Everyone has one part of their body that they would change if they could. Nose, stomach, butt, height, etc. For me it’s always been my chest. The instant I started developing I hated it. If I could have remained an A cup forever I would have been grateful. I’m sure some people would have loved to swap places with me.

In high school and junior high I hid under enormously large t-shirts. Luckily, it was the 90s and grunge was in.

I’ve always been active and on the thinner side. Regardless, once I was ‘fully grown’ I have never been below a C cup. Even when I was depressed and far too thin all over. I made peace with the C cup eventually, but the instant I gained weight, this one one of the first places that would grow. At the very least, it was always a great motivation to stay in shape.

Once of the nuanced experiences that are unique to being a female is that our bodies will change throughout our lives. There’s also a lot more information on this now than there has ever been before. It’s a fact that men’s bodies have been studied more often in regards to how physical fitness and aging affects them, but we are starting to learn more about women. I wish that I had known some of the things that I know now when I was younger (isn’t that what everyone always says?) I also would have loved some of the resources that are available now when I was figuring all of this out.

In short, we don’t talk about this enough. At some point back in the past, it was decided that the female brain and body were these big unfathomable mysteries and needed to be hushed up and kept quiet to avoid disturbing anyone, including other women. (Click here to read about how we used to not be allowed to run marathons.) Bleh, I say! I’m going to talk about boobs, hormones and food!

I was a late starter and didn’t become sexually active until I was 22. At that time, I approached my OBGYN about depo provera. I had friends who raved about it. They loved that they didn’t have periods anymore and one even claimed that she had lost weight on it. To her credit, the first time I asked my doctor about it, she wasn’t sure it was what I needed. The next time I went in to see her, I was seeking relief for my terrible cramps. All of the women in my family have a tilted uterus, which doesn’t normally mean a whole lot, other than worse cramps and a few other ‘incidental’ things. I recall telling her that I was having dreams about having cramps because I was having cramps so badly. I remember her looking down at a spot on the floor, going internal for a second, and saying, “If your cramps are really that bad, maybe it would be beneficial to stop your period all together.” She put me on Depo.

For those of you unfamiliar, Depo contains the hormone progestin. The way it was explained to me at the time was that it tricks your body into thinking it’s already pregnant, thus rendering you unable to conceive. What it physically does is suppresses ovulation, keeping your body from releasing an egg to begin with and thickens cervical mucus so that sperm is unable to reach any eggs. I remember telling my mom about it and her saying she wasn’t sure. She felt that fake pregnancy wasn’t a good idea because pregnancy was such a big deal. I was 22. I was just elated to not have a period. And for a while, it went great.

Me in my skinniest phase. I don’t have a ton of pictures from the big phase.

Then the guy I was seeing (first love, first everything) broke up with me suddenly and unexpectedly just after our one year anniversary. I was devastated for months. My appetite suffered, although I wasn’t intentionally not eating, and I shrank in size. I continued to get the shot, but had no idea how it was affecting me because I was accidentally starving myself. I got down to 114 pounds at 5’6”. I was still working out and I was eating when I was hungry. I was just never hungry.

Fast forward to me starting to get better. I met my next boyfriend. Stayed on the shot. Suddenly everything began growing. I wasn’t eating a ton, I was eating a sustainable amount, but my boobs became huge. I worked out harder, I wore two sports bras to run. I wore a cami with a built in bra over my normal bra under all of my button up work shirts because suddenly they didn’t fit. I only had one bra that would fit me. It got to the point where people started commenting on by boobs. Straight men, gay men, women. Generally the comment was something like, “you know, people said your boobs were big and I was thinking, ‘no they’re not’ but I’m looking at you now and, yeah, they are.” So awesome to hear, right? The next time I went in for the shot, the nurse asked how things were going. I told her my boobs were enormous. She said, “well, you’re probably just getting older.” Gave me the shot and left.

I never made another appointment, I just stopped going. I was at the point where I was researching breast reduction on a constant basis. I was wearing a normal bra and two sports bras every time I went for a run. I figured I should try everything else before considering surgery.

At about month three, when I was supposed to go in for my next dose, I started bleeding again, on and off. I got bloated, it went down, I would have a heavy day, then a light day, the weight began to drop off. I didn’t know that I had been losing my hair until I stopped losing it. I didn’t realize how much my libido had suffered until it came back. I never, ever, went on birth control ever again. My boobs shrank back to their usual size.

That was the most out of control I had ever felt in my body and I never wanted to feel that way again. No matter how good I ate or how much I exercised, I just kept getting bigger.

I wish I had known back when I was getting that shot that if I had changed my diet a little bit in the days before my period that it would have really ameliorated my cramps. They have actual apps for that now. I just thought it was my life and I was going to have to tough it out. Everyone used to tell me, “once you have kids it will all straighten out.” But I never wanted to have kids. That was another thing you weren’t supposed to tell people when you were in your early twenties, but I’ll save that for another rant.

After that, things went along pretty normally. I avoided all hormonal drugs and as I got older and started getting more into physical competition, my diet gradually got cleaner and cleaner. Outside of college, I never intentionally ate terribly all the time. I was always a person who genuinely enjoyed vegetables. I was also a person who didn’t really care to cook and was really good at living on a budget. So when I was younger, I ate cheap food a lot, or when I did eat out, I ate leftovers. So, I paid attention to what I was eating, but when you eat out, or eat cheap food (and you’re not cooking) you’re frequently getting a lot of sub par stuff in your system that you don’t know about.

Me during a demo at a black belt ceremony.

Martial arts competition changed this a lot for me. Suddenly I had to train at a high level and be at a certain weight. I started cooking in earnest. A few fights in, MyFitnessPal came on the scene. Suddenly there was an app at our fingertips that would tell you how much you were actually consuming. You could see on your phone (which people now carried everywhere) how many calories you had left to consume. If you had a goal, you could see, in real time, how that beer might wreck it and maybe you go for water instead. It also gave me an idea of things to cut out. I started cutting mayonnaise off of my sandwiches then, and opting for healthier bread. I found I didn’t miss the white bread or the mayonnaise when the fights were over, and those habits stayed.

Fast forward to when Dean and I were married and we decided to go on a two week sugar cleanse. I had always had a sweet tooth and, although I knew sugar wasn’t great for me, had never had enough motivation to really try and eliminate it. I felt amazing after those two weeks. I had injured my piriformis several months before and it was healing very slowly, to the point where I was a little sore after every run. This completely went away during the sugar cleanse and came back when I reintroduced sugar to my diet. (Although not as strongly, so the break did it good.) This real time feeling of inflammation changed something from my perspective, as well as being forced to check labels for all of the different names for sugar for two weeks. Now I’m quite adept at avoiding it.

All of this to say that what we do with our bodies in terms of moving them and exercising them, as well as what we put inside them, makes a huge difference. When you read that sentence it seems so obvious. But somehow it takes a bit to really sink in. Especially for women, I think, because this is different for us week to week because our hormones ebb and flow every month. Some weeks caffeine may be fine and you can have a glass of red wine at night. Pick the wrong week and you’ve set yourself up for a migraine and breast soreness for the next five to seven days. But I finally thought I had it figured out. I knew when to start avoiding caffeine and wine, I knew when to take it easy on sugar, etc.

Until this year.

Me with Cloud this summer wearing a strapless bra that I’ve been unable to wear in recent days.

Seemingly overnight, my boobs have exploded. I suddenly was busting out of my yoga tops that I would wear for work. Only a few sports bras were working for me. EVERY sports bra left burns somewhere no matter which one I chose. My band size has not changed. (For those of you who aren’t as familiar with bras, the band size is basically your ribcage size, the cup size is the protrusive bit. Slightly misleading in that if you get a wider band size, the cup size will increase - fabric wise - even though the letter may not go up. I.E. A 34B can sometimes wear a 32C.) In fact, by some measurements, my band size had gone down, while my cup size had increased. I began researching reductions again and really calculating the cost. I measured myself and ordered new bras, only to try them on when they arrived a week and a half later and throw them right back in the box to return because they were way too small. I went and got fitted at a store in Nashville that claimed to have good COVID practices and had a five star rating regarding fit, especially with big busts and small bands. I was put into (depending on the bra) a 32DD or a 30E.

The bras were enormous and covered the entire expanse of my chest (get rid of all v-necks, not to mention any tank tops) and even wrapped around my ribcage. I felt completely imprisoned and not at all like myself. I made an appointment with my OBGYN (something I was planning on putting off until infection rates started to go down) and told the intake nurse that I wanted to get evaluated for a reduction. I also decide maybe I should try and lose a few pounds just so there were no arguments.

The next day I weighed myself and saw a number I had never seen before. I was astonished and depressed. The thing is, I’ve gained weight before. Right after the fire, I felt like my whole body was holding tension. I felt like my boobs were bigger then, too, but I felt like my whole body was a little bigger. There were certain pants and shorts I felt I could wear as well as certain bras and tops. Eventually, when things calmed down, everything went back to normal. But I never weighed myself during that time, I knew I was carrying extra weight.

This was different. I had lost inches on my ribcage. My skintight leggings were fitting great. Nothing gave me any indication that I had put on weight except for one area. No matter. I decided this was going to take a while, but I was going to do it the healthy way and just pay attention to my calories and workouts and cut out the extras. I would find time to move a little extra every day, even if it meant just getting up once an hour and taking the garbage out or something.

Two days later I had lost three pounds.

Impossible to be done in a healthy way and yet…

Two more days later I was fitting back into my old bras.

Me, trying to lift weights around the cat on Monday, busting out of a full coverage sports bra. (Today it fits fine.)

I literally don’t know what’s going on. I know that this is a flux of estrogen and progesterone, and I’m fine with keeping one of these extra large bras around for ‘period week’ but it’s gradually starting to encompass more than just that week. When I got fitted, it was two days after I had finished. And normally this kind of thing starts going down a day or two after you start. Basically I’m spending half a month in one body and another half in the other. It’s maddening.

I’ve also had other emotional and workload changes that may have affected me a little bit, but really, let’s face it, there’s not a lot going on right now. I can work, eat, sleep and go to bed with very little temptation. And I have been.

This brings me back to that time when I was on Depo and I felt like I was out of control of my body. And yes, I have the appointment, and yes, I will talk to my doctor, but ALSO, I wanted to put it out there, because as much Googling as I have done, I haven’t found any stories like mine. And I know that it happens. So we need to talk about it, so we can survive it without going through a major depression and hating ourselves and thinking that it’s all our fault or something that we’ve done.

Because that’s what I’ve been doing, even though I know for a fact that it isn’t true.

Let’s talk about boobs.