The peculiar torture of underwear shopping

I wasn't going to post a photo of myself in underwear on my blog (people could be eating while reading it) so instead I opted for the most covered up photo I have of myself. As I mentioned before I have recently gained some weight and unfortunately this means a lot of stuff that was fitting me doesn't any more. I am working on fixing this ( by eating healthier) but its an incredibly slow process so in the meanwhile getting dressed to go places that are not work is a bit of an ordeal. As most of you know when your weight goes up so does your bra size. This makes sense so it was hardly the most surprising thing to have happened to me over the last few months. My way of managing this was to bravely ignore the problem ( perhaps bravely is not the word I am looking for) and to only occasionally wear regular bras but instead live in some sort of hybrid between a sports bra and vest. I decided today was the day to fix this but I clearly had forgotten how much of an ordeal this could be.

Step one to bra shopping was to work out what my new bra size is. This involved a measuring tape, a bit of internet searching and lot of confusion. According to the internet this is not a straightforward process. A lot of sites recommend you put on a bra while working this out which isn't a whole lot of help when you don't have one that fits you. From my calculations it seems I might be one of three different bra sizes. I had rather been hoping that my trusty measuring tape might actually rule out all but one. I was hoping to avoid having to try on a million bras before finding one I liked. I headed into town with only a vague idea of what I might be looking for.

I started in Dunnes Stores and brought a few options into a dressing room only to discover, after much wrangling trying to close said bras, that my calculations were dramatically wrong. This lead to frantic searching online to try and find out if I should be going up in cup size or band size. You'd think you could just try on the next size up but you would be wrong. I don't know who decided to make bra sizes so confusing but I have already decided I hate them.

Next I went to Debenhams because I know they offer a bra fitting service but while there I decided I didn't really want a strange woman looking at my boobs plus I didn't want to spend €40 on a bra when I am actively trying to lose weight. Also I noted that while they had lots of delicate bras , these were mostly in much smaller sizes than I calculated I'd be wearing. It seems my new bra size allows me to most buy ugly contraptions meant to hide your breasts away. 

Feeling somewhat dispirited I made my way to Penneys. This is always a brave move on a Saturday afternoon. I grabbed a multitude of bras in various sizes and made my way to the changing room. I thought I was being very clever by picking out some in multipacks so I would be getting two or three similar bras but only having to try on one of each. What I didn't think about is that shoplifting is clearly rife in Penneys which leads them to attach multipacks of bras together in such a way that you can't separate them without a scissors. It does make it difficult to work out if a bra looks halfway decent on you when there are two other bras dangling from it. Can I also say that standing half dressed in a changing room surrounded by mirrors does not do wonders for your confidence. I did emerge with a bra, no clear idea of my actual bra size (this one better than any of the others but not perfectly) and a new complex about my back fat thanks to some well situated mirrors. I think I will be waiting a while before I put myself through all that again.