Changing Body Types – Is it Actually Possible & My Experiences with it

Who hasn’t wanted to change their body type at some point or another? I know that I’ve longed for a different body, hair, and face at many different points in my life. So a question that I’ve wondered about, and that I’ve been asked, is: ‘Is it possible to change my body type?’

And for a long time, I thought the answer was yes. I also thought that I had accomplished it.

But now I’m not so sure.

As some of you know, my recovery from surgery has been a long and difficult one. As a surprise to cheer me up, my mom gifted me with a copy of David Kibbe’s “Metamorphosis”. The book that started it all! The one that describes the 13 body types.

And as I read it, it started to confirm a suspicion that I’ve had for a little while now. One that I was scared to voice.

I was wrong about my body type.

When I first started learning about the Kibbe body types, back in 2017, I first typed myself as soft classic. I had difficulty differentiating between the answers on the test, so I always went with the safe option of ‘c’ unless it was clearly otherwise.

But I knew right away that soft classic didn’t fit. So I retook the test a couple of times and landed with soft gamine. Looking at examples of soft gamine celebrities, as well as the lines for soft gamines, I knew that that’s what I was.

But then I forgot about the body types for awhile, and only returned to them again in 2019.

And I made the same mistake again. This time, it took me a lot longer to realize it.

So as I read “Metamorphosis” and saw the examples in the book, it clicked for me. I was still a soft gamine, and my body type had never changed, it had just shifted closer to gamine.

You see, I was in my mid-teens when I first took the body types test in 2017. My body hadn’t quite finished developing, and by the time I got back into the Kibbe body types again I thought that my bone structure had changed.

Since 2017, my body had changed a bit, but not in the way I thought it had. It wasn’t my bone structure that had changed, I just lost a bit of softness in my flesh and had a bit of a jawline change with my surgery.

My overall balance is still that of a soft gamine (leaning more towards gamine now), but unfortunately I don’t have my original answers to the test from 2017 to compare exactly how my balance has shifted.

What I do know is that my flesh has become slightly more yang leaning, as I’ve lost some softness in my arms and thighs, as well as some definition in my waist (I may get it back though, as it was antibiotics that caused the change in how my weight collects). However, my orthodontic procedures have also changed my lip shape from more thin and sharp to more full.

So how did I mistake my high-contrast body type for a low-contrast one?

Bias.

It’s always more difficult to be objective with our own bodies than with the bodies of others.

I really wanted to be in to be in the classic family for some time.

I didn’t realize how small I was, despite people mentioning it a lot to me.

My flesh had changed a bit, which led me to interpreting my results as more balanced than they actually were.

Lots of little things shaped my view of myself, leading me to an incorrect answer about my body type.

I feel a lot more comfortable with my body, now that I’ve realized what my body type actually is. And with my experience of having the wrong body type, I’ll be publishing a post next week showing some of the signs that you may have the wrong body type.

As to whether it is actually possible to change your body type: I’m not entirely sure. I’ve lost some of the softness that I had in my flesh, which has created a slightly more gamine-ish body, but I still have a very soft face, so my balance is still that of a soft gamine.

I think it could be possible, based on your age and body type, but I don’t think that drastic changes are possible, at least not without extreme procedures.