onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the month “June, 2025”

29 Jun 2025

This old(ish) dog’s new tricks.

It’s sort of crazy to me to think that over the past two and a half years so many things in my life and my body are entirely different than they used to be.

About 3 and a half years ago I got sick and I didn’t get better. And I hated doctors. I spent my young life fat and was not treated very well by doctors. And as an adult I was poor and didn’t have insurance so I just sort of managed. Went to a clinic if I had to, but mostly just rode it out. 

But I am married to a union construction worker. We have excellent insurance. Yet I still didn’t want to go. Doctors were a traumatic experience for me most of my life. And even unable to breathe I didn’t want to go. To the point that my husband was at his wits’ end. 

I will say that even right from the start, I had a whole bunch of experiences that reminded me that there is a reason I don’t like doctors. I was treated with so much condescension by several. And I have to say that being an incredibly smart person, being treated like a child by a person whose mother I could be, really brings out the bitch in me. (I literally had to stop myself from explaining the logical fallacy used by the probably 20 something first year resident while she was condescending to me…I did hold my tongue. Keeping my eating under control keeps my tongue under control too. For the most part.)

But here is the deal. That one change, being willing to go to the doctor to deal with my breathing, made a huge shift in both my physical body and my experience of it. 

When I stopped running because I could not breathe, I started walking stairs. Walking stairs gave me a butt that I never had. Having a butt moved my center of balance back from my toes to my middle foot. The shift in my balance made my short right leg tighter and more noticeable. That made me put a lift in one shoe to accommodate my short leg from being born with a club foot. 

Today I walk different. I workout different. My right hip rarely hurts anymore. My clothes fit differently, so that my belly is smaller and less noticeable. 

And I go to the doctor. Regularly. I have a doctor that I adore. And I have a particular phlebotomist that always gets me perfectly on the first stick. (Blood draws have always been another problem for me and I would often end up bruised all inside my elbow.)

But changing the way I ate at 28, giving up my drug food, weighing my food, eating only 3 times a day, created the opportunity to change. Anything. Anytime. If I could change my eating I could literally change any aspect of my life. Yes it takes work. But everything worth anything takes work.

And I am 48. I am old(ish). Which means you apparently can teach an old(ish) dog new tricks.

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22 Jun 2025

The slow road

I decided recently to stop showing people my crochet projects before they are done. There is some science behind it. That the praise of others gives you the same reward chemicals as actually finishing the project. 

There is a thing that people who do what I do with food say. “If you want what I have, do what I do.” Mostly we mean, “if I look happy and peaceful to you then maybe you should try giving up sugar and put boundaries around your eating.” 

And sometimes we say it outside of the group. A little inside joke. When someone says they could never do what we do, one person I know always tells them “that’s fine. I don’t want what you have.” 

But sometimes it means something *within* the group. There are people who are doing all of the same things with food that I am. But they have a life I don’t want. I am not saying it’s not a good life. Just one not good for me. So I don’t take life advice from them. Food help, absolutely. Life advice? Absolutely not.

Getting my eating under control let me see how specific I could start to be about what I wanted for myself. Every specificity was a little more authenticity. And authenticity, not praise or popularity, was the goal. 

Because it’s the knowing what I want that is often the sticking point. In getting my eating under control, I started to realize that the way I had lived, what I *wanted* up until that point was just reward chemicals in my brain. Very much short term gratification. 

Denying myself reward chemicals in the form of food was the first step to delayed gratification for me. Eventually I would start my slow hobbies. Set positively unrealistic expectations for myself that I would actually end up meeting in a very realistic time frames. (I wanted to be able to design crochet as a beginner 15+ years ago. Before I could read a pattern…But yes. I now design my own dolls and art pieces.) And fail and persevere repeatedly for over a decade.

There are many things I dislike about perimenopause, but one thing I love is how self aware and self involved I am becoming. Caring more for pleasing myself than others. And yet I am so much less selfish than I was when I was in the food. 

What I want is a rich and satisfying life of contentment and creative expression. And the road to that is slow by nature.

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15 Jun 2025

Get in line

I saw a video on social media this week that I have been thinking about. It was about how to spot and stop manipulators. But the point was that the hardest person to manipulate is the one who is in alignment with themselves.

The person who knows what they want, what they stand for, what they want to achieve and create, and who they want to be in the world, isn’t going to be swayed by anything other than something even more in alignment with their heart and head. 

I spend a lot of time worrying I’m doing life wrong. And will probably never entirely grow out of it. But this was a nice little reminder for me. 

Because getting my eating under control is how I learned to listen to myself. I had so much noise in my head when I was eating compulsively. Most of it was about food and eating and craving, but it was also about shame. What I did wrong. What I failed to do. How I was lacking. How I was broken. How I was ugly and wrong.

When I was in the food, I could not see what I wanted. And if I thought I could, but the world didn’t agree, I assumed I was wrong, not the world. 

But here’s the thing. The world often doesn’t agree with me. I’m not particularly interested in its conventions. And once I made friends with that, it was easier to be authentic. After all, the world doesn’t really want me to quit sugar and grains. It upsets a whole group. People who have zero stake in my eating have had all sorts of opinions about it. Strangers! And there is a whole ultra specific group that thinks that what I do is not only useless but harmful. People on the internet insisting that sugar addiction isn’t a thing. That it is about food morality. That I am a fatphobe monster because I assert that I have a problem with sugar and that sugar can be addictive. 

Look. Just to clarify, I don’t think every fat person is an addict. I don’t care if a person is fat. I don’t think fat people need to lose weight. I don’t think that anyone owes anyone else any explanations of their food or their body.

But I was getting drunk on sugar from childhood and it was ruining my life. And want to help a compulsive eater and sugar addict who still suffers. (P.S. Not all sugar addicts are fat. I want to help them too.)

But that is part of how getting my eating under control helped me align myself and my principles and my past. It was only in putting boundaries around my eating that I could separate my fatness from my addiction. Come to love my body in all its iterations. To feed it nourishing foods. And not worry about health or weight. Just worry about not doing my drug foods. Just worry about not using. Take the morality *out* of food.

And every time I make a choice that makes people who are not me look at me funny, I remember who I am, what I want, what I want to create and what legacy I am leaving. And I have enough clarity of mind and purpose to actually know the answer. And all of that is the culmination of 19 1/2 years of keeping boundaries around my eating. 

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08 Jun 2025

Can you keep your morality away from my food?

‘Tis the season…For giant cantaloupes!!!!!

I ate almost two pounds of fruit this morning – along with my bacon and cheese and coffee with whole milk – and I did not DO NOT have an ounce of regret. I didn’t even feel a little stuffed. (Which would be a perfectly acceptable outcome for me personally.) Just the pure joy of a huge sweet breakfast.

It’s such a good reminder that bodies change. And that some of those changes are from our own choices and are in our control, and some are not. 

In the summer, any summer, I am going to eat half of a giant cantaloupe, or a quarter of a ginormous honeydew every day I can. And if I can’t, I am going to be disappointed. (I mean, I will still have a delicious breakfast because loving my food is a priority. But I’ll be a little sad too.)

And in past years, that sometimes meant that I would be uncomfortable and overfull after breakfast. But again I don’t mind that. I would rather feel too full than hungry. And I don’t have to have a moral or emotional reaction to that anymore.

But lately my current workout is centered around building muscle, so even eating gargantuan fruits, I am very rarely really full anymore.

I had so much shame around how I felt about even my own experience and preferences of eating before getting my eating under control. Hunger was “greed” and wanting was “greed” and preferring to be stuffed rather than hungry (thin) was “greed” and I was never going to be a good girl if I wanted to be satisfied. 

But getting my eating under control also taught me to sit in discomfort. Withdrawal is a bitch and sugar is no different. It taught me to live with feelings. Even hunger or the cravings that masquerade as hunger.

But also, my eating boundaries come with a community. So if I need more literal fuel, I have someone else to help guide me through what kind of food and how much and when.

Having boundaries around my eating let me choose my eating for myself, while also having a set of clear rules that keep me from my drug foods. And that took the morality out of food for me.

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01 Jun 2025

Nothing to miss

First for those of you interested in a Suren update, she has apparently moved her kittens (that I have still never seen, but assume exist somewhere) but she is clearly still in my close vicinity. When I am around she comes for two meals a day. And when I am not, I know my sweet neighbor feeds her at least once a day. And I think occasionally more if she comes by. But she is still skinny and wary. And I adore her.

I just want to say that this week I have eaten like a queen. Ribs and meatloaf and tonight a roast that has been cooking for 2 days. Plus sautéed green beans and of course my ice cream and salt and vinegar pork rinds.

God I love to eat. I am so grateful that I still find intense joy in eating almost every day and every meal. Over the past 19 years I have been learning to enjoy the little things. Moments with people and animals and the natural world. Though that is perhaps just aging.

But I never needed to be convinced to love a good meal. 

I have a lot on my mind lately. But none of it is about my body, my eating, obsessive food thoughts, or how much I hate myself. Plus I get to eat joyfully and without guilt three times a day. Which is priceless. 

I don’t miss sugar or trying and failing to be normal with food. There’s nothing to miss.

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