onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the category “Relationships”

17 Dec 2023

Living the life I am in

My dad and stepmom are coming over for lunch today and I have to clean. If you had thoughts about how maybe it’s late for that. Well I did too. 

I have a whole arsenal of ideas that could send me into various spirals. I have a history of fleeing. Of freezing. Of shutting down. And they live in a murky soup of fear of failure, fear of success, procrastination, perfectionism, self-aggrandizement, and self loathing.

Basically, I am an addict.

Getting my sugar addiction under control taught me how to do “enough” without having to go go go at an 11 all the time. I learned that the reason so much in my life did not get done, was because I lived like I had to go big or go home. So I just went home, put on some pajamas and ate.

Now there is no cake, even at home. So I am going to clean my house. Not like a crazy person. But like a person who knows how to live the life she is in, not the life she thought she was supposed to lead.

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10 Dec 2023

Not another quit in me

Today I am going to write about quitting. It has come up twice this week, once just this morning, so I guess I will take that as a sign. 

There is a very big practical difference between quitting, and having quit. It is harder to quit than it is to stay quit. And I am pretty sure I do not have another quit in me. Not for sugar. Not for cigarettes. Because both of them sucked so bad.

17 years and 11 months ago, I quit manmade sugars, starches and almost all grains, along with some foods so naturally high in sugar that they kick off sugar cravings. I think it’s worth noting that all of the natural foods I avoid (potatoes, grapes, corn) are all easily made into alcohol. My body is a still.

It took a full year for me to start digesting food properly after I quit sugar and carbohydrates. When I was in the food, everything I ate was so processed that my body didn’t even know how to break down whole foods. And then another 6 months on top of that to come out of the food fog I had been in for the majority of my life.

For that year and a half I wore fuzzy pajama pants everywhere because I could not handle anything rough or restricting on my skin. I was afraid of binging so I would go to the Manhattan flagship Barnes and Noble (in said pajama pants) and stay and read until it closed at midnight, and then take my time getting home so I wouldn’t eat in the night. I watched the same 3 DVD anime (Fushigi Yuugi) on a loop just to obsess over something that wasn’t food.

When I quit smoking cigarettes I got a side effect that affects about 3% of people who quit smoking. The top layer of skin in my mouth started to loosen and peel off. I had open sores all over my gums from having basically smoked the inside of my mouth like a salmon for 20 years. I had already been off sugar for over 6 years but I started gaining weight uncontrollably. And I mean uncontrollably. My food got cut. I was eating quantifiably less food and fewer calories and I was gaining weight. I felt crazy. I was miserable. And it is only over 11 years later, at 46, even after years of working out 5 days a week and keeping my eating boundaries, that I am *almost* the same size I was at 34.

If I had known how these things would look, and feel, and work out, I would NEVER have done them. Were they worth it? Ten thousand and a half percent! But I am afraid of exactly those things I had to get through. Pain. Weight gain. Feeling out of control. Sickness. Lethargy.

I don’t know how, knowing what I do, that I could ever choose it again.

Maybe I am not being fair to my very powerful and committed self. Because I have certainly learned to lean into choosing the practices of delayed gratification for the purpose of long term contentment. But I still think it’s asking a lot of the girl who went through all of that to do it again. And for what? A smoke at a party? A bite of cake?

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03 Dec 2023

Retroactive love

Someone posted on social media the other day that they used to think they had a high pain tolerance, but then they realized they are just excellent at disassociating from their body.

That is how I got through a lot of the physical pain of being fat. And for me personally there was a lot of physical pain that came with my fatness. Foot pain. Back pain. Period pain.

Well right now, perimenopause is kicking my ass. I am not disassociated from my body anymore and my periods are as bad as they were when I was eating sugar compulsively. I have been in pain for the last few days. And none of the pain medication I have taken has worked well or for any prolonged amount of time. And I am reminded of what a gift it is to live the majority of my time in an easy body. 

I am grateful to be in communication with my body. I am grateful for a relationship with my body based on gratitude and grace. But more than that, I am thankful that I don’t have to live with pain every day. Because for as much as I take care of my body with nourishing food and water and gentle loving exercise, much of that is still luck. 

I used to think of and treat my body like my own enemy. It was fat and I blamed it for being fat. It was always hungry and that was shameful, so I blamed it for the uncontrollable need to eat. It was an easy target, so I blamed it for being the easiest joke in the room. It was the problem. It was the root of all my problems.

I gave up sugar to lose weight so I could get rid of the ugly body I hated and get a new, better body I didn’t think I deserved, so other people would stop being able to target me.

But giving up sugar let me get to know this body. The old body. The same one that I hated and pushed away so it would just work like a machine, even while in pain. I wanted to shame it into perfection, and instead I learned to like it and love it and be grateful for all of the ways it took care of me while I was hating it. To love it for being me. To love it retroactively, all of my iterations and presentations.

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19 Nov 2023

The closest to Enlightenment I have ever come

When I was young, late teens and early twenties, I was always looking for something like “answers” or an “owner’s manual” for life. And I tried a lot of different religions and practices. I felt that my life was missing something.

I wouldn’t understand until later, when I got my eating under control that I was trying to “fill a God-sized hole.” It was, surprise surprise, also why I ate drug foods the way I did.

I was telling some friends the other day that when I was in my 20s and looking for contentment and peace, I tried to get into Zen Buddhism. One of the practices is called sitting Zazen. It means to sit very still in a rigid posture and think of nothing. 

If you know me, it may not come as much of a shock to you that I was very very bad at sitting still and thinking of nothing. The other thing that I learned at that time was that Zen Masters believe in many roads to Enlightenment, and 20-something Kate was *positive* that my path to enlightenment was *suffering*! Maybe it was why, at 28, I was willing to give up what I expected to be the only joy in my life: sugar.

Now, at 46, the idea that I was made for suffering is hilarious to me. Hilarious!

The closest I have ever come to Enlightenment is the pure peace and calm of having my eating under control. The only thing I actually gave up was the high, and the subsequent shame that I could not stop eating.

Because I still love food. I still love to eat. I still get excited about meals and particular dishes. I still do little dances. I still sing little songs to my meals. I still talk to my food. I even talk to it at the grocery store. “Oh! You’re a pretty baby! Are you mine? Yes you are!”

Giving up foods I am addicted to and keeping within my eating boundaries frees up so much space in my head. It helps me prioritize my relationships and goals. It makes me like myself enough to make hard choices. It gives me the fortitude to choose the practices that will make me truly happy in the long term, not the ones that will make the moment feel better momentarily. 

Keeping drug foods out of my body lets me think straight, and feel my feelings. It helps me make honest and honorable decisions that I don’t have to worry about or backtrack on. And if I do make a mistake, I know how to take responsibility and make amends. 

Yes simple. No not easy. But the closest to Enlightenment I have ever come.

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05 Nov 2023

Kate, what game are you playing?

I have a complicated relationship with “all or nothing” thinking. For one thing, I have an all or nothing relationship with simple sugars and carbohydrates, and that is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. 

But that relationship, for all of its black and white, (no you can’t eat that, yes you can eat this and this is how much) also taught me boundaries, doing the bare minimum, and “working the system.” Which are things other people like to look at as lazy or cheat-y.

I remember someone years ago asking me why I was going all the way across town to get apples. And I explained that I could have 1 apple for breakfast, and whatever market had apples that weighed more than a pound. This man who barely knew me told me that was “cheating.” Because I was obviously supposed to be on a diet if I had that many rules around food.

He thought I was cheating because he didn’t know the game I was playing. I was playing “make the food you eat so delicious and satisfying that you can withstand the appeal of chocolate cake.” That’s not the kind of game people understand. I don’t need them to. I am satisfied in my food life.

This week I decided to join NaNiWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month.) It is a thing lots of writers and authors do. The idea is to write 50,000 words of a novel in the 30 days of November, with a daily goal of 1,667 words. 

Well I woke up Wednesday and decided I was going to try to write a romance novel that has been rattling around in my head for a year-ish. I signed up and wrote over my 1667 word goal. But the next day I had a bunch of things to do. And I only got 900 words in before it was bedtime. And Friday was cleaning for company and then company. Saturday was weekly errands and husband time. So two days in a row that I did not write my novel. And here it is Sunday and I am writing this blog. Because I always write a blog on Sunday. Because it is truly a priority in my life.

But will I write my novel?

And what if I don’t?

And what if I just do it when I have time?

Will I fail at life?

My first reaction is to quit. Not because I want to, but because I have already shown that I am not taking this seriously. I’m not willing to do the work. I don’t have what it takes. That I am not good enough for my inner Good Girl.

My Good Girl and her needs – to do it right, to be perfect, to show you *how good* she is, how smart, how disciplined, how well she pays attention and follow directions – are making this NaNoWriMo experience a whole lesson. As far as she is concerned, we have already failed! FAILED!!!

But I did not choose to try it for my Good Girl. I did it because I don’t know what comes next in my life and I just want to put a whole bunch of the best of myself and what I love into Life, and see what Life offers back.

So I guess I have to ask myself “what game do I want to be playing with NaNoWriMo and this novel?”

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22 Oct 2023

Daily amends to this spectacular body

There is a concept I learned years ago that has changed the way I see the world and people. That when we, as individuals, do wrong by someone, we have one of two options: 1) we can acknowledge it and make amends, or 2) we can refuse to see our part in it, but then we *must* make the other person the bad guy in order to justify our wrongdoing.

I did this to my body for most of my young life. And what it meant was that I started to believe that my body was wrong, broken, evil. I hated it for being fat. I hated it for being ugly. I hated it for letting everyone see my “problems” instead of them being invisible like other addictions. My addiction was written all over my body and it was (and for the most part still is) totally acceptable to judge me for it and let me know that the mere existence of my body was unpalatable.

I often think that if I had not gotten down to a socially acceptable size through crazy and unsustainable eating and exercising practices, and then unsuccessfully tried my hand (and toothbrush) at bulimia, I would have probably just been fat, and angry at life, the universe, and everything about it for the rest of my days.

Bulimia really lit a fire under my ass. I couldn’t look at myself and think I didn’t have a problem anymore. But I didn’t care about anything but not being fat.

Even getting my eating under control started as a punishment. Since throwing up was clearly “after school special level” messed up, I decided I was going to starve my body into thinness.

That was what I planned/expected when I put boundaries around my eating.

Except I don’t starve on my food plan. I eat so much food. Vast amounts of whole foods. And I learned early how to work the system. One apple could be, and is whenever possible, a 1+ pound apple. (This morning’s apple was 14 ounces.) I had an 11 pound honeydew this week that yielded over a pound and a half of melon every morning for breakfast for 4 days. On top of 4 ounces of bacon and eggs and whole milk in my coffee.

I treat my body with loving kindness now. From the way I eat to the way I work out to the amount of sleep I get. I don’t judge my body or my beauty or my health by the size of my pants. It’s a living amends to myself, and this amazing body that has gotten stronger, healthier, and more comfortable as I have aged. And ever more beautiful, not because of thinness, but because of genuine care. Perhaps this is what they mean by growing old gracefully?

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15 Oct 2023

You can take the fat out of the girl (but the damage was probably already done)

I was talking about this blog to some friends who do what I do with food. Many of them don’t read it, or didn’t know I wrote it. So I was telling them the name. But it was hard to hear or understand on the zoom call. So I said “It’s Once A Fat Girl, as in ‘once a fat girl, always a fat girl.’” And this bunch of women who have had their eating under control for years, some for 25 to 30 years, all nodded sagely.

My relationship to food and my body is the defining characteristic of my life, and the filter I see absolutely everything through. Even now, well over 17 years of having boundaries around my eating.

I come from a big (number of people), fat family. And because of that, I can see that even when I was not actually fat (yet), fatness was projected on me.

And then I really was fat.

You might think that being fat in a fat family would mean the family could see the beauty in fatness. But that was not the case. The “pretty” girls were the few thin ones. (Ok, but in retrospect, I was a stunner!)

Also, I was fat in the 80s and 90s when fewer people were fat. I was one of 2 or 3 fat girls in the schools I went to. 

Existing in a fat body took up at least a third of my brain space at all times. And if I was in a “danger zone” of humiliation, (a group of attractive people near by, a group of mean boys or girls, a wardrobe malfunction, an event where eating was expected, sharing seats when your butt hangs over your allotment) it was taking up way more space than that. And it was all terrifying, terrorizing, and exhausting. 

I was once in a conversation on social media where fat people and people with the experience of being fat talked about the fat shaming moments in movies and TV shows we saw growing up that still haunted us. And we all had them. So many of us had the same ones. The casual cruelty towards fat people is ongoing. (Fat Thor, anyone?)

I am grateful for the totality of my experiences. If I had not gotten my eating under control, I never could have begun to separate the fat hatred that I internalized from the real and debilitating addiction to drug foods that I needed to deal with. I was so desperate not to be fat I was willing to give up sugar entirely. And that turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me. But why did I have to be desperate to just get a modicum of respect?

Having my drug foods down and having a clear head let me really wrap my mind around how I did not deserve the fat hatred I had been receiving every day all the time. And it let me see how I was also contributing to it, by hating myself. By blaming myself for not being able to stop eating. By showing the people who shamed me that I was properly ashamed. 

The longer I have my drug foods down, the more authentically me I become. And the more me I am, the more capacity I have to see all of the ways I unfairly judged myself, and the better I can love the people in my life exactly where and who and how they are.

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01 Oct 2023

Apologies to my fiercest protector

My mom and I sometimes refer to a study she read about once where they asked men and women what scared them most about the opposite sex. And men said they were afraid women would laugh at them. And women were afraid men would murder them. 

I bring this up because I am afraid of men. No, I am not afraid of all men all the time. But I generally fear men as a group. (Duh.) And when I think about my body, I know that much (no, not all, but a lot) of my fatness when I was younger was a fortress to keep me safe from men. Because, in general, men don’t want to be associated with fat women. 

I have written about my “fortress of fat” before. And how, when I got thin and conventionally beautiful, I didn’t have any coping mechanisms for dealing with unwanted attention, so I built a “fortress of bitch” to keep myself feeling safe.

I have been losing a lot of weight very quickly in the past 6 months. In April I was a U.S. size 14 and now I am a U.S. size 8. There are a few relatively obvious reasons for this. I started a new cardio workout on a mini stepper, as opposed to jogging. Plus I got put on a maintenance inhaler for asthma and can breathe all the time now, including while I exercise. 

Plus, I initially started to gain weight 11+ years ago when I quit smoking. So perhaps it has been long enough that my body/hormones have done some healing. 

But something else occurred to me this week. Yes I gained weight when I quit smoking. But I gained more when I started working in construction. Now I have not worked in construction for 2 years. And I know that I never want to work in construction again.

And the weight is just melting off? 

I am not eating less to lose this weight. I am eating heavier and fattier to keep myself from getting hungry. I am not working out more than I was. I was jogging 30 minutes and now I am stepping 30 minutes. 

But I don’t have to navigate men right now. I don’t have to be productive and professional but also feminine and friendly enough make them comfortable. I don’t have to have my work judged against the ego of a man. I don’t have to worry about my attractiveness (either way) to men who have a say in how much money I make or how I am treated or how I am referred to, either in company or when I leave the room.

My weight has always fluctuated, even after quitting sugar and putting boundaries around my eating. And even once I took my drug foods out of the equation, I have never been able to “eat lighter” into a particular sized body. I was no longer fat once I got my eating under control. But I wasn’t necessarily skinny either. Even when I ate “light,” eliminating things like bacon and pork rinds and eating more raw veggies and less starchy vegetables cooked in fat, I couldn’t make myself lose weight. So I stopped trying.

In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense that my body chose to protect me from that kind of attention and association in my daily work life. Whether or not it was “necessary,” it clearly was necessary. For my own sake.

And it reminds me that I owe my body the living amends of giving it good food and loving care, for the ways I treated it like it was my shameful problem, and not my fiercest protector.

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17 Sep 2023

Am I the drama???

Last Sunday I went out to dinner with my dad and stepmom. And I had a difficult time getting what I needed. Definitely not the worst experience I have had by a long shot, but annoying and frustrating.

I had a waiter who kept saying “but…” every time I asked for something out of the ordinary. When I asked for my burger to be “just the meat on the plate” he tried to explain to me how the burger comes. I said that it was fine, but I only wanted the meat on the plate. Then I asked for a big plain salad. He explained to me that the burger comes with a little side salad. I told him it was not enough and I needed a whole big salad on the side. He never did get it for me. And rather than ask for it again, I just reached into my purse and pulled out a bag of cherry tomatoes I had brought for just such a situation, and put them on my plate right in front of the staff. He also didn’t put in my order of 3 orders of sautéed spinach, so I had to wait until everyone else was half way through the meal to even start. I also asked for a big extra plate and he stared at me and told me the burger would come on a plate. But I weigh my food. Even at restaurants. So I need a plate to put on the scale, weigh my meal, and then I send the rest of the plates back. But I don’t think I should have had to explain that to this guy. I just needed him to follow directions. I feel like I must have been glaring at him. But frankly I don’t care. I definitely snapped at him once. Thankfully my husband stepped in at every moment I needed him to, to get the waiter to just do what I needed.

I don’t like to eat out because of things like this. Frankly, most of the time, waiters are great, and follow my directions perfectly, and the food is delicious. We are good tippers even when the service is bad. Even this guy got over 30% and I was annoyed at him the whole time. 

But even when it’s good and easy, the possibility of trouble is stressful. Plus, I had this experience at a place I have eaten at many times before AND I called ahead this particular time anyway to make sure I could get what I needed. Even after all my due diligence, the experience was lacking. Though the food was absolutely amazing.

Even after 17+ years, there are times and moments when I have to deal with stumbling blocks to keep my eating boundaries. The good news is that after 17+ years, nobody is thinking I could or should or would just let it go. Just accept what I was given and make nice. I don’t make nice around food. It’s life or death for me. And if you think I’m being overly dramatic, you are clearly not an addict. Addiction is dramatic. And so is recovery.

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10 Sep 2023

Get you a partner who grows!

There are all sorts of big changes going on over here. My plumbing works like a dream, and my patio, which had to be dug up to replace some clay pipe, has been reinstalled, but with a handy-dandy new access point so we won’t have to dig it up again. The shrubberies in front of our house have been removed. Plus, new siding has been ordered, and hopefully that and the porch will be replaced by the end of the month.

But even bigger than that, my husband and I have started a new morning routine working out together. And it’s pretty amazing. 

The truth is it’s nothing crazy. He has a rowing machine and I have a mini stepper. We wake up at around 4 in the morning and do half an hour of cardio. I do some floor exercises and stretching while he showers. I see him off to work and go about the rest of my day. By 7am I have drunk my water, worked out, showered, done my writing, meditation, and written my gratitudes, and had a big, delicious breakfast. 

I love that my husband has made this choice for himself. I did not ask him to, I did not need him to, I did not think he “should.” He told me he was thinking about it. I asked him if he would like me to join him if he did. He said he would. 

But phew if it isn’t sexy as hell. It’s not about bodies or attractiveness. (I sent him a screenshot of an ad with one of those fitness couples and captioned it, “It’s us!” And boy did we laugh. Friends, it will never be us…) It’s about having a partner who wants to grow. It’s about having a marriage that is so good we both want to be around for it longer. It’s about being a better version of myself so I can be a better wife. And having a husband who sees that and thinks “ok. Bet.” 

I’m still in limbo in terms of what comes next for me in my work and money life. But I have a good feeling about this new routine. Fingers crossed that this new way of life shakes something loose for me.

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