onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the month “April, 2026”

19 Apr 2026

I set myself up

There is a concept/dichotomy that has come up for me in two different contexts lately.

Internal vs external. 

First it was an Instagram reel about tight hips.

I have very tight hips, particularly my right one. It has been an issue since my late twenties. I have lived in pain on and off since then. And over the past 5 or so years, I have found more and better stretches to get them to release. But there was a portion of my right hip, deep in the joint, that never got any real satisfaction. 

And then I saw this video a couple of weeks ago, of a woman saying if you have tight hips and you get a “cramp” kneeling, it’s not a cramp. 

It turns out it was the end of my range of motion for my “internal rotation.” The same with the top of my right foot. All of the stretches I have been doing up until now are working, but only for part of my motion, my external rotation. And then she demonstrated stretches for internal rotation. 

And if that didn’t change my life! It took more than one session of these new stretches for my hip to get full range. But I have finally managed to hit the spot!  THE SPOT!

Since then I have been doing my new stretches with every workout. And additionally any time my hips are paining me. I have the most relief and least hip pain I have ever had in my adult life.

The other thing was a reel about the differences in the brains of people who live by internal validation vs external validation. That there is a difference in their brains. But it’s not about parts. It’s about practice. That the rewards and the reward systems are different. And lead to very different life experiences.

And this made perfect sense to me because what the reel described was the difference between me before getting my eating under control and after. 

And it also made other people come into clearer focus for me. It made strangers on the internet make just that much more sense.

I definitely didn’t know when I got my eating under control that what I was *doing* was engaging in less external validation seeking and more internal, but I ABSOLUTELY knew I was rewiring my brain. 13 years ago I was writing blogs about it. 

One thing I know from 20 years of having my eating under control. That my brain is as elastic as I let it be. My hormones are not entirely in my control, but they are not entirely out of it either. That when I make a choice to remain calm, I can take actions to remain calm, and I can stop from brain from flooding my body with hormones. I can make friends with my body. I can retrain my brain. I can choose peace. I can set myself up for the best experience.

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12 Apr 2026

Maybe all my childhood dreams will come true

I grew up fat in the 80s and 90s and there was not a market for clothes for people my age to be fat. So I wore what the plus size stores had to sell. And that was a lot of business casual in crepe.

So when I got my eating under control 20 years ago, I got “fashion” for the first time. I had a new body and I loved dressing it. So I tried all the styles. And I got to figure out what was mine. And I definitely went hyper feminine. And loved it. 

But now I wonder if I chose those styles or if those styles chose me….Because I had a very different body shape. 

I was a kid in the 80s. And I was obsessed with ads for Charlie perfume. Beautiful women wore feminized versions of men’s suits and looked unapologetic while the print said “She’s a Charlie Girl.” And I wanted to be a Charlie Girl so bad. Until I realized I did not have the body to be one. Those models were tall and skinny with long legs. They could be Charlie Girls because they were built that way and I was not.

The first 40+ years of my life, I had a specific body shape. Since my teen years, from the front, I have always looked like an hourglass. But my back side was flat and I carried all of my weight in my front. And that made certain cuts of clothing more flattering on me. A-line or empire waist dresses and tunic length tops accentuated my hips and covered my lack of a butt. 

And now I have an entirely different body shape and I look frumpy in these once so feminine outfits. 

And I need all my tops CROPPED! GASP!

I had the same thought you did just now. No I am not showing my belly. I am a 48-year-old woman. I have enough body temperature issues without adding clothes that ride up. 

Now, after years of stairs and squats and lunges, I have a big, muscular butt, and I need tops and sweaters that come to my waist, not half way down my hips or lower. I need pants and skirts that hit slightly above my (very low) waist. I need to buy bigger pants and cinch the waist for a better drape. I need belts. 

When I was fat, I thought the clothes were right and my body was the problem. A belief the fashion, fitness and beauty industries enjoy perpetuating. And then when I got my eating under control, I realized that I just had to find the clothes that were *my* clothes for *my* body. And now, at 48, with a whole new, not skinny or long-legged body, and low enough estrogen that I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I can wear a pair of pleated dress pants and a crisp white button down and vest and be a Charlie Girl if I so desire. 

I guess if I wait long enough, maybe all my childhood dreams will come true.

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05 Apr 2026

Know what they’re selling so you don’t buy it.

It is now clear to me that we have entered another phase of pro-extreme-thinness in United States’ culture. People are admitting for their social media audiences to doing things like taking meth to stay as thin as possible. And they are framing it as if this is totally normal. 

 The early 2000s had this too. Both the culture extolling the virtues of taking up little space, and the common use of drugs to accomplish it. Or anything to accomplish it. As long as you got smaller. I knew a girl in those years who was both tall and already extremely thin, who was offered heroin by her modeling agency in case she wanted to lose a few pounds.

There is a scene in the original Zoolander movie (2001) where the beautiful but normal girl is talking to the male models and she ashamedly admits she used to be bulimic. And they both tell her that everyone does that. It’s a great way to keep your weight down. It’s meant to be funny because that mentality was alive and well then. 

And then we had Love Actually (2003) where a thinner than average woman is cast as a character who is repeatedly mocked as chubby and for having “thighs the size of tree trunks” and a sizable arse. This is blatantly false, but instead of believing my eyes, I believed those words.

There are so many more.

My point is we have been here before. And it is an ugly place to be. And the internet is only worse in the past 20 years. Not better. Once photoshop was the best tool for image manipulation. Now AI brings the game to a whole new level. The girls and boys who are exposed to this kind of cultural propaganda are less equipped than ever to understand what is being done to them. 

And that is the other thing: it is already established that KNOWING ALONE WILL NOT STOP IT. You really have to not see the propaganda. You have to know BEFORE hand and not be exposed. Because knowing it’s happening does not stop it from *working.*

I already limit my exposure to diet and thinness culture as much as possible, and I still can’t entirely eradicate it from my screens. I literally cannot. The algorithm will not let me.

And It’s not just social media and online influencers. It is and will be anyone in an audience facing job. This extreme thin bias will be noticeable in the actresses who get roles (and the ones who don’t), it will be in the headlines about a pop star’s weight gain presented as news from main stream news sources, it will be in some off handed remark by a weatherman on your local news about some woman’s “outfit.” It will be everywhere. And it will be sold as virtue.

Don’t buy it.

So I hope you are protecting yourself. But also, I hope we are all protecting the young people in our lives. And hey. Don’t talk about people’s bodies.

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