The Body I Was Chasing vs. The Body I Got

The journey to losing weight, and more importantly to being healthy, has been paved with ups and downs for me. I'm a little different from most people when it comes to stress. When I'm stressed, I exercise more; it's my escape from whatever is bothering me. That said, let me not make it sound like I turned into a gym rat, because I have never been that dedicated to exercise. My walking has always been my real escape, a time for me to clear my head and refocus.

Those walks are also what created what I call my "20 over or under." My weight has fluctuated between 10 and 20 pounds for years, and my closet is proof of it; full of multiple sizes for whatever version of me shows up that season. I spent a few years riding my "20 under," but I was still dealing with some health issues underneath it. So in the middle of 2025, I set a goal: get under 200 pounds by the new year.

Mission accomplished. I honestly can't tell you the last time I was under 200 pounds realistically, it was sometime between college and my first son. Let's just say it's been a while.

I changed my eating habits, committed to walking daily, and added workout videos into the mix. It took months before I saw any real change, and when I finally did, I wasn't ready for it. I know the goal is supposed to be health, not chasing a certain body type, but my breasts and I have been together a long time. I wasn't ready for the weight to leave there. Like most women, I wanted the fupa gone that part I was prepared for. I just didn't expect to have to grieve a cup size to get there.

For a while, I didn't even notice. Getting dressed for work, I didn't pick up on the weight loss happening anywhere else. It wasn't until date night, when the size options in my closet were suddenly slim, that it hit me how much I'd actually lost. Forty-seven pounds, to be exact we aren't going to talk about the other 20 that took forever. But instead of sitting with that number, all I could focus on was losing a cup size. I didn't register the rest of the weight loss; I just knew my bras no longer fit right, and the sports bras I'd pushed to the back of the drawer years ago suddenly fit again.

The physical changes were impossible to ignore once I saw them but the mental shift took a lot longer to catch up. It's strange to set out to be healthy and then feel caught off guard over the parts of your body that change along the way. Nobody warns you that "losing weight" doesn't mean losing it evenly, or that you get to choose where it comes off first. I wanted the fupa gone and didn't think twice about it. I didn't expect the same math to apply to my chest, and that disconnect says more about what I'd absorbed from everyone else idea of a "good body" than it does about my actual health.

That's the part I keep coming back to: the goal was never a body type, it was a number on a chart and feeling better day to day. But somewhere along the way, society's version of what my body "should" look like snuck back in and started grading the results anyway. I know I can’t control where the weight comes off and how it comes off any body part but it still creeps into my mind.

I journaled for days about how I was dealing with the weight loss and the stress of inconsistent workout weeks. I have refused to purchase too many items in a smaller size cause I am not sure if this is it. Apart of me even thought about trying to put some weight back on in hopes my breast would fill back out. As crazy as it sounds I had all these feeling around my breast and weight for weeks. I know its a process and there are so many ways those voices sneak back into our heads. I almost felt weird journaling about my cup size and my attachment to them. Let’s be real good bras aren’t cheap.

Having the hard conversations with myself around weight, my insecurities and the root of all my body image ideas helped. We are all on a journey to be the best versions of ourselves and it’s just as important to do the inside work as it is to the physical work.