onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the month “August, 2026”

23 Aug 2026

Hip to the new style

Over the past few weeks I have been experimenting with time. I have had a pulled hip flexor so I couldn’t do my workout. 

And it gave me a chance to play with my schedule. I have had the same morning workout routine for many years. I want to break out of old patterns. Not because they are bad, but because I want to shake up my life and what better way to do that than to disrupt my routines. To do something different.

I am always looking for the next part of my life. Some new growth, a new understanding, new perspectives. I don’t love the experience of change. But I love having changed. Like a lot.

This willingness (however begrudgingly in the moment) to change is a direct result of having my eating under control. Not eating my drug foods forced me to look at reality. The reality of my integrity and my behavior. And with my hormones and emotions not being influenced by sugar and carbohydrates, it was hard to talk myself into continuing a temper tantrum and insisting on being dragged kicking and screaming. It was easier to be a grown up. Also less embarrassing.

The more time I spend with my sugar addiction arrested, the better I am at life. I am more peaceful, have a good sense of (not religious) faith, I know how to be a good friend, and a good community member. And the more I understand what I care about, the better I can use my time going forward into a new life.

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16 Aug 2026

Loving all the places I live

By the end of the month, my home buying and selling saga will be done and I am so overjoyed! I love my new home. I am so happy to have our old home sold to a family that loves it. (I designed that kitchen with so much loving intention!) I am so relieved to not have a mortgage anymore before the end of the year. I am so glad that it didn’t take months and months to find a buyer and have to deal with stagings and showings and two tax bills.

I have a home beyond my wildest dreams. I already had a life beyond my wildest dreams.

That was a promise I was made by people who were already putting boundaries around their eating 20 years ago when I started. They said “weigh and measure your food and your life will get better.” “Stop putting drug foods in your body and you will change your life.”

And I changed my life. Not just my body, which did change, but my very experience. How I felt about myself. How I thought about myself. How I talked to myself. And therefore how I felt about the world.

The foods I am addicted to and abstain from DO things to my body. To my hormones. To my brain. More than just nourishment, they affect my moods and my pain receptors, and my anxiety levels. 

And I have never been so clear about it as since I stopped. I am a 49 year old woman, and I love my skin. I love my body. I love to do my workout. And I love myself enough to rest it when I need to. This vessel is the only one I exist in. And it’s my job to understand that that was not a mistake, it is a gift. 

There is so much the same about loving the body I am in and the home that I am in. I had to love my body *before* I could change it. (Well, change it for the better…I tried bulimia but it was hard…do not recommend.) I had to love the home I was already in before I could get a new dream home. There is something to the idea that gratitude is key to abundance. To be able to change the filter in your brain to see the gifts and the joy and the winks from the Universe. 

So here’s to the next unexpected gift from being this grateful for my new home! 

Goodbye to my amazing kitchen! I hope you make the next family as happy!!!
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09 Aug 2026

7,524 days of getting better at life

My move went incredibly well this week. It took less time and cost less than the original quote. And I definitely did a great job downsizing. There is still plenty of room in my kitchen. And while we don’t have our extra room organized yet, I am not afraid of how much stuff I have or where I am going to put it. 

I am deeply joyful and grateful.

And I keep thinking about how easy it was. 

But it was easy because I made it easy. And I could do that because I have my drug foods down.

I didn’t leave everything to the last minute. I didn’t avoid looking at the reality of my situation. I looked critically. I made plans. I replanned plans. I prepared. 

When I was eating compulsively, I didn’t look at difficult things. (It still takes me longer than normal to look if I, say, cut myself in the kitchen.) And the problem with that was I never had a real gauge of the actually moment. And if you don’t know what something is, you can’t take action. I imagined mediocre issues were worse than they were and ignored them until they became real problems. Or I let real problems grow until I could not ignore them. And by that point I was overwhelmed and terrified.

I have 20 years of managing my addict behavior. I have 20 years of learning to be good at life. Because I was very very bad at it for my first 28 years. And every day I don’t eat compulsively I get a little better at it. 

Today is day 7,524 of having my eating under control. Over severity five hundred days of getting a little better at life got me my dream home. Not too shabby. 

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02 Aug 2026

I have made my bed. I have yet to lie in it. 

This weekend I made my first and last IKEA purchase. On Saturday we picked up some pieces of furniture. When we got it home, we started to put one together, a bed, and it was clear that one piece was drilled wrong. And the options for replacing it were more inconvenient than literally fixing it ourselves. I mean drill bits. I mean saw dust. 

So it took two days and another 100+ dollars. To build a bed. 

Nothing that was supposed to get done for the move this weekend got done except that. 

I don’t eat over being frustrated. I don’t eat over my plans going awry. I don’t eat over broken furniture. 

And I have a modicum of control over my nervous system because of it. I was not that stressed. I am not saying I was happy, but we could laugh. We could do one thing at a time and problem solve. (It doesn’t hurt that my husband is a construction worker and I am a crafter. We are used to that kind of thinking.)

And I prefer to trust that we were exactly where we were supposed to be. But also, we will never forgive this bed or IKEA. Sweden as a whole I withhold judgment on for the time being.

I have made my bed. I have yet to lie in it. 

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