Last week, after the half marathon, I REALLY wanted to get in a hot tub. I quickly realized I have no friends with a hot tub and I’m too cheap to pay to go anywhere. Then I realized, even if I knew someone, I didn’t have a swimming suit. The last time I bought a swimming suit was last June maybe. That was 4 pants sizes ago and probably 20 to 30 pounds. Needless to say, when I tried on my old suit, it wouldn’t hardly stay on my body.
So it’s that time again; the time every woman hates. I have to go swimsuit shopping. I have to admit that I was actually really excited about it. I haven’t tried on swimsuits since I was a kid. In my fat days, I would just order one and hope for the best. Since I rarely had to wear it around people, it didn’t really matter how it fit or what it looked like.
But now I have a body that I actually kind of like. Note the: kind of attached to that sentence. A lot of people don’t really get it. Yes I lost a ton of weight. Yes my pants are 1/4 the size that they used to be. Yes I feel awesome and confident about myself. But, that doesn’t mean that I’m happy with how my body looks. I’ve worked really hard to look how I do but there are some things that hard work is never going to change. My skin will always be loose. My stomach will never be flat or a six pack. My body will never look like a fitness model but it’s my own damn fault.
In some ways I’ve accepted it. I no longer care about changing my shirt at the gym or wearing more revealing clothing. I wear tank tops again and shorts even though it shows my loose skin. I’ve come to accept it in some places. In some ways I don’t care at all and figure it’s other people’s problem if they don’t like it. But no one really understands it. It’s hard to find anyone who knows what it’s like to lose 50% of their body. It’s hard to put in so much work and not feel like my body looks much better. It’s hard to carry around the loose sack of who you used to be.
But it’s time to put that to rest. I’m trying to care less, but it’s hard. Someday I’ll have skin surgery but I still won’t look perfect. I’ll forever carry around who I used to be. It’s hard to realize that no matter how fit I stay for the rest of my life, there will always have been a morbidly obese version of me. Some people will always know what I used to look like. Other people only know me now and can’t imagine what that was like.
I have no before and after swim suit shot. I don’t think a photo of me exists in my swim suit before. I think today I might have taken the only ones that exist! But here goes. I’m going to post a photo of myself in a bathing suit! I didn’t buy it because I didn’t like how it fit. I even tried on a bikini just because I could. Those photos I’ll keep for myself. Here’s my purpose in posting this photo: My body isn’t perfect. Even after meeting all of my fitness and health goals, there are still things I want to change. There are other things that will never change. But I’ll continue to love myself, push myself and try to accept the body that I have.
