onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the month “April, 2020”

26 Apr 2020

The First of Many Ways I Learned to Honor My Body

Today I am sharing the link for a documentary that I was featured in that I am really happy to be a part of. It’s called Follow me, and below is a link to rent or buy it on Vimeo.com. If you are interested, I highly recommend it.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/followmefilm

As a person who was fat and hated it for my so much of my life, I was still terrified of giving up sugar and carbohydrates 14+ years ago. Now I treat those foods as poison, but then, I didn’t think I could have any joy if sugar was gone from my life.


But I have said it before and I will say it again: Giving up man made sugars, grains and starches is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.


When I was eating sugar, I ate even when I did not want to eat. I could not stop. My eating was completely out of my control. And that lack of control was terrifying and shameful. I felt like I was morally inferior to thin people. And because it was written all over my body, people treated me that way as well. And they were allowed to. For all of my life, fatness has been a thing it was OK to mock, and fat people a “fair target” for shame and abuse.


For a while now, I have been moving away from focusing on weight and weight loss, and moving more toward looking at freedom and happiness. Specifically, the freedom I have from food addiction and the happiness I find in having my physical cravings and mental obsession lifted.


Look, I am significantly happier in an easy body. And I am not ashamed of that. And I am grateful to not be subject to the kinds of judgement I was a target for when I was fat. And I am not ashamed of that either. But that doesn’t mean I think it was or is OK. I am just relieved to not be on the receiving end of it. That is natural.


But whatever my body looks like (and it has looked a lot of different ways over the past 14 years – skinny, strong, curvy, chubby) giving up sugar and carbohydrates has created freedom for me from not only compulsive eating, and sugar addiction, but also from the shame I felt in not being able to stop eating.


In having freedom from my sugar and carbohydrate addiction, I can have a much more gentle view of my own fatness. I can love myself and my body, in all of its various shapes and sizes through my life. I can see how beautiful I was when I was fat. Something I could not see when I was in it and cowed by food. And I can see how beautiful I am now. I can see that how much I like and love myself doesn’t have to do with my size or shape, but by how I am willing to honor my body. And for me, putting down sugar was the first of many ways I learned to do that.

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19 Apr 2020

PSA: Your Quarantine Fat Jokes Aren’t Funny

So, a little public service announcement to those of you making quarantine fat jokes:
The fat people in your life can see and hear you and it is most likely making them feel shamed, ugly, and judged.

Here’s the thing. I understand that some of us are not used to having this much time, plus this much stress, and many are stress eating and boredom eating. If that is how you are coping, I don’t have any judgment about that. Maybe you have, are, or will gain weight. It happens. Bodies change, and we change our bodies through what we put into them and what we use them for.

But if you are grossly exaggerating the amount of weight you have gained “as a joke,” please know that you are shaming someone that weight. If you went from a size 8 to a size 10 and you are taking about being 300 pounds, and talking about it like it’s an impossibility, because “who could let themselves go to that extent” please understand that I weighed 300 pounds. And not in a pandemic. That was just my life and my body. And I was just as valid and valuable a human as I am now.

Or if you are bemoaning the weight you have gained and are talking about how it has made you ugly, or shameful, or somehow unworthy, you are telling the fat people in your life that you have been seeing them that way this whole time.

Or if you are making or sharing pictures, gifs, and memes with unflattering and humiliating images of fat bodies, you are sending a clear message to the fat people in your life that you do not respect, honor, or appreciate them. You are telling them that you are willing to make jokes at their expense. And not particularly funny jokes at that.

And chances are they won’t say anything. I never would have when I was fat. I would have kept it to myself and it would have festered in me. Or it would have killed a little bit of my soul and my joy. But to bring it up would be to put a spotlight on my own fatness. A target. And I never ever wanted to do that because it had painful consequences.

I did not like being fat. It’s true. But to this day I have a hard time separating and differentiating between not liking being fat because of my own physical comfort, and not liking it because the world at large was so cruel to me for it. And the world was certainly cruel.

I will not lie to you about how grateful I am to not be eating compulsively right now. I am so grateful that my eating has had boundaries for a long time. It has made my life easier and better for the last 14 years, and it makes it better now. I have “built up that muscle” so that not stress eating or boredom eating is the norm. And that is a blessing to me. But that is about my eating, and my eating disorders. Not about my weight, or size, or fatness, or beauty.

If you are having trouble with your eating or your weight, I am sorry. And I wish you well. But please remember the people you love. They may not have the words or the willingness to tell you that you are hurting, humiliating, or shaming them. But they feel it. I promise.

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12 Apr 2020

Count my blessings, do what I can, and love my meals

Yesterday I was talking to a friend who has the same eating boundaries as I do, about people who find something else and do that instead. She said she just needed to call somebody who does what she does and say that she doesn’t want to know how other people do it. That she has a way of eating that keeps her well and happy and she doesn’t need to go looking for another solution. 

I was happy to hear it. I was grateful to be the person who she wanted to say it to. And she chose me because I am safe. I am safe because I agree. I want to do this thing I do for the rest of my life.


I am aware that everyone is different. When I hear that someone else has taken on a new way of eating that is not my way, I wish them well. I wish them peace and success. And then I remember that I already have peace and success. So I keep my eyes on my own plate and love my food.


I know a lot of people are stress eating right now. And I get it. Food is a powerful mood alterer. I know. I used it for the first 28 years of my life. But I am so incredibly grateful that I am not right now. Because to a lot of people, that eating is a temporary balm. A much needed soother. But food hasn’t been that for me since I was probably 9 or 10. That young I was already obsessed and craving. I was already lying, cheating, and stealing for a fix. And if I were to try to use it again, it would backfire on me hard and immediately. So I keep my boundaries and love my meals, and find something to do to take my mind off of my existential dread.


But truly, I have had some level of existential dread for much of my life. It’s part of being motionally sensitive with an exceptional imagination.


I am so deeply grateful to have a solution to my eating problem as well as a way of life that gives me tools to ease my worries and anxieties. I am not saying I am “fine.” I am nervous about the future. I am worried about what comes next, not just for me, my husband, my family, my life, but also the world.


But nothing in *my* life is wrong. My loved ones are all healthy. The people I know who have been infected and sick with coronavirus/Covid-19 are are all over the worst of it and are making a full recovery. I have money and food, and I genuinely like spending time with the guy I am stuck inside with. So really, I’m as lucky as it gets. I will remember to count my blessings, do what I can, and love my meals.

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05 Apr 2020

Eating like a queen will have to be good enough for now

My self-imposed quarantine will technically come to an end Tuesday. It will have been 14 days since I was out in a public space. In my case, to buy groceries for two weeks. Since, I have only been to the outdoor track across the street from my apartment complex by myself.


And people were sometimes there. And, to my chagrin, often refused to try to keep 6 feet from me, which meant I had to take all of the responsibility for keeping the distance. So I did. Because one of the most important lessons I have learned in 14+ years of keeping my eating boundaries is that I am responsible for taking care of what is important to me. If 6 feet of distance is important to me and not to other people, then it’s my responsibility. So I did what I needed to do. But it made me angry.


Because I am scared. Here’s the thing. I am in a small town in Oklahoma. And where I am is a “hot spot” in terms of per capita spread of the coronavirus according to a recent map in Scientific American. In other words, there aren’t enough people here to be a hot spot like New York or Chicago, but in terms of percentage of the population, we have a rapidly growing problem. And my expectation is that in a week or two, it will be a crisis here.


And the other thing is that starting on Monday, my husband goes back to work. It will be 14 days since he was on a plane or in an airport, so they will let him back on his job site now. The work we do here is considered essential. Which is nice in one way. I am grateful to have money coming in. I am grateful to not be worried about money when so many people are.


But it also means my husband will be going out into groups of people. And then coming back home. While we are in an area with a rapidly growing number of cases of the coronavirus. And I am going to have to manage my stress over it.


But so much of my life is the same. And can be the same. My food is the same. My exercise. My work. And that is a blessing. It keeps me grounded and sane. Or as sane as I can be when I am worried and stressed.


I am grateful I am not face first in the food today. Because while food certainly helped me deal with a lot of feelings and fears as a kid, it only worked until it didn’t anymore. And when it didn’t work anymore it was a powerful burden. So eating compulsively cannot help me now, and I am grateful that my food is under control. My three meals a day keep me grounded. They keep me in the moment as much as possible. And that keeps my stress levels at a minimum.


I don’t know what will happen. And I am allowed to be worried if I want to be. I am probably not going to leave the house until next Saturday’s grocery shopping, except to jog . Because while my 14 days after the airport is just about up, I don’t want to go out into a busy store in a hot spot.


Today I will cook some frozen vegetables for the week, instead of fresh. And I thankfully had the foresight to buy 5 jars of some really delicious pickles, along with lots of bacon, when I was in the Chicago suburbs two weeks ago. So I will still be eating like a Queen for the next week. And that is going to have to be good enough for now.

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