HSOS #4: Breasts, Body Image & Hard Decisions

Let's take a real and personal look at the meaning breasts hold for women at different stages of life. From my own journey of choosing implants and later having them removed, to the experiences of friends, family, and breast cancer survivors, we explore how choices around our bodies are always deeply individual. This is an open, caring conversation about femininity, body image, identity, and finding peace in the season you’re in.

Let’s talk.

Welcome to Her Season of Strength—where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy—registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman when it comes to aging like you mean it.

This show isn’t about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It’s about building real strength—physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I’ll share straight-talking nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies, and conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin once again.

Menopause is not an ending, it is only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

📝 Here's a few of the things we discuss:

• The surprising ways breasts shape our identity—starting all the way back at puberty
• My honest story of getting implants after nursing three babies (and why it made sense then)
• What changed: the moment implants went from confidence boost to holding me back
• How breasts can mean femininity, frustration, or freedom—depending on the woman
• Real stories from my circle: reductions, mastectomies, and choosing top surgery
• A simple body image challenge to help you feel stronger and more comfortable this week
• The big takeaway: why there’s never one “right” choice—only what’s right for you right now

Links & resources for this episode:

Fit After 50 Plus Program: 8-Week Nutrition Coaching & Fitness Program for women 50+. Next session starts winter of 2026. Join the interest list today for the best bonuses and discounts offered.

Free cheat sheet: "20 Tips to Crushing Menopause"

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there, and welcome to Her Season of Strength, where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy, registered dietician, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman. When it comes to aging like you mean it, this show isn't about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles.

It's about building real strength, physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I'll share straight talking, nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies. And conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin. Once again, menopause isn't an ending. It's only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

I just wanna start with a trigger warning. If you are easily offended with the word boob, breast, tatas, hooters, knockers, milk jugs, or even discussion about any of the above. You may wanna skip this episode because there's gonna be a lot of talk about boobs. I am really incredibly nervous to open up and share my story, but this is who I am and this is [00:01:00] the whole reason of this podcast, is to help other women not feel ashamed to talk about these things that many of us have gone through or are going through, especially when it relates to our self-esteem, our confidence.

Breasts just show up when we hit puberty, right? Whether we want big ones, small ones, or none at all, we don't have a choice, and our culture assigns meaning to them. But each woman's relationship with her breasts are deeply personal. So today I'd like to tell you a little bit about my journey and more importantly stories from other women and how our perspective can really shift through different life experiences.

And then lastly, a little challenge on being more positive in how we think about our bodies in general. So this episode is not about judgment for anyone's personal choices. It's just about real conversation and each woman having a choice about their own body. So I guess I should start out with my journey last Friday, and this is gonna be coming out a couple weeks, it would be almost two weeks since I [00:02:00] had my surgery when this does come out.

But I had breast  explant surgery. So what that means is that I had breast implants and I had them removed. So I wanna start out by saying, oh, most of my life, I've always had small breasts. I nursed three babies. After that was all said and done they felt pretty deflated. What, why would I want implants?

I wanted to balance my proportions. I was naturally a girl who had bigger butt and thighs and very small up top, so I was very pear shaped, which is fantastic. It's beautiful. It decreases our risk of so many different diseases. But I'd always thought that, I'd just like to. Look a little bit more proportional, right?

So I got breast implants back in 2017, and I have to say the majority of the time I had them, I absolutely loved them, especially at first. I loved how I filled out my dresses and tank tops. It gave me a boost in confidence and I felt more sexy. But over the past [00:03:00] eight years, my priorities and my perspectives have changed significantly.

First of all I've really gotten into strength training and kickboxing, and the implants started feeling in the way I started studying more kind of root cause. Nutrition and started worrying about, how the implants could be causing increased inflammation in my body because I am somebody who suffers from autoimmune Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

I already have some autoimmune issues going on and I worry that maybe those. The breast implants, my body, seeing those as foreign could potentially cause increased inflammation. I was not seeing any in, problems with them and they still from my, yearly mammograms, they still looked great, everything was intact and they were fine.

They were fine. So there, that wasn't the reason why I wanted to get them out. And the next kind of big issue was I, they felt. They started to feel too big. I would look at pictures and I'd see myself on [00:04:00] Zoom calls, and that's all I could focus on was just how big my top looked. And then lastly I have a family, hi, history of breast cancer.

So my mom, my aunt, and my grandmother all were diagnosed with breast cancer. Granted, none of these breast cancers were genetically related, so it was not a concern that I was at higher risk. And I, but I still worried that these implants could potentially hide cancer on my mammograms and even with self exams.

So I made the decision this past spring to take 'em out. Otherwise known as explan surgery. I wanted to add that I also chose to have a breast lift since at the age of 54, things are starting to sag a bit and this would just ensure that I had a symmetrical, uplifted yet natural appearance when all was said and done.

So the actual surgery it is fairly significant. I am, a little over a week out right now and it's, I'm gonna be. Limited in my activity and what I can lift and ra, lift, grabbing things from [00:05:00] overhead or reaching out to grab things for another three to four weeks. So as a personal trainer, they, you can see how that could be challenging, so all of my clients have been amazing. I've been talking to them about how I'm gonna have to be pointing at weights and telling them, I want you to get those 20 pound dumbbells, and now we're gonna do this, and I wanna get. I want you to grab those 30 pound dumbbells or whatnot, but the actual surgery was about three hours long, so somewhat, time it, it took some time and they went through the incisions they had initially created when I had my implants in.

And, so I have incisions all the way under each breast as well as one that extends up to my nipples. That was the lift part right now. They had to put drains in both breasts. I got one of those out and I still have one of those. And that's just to help me heal from the inside out just because it's, we're gonna prevent those fluid pockets and stuff from, from creating on each side so that you're, you don't have increased risk of infection and things are able to heal [00:06:00] well. I feel a little bit like Frankenstein right now, but I am healing well and I'm really looking forward to the future and moving forward and feeling just feeling, feeling a little bit more like myself again. So enough about me. I wanna talk a little bit about taking a step back to, why are breasts so important? Why are they such a focal point for women and men? And I think, looking back in our culture, they are central to many women's femininity.

Femininity, it's hard to say sexuality as well as our gender identity. And this is not for every woman, and I'm gonna talk about some different stories here as we walk through. But whether you are able to ch you know, or able to or choose to breastfe your children, that could be such an amazing way to feel close to and nourish your baby.

This is all centered around our breasts, but for other people, breasts can be a big discomfort or a hindrance. Many [00:07:00] women don't think twice about their breasts. It seems, might seem crazy to think about spending money through insurance or out of pocket to have surgery to change them.

But if the stories I share today help even one woman feel less alone. More heard and empowered to uplift other women just like her. This is all worthwhile. So first I want to talk about I wanna tell the story of one of my closest friends of the past 20 years who was willing to tell her story. Her name is Karen and she says she has always been a strong athletic and healthy Scandinavian girl.

She swam competitively. She loved to snow and water ski, and did some outdoor running. She was very active, but her weight fluctuated. And she gained some weight after giving birth to her daughter in her mid forties, her usual normal to large breasts began to sag and just felt heavy. She consulted with a plastic surgeon and happily discovered that she qualified for insurance coverage for a breast reduction.

She says it was the best medical decision [00:08:00] she has ever made. She felt so much lighter, able to run freely and confidently, and was motivated to become more active now at the age of 63, 15 years after having the surgery. She has never regretted her own decision. It has helped her to feel more comfortable and confident in her own body, and she wanted to emphasize how she feels it is important for each woman to do what feels right for them.

And now I wanna share another story of just a different perspective. This from a younger woman who went through breast reduction surgery and I wanted to tell her story. 'cause I think it can be so important just to see different perspectives of, from younger women as well as older women alike. So she's a young 20 year, 8-year-old woman.

That I have been lucky enough to know most of her life and she shared her story with me. I won't be sharing her name 'cause I wanna maintain her privacy, but here's what she told me. She says, for as long as I've had them, I never have liked my breasts. I always have [00:09:00] heard that women around me saying how jealous they were or joking, they wish I could give them some of mine when I would complain about my large size.

To me, though, they felt like a huge weight, both literally and figuratively. That kept me from being fully confident. Every outfit I wore was centered on how small I could make my breasts look and how I could make sure not to draw attention to them. I spent the majority of my life wearing a bra halfway up my breasts and hoped they would look smaller.

I hadn't admitted to anyone until after I got my reduction and had a chance to reflect on how that wasn't normal for me. It was necessary after getting my breast reduction. I feel more like myself than I ever have. I've been asked if it feels different now, and for me, it just feels like how I'm meant to be.

So now I wanna take a, just a different look. And since I, worked in the cancer center for 10 years, I met so many women going through treatment for breast cancer who. Many had to make the super [00:10:00] difficult decision of whether to keep their breasts or not, and then if they wanted to go through reconstruction and implant surgery, these are such personal decisions for each woman thrown right into the middle of the absolute scariest times in their lives.

So I felt like it was key to share a story from an amazing cancer survivor and one of my true life heroes who was forced to take this journey. And that is my Aunt Kathy. So back in 2010, my Aunt Kathy was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 64. She felt a ter breasts that didn't show up on a mammogram, but an ultra down An ultrasound did show it.

Initially they were gonna do a lumpectomy, but tests showed she had two different cancers. So she had a single mastectomy on just on one side. She did not get an implant because her physician had recommended that at her age it might not be a good idea and may cover up if the cancer returned. She says she was told not to talk to other women about it or other people who have had breast [00:11:00] cancer because they would only tell her horror stories, but she did have a highly recommended oncologist and a radiologist, so she trusted that they knew what they were doing.

She told them to do what needs to be done so that she can just get back to her life. And that is my Aunt Kathy. In a nutshell. She says she firmly believes a positive attitude was vital to getting her through the challenging chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Only two years later, in 2012, she was diagnosed with a second separate cancer, and that was fallopian tube cancer, which she said wasn't as difficult because she knew what to do.

She went through a complete hysterectomy and chemotherapy again. Now I am so happy to say that at the age of 79 my aunt is cancer free. She says, other than when she gets her yearly mammogram and visits her oncologist, she doesn't think much about it. She says her only regret is that she no longer has cleavage.

So it's difficult to find tops that she could wear that weren't low cut. She [00:12:00] does say that the current range of breast prosthetics are incredible, so she can choose to have small breasts or large breasts depending on her mood that day. So funny, my aunt has a wonderful sense of humor. Yeah, I, the, these stories are just awesome and I love these women and I love that they were so willing to share their stories with me.

But I think I would be remiss if I didn't talk about another group of women and. This is, it's so important to acknowledge here that most of this conversation has been about women who are born with breasts and a vagina, and who identify as female, but that isn't everyone's story. Some people are born with breasts but don't feel necessarily female, and that can be complicated, even painful.

But for them, breasts might not feel like a symbol of femininity at all. They might feel disconnected from that part of their body, or even suffocated by it. And I've seen this within my own circle of family and friends, and I [00:13:00] know really how deeply personal and emotional that experience can be. For some, the decision to pursue top surgery are one to surgically remove their breast.

Isn't about rejection, it's about alignment. It's about making their outer body match the inner truth of who they are. For my last story, I'd like to share a very personal one from a person who would like to remain anonymous. They say I feel uncomfortable. Even as a child, way before I ever started to grow breasts, I resented knowing that I would have them someday.

I remember really starting to hate them. When I turned 18 and started college. I felt like they didn't belong to me. Like they were a foreign object on my body. Now at the age of 32, I am desperate to have top surgery. Financing is currently the biggest boundary because top surgeries can cost as much as $20,000.

It's extremely challenging to get insurance to cover the procedure, especially as a person who identifies as non-binary or not conforming to [00:14:00] either male or female gender and they are not on testosterone. I also fear that my chest won't look how I want it to. I feel shallow saying this, but admit it won't stop me from moving forward with surgery.

I also have a fear of rejection and disapproval, or a lack of understanding from certain family members. My hope for surgery is that I will be able to move more freely and authentically through life in my body. I can't wait to look in the mirror at myself and not see something that doesn't belong there.

I've always had a passion for investing in and constantly developing my personal style because that's how I present myself to the world. I feel after having top surgery, I will be able to wear clothes that I love and look like I belong in them. I will no longer need to slouch or hide and will get to walk confidently in my skin and clothes.

Wow. Let me just take a second to acknowledge the bravery that it takes for this person to share their feelings on such a personal subject, especially at this time when the world is not always kind to those who don't follow the quote [00:15:00] unquote norm. Be kind. So now I wanna say clearly every person's journey with their body is valid.

Whether breasts feel empowering, uncomfortable, affirming, or unwanted, it all matters and there's no single right way to feel about them. There's no wrong choice when it comes to caring for your body and your identity. I hope you found these stories as powerful as I did while collecting them. And wanna thank these four souls for taking the time to Heartfully write.

Them down. I guess the main point I would love for you to take from this podcast is boobs may mean something different to each person, but more importantly, your worth and beauty isn't defined by any one body part. Body image isn't about liking every inch of yourself. It's about appreciation and respect for the body that you live in.

So this week I want you to try one, two, or all four of these simple tips for boosting your body image this week. So first, daily appreciation check. I want you to name one thing that [00:16:00] your body allowed you to do today. Did it let you get yourself to work? Walk the dog, hug your child. Lift your groceries.

Then I want you to look in the mirror and I want you to try a mirror shift. So when you look in the mirror, I want you to focus on a part of your body that you like or that feels strong, not one that you don't like. We, it's usually the first thing our brains go to is, oh, I don't like this or I don't like that.

When you're looking in the mirror or taking a picture, I want you to think about that one thing that you do or that helps you to feel strong. Maybe it's your smile. Maybe it's your cute little nose, or your strong legs, or your muscular calves. Third, I want you to dress for joy. I want you to wear something that makes you to feel good right now.

Not when you lose weight or after you fix something. Let me repeat that one more time. Wear something that makes you feel good right now. [00:17:00] Okay. And lastly, I want you to write down three things that you're grateful your body can do and repeat them to yourself each morning this week. I think one thing that, that having this surgery and this past week has reminded me is just how, one thing can change in our lives and take away our ability to be physically active or mobile or.

For me it's like I I'm so restricted in that sense that I, I can't lift more than eight pounds. So as a personal trainer who is constantly handing people, 20, 30, 40 pound dumbbells, it's gonna be challenging for me for over the next three weeks. But you know what? I'm grateful.

I can still move my legs. I can go for walks, I can get on a bike. There's a lot of things that I can still do while I'm, I am recovering and healing from surgery, and I want you to think about that. As I bring this conversation full circle here, I hope you can hear the common thread running through [00:18:00] all of these stories, and that's whether it's implants, reduction, mastectomy, top surgery, or simply learning to live in the body.

You have our breasts can carry so many different meanings, femin, femininity, there it is again, burden, strength, identity, survival, and yet they don't define our worth. The truth is there isn't a single right choice. There's only that choice that brings you peace, confidence, and comfort in the season of the life you are in.

What was right for me eight years ago? It's not what's right for me today. And that's okay. Our bodies and our feelings about them are allowed to change. I'd love to keep this conversation going. Maybe you've had a similar experience, or maybe your story looks completely different. Either way, your perspective matters.

If you feel comfortable, share with me on social media or send me a message. I'd love to hear how your relationship with your body has shifted throughout the years, especially [00:19:00] where you are right now in, in, in the middle of your life or in this new season. And if you know of a friend who might benefit from hearing this podcast or this message, please share it with them.

I would really appreciate it. And remember, the right choice is the one that supports your comfort, health, and confidence in the season you're in. This is about progress over perfection. We're in this for the long haul and this is your season of strength. Thank you for taking a few minutes today to listen.

Make sure to hit that follow button so you're notified every single Thursday morning when a new episode comes out, and have a fantastic day.