onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “change”

25 Jul 2021

A job, some fear and anxiety, probably a miracle.

One of my favorite things I had the opportunity to learn when I got my eating under control is how to go with the flow. How to let life happen as it does (because it will) and to make the best of it. To handle new and difficult situations with grace and ease.


On Tuesday morning this past week I got a call from management in my company, asking if I would take on a new position. And could I start the next day?


I was certainly happy to take it on. I have mostly just been working part time for almost a year now. And while I have enjoyed it, because I love having lots of alone time, the truth is I like work. I like being of use. I like being good at what I do. I like the feelings I get when I accomplish things. I like being impressive. My best friend’s old therapist said that a huge portion of our self-esteem comes from our job.


And there is another part of it for me right now. I am not working with my husband on this job. My boss is someone I just met for the first time on Wednesday. And while I love working with my husband, and we make a great team, there is something exciting about getting the chance to show someone else what I can do. And knowing that what he has to say means something different to the company, coming from a stranger and superior, than it does coming from the person who chose me as a life partner.


The other important thing about getting my eating under control when it comes to this job is that keeping my food boundaries has taught me how to manage my fear and anxiety. Because for as excited as I am to do this job (and I am very excited), my brain goes on a little merry-go-round ride of thoughts and feelings, and a good portion of them are fears. Fears that I will fail, that I am not as good as I think. That I am not good enough in general.


It doesn’t matter that these thoughts are irrational. Anyone with irrational thoughts will tell you that knowing you are being irrational does not change the experience of it. It’s why self-knowledge was never enough to lose weight when I (and seemingly everyone else) cared so much about my weight. (I’m sure the world still cares about my weight because it cares about weight in general. I just don’t care that it cares anymore.)


But in getting my eating under control, I learned how to stop thoughts. I learned how to change my mind. I learned how to change my thinking. I learned how to harness control over my thoughts as a tool.


Eating compulsively always had me too high on sugar to manage anything, especially my thoughts. It had me foggy, and careless, and numb. These are not ideal circumstances to take control of one’s own brain. The point of getting high was always to stop thinking and feeling entirely, not to control myself.


I am very excited about getting a new opportunity. And if you read last week, I do believe that this job came straight out of a miracle door. So I am going to keep meditating on miracles and the doors they emerge from. And I am going to keep my eating boundaries. And I am going to do an amazing job! Probably. And if not, I expect there will be another miracle coming through another door. But for right now I’ll do the work in front of me.

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09 May 2021

Build the muscle to change a mind

Yesterday my husband and I had friends over for dinner for the first time in forever! And it was awesome! 

My husband is a great cook and he loves to do it. But when we have company he usually makes things I can’t eat. So I either eat the parts I can, and supplement the rest of my meal, or I just eat my own food.

Last night my husband made pasta, so that was a no-go for me. And the fancy sauce he made was also not one I could have. But I cooked up some of our homemade Italian sausage, which is a personal favorite of mine. And he made, for lack of a better term, an Italian salsa for bruschetta as an appetizer. And while you probably already know, I don’t eat bread, I did get to have the salsa itself which was super delicious. 

I am grateful that I no longer look at the things I can’t have as “missing out.” My dinner was delicious. And guilt-free. But that took something. It took a conscious choice to take control of my own brain and stop certain thoughts. To recognize them, and stop thinking them. To change the channel. And that did not happen today. It happened a little at a time over years and years.

If I have one piece of advice for people who want to start abstaining from their drug foods, it would be to understand the nature of their own thoughts. It would be to become aware of how much control we each have over our thinking, which seems, at first, like something we have no choice in.

I am a completely different thinker than I was when I was eating compulsively. I had been thinking a certain way for 28 years when I finally put boundaries around my eating. I had worn certain paths in my brain. Certain thoughts necessarily lead to other particular thoughts. All of those thoughts, all of the paths they created, led directly to the foods that made me feel miserable and out of control. 

It takes something to leave the path. It takes a kind of bravery. It takes a kind of fortitude. And it takes practice. It’s like building a muscle. You don’t start being able to do 100 push-ups. You do a few with bad form and much heavy breathing at first. But you get better and stronger every time. And if you do it regularly, you build the muscles to the point that a push-up is second nature. Your body remembers. It knows. 

I also understood that I was never going to get anywhere different while I was walking the same paths. If I wanted to change the way I ate, I had to change the way I ate. If this seems like an obvious truth to you, let me assure you I tried for many many years to change the way I ate without having to change anything. I quite literally wanted my cake and to eat it too.

When I got my eating under control, people who went before me told me to change my language. Not to call things “favorite foods” anymore. To remember that they were poison to me. To refer to them as such. To stop romanticizing them. To stop thinking of them with longing. To stop thinking of them at all. To build that muscle.

So much of changing my life was in changing my mind. One thing at a time. One word at a time. One wishful thought at a time. And the gift of changing my mind about sugar also gave me the option to change my mind about other things. To know that the thoughts in my head were not “me.” They were merely thoughts. And I was in control of all of them, because once upon a time, even when I was really bad at it, I was willing to change my mind.

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28 Jun 2020

Amends are the worst! And also the best!

I have had a very hard week emotionally. I have been crying a lot. I have been thinking a lot. I have been trying to reconcile a lot of things. I have been restless, irritable, and discontent, as they say. And then yesterday I was a real asshole to two different people. A stranger and my husband. And I had to make amends.


Ugh! Making amends is the worst. But it is also, of course, the best.


I won’t go into details, because they are boring and would be filled my in-the-moment justifications for why, exactly, I acted like a jerk. But just rest assured that I did, indeed, act like a jerk.


The stranger let me have my way, not because I was right, but because it was easier for him to deescalate the situation. So I got what I wanted by being obnoxious.


Then later my husband and I got into an argument about a misunderstanding and a miscommunication. Because he has been frustrating and annoying me all week. But not because of him, or what he has been doing. But because I have been unhappy and frustrated and stretched thin myself.
To both my husband and the stranger, I admitted that it was me, and not them, that was the problem.


But amends are something else. Not just an apology. A mending. It’s right there in the name.


So for the stranger, I wrote a sincere note of apology. I admitted that I was entirely in the wrong. But I also left $20 in the note. Because I had gotten everything in that interaction, and he had gotten nothing. An apology, even a sincere one, doesn’t give him back his time. An apology wasn’t going to dry his clothes. In order for it to be a sincere amends, I felt it should cost me something. And while money is not the only way to make up for such things, it was the easiest way with a stranger.


With my husband, on the other hand, the amends has to come with a change in behavior. In order for it to be sincere, I have to hold myself accountable to being the kind of wife I want to be, even when I am sad, or hurting, or depressed, or struggling.


This morning I feel better, cleaner, freer, having taken responsibility for my own bad behavior. I am still not particularly happy. I still have a lot of things to work through and deal with for myself, but I have had a wake up call to show me that whatever is going on inside, I am still responsible for what I do and say and create on the outside.

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14 Jun 2020

Not dead yet…So expecting change

One of the most useful things about having my eating under control is my ability to change, often gracefully, sometimes less gracefully, but always with sense of well-being. If I’m not dead yet, well, then more will be revealed.


When I first put boundaries around my eating, parts of my life got very small for a while. I had to live through the withdrawal. I had to figure out how to reconfigure an entire life that had been centered around eating, specifically eating sugar and carbohydrates.


But then my life had all of this unused time in it. Time that had been spent pursuing and eating sugar. And my head had all of this new space. Space that had been taken up by my food obsession. And eventually I had both the capacity and the free time to try new things and think in new ways.


Change became a muscle I was building. It’s a muscle I continue to build. And it is invaluable in times like these. Times where flexibility and adaptability are currency. In times like the times we are living in now, people like me, who can get swept up in the current of a present in flux and an uncertain future, and just ride it until we get spit out onto the shore somewhere, are in a great position. We have the power that comes from being present in the moment. We have the power of freedom.


I have this gift because my eating is under control, which means my head is clear from both sugar fog and food obsession. I have it because upon getting the clarity of mind, I realized I had to live honestly and with integrity in all areas of my life, or I was going to end up back in food hell. I have it because I had to take on a way of life where I am rigorous with myself and deal with my own life, rather than looking to blame others. Even when others are wrong. Even when I am right and my anger is righteous. I have this gift because I got to move away from centering my life around what I want, and move toward the power of choosing what I wish to do with what I actually got.

I had to learn to make friends with my food issues. I had to learn to work around them, and make them work for me. And through that, I learned to make friends with what is so, and to not fight against the actualities of my life and my world, but use them. Or at the very least, learn to accommodate them.

Changing my eating and behavior around food also rewired my brain. In actively changing both my thoughts, and my actions, I changed a lifetime of compulsions and defaults. And I got good at change in the process. And it is a gift and a blessing that goes far beyond food or eating or the size of my body.

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07 Jun 2020

Turn and face the strange ch ch…

I have had a very busy week and next week is a busy week again.


We left Oklahoma for good last week. Hooray! And we have been in our home since Wednesday, which has been wonderful! But tomorrow we leave for a new job in Nebraska.


I am good at change because I have my food and my eating under control.


The world is changing. I am able to change with it. This is a blessing. Because when I say my eating is under control, I am not saying I am on a diet. Diets have never worked for me. Not to shrink my body and most definitely not to help me with my life. I have a way of eating that keeps me clear-headed and available, and a way of living that has me focus on what I can do to be the kind of person I want to be in the world.


I can examine my moods and adjust my relationship to my experiences because I have my eating under control. I can go with the flow of life because my eating is under control. I can accept that life is always changing anyway and act accordingly because my eating is under control. I do not have to hold on to the way anything used to be because my eating is under control.


If I am not numb, I am forced to look any and all situations in the eye and deal with them. If I am uncomfortable, I have to sit in it until I change enough to get comfortable.


The world is going to change. Always and forever. Sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small. But I am available to see it and meet it and change with it because my eating is under control.

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09 Feb 2020

Nothing to prove. Not even to myself.

Toward the end of last year, my husband and I found a leak in our closet from our bathroom. And because of it, I had to throw away the majority of my clothes due to a serious mold infestation. And now that we are going on a trip to Florida next month, I realized I needed a summer wardrobe. 

When I quit sugar 14 years ago, I did not lose all of the weight that I would at first. It definitely went in phases. But eventually I was quite skinny. And in those years of thin to really skinny, I bought a lot of clothes. I bought a lot of really cute, eclectic, crazy, fashionable, fun clothes. And I looked amazing all the time.

And when I quit smoking 7 and a half years ago, I gained 30+ pounds. And since then, my weight has fluctuated. Sometimes I have been thin, sometimes not so much. And in that time I bought a lot of clothes. To fill in any gaps in my “skinny” wardrobe. 

At first not being skinny anymore was devastating. Now it’s just life. 

So a lot of my clothes didn’t fit the same way they did before. Some didn’t fit at all and got given away. Some fit better the more I filled them out. Some fit less well. But there were a lot of them. And they were stylish. And I enjoyed looking in my closet for something fun and funky to wear.

And then they were moldy.

But I have to admit there is something so freeing about getting rid of all of those old clothes. Because I am different. I bought so many of them when I was single. When I was a New York City girl. When I had different hobbies and different goals. And frankly, when I was more willing to be uncomfortable for beauty.

There were very few things it hurt me to throw away when we went through that moldy closet. (Though that Black House White Market long cardigan with the granny square cuffs and collar hurt like a bitch to get rid of.) Because they were for a woman with a different shaped body, and a different shaped life. 

It was nice to be able to make new choices and choose different styles in this past month or so. I am less likely to want my skirts particularly short or my heels particularly high. I am leaning toward more classic styles with a funky twist, as opposed to really funky stuff. (Though, to my husband’s dismay, I still love all things strapless. He calls them tube tops and they are not his favorite. But I have a really spectacular neck and shoulders. And luckily, he doesn’t have to wear them.)

But I guess this is the point for me. When those clothes were in my closet, I felt in some ways like I had to live up to them. They were purchased because I could fit into whatever style I wanted. I could be wild and daring and not be given the side eye or be shamed, as happened a lot to me when I was fat. I am not saying I wore clothes I didn’t love. I loved them! They excited me. I felt beautiful and gorgeous and stylish in them. But they were also a point I had to prove and a statement I had to make. 

Now, I have a different statement I want to make. That my 42 and a half year-old body is totally perfect. It’s beautiful and healthy and I can dress it however I want. And I don’t have anything to prove to anyone. Not even myself.

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15 Sep 2019

On making friends with a new devil

I consider myself pretty good at change. I have a lot of experience with it. From all of the kinds of jobs I have had, to all of the moving I have done to different homes and different cities and towns. And I have learned to give up things. Like simple sugar and carbohydrates. And smoking. 

And I have an experience. That life will always give you the opportunity to go back to the way it was before. It will always let you choose to go back to the *you* you were before. Because when you make a commitment, you change your life’s trajectory. You set yourself on a new, unknown path. 
When I was single, and it didn’t work out with a man, he would inevitably show back up in my life just when I had moved on. Within a week of the day I quit smoking, I had a neighbor stalk me and I had to call the police and my landlord. It was very stressful. Exactly the kind of emotional upset I used smoking to soothe. 
It comes back to that old saying: “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.” I find that life always gives me a chance to escape the unknown and return to that comfortable misery. 
Now, I don’t believe that the devil you know is better. And I have known plenty of devils. When it comes to change I agree with Mae West. “When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.”
There was the devil of significant weight gain when I quit smoking. And wow was that difficult and painful. And there are, of course, lots of devils to keeping boundaries around my food. There is the time it takes to shop, prep, cook, and pack. There is the navigation of the feelings and expectations of people who don’t understand. There is the planning involved in having my meals be complete and accounted for daily, while still having a life. There is all of the extra work involved in eating out, when for most people, eating out is when they *don’t* have to do any work. And there are all of the *feelings* that can be painful, overwhelming, scary, uncomfortable, unwelcome, or just plain yucky.
But when I was eating compulsively, I already knew a lot of devils, and they were shame, self-hatred, self-doubt, crippling anxiety, an inability to move forward with my life, fear of failure, fear of humiliation, regular emotional paralysis, and physical pain and difficulties.
I promise, those devils were worse. But if you asked that Kate, who was suffering under all of those devils, she would most certainly have told you the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. And if you had told her that she would spend a huge portion of her time shopping and prepping and cooking, and also feeling uncomfortable feelings, she would have said that sounded like the worse devil! Who would want something like that?!?!
But now, I have reached a point of no return. I am not saying I could never go back into the sugar. I am still an addict and it is still as dangerous to me as it ever was. When I put sugar in my body, it sets up a craving for more. That is biological and inescapable. But I know all of the devils now, and I’ll never be able to think of the difficulties of food boundaries as worse than the prison of self-loathing.
I hated myself when I was eating sugar and carbohydrates. And I hated myself so much and for so long that I didn’t even know I hated myself until it stopped. But the point is, it did stop. And I found that in doing all that work, and feeling all of those feelings, I came to love myself, to like myself, to trust myself, to enjoy my life, to have fulfilling relationships, and to respect myself and others.
And I want to say something about this regarding fat acceptance. I hear a lot on social media about how society has socialized us to hate ourselves if we are fat, and to internalize that bigotry. And I don’t think it’s necessarily untrue. There is certainly an aspect of being taught that we are less than. But I want to note that after quitting sugar, grains, and starches, I did not loose weight all that quickly. And there have been many times in which I have gained weight keeping my boundaries. But my self-hatred has been stilled ever since I started. And when I was thin, but eating compulsively, I hated myself as much as when I was fat. Perhaps more, because I felt like the body I was in was a lie. I don’t want fat people to hate themselves. I don’t think it’s healthy, or helpful, or right. And it is certainly my wish for you to love yourself in whatever body you are in. But for me, it is very clear that my eating, not my body, or my weight, is what made me miserable and ashamed. And in taking care of my eating, I learned how to love my body and my life. So consider that just maybe there are angels hanging out with the devil you don’t know.
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21 Jul 2019

Impossible is just another word for “don’t stop eating junk food.”

Of course. Another article on how it’s “nearly impossible” to lose weight. An article about how there are receptors that help/hider weight loss on a molecular level. It even brought up the contestants on The Biggest Loser. Again. 

There was at least one thing about the article that I wholeheartedly agree with. Calories are not the answer to weight. Losing weight is not about creating a “calorie deficit.” 
And as for the study of the participants of The Biggest Loser television show, who had their metabolisms shut down, causing them to gain back their weight, along with not being able to lose weight any more, can we please remember that those participants were exercising for 6 to 9 hours a day. Which is a great way to create a dramatic physical change in a body for a reality TV show. But is not a practical practice for people who have to, say, go to work, make dinner for their family, have a life. And it is not a lifestyle change that facilitates long-term maintenance.
I am not saying the science talked about in this article isn’t valid. (Though I do not know who funded it and that always makes a difference.) But I take issue with some of the things the article implies. 
The most important one, I think, is this quote from an endocrinologist at Columbia University:
“These data are quite interesting, and are consistent with the hypothesis that the obesity epidemic is in part due to evolutionary pressures to prevent starvation in stress,”
So we are just evolving to be fat?
Guess what was not mentioned. Food. Processed food. In the past 45 years, my lifetime, Americans (and people in general worldwide) have gotten bigger and bigger. Americans have stopped eating at home. We have stopped cooking fresh food for ourselves and our families. We have started buying and consuming packaged, processed and “ultra-processed” foods, most with added sugars, on a daily basis. We eat and snack all day, as opposed to having meal times. We have no concept of portions, and when eating at a restaurant, we feel cheated if we do not get a full plate. We eat the whole bag, the whole box, the whole pint. In the past 45 years, we have gone from a society that ate junk food as an occasional treat, to one that considers junk food a reasonable meal choice. And we’re talking about evolution to explain why so many more people are fat in that same 45 years? 
I feel like this is an example of Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation is probably the valid one. We have told “Big Food” that it can get us addicted to its poison with impunity. We have agreed that rather than call out chips, and microwave snacks, and soft drinks, and granola bars made with “all natural” ingredients, as processed junk, we will say it’s evolution that is the problem. That it’s our bodies that are betraying us, as opposed to the food industry. 
I can’t say this enough. I do not care what you choose to eat! I do not care if you are fat! I do not care if you are fat and sick! I do not care if you are fat and sick and still want to eat ultra-processed foods all day every day! I do not care! You do you!
I care that seemingly everyone in the scientific and medical communities wants to talk about every effing thing except food. They want to talk about how close they are to creating the magic pill. Or the magic procedure. They want to say that it is either too hard, or too silly, or too strict, to give up processed foods and sugar. 
No doctor has ever told me to give up sugar and carbohydrates. They told me moderation. Because I wouldn’t be able to do something so extreme. That it was crazy. That it was impossible to give up cake on my birthday. 
Eat what you want. Whenever you want. But if you are miserable in your body, and you want to lose weight, for yourself – not a spouse/partner, or your parents, or society in general – don’t believe that it is evolutionarily impossible! Don’t believe that there is no hope. Maybe try not eating crap. Maybe try eating whole food that still looks recognizable as what it was in the wild…
My bottom line is this. Can we stop pretending not to see the problem with our food? Can we stop pretending that food we eat and serve is not addictive? Can we stop pretending that we can’t possibly imagine what has changed in the past 45 years to create what we are calling “an obesity epidemic?” 
We should really be calling it a “malnourishment epidemic” or a “toxic food epidemic.” We should not be vilifying the people who are reaping the consequences of a consumerist culture gone awry. An obesity epidemic seems to me to imply that fat people are to blame for not “putting the chips down” and “pushing away from the table.” But companies are making an awful lot of money on these same people. Food companies, and medical/drug companies. They sell us the ultra-processed microwave meal, with an “Organic/All Natural/No GMOs” label slapped across the front, and tell us it’s healthy. And then they get us under the knife for a procedure to “help us” out of the horrible bind we’ve gotten ourselves into by not having enough willpower. (I hope the eye roll implied there was not lost on you.) Those lap bands and gastric bypass surgeries aren’t free, you know. And we all know that insulin is so expensive some people are going bankrupt to stay alive. 
Do not believe them when they say it’s hopeless or impossible. Do not believe that evolution alone has made us fat. We have certainly evolved to have the bodies we have, but I firmly believe that evolution is not making us as fat as our addictive food choices are. 

And I say that as someone who has maintained over 100 lb weight loss for over 13 years. That is not a fluke. That is not an anomaly. That is over 13 years of not eating addictive foods. I *know* that it is not impossible. I am living proof.

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07 Jul 2019

Independence Day too

This week was Independence Day here in the US. So I decided to write a bit about my personal freedom from food addiction.
As a kid and teenager, through my mid 20s, food was the most important thing in my life. I thought about it constantly. I thought about my weight constantly. I hated my body constantly. I wanted and obsessed over sugar and carbs constantly. Almost all of my thinking was around my issues with food. It used up so much of my brain that I am surprised I managed to do or achieve anything else with my time. Also, I didn’t achieve that much.
Here’s the thing that makes me clear that I was a slave to food. I ate when I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to eat in front of people, but I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to be fat and I wanted to lose weight, but I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to eat certain foods because I didn’t particularly like them, but if they were all there was in the house, I still couldn’t stop myself. Compulsive. Obsessed. Miserable. Enslaved.
I stopped being a salve when I stopped eating man-made sugar and carbohydrates entirely. And I did it with the intention of not going back.
When I dieted in my early life, I gave up sugar long enough that I could be thin, and therefore not judged for eating sugar. I *wanted* to eat sugar, but not hate myself and my body. I thought that being thin would make me love my body. I thought that being thin and eating sugar would be the perfect life.
It didn’t work. When I was thin but eating sugar and carbohydrates, I still hated my body. Judged it. Abused it. I thought my body was not treating me right, instead of the other way around.
When I quit sugar and carbohydrates, I started to love my body. Whether it was skinny or chubby. I no longer needed my body to be thin to love it. I loved it by treating it well, with nourishment and care. With food first. Later with sleep and hydration. Later still with quitting smoking. Eventually with exercise. I am sure there will be more. And more still. This food addiction journey is a lifetime journey of self-care. It was the actions I was taking that lead to love. It was “fake it ‘til you make it” that made me so happy with my body and my life. It was treating myself like a precious thing first. Not feeling like a precious thing and then acting accordingly. 
Freedom didn’t come for me. It did not seek me out. But it was there all the time, waiting for me to take it. It was waiting in all of the moments I played a long game with my life. It was every bite of cake I chose not to take. It was every “obligatory” meal I politely refused. It was in every time I put myself first, even though my body and mind were screaming and begging and tempting. 
Until the day that sugar stopped calling. Until the begging and the screaming and the tempting all stopped. And the freedom settled in. And the freedom became the norm. 
That did not come quickly. Or easily. It came a little at a time with a lot of pain and difficulty. Until it was just there. And now it’s just there. Freedom is just a part of my life now. Independence Day is today too. 
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23 Jun 2019
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“Follow Me” and change

I was very excited this week to get to see a documentary I am featured in about sustained weight loss. It’s called Follow Me, and it features 12 people who have lost a significant amount of weight and have kept it off for 5 years or more. I am honored to be a part of it. You can visit the website and see a trailer for the movie at www.followmefilm.ca
What I particularly like about the film is that it features a bunch of different approaches to sustained weight loss. But they all have one thing in common. We each had to change our lives. 
One of my biggest problems with losing weight when I was still eating sugar, was that I wanted to do what I had always done, and have it be different. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was not eating so I could eat later. The reward was the same. Just less often. And someday. Until I couldn’t wait anymore and I ate again. And I couldn’t put it off anymore, and it went back to being the norm, not the exception. 
I could never stop eating sugar when I was eating sugar. I could never *want* to refrain, because I craved it. My brain and my body told me I needed it. And when I first *really* gave up sugar I experienced a lot of physical and emotional pain. The cravings were intense. The feelings I had been numbing with sugar were overwhelming. I was cranky. I felt high from not being high. I had to cope without my primary coping mechanism. Like learning to swim by being thrown in the lake and told “don’t die.”
But I did learn to “swim.” I learned a new way to live. And it was a life I never knew I wanted. But I did. 
One of my many (many) problems with the fitness/diet/beauty industry is that so much of what it is advertising is something that will do the change for you. Hell, even the medical industry is selling that. Take these “vitamins,” they will melt away fat. Drink this shake, it will make you want to eat less. Get your stomach removed/constricted. It will make it impossible for you to overeat. Except it doesn’t. Not even the medical/surgical solutions. I have met people who have stretched themselves a new stomach after gastric bypass. They are not the solutions they promise to be. (Oh great. Now, I am going to be singing Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina all day…)
I am not saying that surgery is necessarily “bad.” Eating as a coping mechanism worked for me until it didn’t anymore. A gastric sleeve might save someone’s life. But  if one’s problem is eating, like mine, and weight is a symptom of that problem, I don’t think anything outside of oneself is going to help. 
And I am not saying that anyone “needs” to change their eating. I want to be friends with fat acceptance, body positivity, and fat pride. I want to make this a conversation about choice. 
But I hated being fat. And I *wanted* a solution. And I was doing all sorts of self-harm and acts of self-hatred in order to try and wrangle my body into a certain shape and size, hoping that one of those awful, painful, and shameful things would be the solution to my self-loathing. And none of them were. 
But finally I found a real solution. One that doesn’t require sustained starvation. One that doesn’t require hating myself into submission. One that is abundant, delicious food, plus a body I actually love, and love to live in. 
So I am honored to be part of this film, Follow Me. I am honored to talk about the fact that sustained weight loss is not a fictional fairytale. That it can be done. And that it’s not about being special or being a specific kind of fat person. That it’s about choices and change. And that if you want something else, there is a way to have it. 
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