onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “eating boundaries”

12 Apr 2026

Maybe all my childhood dreams will come true

I grew up fat in the 80s and 90s and there was not a market for clothes for people my age to be fat. So I wore what the plus size stores had to sell. And that was a lot of business casual in crepe.

So when I got my eating under control 20 years ago, I got “fashion” for the first time. I had a new body and I loved dressing it. So I tried all the styles. And I got to figure out what was mine. And I definitely went hyper feminine. And loved it. 

But now I wonder if I chose those styles or if those styles chose me….Because I had a very different body shape. 

I was a kid in the 80s. And I was obsessed with ads for Charlie perfume. Beautiful women wore feminized versions of men’s suits and looked unapologetic while the print said “She’s a Charlie Girl.” And I wanted to be a Charlie Girl so bad. Until I realized I did not have the body to be one. Those models were tall and skinny with long legs. They could be Charlie Girls because they were built that way and I was not.

The first 40+ years of my life, I had a specific body shape. Since my teen years, from the front, I have always looked like an hourglass. But my back side was flat and I carried all of my weight in my front. And that made certain cuts of clothing more flattering on me. A-line or empire waist dresses and tunic length tops accentuated my hips and covered my lack of a butt. 

And now I have an entirely different body shape and I look frumpy in these once so feminine outfits. 

And I need all my tops CROPPED! GASP!

I had the same thought you did just now. No I am not showing my belly. I am a 48-year-old woman. I have enough body temperature issues without adding clothes that ride up. 

Now, after years of stairs and squats and lunges, I have a big, muscular butt, and I need tops and sweaters that come to my waist, not half way down my hips or lower. I need pants and skirts that hit slightly above my (very low) waist. I need to buy bigger pants and cinch the waist for a better drape. I need belts. 

When I was fat, I thought the clothes were right and my body was the problem. A belief the fashion, fitness and beauty industries enjoy perpetuating. And then when I got my eating under control, I realized that I just had to find the clothes that were *my* clothes for *my* body. And now, at 48, with a whole new, not skinny or long-legged body, and low enough estrogen that I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I can wear a pair of pleated dress pants and a crisp white button down and vest and be a Charlie Girl if I so desire. 

I guess if I wait long enough, maybe all my childhood dreams will come true.

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05 Apr 2026

Know what they’re selling so you don’t buy it.

It is now clear to me that we have entered another phase of pro-extreme-thinness in United States’ culture. People are admitting for their social media audiences to doing things like taking meth to stay as thin as possible. And they are framing it as if this is totally normal. 

 The early 2000s had this too. Both the culture extolling the virtues of taking up little space, and the common use of drugs to accomplish it. Or anything to accomplish it. As long as you got smaller. I knew a girl in those years who was both tall and already extremely thin, who was offered heroin by her modeling agency in case she wanted to lose a few pounds.

There is a scene in the original Zoolander movie (2001) where the beautiful but normal girl is talking to the male models and she ashamedly admits she used to be bulimic. And they both tell her that everyone does that. It’s a great way to keep your weight down. It’s meant to be funny because that mentality was alive and well then. 

And then we had Love Actually (2003) where a thinner than average woman is cast as a character who is repeatedly mocked as chubby and for having “thighs the size of tree trunks” and a sizable arse. This is blatantly false, but instead of believing my eyes, I believed those words.

There are so many more.

My point is we have been here before. And it is an ugly place to be. And the internet is only worse in the past 20 years. Not better. Once photoshop was the best tool for image manipulation. Now AI brings the game to a whole new level. The girls and boys who are exposed to this kind of cultural propaganda are less equipped than ever to understand what is being done to them. 

And that is the other thing: it is already established that KNOWING ALONE WILL NOT STOP IT. You really have to not see the propaganda. You have to know BEFORE hand and not be exposed. Because knowing it’s happening does not stop it from *working.*

I already limit my exposure to diet and thinness culture as much as possible, and I still can’t entirely eradicate it from my screens. I literally cannot. The algorithm will not let me.

And It’s not just social media and online influencers. It is and will be anyone in an audience facing job. This extreme thin bias will be noticeable in the actresses who get roles (and the ones who don’t), it will be in the headlines about a pop star’s weight gain presented as news from main stream news sources, it will be in some off handed remark by a weatherman on your local news about some woman’s “outfit.” It will be everywhere. And it will be sold as virtue.

Don’t buy it.

So I hope you are protecting yourself. But also, I hope we are all protecting the young people in our lives. And hey. Don’t talk about people’s bodies.

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29 Mar 2026

Don’t hate the game (choose it.)

I have read as many books by men authors in the past 3 months as I have in the past 3 years. (Nine – or I’m in the middle of the ninth. Only 2 of which I would ever have picked up on my own.) Because of FOMO. I read them because I didn’t want to miss out on a book discussion with some online friends, or a book that I thought would be fun with my reading bestie.

I was, in fact, *not* missing out. They have mostly been what I expected. Men don’t generally write what I want to read. I am not their audience. But I have been reading anyway. And I have been having a lot of feelings about it. Shame and self judgment. I have been wondering if I am being disingenuous because I knew they were not books I would normally choose. I knew I probably wouldn’t like them or just wouldn’t care. I have some sort of personal expectation that I should not be wasting anyone’s time by not enjoying a book they are. Or by finishing a book I am not interested in. That I should be “matching energy.” Or that by not liking something beloved I am displaying that I am lacking something. Probably intelligence…(I know intellectually that I am not.)

When I was younger, I was very invested in reading books that would make me look highly educated, interesting and eclectic. And I happened to end up enjoying many of them. But that was a happy accident.

I love ideas. I love cleverness. And I have always been very proud of both my knowledge and my intelligence. But I mostly wanted to wow at parties. In my desire to LOOK smart, I made myself smart. (My vanity really has done so much for me in my life…) 

Intellectual books are “boring.” And I don’t mean that as a judgement. More of a discernment. To really grasp the layout of a complex set of ideas, especially in a novel, the brain is going to need to slow down. It’s going to need to work through complicated things. And that often registers for me as boredom. A slog. Not unworthy. Just a bigger commitment. I cannot just zip through. But I was ALWAYS willing to do that when I needed to project “intellectual.” (It helps if you lean into the boring instead of judging it.)

For a long time, for me the only reason to read was to someday impress someone by the fact that I have read War and Peace, all of Shakespeare’s plays, all of Jane Austen’s novels, His Master’s Voice, The Master and Margarita, and Lolita. (Wow, that’s a lot of Slavs…)


Someone in a seminar I attended once said that if you think someone is not playing to win, you just don’t know the game they are playing.

That was enlightening. It meant that there was more than one game and I got to choose which one I wanted to play. And I think lately I have been forgetting that I decide what game I am playing with reading books, just as much as I get to decide what books I want to read and why.

Also, women authors write plenty of books that I hate. In fact, one of my favorite reasons to finish a book I hate is to read it with my reading bestie when she also hates it. We have renamed books for how slow they were. Like “A Land SO LONG.” 

When we do that, the fun is not about the book. If it were I would DNF (Did Not Finish.) It isn’t even about what I can learn or project. It’s about the relationship with my friend. It’s about inside jokes and shared experiences. It’s about how hilarious we are with each other. It’s about knowing that she is the one person I will take a book rec from, no questions asked. It’s about her knowing that I have time and will always accommodate her busy schedule, and to catch up or slow down for her. 

As I get older, less vain, less interested in the judgment of others (thank you perimenopause) I read more for the emotional aspects of storytelling. Because that is what moves *me* right now. For years in my early 40s  I read mostly Young Adult novels (I still read plenty, just not a majority) because they hit the emotional spot, not necessarily the intellectual one. They were a chance to redo my own childhood for myself. For the past several years I was heavy into cozy books with low stakes and lots of feelings and interesting relationships. Because I needed to relax my body and my nervous system. Lately the novels I am reading are getting more political, more intense, more focused on the impact of culture on individuals. I may go back to cozy if I need to. I may slip a slightly boring, highly intellectual novel in there. 

I am writing today to remind myself, the question is not how to win, it’s what’s the game? 

Is the game to read a book I enjoy, or be in conversation with friends, or learn something new, or feel something? Because I can make very different decisions about any one book based on the game. 

Getting my eating under control gave me the tools to recognize when I am doing something based on wanting to be perceived a certain way, and the understanding that masking some aspect of myself for the benefit of others, is not helping my life, it’s harming. Keeping my eating under control is a constant recalibration towards my most authentic self. 

So the next time my friends want to read a book I don’t want to read, I don’t have to say yes. And I don’t have to say no. I don’t have to know now. When the time comes, I just have to choose the game.

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22 Mar 2026

Available for connection

Last night I went to a party with a dozen or so awesome ladies, about half new to me. And it was a delicious delight. (And I didn’t even eat the party food!)

There was so much laughter, candor, humor, insight, and love. There was a spirit of mutual respect and appreciation. There was the desire to support each other.

A few years ago I made the deliberate choice to cultivate my friendships. Especially with women. I felt like I had lost my connections to people who liked me, and whom I liked. Not for any other reason than grown up life doesn’t have a lot of built in structures for relationship that aren’t partner and kids. As an individual, one has to make it a priority. Or not as the case may be.

13 years ago, I moved away from my friends when I left New York City to be with my husband. And we were all already grownups. Navigating partnerships and parenting while we were in the same city was hard enough. From long distance, it takes even more. And I am inconsistent. And so are my long distance friends. This is not a judgement. It’s an observation. Life gets lifey fast and sudden.  

So when I noticed the lack of everyday friendships in my life, I took actions to change that. To reach out to old friends. To make new friends. To be an asset to communities. To find new people that I like, that like me back.

When I was heavy in my addiction and depression, I would isolate for long periods of time. I would hide away in my room and binge eat and avoid my friends. And then when I was better or lonely or ready to be back in the world, I would have to go mend the friendships I had harmed. And that made friendships feel like a kind of burden. And it made me feel bad about myself. And all of those feelings led me to want to isolate more, eat more, hate myself more. 

By keeping my food boundaries and bringing my own food to this party, I looked a little weird at first. But I got to be authentic and funny and fully present. And that is when I can be part of the community. That is where I can make a difference. Just by being there, available for connection. 

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22 Feb 2026

I probably won’t stop, but I can learn

My husband and kitten and I all packed ourselves into the truck for an hour and a half yesterday, to spend less than 24 hours at our house, and then drive an hour and a half back to our apartment this morning. 

The other day I packed all of my food for those next meals. Then I packed the cat’s toys and food. The cat’s water fountain. Then my clothes. Craft stuff. 

I could have literally just packed my food and Harlow’s cat fountain. (When I type it out even that seems a little overkill. No I will not stop bringing her fountain.) 

We were barely there to need anything. I never opened the suitcase. I never made anything. Food or craft wise. I went from one home to another and anything I brought to one was already in the other one.

Really I just hung out with family and ate the meals I brought. Then we left this morning. After repacking all of the cat stuff. And dragging the kitten out from under furniture…

But even though I can see that I’m a little obsessive, I know I feel better when I am prepared. For eventualities. I feel better when I know I have taken care of my own comfort, peace and happiness. It keeps me from being mad, at myself or anyone else, if things DO go pear shaped. When I am prepared I know I did what I could, so I can just shrug and say “that’s life,” and do what I can to fix it. 

So I will still probably over pack two weeks from now when we go back for less than a day. 

But also. I can learn. That I don’t need to bring two outfits a pair of pajamas, and 4 pairs of underwear for 20 hours at home….

Harlow Gold on the road in her harness giving me the ears
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15 Feb 2026

Right now that doesn’t seem too bad

My kitten, who is almost a cat, is a very independent girl. She has a limit to how much touching she likes. And how. There is generally more wrastlin’ (pronounced RAS-lin) and more games of “bite the mamma” and fewer snuggles and pets.

But she loves to sit on my lap while I am eating. 

She doesn’t try to eat my food. Usually. She is occasionally interested in knocking my silverware off the table. But in general she doesn’t need anything. Not pets or scritches or even my attention. She just wants to be there.

I was a nanny for several years and I love babies. Like *baby* babies. I know how to communicate with them. To have them understand the important things at the very least. I love you. I see you. I care. I’m here. I’m happy when you are happy, and I want to soothe you when you are not.

And communication with a cat is similar. They don’t know words. They know energies. They drink intentions, feelings, experiences. 

And I can imagine that my meal times create a kind of palpable joy in me. A peace and also an excitement.

And here is the other crazy thing. I LET HER! I let her sit in my lap during my most treasured time: meal time!

I am forever and eternally obsessed with my food. I have never wanted to divide my attention between my meal and literally anything. Not even with those beloved babies I nannied. And here I am eating one handed with a cat in my lap and I am not even annoyed or begrudging. 

Here is the thing about babies. They are only babies for a year. Those babies I nannied are in their late teens and early 20s now. Grown ups or close to it. 

But having a cat is like having a baby forever. So maybe it’s me eating my meals one handed for the rest of my life. Which right now doesn’t sound too bad.

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08 Feb 2026

Maybe someone else will get suckered into loving themselves too

I’m on the cover of Woman’s World magazine this week. I’m in the top right corner. It’s exciting!

Mostly.

Actually I have had a lot of thoughts about it. Mixed feelings. Because over the past 20 years of quitting sugar and having my eating under control, I have learned to separate my feelings about my body from my feelings about food. I have learned to love my body for all that it is and does. And to be able to love it and call it beautiful on my own terms. And to also know simultaneously that there are foods that I am addicted to. That when I eat grains and processed sugars and even some high sugar and starch whole foods, my body craves more. And those cravings are painfully intense. And that even if I don’t have to hate being fat, I can hate the way those foods make me feel.

I think all the time about how I got basically suckered into getting my eating under control. 20 years ago I had a life coach who told me I just had to get 90 days and then I would prove that I was not a food addict. (HA!) And then I thought it was going to keep me skinny. (HA HA!) I mean it did for years. But even having my eating under control, when I quit smoking almost 14 years ago, I gained weight seemingly indiscriminately. Weighing all of my food. Cutting my portions. Gaining weight anyway.

And I still kept my eating under control. Because even though I was terrified to gain weight again, and be fat again, I was more afraid of the insanity of eating compulsively.

I had to learn to honor my body at any weight. 

But magazines don’t sell that. It’s hard to get a before and after shot of joy. Or freedom. It’s hard to get a before and after shot of “I hated myself here, and here I love myself.” 

But an extreme weight loss? That is an easy thing to show.

And I should remember that I started doing what I do with food exclusively to lose weight. And it was only a series of (un)fortunate events that led me to loving my body unconditionally, and keeping my eating boundaries in all circumstances. Not to be thin, but to be grounded, nourished, and sane. 

So if Woman’s World selling weight loss through me lets someone find a solution to their eating problems, that’s another person who may get suckered into loving themselves unconditionally too.

Photo and makeup by Holly Michelle Makeup and Beauty
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25 Jan 2026

Limits to Time and Momentum

I don’t eat compulsively, no matter what. No Matter What is a popular slogan with the people in my life who have boundaries around food. I eat my portion controlled food, three times a day, I abstain from simple sugars and carbohydrates at all times because they are drugs in my body. And I do it No Matter What. 

The United States is a terrifying place right now. I am afraid all the time. I am a person who has a lot of anxiety naturally. And right now it’s through the roof. 

I am worried about myself, about my family, about my friends, and the state of the country and the world. 

But I don’t eat outside my boundaries. No. Matter. What.

I have 20 years of doing this. Back to back, we call it. For 20 years I have done it every day all the time. And because of that I don’t think about food as a drug very often. 

But lately I have. Just little thoughts that are so fleeting. “I wish I could have another piece of bacon before I put the extra away.” Or recently “I wonder what would happen if I took 2 of my SSRIs today?” (Wow! Where did that come from???)

I don’t. I don’t act on these thoughts because I have 20 years of momentum keeping me doing what I do. And 20 years of going to meetings and talking to other food addicts. BUT! Momentum has its limits. 

So I also know that if I didn’t pay attention to the addict in me sneaking around, if I didn’t say it out loud, I could slide back. Yes. Even after 2 decades. So I am saying that I am having thoughts that say, “hey, I don’t want to have these feelings. There are ways we could not feel them. Nudge nudge. Wink wink.” And I am choosing to not do those things. I am choosing to keep my eating boundaries, and to take my medication as prescribed. 

Yes these are barely blips now. But I learned years ago not to get complacent. To play it out in my head anyway. Because when I really play it out to the end, it doesn’t make sense. 

My addiction didn’t go away. And neither did my compulsion to binge eat. I know because I can eat an entire huge meal and still be sad at the end and wistful for more. Did I mention 20 years? And a little piece of bacon, which, by the way, is not a drug food for me, is NOT going to do anything to make me feel better, but it is going to be me undermining 20 years of self esteem built by not eating compulsively.

Because it’s not about the bacon. It’s about the chink in my armor against my addict brain. 

The last thing I will say is, I only have a shot at doing the things that will make me proud and help me sleep at night, when I keep my eating under control. I learned how put boundaries around my eating by learning that the best way to get through a difficult personal time is to stop worrying about your own uncertain future and be of service to others right now.

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18 Jan 2026

An eat real food pyramid?

There is a new food pyramid. And…I…like it?!

There is seemingly only one hard division, making only two separate groups. The really big one with meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables and fats. And a small one with whole grains. And the directive to eat real food and limit ultra processed foods.

I say it all the time: I am not the food police. But I also have 28 years of experience in eating sugar and ultra processed foods nearly exclusively. And 20 years of eating mostly real food and not eating my drug foods. And I can tell you that everything about my life is different than it was before I got my eating under control. And part of it is *what* I was eating. 

My body, my mind, my hormones, my skin, my emotions, my cognitive functions, literally everything works better when I eat real food. That I also abstain from sugar and simple carbohydrates I’m sure helps.

Look, I DO still eat processed foods. Dehydrated cheese and pork rinds are indeed processed. Not like, say, pizza rolls and pop tarts, but still processed. There is propylene glycol in the chocolate flavor that I put in my ice cream. I sometimes wonder if I am single-handedly keeping sweet-n-low in business…

But most of my food is food. Butter and olive oil and green beans and gorgeous steaks and full fat Greek yogurt and so much bacon! 

I like that we as a culture are moving away from carbohydrates. Not because there is anything inherently wrong with them. But because the food industry in the US and the average American diet abuses them. Sugar and carbohydrates are the primary ingredients in our ultra processed diet. Always making ALL food sweeter. Not just sweets. To get us hooked enough to eat more than we want and much more than we need. People from other countries think our regular grocery store bread tastes like cake. I have seen sugar in frozen fish! I have had to stop buying so many products over the years because the formula changed to include sugar, starch, or alcohol in the first 4 ingredients. To this day I still read labels in case some sugar or starch got snuck in.

I know that not everyone is going to be addicted to sugar. Just like not everyone is going to be an alcoholic. But that doesn’t mean it’s not hurting everyone’s bodies and brains when they use it. 

I know that “fed is best” for all people, not just babies. I know that there are a million and one reasons, political, social, and personal, why someone may only eat processed foods. I am not the food police!

But I hope this change on a bigger scale can help change the ideas of people now, and find more young parents, more kids growing up now, and maybe make a difference for their kids in the future. And maybe that’s a kid who doesn’t end up an addict.

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11 Jan 2026

A 20 year wish come true

I had my photo shoot for that magazine this week and one thing it reminded me of is how comfortable I am in my body. Just really IN it, as opposed to trying to see what others see and judge as I think they are judging. Which was my experience the first 28 years of my life.

The photographer sent me a pic for myself to keep that will not be used in the magazine, and you can see the outline of my belly in my clothes. Not my favorite, but not emotionally devastating.

But when I was posing, I was not thinking about my belly. Or my chins. Or my arms. I was not thinking about anything but following directions. Or maybe that I am pretty. And when it was done I sent that picture with the belly to a couple of people. Because I did not feel the need to hide it or hate it. (Ok I didn’t and wouldn’t send it to everyone…a girl still needs to know her audience and hold her boundaries.) But I did not hate my body for having a belly. And that is a miracle. 

When I got my eating under control, I had been volunteering in a self help seminar, and the leader asked me what I wanted to get out of the seminar. And I said “for my body to stop being an issue.” And literally 20 years later I live every day in a body that is not an issue.

The problem when I was eating compulsively was that I made my body my enemy for a long time. I didn’t give it what it needed and I expected it to give me what I wanted. And instead it gave me what I needed. And I was ungrateful. 

Food saved me when I needed it. I could not manage my feelings and emotions as a small child. I really thought they might kill me. That is not an exaggeration. I was terrified of not being capable of living with so much pain. And food got me through. Right up until it started to kill me. 

Now I give my body what it needs. Not as an ultimatum. Not like training an animal. Like nurturing a plant. Water and light. Exercise for strength and mobility. Good food for both energy and pleasure. Rest. Learning.

No where in there is anything about my weight. I am perfectly comfortable in this body. Happy to make it bigger with muscles. Not worried about making it bigger with fat. 

So I am grateful to have the shoot over and done. It was more thinking about my body than I like. But I am even more grateful that I got to experience myself just being, even when the focus *was* on my body.

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