onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the category “Personal Growth”

09 Apr 2016
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I go moderate so I don’t have to go home

We all have at least one person on social media who is a fitness enthusiast. And there is a culture around fitness (at least in the U.S.) that is about leveling up, so to speak. It’s about getting better, faster, stronger. It’s about pushing yourself harder and harder. Every time. It’s about never being satisfied.I believe there is a place for this. I do not have a judgment about people who do this. I think it is beautiful. I love when people have a thing. And I have known, and have respect for, many people in the fitness industry. (A fat girl trying to be a skinny girl makes a lot of those kinds of friends.) 

But I think there is a conversation that we should be having that we are not. And it’s this:

Not everyone needs to be a beast in the fitness arena. I want to be in shape. I want to have a healthy body. But I am not interested in leveling up. Because constantly leveling up as the only way to exercise is not sustainable in my life. And that doesn’t make me any less admirable than the people who are constantly pushing themselves.

For me, and I think for a lot of people, this all or nothing attitude is overwhelming. And destructive. The idea that, if you are not continuously improving, you are some how going backwards, is prevalent in our fitness culture. Which is another aspect of our beauty culture. And it keeps you buying fitness gear, personal trainer sessions and gym memberships. 

Again, I am not knocking those things. I am suggesting that maybe having a commitment to work out consistently for your own health and peace of mind, without the need to “go big or go home,” or answer questions about “if you even lift” might be worth more to you in six months or a year, or 10 years, when you are still doing it. I am suggesting that maybe if you went moderate, or even small, you wouldn’t need to go home. Because I am going to tell you a secret I learned about commitment: 

Sometimes, in order to keep a commitment long term, you have to half-ass it. 

I’m telling you, sometimes I phone it in.

I am thinking about this today, because I half-assed my run today. The truth is, it’s cold here, especially in the mornings. And the wind is brutal. Yesterday morning, there were 25 mph winds with gusts up to 30 mph. And at certain points on my path, I have to run directly into it. And it ticks me off! I actually swore out loud at the wind yesterday.

So you can imagine that this morning, when it was 37 degrees, felt like 28, with 14 mph winds, I did not want to go.

I jog a 2 mile path that runs around my house, so that at one point close to the end of my run, but NOT the end, there is a little sidewalk that shoots off basically to my door. And today, I sure did want to go right there and skip the last quarter mile or so. But I didn’t. 

What I did do was slow down. Not to a walk. I was still jogging. My commitment to myself says that I only walk if I am injured or fear I will injure myself If I continue to run. What I did was take it easy. 

Today, I added over a minute to the time I ran just Tuesday. But I don’t care. I am not angry, frustrated or ready to quit, like I would be if my run were always about leveling up. Like I would be if it weren’t OK to take it easy.

The truth is, that I am improving. Naturally. Without trying. Without pushing. Without beating myself up. I’m sure not as much as the ones who are pushing. But I’m not them. I’m me. And I am making sure I can go on to jog another day.

Now, keep your fingers crossed for me that spring comes to Kentucky soon, and Running Against The Wind can go back to just being a Bob Seger song. (Darn it! Now that song is going to be stuck in my head all day.)

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , , ,
03 Apr 2016

The willingness to be willing is the beginning of change 

I used to weigh myself once a month, on the first. Only on the first. Because it was a good way to keep an eye on my weight, without the obsession of getting on the scale every day. Or multiple times a day. People with eating and body image disorders can become obsessed with the scale. I was one of them before I put boundaries around my eating. I would get on the scale constantly, looking for the secret recipe for weight loss. Was I down a pound in the last 2 hours? What had I done? Could I replicate it? 

It was insanity. I was treating it like science and wishing for it to work like magic. Needless to say, it was neither.

When I quit smoking, I gained at least 30 pounds. Almost certainly more, but I stopped weighing myself. It was devastating to me. I lived in fear of stepping on the scale. It haunted me constantly. Not just around the first, but for the whole month. I started to obsess about how I could stop the weight gain, and lose what I had gained, within days of weighing myself. It was never over.

I started to feel the same crazy I had when I was eating compulsively. I wanted something to work. Anything! I wanted some sort of magic.

So my friend who helps me make decisions about my food and my weight told me to stop weighing myself. She didn’t want me to make myself miserable. My job was to keep my food boundaries, and not focus on my weight. 

Now, it’s almost 4 years since I quit smoking. And I have lost what seems to be most of the weight I gained. I don’t know, because I haven’t gotten on a scale in 2 1/2 years. 

It makes sense for me to get back on the scale. But I’m scared. The truth is, that experience scarred me. 

I was angry at life. I was angry that I did the “right” thing by quitting smoking, and I was punished with the worst possible thing that could happen to a former fat girl. I gained weight with no relation to what I was eating or how much I was moving. It made me feel crazy and desperate. It triggered all of my body image disorders. It was hell.

But now, I think I should start weighing myself again monthly. And that means having a conversation with my friend about it. And I don’t want to. I’m worried. And it makes me feel a little nauseous. 

The truth is, what if it’s not enough? What if the number just makes me feel fat and gross? What if I hate myself all over again?

But I guess I am telling you this so I can keep moving forward. When I put it out there, I can be responsible for it. I need to out myself so I take some action. And so I don’t keep all if this fear bouncing around in my head. 

I don’t know when I will have this conversation with my friend. I don’t know when I will be ready. The point, I guess, is I’m getting ready. And it’s that, the willingness to be willing, that is the beginning of change. 

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26 Mar 2016
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Some next-level sh…

I happen to be living the sweet life at the moment. Just Married to the love of my life. I not only have a driver’s license, but I even have a cute little car for running errands in a cute Kentucky town. There just happens to be a 2 mile path around my house for me to jog in the morning. Robins and daffodils are everywhere. And I’m writing and learning to knit socks. People used to tell me, “put boundaries around your food and your life will get better.” But that first day that I put boundaries around my food, I could never have imagined that they meant *this*. 

It took years of not putting sugar, grains or starch into my body for me to untangle myself from my false notions, bad behaviors, and manipulative ways. It took years to get free from my self-loathing. To be willing to take an honest look at myself and my character flaws and change. There was no way I could have fathomed this kind of happiness. But that is because I could not have guessed the self-love and freedom that exist in integrity. I would have wanted all of the “prizes” but I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea what it was going to take to get them. And if I had known, I would have been terrified of the work.

Work used to terrify me. Discomfort was the boogie man, it filled me with dread and panic. In the end, I had to make friends with discomfort. It was the only way to grow up. Only children expect to feel good all the time. 

I can imagine on an animal level why instant gratification is a necessity. Eat the food when it’s there. You never know where there will be more food. But when you have a car, gas, a local grocery store, and you do know there will be food, instant gratification means higher obesity rates and a rise in the number of obesity related illnesses. But I’m not just talking about food, either. I’m talking about discomfort in general. I’m talking about sacrificing a fulfilling future for a comfortable present.

I am not one of those people who looks forward to exercise. (Do those people really exist? Are they all underwear models or motivational YouTube celebrities?) What I look forward to is having done the exercise. I like being energized. I like feeling accomplished. I like the endorphins. I like feeling like I am doing some long-term planning, investing in the future. A future with less pain and better brain function. A future where I continue to love my body and care for it, and it loves me back.

And I still marvel that this body can jog for 2 miles. This body that I was sure was such a curse. This body that I was so ashamed of and disgusted by. 

But that just brings me back to my point. How could that me, the one who constantly diminished and criticized myself, ever have had a glimpse into this future? 

They told me if I put boundaries around my food, my life would get better. So I did the work. And my life got better. So I kept doing the work. Yep, I still do the work. But I have to admit, I’d do this much work for a lot less. I mean, it’s not always easy, but it’s really not that hard either. I’d do the work just to be free from my obsession with food. I’d do the work for the guilt-free eating alone. But this whole thing, the love and the peace and the joy, the “prizes”, the life beyond my wildest dreams, this is something else. This is some next-level sh*t.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , ,
19 Mar 2016
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How you know you’ve found a keeper

When you have boundaries around your food, things that other people take for granted are off the table. Like grabbing a quick bite, going out to dinner somewhere you have never been, or sharing an entrée with your date. It can be complicated, annoying, inconvenient, and difficult. It’s worth it, but it’s not always easy or simple.

That makes it a great way to figure out who is worth your time. See, if I tell you that my food boundaries are a life and death matter for me, and you think it’s embarrassing, or ridiculous, or you simply think I am being difficult, then you are toxic to me. We can’t be close, we can’t be great friends, and we certainly can’t be partners.

This week I got married to the love of my life. I knew he was the one pretty early. I mean within days of being reunited with him after over 20 years. One of my big clues was that he asked me for a shopping list when I was flying to Texas to visit him. And he sent me a picture of a grocery cart filled with pounds and pounds of vegetables. He even found bok choi, which he had never even heard of before. Over the past 3 years, he has let me choose the restaurants, taken my eating schedule into account, and he never minds if I don’t eat with him, if I ask the server a million questions, or if other people are staring at me. 

I’m not saying it’s always easy for him. It’s not always easy for me. But it’s important to me. So it’s important to him. 

The thing about putting my food boundaries first is that my priorities become obvious. And my husband is a priority in my life. 

So pardon me, but now I need to go for my run, before I go out to dinner, with my husband, on my honeymoon. At a restaurant I picked.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , ,
13 Mar 2016

No fear of flying. Or airports.

In some ways it’s interesting what has become “normal” for me. For instance, right now, I am in an airport on my way to fly to the Florida Keys, and I am not worried about what people are thinking about me.There is something about airports, the close proximity, the hundreds of people passing by and passing through. The natural people-watching atmosphere, that always used to heighten my embarrassment of living in a big body. It made me tense and self-conscious. There was a lot of shame involved. 

Now, to be fair, I was always self-conscious and ashamed, it was just more noticeable in airports.

It seems like I have a different life now. In many ways I do. In specific moments I get glimpses of it. Like the other day, when I looked in the mirror, and knew that I never had to be fat again. It was a beautiful moment. I felt free. 

I have the luxury of feeling free every day now. Especially on a day like this, at the airport. I fly relatively regularly. It’s easy and I don’t have to stress about it. I don’t have to worry about fitting in the seat. I don’t have to think about who is looking at me and why. I don’t have to worry about what clothes will cover my butt or camouflage my belly. I wear what will be comfortable. Because I don’t care.

But that is not exactly true either. I do care, every day, about what I eat, about keeping my food boundaries, about staying away from sugar and carbohydrates. And that constant, steady caring, no matter what, allows me to not care about things like what I’m wearing, or if the person next to me will be angry that I am sitting next to them, or if I’m going to spill over into someone else’s seat. 

If you have been reading my blog, you know that I keep boundaries every day. I don’t have cheat days. I don’t make exceptions, or excuses. So a vacation to Florida doesn’t mean anything goes. It doesn’t mean that since I have never had deep fried alligator or conch, that I get to “live a little.” Why would I live a little for a bite or a drink, when I can live a lot.

There are a lot of things that I will never taste. And that’s ok. It lets me sit comfortably on an airplane, on my way to Florida, in whatever clothes are comfortable and easy to get through security, with my bikinis packed.

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06 Mar 2016
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The complexities of body image and wearing a slinky dress anyway

Body image disorders are a trip, I tell you. So lately, it’s not about my weight. It’s about the shape of my body. 
The truth is, I’m small right now. In fact, my boyfriend has never seen me this small. So it’s not about my weight. It’s about my knock-knees, and the sort of square shape of my hips, how big my belly is, how my arms jiggle. It’s about what bulges and what sags. It’s always about not being pretty enough. 

It’s not that I’m not beautiful, or that I don’t know that I am. It’s complicated. It’s more about obsessing and worrying. It’s more about focusing on the aspects of my body that are not photoshop perfect. 

I know I’m not the only one. And I also know that “perfect” is just a bill of goods we have collectively been sold. But it doesn’t stop me from thinking about it. Sometimes obsessively.

We are going to Florida next week. So there’s wearing the bikini. And I bought a new dress to wear on the beach and it’s what you might call “slinky.” And I keep thinking “did I make a mistake? Should I buy a different dress? Is my body not perfect enough for the one I bought?”

Sometimes, when I am disconnected from something, it doesn’t occur to me as “painful” but it affects my life to a greater extent than I am aware of. For example, when I used to have a personal trainer years ago, he would give me fitness tests from time to time, and ask me to rate my pain/discomfort level from 1-10. As I got into better shape, my levels rose. When I was out of shape, I was so disconnected from my body that I was almost numb to the pain of living in that body. So even though in reality it was easier to do the exercise as time went on, it registered as more painful because I was actually living in my body.

I have a similar experience with my body image disorders. Over the years, the more accepting and loving I am of my body, the more my disorders are right there in my face.

So I may be less numb to my fears and my judgements, but at the same time, I’m more likely to wear what I want to wear. There was a time I would never wear a bikini in public. And I would have opted for a more loose-fitting dress.

But now I wear what I want. And I love it. And if I worry about how big my thighs are…well, moments pass.

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , ,
28 Feb 2016
2 Comments

It has to be about my head, not my butt.

I have been keeping up with my running. 2 miles a day, 5 days a week. (I may call it running, but I am unapologetically super slow, so what I really mean is jogging…)I like it. I like the way I feel. I like the sense of accomplishment that comes from keeping that kind of commitment. I like the way it feels to know that I can count on myself. Especially since I grew up telling myself all sorts of things about how much I hated exercise, how bad I was at it. And I was alway looking for the time that I would never have to do it again. Now I am jogging in the hopes of doing it for the rest of my life.

But there is another side of my exercise commitment. It is sneaky little thoughts about “more.” That I should run longer. That I should run faster. That if I do that, I might lose more weight. Maybe even get more food.

This might seem innocuous enough. Normal eaters with healthy weights might think that makes some sense. Many normal eaters and exercisers manage their weight like this. I am not a normal eater. I am a compulsive eating sugar addict, exercise bulimic, with body dysmorphic disorder.

I want to run 2 miles a day, 5 days a week for the rest of my life. And I want that to be enough. I will probably get faster, because I have already gotten faster without trying. But even if I don’t, heck, even if I get slower, I want to be satisfied that I’m doing something loving for my body, not something to “fix” it.

I don’t want to burn out. I don’t want to get injured. I want to run. Slowly and consistently. Because, as a friend pointed out to me, as a food addict, exercise can’t be about my weight or my size, it has to be about my head.

Posted in Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , ,
21 Feb 2016

A big-girl-panties kind of day

So I talk a lot about how I live with a steady stream of low-level anxiety. I especially worry about doing things wrong. Friday, I was feeling pretty anxious. I had to drive for an hour by myself to apply for an apartment. And the lady said she couldn’t give me the keys to the apartment until I got all of the utilities turned on in my name. So I drove to the Municipal Utilities office and took care of that. Then I drove all over the new town, and ran my errands: Ordered furniture, set up a cable and internet installation, went to the bank to deposit a check, etc.

It’s not that I wasn’t anxious. I was. But after years of having my eating under control, I have learned that I don’t have to feel confident to do something. I just have to do it. I just have to take the next right action, one baby step at a time. 

When I was eating sugar, I got high to deal with my anxiety, like a form of Dutch Courage. When I gave up sugar, I had to get myself some real courage.

I know that what I had to do was not that big of a deal. People do those kinds of things all the time. But to me, it was a “big-girl-panties” kind of day.

I kicked a** and took names on Friday. I did everything that needed to be done to get the keys in my hands that day.

I was anxious every step of the way. And I won’t say it went off without a hitch. But it all got done, and it went smoother than a worrywart like me ever expects.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an apartment to move into.

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13 Feb 2016
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The luxury of comfort 

It has been a long week. Cleaning, packing, driving 7ish hours, and unpacking, on top of the usual everyday life stuff. But I’m with my boyfriend again. (Yay!) And we’re on the road.

I’m happy. But I’m also raw. It’s emotional. And that’s uncomfortable.

Driving in this town is very different from the suburbs I am used to. It is stressful for me. I am going out every day to practice, but it I’m still not at ease on the roads here. The internet at the hotel is bad, so I called around to Internet and phone companies, and thought I got better web access. But after all that, I couldn’t get on to send out the invitation to an important video meeting. Then we decided to start looking for an apartment closer to my boyfriend’s job site. Plus keeping in touch with various people who are taking care of our house. 

It’s a lot. And I feel it. Of course, I feel it. I’m not high on sugar and carbohydrates.

I was talking to some friends the other day, and one of them was talking about how she was feeling nervous, and anxious, and worried that she didn’t know how to do some things she was doing. And then she realized that she was feeling like that because she was doing new, exciting things. She was pushing her comfort limits. She didn’t know how to do things because they were things she has never done before.

I could live a very small life with relative ease and happiness. I can find a million reasons to say no, stay home, take my usual path. I like the usual. It’s comfortable and comforting. 

But for some reason, I have repeatedly chosen to do things that make me uncomfortable. Or perhaps it’s just that I have decided that comfort will not be a major factor in whether or not I do a thing.

I ate sugar and carbohydrates to feel comfortable. Dazed, zoned out, numb, heavy. They call it a food coma for a reason.

Being aware can be uncomfortable. Even when it’s beautiful. Even when it’s pleasurable. I have to make decisions. I have to take actions. I have to be in new, uncertain, scary situations. It’s just the way it is. 

When I quit sugar I agreed to be uncomfortable. Not only did I have to sit in feelings I had been avoiding by eating sugar, but I had to sit in the feelings of withdrawal too. Thank God I stuck it out. It turns out the feelings I was eating are almost never as bad as sugar withdrawal. And even the most painful feelings, the ones that are worse than sugar withdrawal, pass so much more quickly, and are ultimately so much more easily soothed and satisfied. 

Being okay in the face of discomfort is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.

I don’t mean to say that I don’t enjoy comfort. I do. Maybe I love it all the more for keeping it as a luxury, rather than a necessity. A thing my compulsive eating self would never have understood.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth and tagged , , , , , ,
07 Feb 2016

Eating and driving

On Tuesday I leave home and head out to meet my boyfriend in Indiana, where we will be staying for the next 9 months to a year. This past week and a half or so has been about preparing to go there. A big part was getting my driver’s license and getting comfortable driving. I have been driving every day. Since I got my license on Wednesday, I have been making sure to go out by myself every day too. I need to get used to it.

I have a lot of anxiety. It’s part of the way I have always been. Except that when I was younger and eating sugar, I numbed that anxiety by getting high on food.

I think the hardest part of learning to drive at 38 is that I am no longer fearless, like teenage drivers, and I am no longer numb, like I was when I was eating sugar. I feel everything, and everything includes a lot of fear.

When I talk to people who are giving up sugar, I like to talk about “a healthy fear of the food.” Look, sugar and carbohydrates are dangerous to me. I am an addict. When I put it into my body, I set up a physical craving and a mental obsession. And that leads to a lot of addict behaviors like lying, cheating and stealing. So I am right to be a little afraid. But chocolate cake is not going to jump into my mouth of it’s own accord. I take responsibility for my part of my food boundaries and I trust the rest will go the way it’s supposed to. I know people who have boundaries around their food who have a kind of panicky fear around the food. But I can’t live like that. I got my eating under control to find peace, not to feed my fear.

I have a similar experience when it comes to driving. I want to maintain a healthy fear of driving. I want to remember that I am controlling a dangerous machine, but not in a panicky way. No, the metaphor is not perfect. After all, when I deal with my eating, I am the only one who is putting the food in my mouth, where as when I am driving, I have to negotiate roads with other drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists. But for me, there are similarities in the way I want to look at food and driving so that I can have the most peace around it. I do my best to be a safe, and courteous driver. I pay attention to what I am doing. I take responsibility for my part and I trust that the rest will go the way it’s supposed to.

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