"Karen, you're just big-boned."
Yeah, I heard that a lot, especially from my mom as a teenager. And I didn't doubt it! I'd become taller than her sometime in junior high, and heavier too. I reached 250 pounds by the time I was 14 and eventually got slightly taller than my dad at 5' 8". Which isn't super-tall, but moreso than any of my female peers at the time. I just felt huge all over. I wore a size 10 on my ring finger, I wore size 10 shoes. Choker necklaces didn't fit me (and some regular ones fit me like a choker), neither did ladies' watches (I had to wear mens' watches). I felt oversized and a misfit in every aspect of my life; even the "blossom" hats that were so popular at the time were too small for my apparently chunky head!
So yeah, I was admittedly fat, but no doubt I was big-boned and/or had a large frame to match, right? Well, I'm not so sure anymore.
The more weight I lose, the more misproportioned I appear to be. My wrists have gotten incredibly tiny (to me, anyway!) at 6¼". My ring size is now a 6½. My hip bones are now findable and much more narrow than I expected. My collarbones have finally appeared as well (OMG, I have collarbones!!!). And the weirdest part of all to me is that I've lost a shoe size, and not because of the width, it's all because of the length. Yeah, I get it . . . I weigh less now so my foot bones aren't so spread out, but it's not something I'd ever considered. So while I've still got a misproportionally-large waist in comparison to the rest of me that I'm working to whittle down (44" still, WTF?! ), I got curious and took some measurements to plug into a site that estimates your frame size. I thought it might be medium rather than the large I'd always assumed, but it came up as small!
Now I'm not putting any real stock into this, but it's just kind of mind-blowing for me to even consider after spending all my life thinking I was huge in every aspect, and more importantly, that there was really nothing I could do about any of it. This is yet another reminder of how I have no clue what I look like under all this fat, and that maybe I'm even off with my goal weight. I guess time will tell?
And it's not as if there's anything wrong with having a larger frame, other than letting my overly-negative assumption about it be yet another excuse to write off trying to lose weight. But it's kind of a mindf*uck to figure out I'm not physically the person I thought I was my whole life, that my identity is changing. It's difficult enough to wrap my mind around possibly not being plus-sized anymore, now there's a whole other aspect to adjust to. I'm not complaining, mind you, I'm just . . . bewildered, I guess.
Tell me I'm not alone in this?