Even though it's been nearly three years since I took off one-third of my total weight, I still am surprised sometimes...navigating through crowded spaces, I often have to remind myself that I can actually get through a narrow gap. It still gives me a little thrill to look down when I'm sitting in a chair and see seat on either side of my hips. I love to fold my pants when I take them off the clothesline...they look so small. (I figured, during Roofstravaganza weekend, that I should put on a pair of jeans if I were going to be climbing around on the roofs--I ended up not getting on either one, but I still wore jeans...my favorite size-18 jeans from when I was heavy. I didn't have to unbutton them to get them on, and even with a belt cinched as tight as it would go, I walked around hiking up my drawers all day that Saturday. Come to think of it, I went to Home Depot like that. Twice. No wonder I got funny looks.)
Today I got shocked again, though. I went shopping with the Belle (after we made two batches of strawberry jam and split a jar between us for dessert after lunch...be advised that there is very little in life that can top eating still-warm jam straight from the jar with spoons on a sunny patio with a good friend). We both wanted to get a bra fitting, so in the course of spending most of yesterday's paycheck, we did.
I'm not surprised that my band size is bigger than what I thought it was--we do so much back work in circuit class, and I'm so broad around the ribs anyway, that the ones I've been wearing really don't fit properly.
What shocked me beyond all reason, though, is that I'm actually a cup size bigger than I have ever worn in my entire adult life. Now, lifting weights does not make the girls bigger, nor do the gobs of pushups in circuit class. Wishing they were bigger doesn't work either, though I have certainly tried that. I measured myself after losing the weight and bought bras based on those measurements (had to do that twice during the process, actually) and thought everything was fine. I assumed that losing weight all over also meant losing weight in the girls, and was happy that I hadn't actually dropped a cup size. I figured everything was groovy and went about my business for three years. The cups occasionally runneth over, but I chalked that up to the bras stretching out over time. Apparently, though, stretching wasn't the issue.
After the fitting, after I picked my jaw up off the floor and made her re-measure, after the clerk patted me on the shoulder and said, "Yes, honey, that really is what you are," I returned the armload of bras I'd picked out to their original homes and grabbed a few in the new size.
Alone in the dressing room, head spinning, I tried one on.
Dadgum if it didn't fit. And the girls actually looked bigger. Evidently I've been compressing the poor ladies all these years. Put them up where they belong with enough room to fill, and fill they do.
Coulda knocked me over with a feather.
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