onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “boundaries”

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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23 Feb 2025

Is this growth? (Probably not but it is different.)

I have been rationing Sweet n Low since yesterday when I realized that I didn’t have any more in the house than what was on my counter (unheard of, frankly) and I didn’t want to leave the house to go get more. In fact I don’t want to leave the house until tomorrow. So I divided it up and I have been using it wisely. 

I need you to know that when I was in the food I absolutely would have left the house in the middle of a blizzard on foot to get ice cream. And maybe even have eaten all or most of it on the way home. So I probably got a lot more than just ice cream.

But now I keep my eating boundaries the way I chased sugar. So if I think I need some artificial sweetener or I don’t know what I am going to do, you’re damn right I am going to get me some artificial sweetener. 

But today, 19 years into having my eating under control, I can just ration out my artificial sweetener. I don’t need to go out in a blizzard, or even just when I don’t want to, to get my pacifier. I can manage.

If you think I am going to be ashamed or embarrassed by my “pacifier,” please think again. I do whatever it takes to keep my sugar addiction under control. And almost 2 decades of being in control doesn’t make me less of an addict, it just makes it harder to remember how desperate I was at 28, not being able to stop eating, and doing all sorts of awful things to my body to try to keep my weight down. 

But it feels kind of good to not NEED to leave the house. And honestly, I have not felt deprived using less. Perhaps I planted a seed for myself. To cut down (someday), or even let it go (eventually.) 

But not today.

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16 Feb 2025

Trusting Life to be exactly what I need

I’m feeling creative again. I’ve been trying new makes. And I made a short instructional video on “reading your knitting” for someone on social media. Lots of ideas and thoughts swishing around with no idea what I will settle on. Some trials and errors. Mostly imaginings and daydreams with a few shots at different fibers and sizes.

For a few weeks I was out of ideas. Not in a bad way. I was just creatively exhausted. I did some mindless knitting. Listened to my audiobooks. Went for a walk. Watched some videos on crochet and embroidery techniques. 

Having my eating under control let me create a life for myself where I don’t have to worry about if I am doing enough. Because all I have to do is keep my sugar addiction and compulsive eating under control. If I can do that then it was a successful day. And as long as I am not craving drug foods, I have a shot at doing something meaningful to me tomorrow. Or the next day. 

Keeping my eating under control is me taking the very best care of myself. Everything on top of that is a blessing. And the longer I keep my addiction under wraps, the more I am able to do big, beautiful things above and beyond keeping my eating boundaries.

I used to always wonder if I was doing enough. And the answer was always that unless I was working myself to death, I was not.

So I didn’t really do anything. I worried about what needed to get done. I froze up. I freaked out. And I felt really bad about it. And I drugged myself with sugars and carbohydrates to feel better.

Now I know how to do things with the time and energy and love that I have in the moment. And as an artist I don’t feel compelled to be making all the time. I don’t need to be creating and putting out art to feel like an artist. Plus I have never rushed myself into something spectacular. 

Having my eating under control has taught me that the most important learning is learning to be still and listen to my life and my heart. And the best thing for me to grasp was that it all takes much more TIME than I thought it would and assumed it should. That care and attention take time. That fully grasping something new takes time. That when it comes to creating my most authentic self, everything worth anything takes time.

So I didn’t have to worry about not creating for a while. And I don’t have to work in a frenzy to complete a project before the “magic” runs out. And I don’t have to distrust myself or my discipline or my work ethic. I could, and can, trust myself. And trust that the more authentically I live, the more I can trust my Life to be exactly what I need.

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19 Jan 2025

Worth every boring moment

I made another very cool pouch! A Taco Pouch, with a zipper and a taco fabric lining. It’s amazing! I love it!

But on Wednesday this past week I did not love where I was. All of the creative part was done. All that was left to do was assembly. So lots of detail work. 

My husband is a kind of construction worker, and he runs jobs where they build and install machines. And we sometimes talk about “show steel” which is the part of the job that looks impressive. Like if yesterday there was nothing but an empty space there and now there’s a bunch of machine standing up all over the factory. But for the next few days, the work will be detail work. It will be tightening bolts and putting up handrail, etc. Which still needs to be done, but doesn’t look like anything. And it doesn’t impress anyone.

So all I had left on Wednesday was detail work. And I had a great new idea for a cheeseburger pouch! So I didn’t *want* to iron fabric and make and cut out patterns on graph paper, and impale myself on straight pins while trying to cut and sew. 

But I did. Because crafting is not only about the creative part. For me it’s about details. About my own fastidiousness. About craft. About my understanding that a job worth my time and energy is worth utmost care and attention.

And I’m so glad I did. Because it’s a real masterpiece. I am so proud of it!

And then about 1/3 of the way through the cheeseburger, I needed a break. I had exhausted my creativity. 

So for the past few days I have been not creating. I’ve been cleaning. Doing mindless knitting that is all hands and rhythm and no brain.

I think if I had not finished Taco Pouch, I would not be able to. It would have been lost in the creative void with the pieces of a bunny and the head and body of a discarded character doll and a handful of other projects.

But I did complete it. And now when I am filled up again creatively and ready to make again, I can get back to my cheeseburger. And know that I have a history of completing these pouches, even when I am at the boring part. 

There is pride in knowing I will do what it takes to make something to completion. It doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s something I have had to cultivate. And it’s worth every boring needle pricked moment.

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05 Jan 2025

I didn’t even want to be here

Honestly, I don’t even want to be here. There is a super ambitious (for me) project I’m working on. I’m cloth lining a crochet pouch and adding a zipper.

My first cloth lining. My first adding a zipper. I made my own pattern on graph paper. The piece, currently in progress, has gross imperfections that I will have to come up with better techniques for to make more in the future. But I always have a kind of deep knowing that I am good at making. And that I love it. That even the dissatisfaction is its own kind of satisfaction.

But I have the life I have because I take self care seriously and treat it methodically. 

I write this blog every week because I am committed to writing about my life as a recovering sugar addict. It’s self care like journaling, meditation, and exercise. Once I got my eating under control I could see that commitment was life changing. And that talking openly regularly about sugar addiction was a way I wanted to change my life. And it worked.

So here I am writing when I would rather be accidentally stabbing myself with needles and pins…(ok, I do actually hate that part. But I want to get back to it nonetheless.)

I could burn myself out on making. I want to. The addict in me absolutely wants to. I want to binge it the way I used to binge chocolate. Forget about my commitments. Just zone out.

And I used to make that way. Crazy up all night sugar fueled binges of compulsive creating. Too emotional to have the time or patience to actually care about craft. 

Being forced to stop to take care of my commitments, like eating my 3 meals, doing each of my weekly workouts, sleeping 8 hours a night, has made it possible for me to make more patiently. To take care of the details. There is no rush. 

It often felt like inspiration would go away if I didn’t finish. And sometimes it did go away. And sometimes it still does. 

But in the end, when I stop even when I don’t want to, to do things I know I need to, I get further, I learn more, and I make better. 

Now that this commitment is done I can make a little more. 

Until lunch.

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22 Dec 2024

No void to fill this Christmas

I am in Chicago for a few days for some pre-holiday celebrating. But not actual holiday. We are headed back to our apartment in SLC on Christmas Eve, and we will celebrate Christmas by not really doing much of anything. Yay!

‘Cause I don’t really care about Christmas.

Here’s part of it: I love my life every day. I’m not anxiously anticipating a special day. I like my regular days. And in fact, these special days are often exhausting if you do the bells and whistles. 

So I don’t do the bells and whistles. And I don’t want to. And I thankfully married a man who doesn’t want to either. 

Having my eating under control makes it possible to be unapologetically myself. I don’t feel pressured to do things to please others. Or to meet other’s’ expectations. (And the truth is half the time I was just meeting what I assumed others’ expectations would be.) But instead now I already like myself. I don’t need to try to make everyone happy to fill that void. 

So this year we are keeping holidays low key. Seeing family. Spending time. Enjoying company. And then leaving and enjoying peace and quiet.

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