As I lost fat, my body topography changed. Duh, right? I mean, there were changes that I expected like my waist getting smaller, my wrists and arms getting thinner, losing some junk in my trunk. I expected all those things, but there were some changes that just never occurred to me.

One day, I looked down at my abdomen and there was a scar on my belly, just above my belly-button.  It was weird. I mean, you’d think I would remember an injury significant enough to leave a scar like that, wouldn’t you? But I was drawing a total blank!  Until, that is, I remembered having my gallbladder removed. The procedure was done laparoscopically and one of the incisions was on my abdomen.  The thing is, it was INSIDE my belly-button, not above it.  As I lost weight, my belly got flatter and the scar appeared to move, blowing my mind. But, that wasn’t the only thing that did.

My head, neck and feet shrunk, too.

I have a gigantic head.  No, seriously.  A great, big, old egg. My kangaroo felt Akubra hat is a size 60.  When I lived in Pennsylvania, it was my go-to hat for shoveling sidewalks and keeping my head warm going to work.  It took every single centimeter of the circumference to hold my noggin and hair.  It’s too big for me now.  Even with the same huge mane, the hat slips around on my head.  I was, in fact, a fat-head and, it turns out, a fat-neck.

I had a couple of necklaces that hung just to the bottom of that dip at the base of my neck (the jugular notch – for your cocktail party trivia of the day).  Now, those same necklaces hang a good inch lower than that.  Again, I never thought about my neck having a layer of fat that significant; but, clearly, it did.  Today, I can see my sternocleidomastoid muscle when I turn my head (that’s the muscle that runs from behind my ear to my clavicle.  And, yes, I had to look that up just now.)  There’s not much excess fat on my neck anymore – or on my feet.

Probably the biggest surprise was my feet. I’ve never really thought that my feet were fat – they certainly weren’t Fred Flintstone feet.  However, I lost one whole shoe size (or maybe they’ve changed how they size shoes, I’m not sure). Most of the shoes I wore before are just a little loose – like they’ve been stretched out.  My favorite white sandal wedges are a safety hazard now that my foot moves around so much in them.  Not that I was particularly graceful on them to begin with; but, now, I’m a $10,000 video waiting to happen in those things.

As we discussed last Friday when we talked about the excitement of excavating one’s own skeleton, losing weight is truly a voyage of discovery.  The body I thought I knew, I didn’t really know at all.  Things have moved, shrunk, tighten and, yes, sagged. Regardless, I’m thrilled with the introduction!