fashionable.

Same pants.

Different body.

Completely confused brain.

And somewhere along the way, getting dressed stopped being exclusively about asking:

What will hide me?

I started asking:

What do I actually like?

That sounds like such a small question.

It wasn’t.

Because for a very long time, I hadn’t been dressing the body I had.

I’d been dressing the body I wanted nobody else to notice.

Apparently, Smaller Doesn’t Automatically Mean Comfortable

There are still clothes that make my brain panic a little.

Anything involving my stomach is at the top of the list.

A shirt can fit perfectly everywhere else, but if it hugs my stomach?

Suddenly that’s the only thing I can see.

I can look at the entire outfit and somehow my eyes immediately zoom in on one area like they’re conducting a very important investigation.

There it is. The stomach.

Yes.

Thank you.

I was aware I had one.

I’m trying to challenge that a little.

Sometimes I deliberately let some of my stomach show.

Not a lot.

We’re not getting reckless.

But enough.

Enough to remind myself that having a stomach doesn’t mean I need to hide it.

Enough to discover that I can leave the house with part of it visible and absolutely nothing catastrophic happens.

People continue shopping.

Traffic continues moving.

Society survives.

It’s very brave of everyone.

Some Rules Are Harder to Break Than Others

Color has been another adjustment.

For years, I knew which colors were “safe.”

And even now, there are colors I look at and immediately think:

Absolutely not. I cannot pull that off.

Maybe someday I’ll change my mind about some of them.

Maybe I won’t.

I’m starting to understand that this isn’t about forcing myself to wear every color, every style or every piece of clothing I spent years believing wasn’t meant for me.

That’s just another set of rules.

The difference now is that I’m trying to figure out whether I genuinely don’t like something…

or whether an older version of me is still whispering:

People with your body shouldn’t wear that.

Those are very different answers.

I Thought Confidence Would Arrive With the Smaller Size

I think somewhere along the way, I assumed confidence would be included with the weight loss.

Lose the weight.

Buy smaller clothes.

Feel amazing.

Done.

That would have been convenient.

Instead, I lost around 100 pounds and discovered that the body can change considerably faster than the person living inside it.

A year later, there are days when I look in the mirror and recognize how different I am.

There are other days when I’m bloated and my brain immediately returns me to 240 pounds.

There are days I put on a romper or a dress and think:

Damn. I look good.

And there are days I can find every sag, wrinkle, roll and piece of loose skin before I’ve even noticed the outfit.

Both versions of me exist.

Maybe I Don’t Have to Love Every Inch

I’ve heard versions of:

Love your body.

It’s a nice idea.

I’m just not sure I’m there.

There are parts of my body I don’t particularly love.

I don’t love the loose skin.

I don’t love what losing weight did to my face and neck.

I don’t love my stomach every day.

Sometimes I still think about surgery.

Sometimes I still wish I could change things.

Maybe that’s not the inspirational ending I’m supposed to have after losing 100 pounds.

But it’s the truthful one.

What has changed is that I’m trying not to make loving every part of my body a requirement for living in it.

I can dislike my stomach today and still wear the shirt.

I can notice the loose skin and still wear the dress.

I can feel uncomfortable showing a little skin and still leave it showing.

I can look in the mirror, see something I don’t like, and resist the urge to immediately cover myself back up.

Maybe that’s what body acceptance looks like for me right now.

Not:

I love everything I see.

But:

I’m not going to punish myself for what I see.

My Brain May Take a Little Longer

My closet looks very different now.

There are rompers.

Skirts.

Dresses.

Wide-leg pants.

Colors.

Things that fit my body instead of trying to disguise it.

And yes, there are still plenty of comfortable clothes because losing 100 pounds did not suddenly make uncomfortable clothing enjoyable.

I’m smaller, not insane.

I’m still figuring out what feels like me.

I’m still learning which old rules I actually want to keep and which ones were created entirely out of shame.

And I’m still waiting for my brain to fully understand something my clothing tags figured out about a year ago:

This is my body now.

It has loose skin.

It gets bloated.

It has wrinkles.

It has a stomach.

It doesn’t look like the body I imagined I’d have after losing 100 pounds.

But it’s also the body that carried me through everything it took to get here.

So maybe I don’t need to look in the mirror and love every single thing I see.

Maybe, for now, this is enough:

I don’t have to love every inch of my body before I stop dressing like I need to apologize for being seen.

My brain may not have gotten the memo yet.

But I’m going to keep dressing like eventually it will.