onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “boundaries”

28 Dec 2025

Twenty years ago and a lifetime ago

Twenty years ago today I was pretty miserable. 

I don’t think about it much at all now. Not even as my anniversaries approach year by year. 

But someone said something to me recently that reminded me that 20 years ago right now, I was 28 years old, I was an exercise bulimic and a regular old stick a toothbrush down your throat bulimic, I had gained 30 pounds since Halloween two months earlier, and I was terrified because I could not see a way out. 

But also, it was good for me. A kind of shock to my system. I had hit a bottom. 

Once I started trying to make myself throw up, I could not pretend that I didn’t have a problem. We had reached After School Special levels of not okay.

As I approach my 20th anniversary this week, I get to really remember the excruciating pain of existing in the food. I could not stop eating. I could not stop punishing my body for it. With laxatives, with bulimia, with exercise to the point of and past injury, with harming myself any way I thought I had to so I could be in a different body. BUT STILL I COULD NOT STOP EATING!

So yes, it basically comes down to the fact that I am grateful for the ability to stop eating. Food thoughts don’t plague me. All of my eating is guilt free. I have a life beyond my wildest dreams. I have the ability to live a life between my meals. And love my meals 3 times a day. 

These boundaries are freedom. This freedom is liking, loving, and trusting myself. This is nearly two decades of increasing peace.

So here’s to my gratitude for the past almost 20 years and here’s to a lifetime more. 

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14 Dec 2025

An almost 20 year head start

I got my eating under control at 28. And that is a miracle. For me. But also, it’s not common. 

Most people (definitely not all) who come into food recovery are women. And most women come in about my age now. I’m 48. Essentially, when their hormones are changing. And when that need to please is greatly reduced.

I heard a woman say that society calls menopause “The Change” because that’s what it is for men. Their wives and mothers change. The women they relied on for everything are no longer as reliable, and some of the wives just LEAVE! (Can you imagine????) 

The older I get, and the less “reliable” my body gets, the MORE reliable my heart and soul and passion are. The more creative I am. The more proud I am of the time I spend learning and making and the product of my work. The more inspired and excited I am.

And I have all of this because in January of 2006 I decided that my sugar addiction had such a hold on me, that it would be better to give up all of my joy (I really thought that food was my only joy) than to live the rest of my life with the compulsion to eat and all of the shame that came with it.

A thing I hear a lot now is “I love your energy.” And they are right! I have great energy. I know I do because I WORK at it. And it’s a product of a lot of things that most people don’t actually like when it’s happening to them. 

You love my energy? I say NO to things that drain my energy. I limit my interactions with negativity and greed. I limit my interactions with drama. Even if I like you. Even if I love you. I say NO! I protect myself first, my family second, my friends third. 

And all of this is cumulative. I am just weeks shy of 20 years of taking care of my eating and letting that be the first step in taking care of the rest of my life. All of the rest of my life. So I have an almost 20 year head start of loving my body, of choosing my own peace and my own path, of living without resentment for the way I failed to measure up to someone else’s standards. An almost 20 year head start on so many women addicted to food, to sugar, to the idea of a perfect woman and the perfect body, or at least a “better body” that someone wants to sell us all. And I refuse to take that for granted. 

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07 Dec 2025

I already eat like it’s a celebration every day

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I eat well as a lifestyle. My husband and I spend money on quality food ingredients and cooking implements, and spend time cooking at home. We essentially eat like wealthy people. Though we don’t live like the rich and famous by any means. Unless you count an executive Costco membership…*bragging eyebrow waggle*

I had to entirely shift the way I thought about food when I first put boundaries around my eating. Eating was always a double edged experience before I got it under control. Either I was eating food I loved and craved and was ashamed of it because I was fat. Or I ate “healthy” options (not necessarily healthy in actuality, just low calorie) and hated the experience and felt like a martyr. 

When I got my eating under control the first thing the community told me was that “we eat the biggest and the best.” We love our food. We eat the foods we want. (Not sugar obviously…) If we want to eat the same foods every day, we are welcome to. As long as it is portion controlled and not a drug food. If we want to change it up every day, that is welcome too.

It meant there were rules that served me, and following them served me, and I knew when I was and was not following them. And when I was following them I was keeping a promise to myself.

And that, just the understanding that I could eat and not hate either the food or myself, was a revelation. And a freedom I didn’t want to give up. I say to this day that guilt free eating is the very best, number one thing about keeping my sugar and food boundaries. And if I lost every other benefit, just that would make it worth it.

As we come to the season of bowls of candy everywhere and homemade cookies on tables and big boxes of fruit and nut breads, I am reminded that I don’t need to do this anymore. I did it for 28 years. No holds barred. And I DID NOT GET TO ENJOY IT!

So it’s good for me to remember that I eat like it’s a celebration every day. And let the cookies lie. (I actually have zero interest in cookies. It turns out that when you don’t eat them for nearly two decades, your body doesn’t care anymore.)

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31 Aug 2025

I can want with clarity

Anyone who knows me really well knows that I don’t want to excess, BUT I want what I want how I want it, pretty intensely. And that is still true now at 48. But there are some huge differences.

Getting my eating under control taught me that I am responsible for getting what I want. And it taught me that I really do care how I get it. I won’t “do anything” to get what I want. I have limits. I have personal boundaries.

When I put down sugar and grains and started managing my compulsive eating the very first lesson was that nobody could do it for me. Literally. I have to weigh my own food. Unless I am physically incapable, I have to be the person who puts the food on the scale. (People in my community are really committed. And I have specific friends who have had to have loved ones weigh their food for them after being hit by a train or a bus because they *were* physically incapable.) 

There were no “excuses” for why I didn’t have the food I needed. Or why I didn’t have a scale with me or why I couldn’t do what I said I would do. I was told it was my responsibility to be prepared.

So yesterday, I had a plan for eating on our travel day. (We are visiting family on vacation!) And it didn’t work out. But I was prepared for eventualities! And they did, indeed, “event.” (This time. Sometimes they don’t.) But I was prepared for that too. 

Were they my favorite meals? No. Were they still delicious? Yes. And they were all within my eating boundaries. One hundred percent. And that is the most important thing. My peace and my self-respect are inextricably linked to whether I put drug foods in my body.

The ability to put what I need above what I want came from putting boundaries around my eating. Along with the ability to know when what I want is not meant for me. But also, having my eating under control and my drug foods down, means that I can go after what I do want with clarity, consistency, and drive.

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24 Aug 2025

Less to push against

When I was a nanny, there was a very specific trick I learned to get a sleep hating kid to go to sleep. You have to NOT CARE if the kid goes to sleep.

Why does it work? I have my theories. Kids are energy vampires. If you have ever held a newborn you may have noticed that they don’t actually do anything, but *you* are exhausted anyway. And if you have any anxious energy for a kid to PUSH against, they will. But anyway no matter why it works, it *does* work. 

Well this week the kittens in the back yard of our apartment came back. With their very pregnant momma ready to drop another litter. And it occurred to me that they came back, because I stopped wanting one of them to choose me. Because my husband and I agreed to go to the shelter and adopt a kitten there. And now there is no anxious energy from me for them to push against. 

Is this true? I don’t know. But it definitely fits a pattern I am used to.

When I got my eating under control I started to learn to accept that I would not get everything I wanted, and that was OK. And then I started to realize that every time I didn’t get what I wanted, I got something better. So it was actually better than OK.

It takes a constant reregulating of my expectations. Desire, disappointment, mourning, acceptance of the reality of any situation. A cycling through of all of the emotions I need to catch up to the moment. And that hasn’t really changed. But the gift of doing this for almost 20 years is time. It takes so much less time for me to be disappointed. And I don’t have to NOT be disappointed. I don’t have to suck it up and be a grown up. I can feel however I feel. It just serves me to get through those feelings quicker.

So we are still going to the shelter in two weeks to find a kitten to adopt. But in the meantime we are feeding momma and her babies. And my husband keeps insisting to the strays that they missed their chance to be adopted by us. But we all know what happens when a guy insists he doesn’t want a pet….

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17 Aug 2025

I’m betting it’s for the best

When I was young, I think 20, I went to a (fairly controversial) self-help seminar. And because I was still actively eating compulsively, I heard a lot of good things, but I, personally, lacked the tools to put them into practice. 

One of those things specifically, is that when you make a commitment, you change the trajectory of your life. 

Those are great words. But without a frame of reference it was hard for 20-year-old Kate to comprehend what that meant. And I was just really not capable of commitment then. I didn’t know that, though. 

Because commitment is only commitment after it has been tested. And getting my eating under control in my current food program 19+ years ago was my first real follow through. And that paved the way for all my other commitments.

Well my husband and I have decided that we are getting a kitten in a few weeks when we get back from a week long vacation.

One of the reasons we have not before is because we travel for my husband’s job. A lot. And that is now another moving part in finding housing for us on the road. So that is a minimum of 1.5 bathrooms, a dishwasher, an in unit washer dryer and now pet friendly.

But cats keep finding me. And needing me. But ultimately not wanting to be pets. 

Besides the cats that live in our suburban neighborhood, that my neighbor has been feeding for us while we are on the road, here in our second apartment, there were 3 little kittens that I fed for several weeks. But once they were bigger, they disappeared. 

And I feel like Life is telling me that I need to find the cat that is my cat. 

And that will change the trajectory of my life. But how could it not? That is a new little (or big) personality living in my home. 

But I guess the most important thing is that I don’t have any idea *how* it will change the trajectory of my life. I know that right now I can’t imagine what getting my first pet at 48 will create. Just like I could never have imagined how getting my eating under control would not just change my weight, but my health, my peace, my self-love, my humility, my compassion, my creativity, my integrity, really just everything. For the best.

L toR: Leo, Gus, and Baby Donut (BD got their own food when the big ones left)
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27 Jul 2025

Maybe leave us out of it?

Sometimes I am really confronted with how much work I have done on my internalized fat phobia, and how much the default response of most people to fatness or things related to fatness, is disgust and judgement.

On Facebook the other day I saw a woman I used to go to school with posting about her daughter’s difficulties since being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. That is not the thing that hit me. That sucks and I wish her and her daughter the best.

It’s how she went ON AND ON about how it was not her daughter’s fault. Because type 1 is not the one where it’s your fault. My issue being the idea that type 2 is your fault? She explained over and over about how she and her daughter are following a diet based on her doctor’s recommendations and watch her food and she’s a healthy eater and they are doing all the right things.

Here’s the deal. I understand that this is a woman who has only had to deal with fat phobia as it applies to every woman in the Western world, which is admittedly no small thing, but therefore has never had to dismantle the structures in it. And she is a societally attractive woman. So she has most certainly experienced privilege based on her beauty. Which is not a slight. Just a truth. I like her. She’s a nice lady.

But fuck did it hurt my feelings to hear her try to insist her daughter is one of the worthy ones, instead of inherently understanding that every one of us is worthy. Even if we have eating disorders. Even if our bodies are not the standard. Even if we are hugely fat! Yes! Even then!

Fatness is not always an addiction. I didn’t understand that until I had my eating under control. There are plenty of happy, healthy fat people. People who love their lives and their bodies and are simply fat.

I was not one of those people. I was an addict. I wanted to stop and I could not. And even though I did it to lose weight, I KEEP my eating under control because it makes my life better. But it doesn’t always keep me thin. I have been very thin but I have also been quite chubby.

It turns out thinness is not as predictable for me as common lore would have you believe. Calories in calories out is not actually the way it works. Not for me, anyway.

But even if it is clear that a person is fat, and an addict, and miserable, and not doing the “right things,” do they really deserve to suffer and die?

There are plenty who will say yes. And I think it’s quite possible I would have been one when I was in the food and miserable and a self-hating fat phobe. Because I used to believe one had to earn their place in the world. But now that is not true of me. 

I guess I will wrap it up with this thought. Sometimes the only way to change is to think you are worth it. And when you tell people they are not worth it, you are just slowing the process of the thing you think should happen. 

Also, maybe mind your own business. You can talk about Type 1 diabetes without bringing Type 2 into it…

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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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11 May 2025

Probably not the last time either

This past week has been enlightening for me as a person looking to continue to grow. I always forget that most real spiritual breakthroughs in my life happen through breakdowns. I always think about the joys of the other side without remembering the absolute physical, mental, and emotional misery of the catalyst for it. 

The 2 month period that led up to me quitting sugar and putting boundaries around my eating was emotional torture. But people who saw me then said I seemed fine. Perfectly normal. 

The months that led up to me no longer weighing my body and no longer judging my life based on the size of my body were riddled with uncontrollable weight gain, nightmares and stress hormones, and crying jags I couldn’t control.

This week it took some time to get me out of my woe-is-me-feelings. But they say to do service to feel better. So I did some stuff for other people. Which got me out of my head. And I decided on my amends. (I ended up donating to the GFM for Burn the Cape by Dr. Raquel Martin.) So that I could move on. Because I hurt someone by accident and then I got terrified that I would do it again. And I made myself as small as I could be. Made as little movement as I could. Froze right in place and stayed as still as possible. 

Because that is how it goes for me. I be whatever I am. And I get bigger. Weirder. Sillier. And then make a mistake and hurt someone. Again. And I freeze. Then I flee. And I go and hide. 

Getting fatter was absolutely a way for me to get smaller when I was still eating compulsively. More invisible. A way to have less impact. To be less seen. To hide in plain sight. I definitely did not know that intellectually at the time. And the being high on sugar helped me not know.

This is a difficult thing to explain. If you know me you may already think I’m “big and weird and silly.” You may think I have a gigantic personality. Which I do. But even that is still a stifled little girl doing a cha cha dance of trying to never ever make a mistake and then making one anyway and then quitting the dance and then 5-6-7-8… 

And that is the lesson here for me. That the shutting down and the woe is me and the hiding away is not authentic. It’s a way for me to stop and regroup and figure out what is palatable. What’s a tolerable dose of Kate? Let’s get it in that range. 

That is a problem. For me, anyway. Because what got me here to my sugar addiction and compulsive eating being arrested, and loving my life, and being in a loving and happy marriage, has been an uncovering of who I am. Very much *not* the making myself easier to digest. My life is better because I care about my authentic self. 

I understand a few things. 

My ego is not particularly big but it is fragile AF!

My impact in the world, and not my intention, is what I am responsible for. So that ALSO MEANS I don’t have to have a whole emotional breakdown about being a scourge on humanity because I made a joke that landed a way I didn’t mean for a person I really like. I can make it about my integrity (a thing I can do something about) and not my ego (an amorphous blob of ever changing and impossible standards.)

I just want to say that over these past 2+ years I have seen an incredible transformation in so many aspects of my life. My breathing health. My mental health. My physical strength and wellbeing. My balance. My willingness to see the doctor regularly and to get blood work done.

I am clearly changing for something. Into something. And I expect it won’t be the last time either.

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09 Mar 2025

Do the next thing and hope it’s the right thing

Throughout my life I spent a lot of time being told “the way it is” about so many things. And really just not believing. Just deciding that I was going to do it my way and see what could happen. 

I definitely did not choose the path of least resistance. Kind of ever. 

But when it came to my body I *never* believed there was any other possibility than the very narrow one I felt confined to. I was fat. I had a certain shape. That was just the way it was.

When I quit sugar and carbohydrates and started to weigh my food 19 years ago, that was the very first time that I felt like I had any control over my body. Before that my own body had felt like a curse and a force of nature. I could lose weight, but I could never really stop eating. Every weight loss felt like a lie. I KNEW that it was unsustainable. Until I stopped putting my drug in my system. 

So ok. That was amazing. I could stop eating sugar and I could be “not fat.” But I still had a very specific shape and it was “weird.” I had to dress to “hide my flaws.” My weight distribution was all up front. I had  big belly. I had wide hips but no butt. My shorter right leg (from when I was born with a club foot and they put me in a full cast from hip to toe) was bigger and stronger and so was/is my right foot. I carried almost all of my weight on it all the time. My right hip hurt constantly. It was just the way it was. And it was still a more comfortable and easy body than when I was eating compulsively.

And then I started walking stairs and as my butt got bigger my center of balance moved way back so I was no longer balancing on my toes. And my belly got smaller as my balance shifted back. But as my legs got stronger and stronger my back started to get tighter and I had to spend a lot of time stretching and massaging my leg muscles to open my back up.

So a couple of weeks ago I started using a lift in my right shoe to accommodate the full one inch difference between my left and right legs. And that ended up making a huge difference in my back. 

In less than 2 full weeks it has reduced my back and hip pain and significantly increased my range of motion backwards. 

None of these things ever felt like anything I had any kind of power over. They felt predestined and set in stone. But I just didn’t know anything. And when people or media or movies told me about “how it was” with bodies like my body, I just believed them in a way I didn’t for almost anything else.

I was ashamed of myself and my body when I was in the food. Ashamed of my fatness, ashamed of my shape, ashamed of any anomalous aspect. And that kept me from even thinking of simple fixes. I would have to be worthy of that. I would have to just be in need of a little help. Not irrevocably broken…

But now that my eating is under control, I love my body. The beautiful, the weird, and the weirdly beautiful. And by loving my body I have a shot at taking an action that leads to me loving it more. Like putting a lift in my shoe. 

I am trying to remember every day and in all things that there is no “way it is.” There is only the way it has been and my choice of what to do next for myself and my community. And I’m trying to remember that I did not know what was possible before I started any of these things. I just did the next thing and hoped it was the right thing. 

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