I stood in front of my wardrobe last Tuesday and cried.

Not because anything terrible had happened. Not because of a bad day. But because nothing in there fits anymore, and I do not mean "a bit snug." I mean my body has fundamentally changed shape, and the clothes I have spent years collecting, the ones that made me feel like me, now belong to someone else.

If you are in perimenopause and you have felt this, I want you to know two things: you are not imagining it, and it is not your fault.

It started slowly. A pound here, a pound there. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that set off alarm bells. But over the course of about eighteen months, my body just quietly shifted.

And the weight went to my middle. Always my middle. I had never carried weight around my stomach before I had the kids, and suddenly there it was, this stubborn layer that no amount of exercise or healthy eating seemed to touch. I was doing the same things I had always done. Moving the same way. Eating the same food. But my body had decided those rules no longer applied.

Here is the science bit: dropping oestrogen causes your body to redistribute fat storage. Where you might have carried weight on your hips and thighs before, perimenopause shifts it to your abdomen. It is not about willpower or discipline. It is about hormones fundamentally changing how your body processes and stores energy.

Understanding that did not make my jeans fit, but it did stop me blaming myself.

Weight is the one people talk about, when they talk about it at all. But there is so much more going on that nobody warns you about:

Your shape changes. Not just bigger or smaller, but differently proportioned. Your waist, your hips, your bust, even the width of your ribcage or your upper arms can shift. Clothes that technically "fit" in terms of size can look and feel completely wrong because your proportions are not what they were.

Hair can appear where it didn't before. Chin hairs. Upper lip. Sideburns. As oestrogen drops and testosterone becomes proportionally more dominant, hair growth patterns change. It is incredibly common and nobody wants to talk about it because it feels embarrassing. It is not embarrassing. It is hormones.

Your feet change. Yes, really. I went up half a shoe size in my early forties. I thought I was imagining it until I looked it up and discovered that relaxing ligaments (thanks again, hormones) can cause your feet to spread. Shoes I had worn for years suddenly pinched. If this has happened to you and you thought you were going mad, you are not.

Your skin changes. Drier, thinner. Less elastic. More sensitive. Products that worked for years suddenly irritate. More cysts/acne can appear on your chin line, hair line, behind your ears or even across your intimate areas.  Your entire relationship with your own skin shifts.

My menopause clinic highlighted I have also shrunk in height since my last session. How did that happen? 

Put all of that together, and you have got a body that feels like a stranger. Not in the way pregnancy changes your body, where there is a clear reason and a defined timeline. This is gradual, relentless, and comes with no guidebook.

This is the bit that really got to me, and I know it sounds trivial compared to the health stuff. But losing your sense of style when your body changes is a grief, and I do not think we name it enough.

I used to know what I liked. I had my go-to outfits, my "this makes me feel good" pieces, my formula. And perimenopause just slowly dismantled all of it. The jeans that were my armour got too tight. The tops that I felt confident in started sitting differently. I would get dressed, look in the mirror, and feel worse than when I started.

So I stopped trying. For months, I lived in leggings and oversized jumpers, not because I love that look, but because I could not face the alternative. Getting dressed became another thing that made me feel bad about myself, so I just opted out.

I know so many of you are doing the same thing right now. And I want to say: that is okay. It is okay to be in survival mode for a while. You do not have to fix this today.

I am not going to give you a "5 Steps to Love Your New Body" list because honestly, I am still figuring it out. But here is what has helped me start to rebuild my relationship with getting dressed:

 💜  I stopped keeping the "maybe one day" clothes. The jeans from three years ago that I kept hoping I would fit back into were making me feel like a failure every time I opened my wardrobe. I packed them away. Not threw them out. Just moved them out of my daily line of sight. The relief was immediate.

💜 I bought a few things in the size I actually am. Not the size I used to be. Not the size I want to be. The size I am right now. This felt like giving up. It was not. It was the most radical act of self-compassion I have done in years. They are the stretchy jeans that make me feel good and don't feel like they cut me in half!

💜 I accepted that my "style" might be evolving. The person I was at 35 had a different body, a different lifestyle, and a different energy level. The person I am now might need a different wardrobe. That is not a loss. It is a chapter.

💜 I started following women my age online. Not fitness influencers. Not "How I Lost the Menopause Weight" accounts. Women who look like me, dress for comfort and confidence, and are honest about the fact that this is hard.

💜  I talk about it. In my social feed, in messages with friends, out loud to my partner. Because every time I have said "I do not feel like myself in my body right now" to another woman in midlife, she has said "me too." Every single time.

I want to be careful here because I am not a nutritionist or a doctor, and I am not going to pretend that accepting body changes is easy or that it solves everything. If weight gain is affecting your health, please talk to your GP or seek professional advice.

For me finding time to move, to easy my joint pains, to sleep comfortably is a challenge, but I am trying to make small shifts to improve those feelings and find more acceptance and lose any shame or judgement or the should's that society puts onto us to be a certain shape or size. 

But I also want to push back against the narrative that says perimenopause weight gain is something you need to "fix." Your body is responding to a massive hormonal shift. It is doing what it needs to do. And while there are things you can do to support it (movement, nutrition, sleep, tracking your symptoms), the starting point should be compassion, not punishment.

You are not broken. You are changing. And you deserve to wear clothes that make you feel good while you do.

Go gently with yourself.