onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “food boundaries”

17 Mar 2024

More brain space for all this *gestures vaguely*

Yet another week of too much to think about, too little to say.

I suppose in most contexts that would be a good thing. In blog writing, not so much.

What I have to say is that I am not thinking about how to get thinner. I am not thinking about how other people are looking at my body. I am not obsessing about food. I am not worrying about what I am going to eat next or when. Or how I am going to get it. Or who will see me eat it and what they will think about it.

And that has been true as long as I have had boundaries around my eating. My weight has fluctuated greatly over the past 18 years of food boundaries. For me, the peace is not in the weight but in the eating. Or rather, in the ability to stop eating constantly and compulsively.

So that’s a lot of free space in my brain now because I keep boundaries around my eating and avoid my drug foods. 

I firmly and fully believe that I only get to have the awful, cathartic, painful, wonderful, exhilarating, worthwhile experience of growing into my most authentic and content self by keeping my eating under control.

So I keep doing it. And now maybe I have a chance to be even better than I thought I could be.

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10 Mar 2024

Life is hard. Eating is a delight.

I have started and scrapped so many posts today. I am going through one of my “cascade” moments of learning. Where many things over many areas of my life, physically, emotionally, spiritually, seem to fall quickly into place and change my entire perspective on things. So there is so much to say. Too much with not enough information. From the universe to me, I mean.

So I guess what I want to say is that while terrifying, these growth spurts are always a blessing, no matter how painful. And they are only possible because I have my eating under control.

I am a sugar addict. I am an alcoholic with sugar. And I mean that literally. 

There is a saying among the people who do what I do with food. “My body is a still.” If human ingenuity can make it into alcohol, my body can probably do it faster. 

I spent a lot of time drunk on sugar growing up. And I acted like it. I passed out like an alcoholic. I lied, cheated, and stole like an alcoholic. I was unreliable. I was irritable. I hated myself like an alcoholic. But I was a drunk on French fries and candy bars.

So here I am, in the midst of a spiritual awakening – one of many so far – that is uncomfortable but also exciting, and it’s all because 18 years ago I chose to give up what I thought was the only joy in my life.

But instead I got a life beyond my wildest dreams. And then I got to understand that there was even something better than that. And I got that too. And I got to understand that I will keep getting to keep going.

I will admit that sometimes I get to a place in my life, and I wonder if this is where I will get stuck. Because I can’t imagine what could be on the other side. But there has always been another side. And it has always been better than the last.

What I really am is so grateful for the routine of my food boundaries. And for the belief that the best way to fight my sugar addiction is to eat abundantly of foods that I love that don’t get me drunk. So I can love my food. Find refuge and solace and joy in it.

Life is hard. Eating is a delight.

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03 Mar 2024

Stay where it’s warm

I have had a really intense week of spiritual awakening. It was around some inner child healing work. And it was made clear to me that around the time I was 12 or 13 was when I really shut down. Buttoned myself up. 

If you know me, you may think that this me who is “buttoned up” is still pretty wild. I think that is probably true. There have always been things about me that have been intense for the people around me.

For example, I cry. I have always been a crier. And to basically everyone’s chagrin, I never learned how to get control over it. So when I say that the crying I have been doing this week is “different” than usual, there is, indeed, a “usual” and this is not it.

The tears this week have been big. And hot. These are kid tears. These are the kinds of tears I saw on children when I was nanny when they didn’t have the words to express themselves, or the power to change things without an adult. They are tears of fear and powerlessness, and have probably been buried in my heart for 40 years. 

Over the past couple of years, I have come to understand that the people around me didn’t feel about me the way one might expect them to feel about a kid in the family. They ways they didn’t like me. The ways they didn’t want to deal with me. The ways they did deal with me which were often mean. But it was the water I was swimming in. A fish doesn’t know what water is until they end up out of it. Except fish die out of water. And once I got out, I thrived.

One of the things that happened to me when I went to college, and then even more when I moved away to New York City at 21, was that I ended up spending time with people who actually did like me. Who thought I was fun and funny and nice. Who thought I was worth time and energy and effort. People who didn’t think I was a know-it-all. People who didn’t roll their eyes at me or make me the punchline of a joke because I was sensitive and it was fun to make me cry. People who actually sought me out. 

All of a sudden it was warm.

I’m not saying that all of the adults in my childhood were awful to me. But there were plenty. Plural. And nobody to tell me it wasn’t me. It was them. No one to tell me that as a child, I could not really have deserved the kinds of bullying and just mean-spiritedness I received. I am saying that I was a grown up before I had any sense of myself being likable or worth liking. 

“Stop being so sensitive. If you didn’t cry so easily, you wouldn’t be such an easy target.”

So I tried to make myself small enough to fly under the radar. I’m not saying I was good at it. Just that it was what I had to work with. 

The idea that I am supposed to let that little girl out and tell her she is allowed to be as big and weird and fun and stupid and overly confident and creative and daring as she wanted to be before 12 is terrifying. One bitten twice shy is a whole different world when it feels like you were the sacrificial meal for years.  

When I got my eating under control, I wanted to be done. To be cooked. To be complete. But instead it has been a long process of uncovering my most authentic self more deeply every day. And 18+ years into it, the lessons and gifts are deeper and more profound, not less. 

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25 Feb 2024

Apparently, you don’t know what you’re missing

When I first got my eating under control, I lived in a bit of a fog for about a year and a half. I wore pajamas everywhere. I left my house in the middle of the night to drink diet soda and read manga in those pajamas in the bar down the street so I didn’t eat compulsively. I don’t remember a lot of that time. 

But then I got clear headed. And I realized that for the first time since I was 5 years old, I was very conventionally attractive. That was both the good news and the bad news.

When I say I was conventionally attractive, I mean I was hot. I mean that the kinds of things that happened to beautiful women in movies happened to me. 

Once, my mom was visiting me in New York City. We were getting into a cab, and as it was pulling away, a guy jumped in front of it so he could get my number. I remember my mom looking at me kind of funny and asking me if that kind of thing happened to me a lot. And me saying…well, kind of.

But when I think about that me, that 30 something girl who felt 16 again only actually excited to be here, I can see I really was like a 16 year old girl. I had to learn how to navigate the world differently. I had to get a crash course in having social currency.

I was completely unprepared for the differences in the way I was treated. Good, bad and heartbreaking. Completely insecure about my new place in the world. When you are fat, even though it’s a terrible one, the world has a place picked out for you. Completely unsure of who I wanted to be now that it felt like I could be anyone. And I tried on a bunch of new clothes and personalities. 

But the thing is, that 15+ years later, at 46, what I am is authentically me. Or the most authentically me I have ever been. I feel so much more confident, beautiful, sexy, sure, secure, and comfortable. That was 15+ years of making amends, changing behaviors and setting boundaries, loving myself and learning to love others as they were. And yet, nobody has rushed into traffic to get my phone number in many years. Which seems a shame really. I mean, I’m married, so I would refuse anyway, but I’m way more appealing now than I was teetering on my hot girl fawn legs.

I’m not saying I’m not a beautiful woman. I am. I know it. I enjoy it. But beauty without youth is not as in demand. And frankly, that’s a relief. But also, a pity. You clearly don’t know what you’re missing.

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18 Feb 2024

It was always sink or swim anyway

I had a fun little bout of body dysmorphia this week after our nephew’s wedding. 

I had posted pictures of myself on social media hoping people would tell me I was pretty. And then people told me I was pretty! 

And then I started to wonder if I was really pretty. And then my face started to look like just a bunch of shapes. And I started asking my best friend if I was really pretty or if it was just a face. Is it my hair that makes me pretty? Do I not look like myself in makeup? Am I only pretty with makeup? Am I only pretty without it?

And I wasn’t asking her to reassure me. I really didn’t know. I really wanted to know.

And she said, honey, this is just another side of your dysmorphia. 

Oh. Right. That.

So I changed the channel for myself. Am I pretty? I don’t know or care. It’s not my business today. 

It’s not my business today.

This has been happening too as I both get a smaller body while building muscles and changing my shape. When I focus on my body changes, I start to focus on my body. And I stop being able to see my body. Suddenly it is a bunch of shapes. Am I changing or is it all in my head? And what does it mean? About me?

(Spoiler alert: It doesn’t mean anything about me. It’s the result of the exercises I do consistently.)

I’m 46. I’m happily and lovingly married. I have my sugar addiction under control. But some of these issues, food and eating and body too, are only ever dormant. Never really dead.

I have learned to ride the waves. It still sucks. Sometimes I fall off. But it’s only ever been sink or swim anyway. It’s just that now I know how to swim.

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11 Feb 2024

Just a member of a community and also on a dance floor

Yesterday my nephew got married! Congratulations to him and his wife! And hooray for me to get a night of dancing like when I was young and wild and living in the city!

I brought my own food to the event. It was part of my RSVP, and I had discussed it with the couple before hand. I let the waitstaff know. I told ours that I had everything I needed for myself and she should just pretend that I didn’t exist. (And even still the waitress kept asking if I was sure I didn’t want the salad, the palate cleanser, the after dinner palate cleanser…”oh right. Pretend you don’t exist…tee hee hee.” Sigh. ) 

But the other wonderful thing about the night was how much I didn’t need it to be about me. 

Now you may think, “Kate, it was your nephew’s wedding! How could it possibly be about you????” And that is how I know you are not an addict.

For most of my life everything was about me. It’s common in this culture and society. The importance of the individual. The sanctity of the person. And what person could I care more about than myself?

When I went anywhere socially before I got my eating under control, if it wasn’t about getting high on food and drinking or drugs, it was about getting high on attention, and attraction and the possibility of personal pleasure.

Last night, I wanted to be a part of a celebration of love and commitment. Not as an individual, but as part of a community. And as the member of an even smaller community, my family. My nieces and my nephew, my mother in law, my brother and sisters in law. And my partner in crime was my youngest sister in law. (It turns out we are both former party girls who married men who don’t dance…) We got to be the groom’s two hot old aunties making a scene on the dance floor – in the good way, not the dramatic way.

I learned to put things in their proper place and perspective when I got my eating and sugar addiction under control. There is a lightness to not being so important. A freedom to being one piece of a bigger machine. A joy in being wanted but not needed. 

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04 Feb 2024

The luxuries of 18 years

One thing about having my eating under control for 18 years is that I’m well into the life stuff. The relationship stuff. The dealing with stuff stuff. 

In the beginning all I could do was focus on keeping my eating under control. I had been addicted to sugar for almost all of my 28 years and I spent all my beginner energy making foods that fit my boundaries, and distracting myself from the foods I used to binge on. With books and manga, and that one anime (Fushigi Yuugi) that I watched on a loop for like a year and a half.

But this shit works. Putting down the sugars and things that turned into sugar in my body, and then taking responsibility for my actions. And living my most authentic life.

It has been a long, slow and unsteady process. It was worth every uncomfortable and insecure second.

The truth is now I have a healthy fear of the food. As one might have a healthy fear of the Ocean. But avoiding it and preparing to resist it does not take up my time at the moment. A true blessing and miracle.

But I am in some life lesson place and I feel a little crazy. A little stupid. A little frazzled. And I have been literally walking in circles.

And then this morning I was telling this to my best friend and she said “you’re the one who always talks about my ‘spiral staircase.’ You’re on yours. Plop your ass down on the steps and have a look around.”

(I mentor food addicts and one thing I talk about is how we are always coming to the same problems on a new level. Like a spiral staircase.)

Ah! I keep getting my own advice turned back on me. The joy and curse of being a mentor and knowing that means being available for mentoring…sigh

So I am reminded that it’s life on Life’s terms, not on Kate’s terms. That time will pass whether I wear a hole in my Luxury Vinyl flooring or sit my ass down.

I keep my eating boundaries a day at a time, and I get to contemplate luxury problems between luxury meals. Truly a life beyond my wildest dreams. 

But let’s be honest. Still uncomfortable, difficult, and scary. Makes me want to get up and walk around in circles.

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28 Jan 2024

Feels like a shame but probably isn’t

I am almost a full month into my “Peaceful Purposeful Joyful Creation” journey and I am still learning and shaky. But also still plugging along. 

One of the things that I had to learn early in getting my eating under control was time assessment and management. Because shopping and chopping and cooking and packing and eating took time. And I had to actually know how much time I needed. I had to learn to be practical about practical things.

And I got pretty good at that. Certainly good enough that I figured out my priorities and how to implement them in my life.

There is a saying that I think about a lot. “You can talk about priorities all you like, but your schedule doesn’t lie.”

And my schedule clearly says self-care is a priority. I take care of myself with my eating boundaries, my workout and sleep and meditation schedules, my skin and hair care. 

But all of this scheduling and routine maintenance has made a nice tidy place for my head to go chaotic. Rush through step 1 to get to step 2 while simultaneously preparing for steps 3-8 in my mind. My brain is full. No room for anything but the rest of my planned out time.

On the outside I look calm and confident. I know this because people say it all the time. “You have such a peaceful presence. You always seem so together.” Inside I am panting and panicking and focusing on perfection.

This past few weeks of trusting that my life will work out even if I don’t run around like a crazy lady is…frankly hard. There is a level of superstitious thinking to the way I live that stems from my childhood thinking. That the “magic” is in not stopping, not looking, not hesitating. Not giving life, or bad luck, or karma, or the devil or WHATEVER, a chance to get me.

But the thing is that I already know that the real magic is in slowing down. It’s in the stillness. It’s in the trusting. It’s in the space between thoughts.

Because ultimately that is what my brain chaos is. It’s me not having to trust. It’s me not having to look too closely at my dreams and my wishes and what I really want for my life. It’s me not having to expect that things will work out for the best for me in the end. So I can use that time and space to go into survival mode and “prepare for any eventuality,” instead of being excited, interested, involved, curious.

I guess what I am coming to recognize is that all of that mental busywork is a way for me to burn off my creative energy without having to create anything. 

And that sucks. I hate that! I’m annoyed at myself. I’m frustrated that I have taken so long to get here. I am impatient to grow faster and be better now!

But I am reminded, yet again, that these big changes come a little at a time. I do not currently have the capacity to bridge the gap between what I am and what I want to be. And the only way to get there is to continue. At life’s pace. Not mine.

Which feels like a real shame but probably isn’t.

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21 Jan 2024

Fight, Flight, Tears, and a Time Out

I think a lot about change and changeability. About how I actually have tools to change my life now. And how slowly and strangely information is dispensed to me. By Life. By the Universe. By my own ability to comprehend and implement it.

The other day my husband and I got into an argument. He said a true thing about me rather angrily and it made me cry. Which upset him. It is difficult for him to see my crying. It is awful for him to feel like he “made me cry.”

I cry a lot. I always have. But I have come to understand in the past year or so that it’s the way a body, my body, reregulates after I have gone into “fight or flight mode.” Which I do. Kind of a lot. (Way less since I got my eating under control, but still a lot.)

Growing up, I cried, and everyone told me it was me being overly sensitive. And me being emotional. And me being some sort of way. So I fit myself into the narrative. I could find the emotions there in the crying. The shame. The hurt. The anger. The fear. The indignation.

Plus I had a whole world of stories and books and all manner of art depicting overly sensitive weepy girls unable to manage their emotions. Hysterical women! I didn’t have to look far to reinforce the idea that my tears were because I was too emotional and the emotions were shameful ones, if only for their inconvenience to others.

But this time I didn’t need to look for an emotion. Not because I knew what it was, but because in that moment I knew it didn’t matter. I was having a biological reaction. I could assign an emotion to it later if I wanted. (And I did. I was embarrassed that I had been called out. It sent me into a panic.) But in that moment, I just wanted to calm back down. I told him I was just in fight or flight and I just needed a minute. I excused myself and got myself together.

Having my eating under control, not eating foods that make me feel drugged, knowing what and how much I am going to eat every day, have all contributed to lifting my food obsession. And not being obsessed with food means lots of time and room and energy to think about other things, and plenty of time to work on myself. 

When I learn something like this now, I remember that I couldn’t have known it before. That some things can only be understood because they are a culmination of knowledge and experience. 

As my mentor likes to remind me: More will be revealed.

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14 Jan 2024
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Building my peace muscle

One of the things about getting my eating under control is that I don’t have a lot of room to *not* grow. And this year I just sort of decided that peaceful, purposeful, joyful creation is the “theme” of my year. And apparently now I am committed.

Already I feel like I have had so much purposeful and joyful creation!

But I also committed to being peaceful. And boy when I tell you I was not expecting Peace to go so hard!

I am a mentor to people who don’t eat sugar. And I have a lot of advice to give. (Solicited only! I do not believe in unsolicited advice.) And one thing I understand is that to be a good mentor, you have to be willing to take your own advice.

And ain’t that a bitch sometimes.

So when my mentees would come to me and need practical advice about how to stop thinking about food, (or eventually their ex husband, the test results for their biopsy, their kid’s relationship with the other parent that they have no control over) I would tell them to “change the channel.” To make an active and concerted effort to think a new thought. Put oneself in a new frame of mind and body.

So what I decided for myself in practical/actionable terms was to be deliberate in all things. To make choices and take actions from a calm place of Trust. To commit without fear, without second guessing, without looking back. And that means everything from writing my morning journal to showering to making food to crocheting to driving to the grocery store to putting my wallet in my purse.

For now that means slowing down to do a lot of things. But I know that purposeful and exact doesn’t have to mean slow. The internet is filled with artists and artisans who are methodical and precise with incredible speed. I am a craftsperson. I can simultaneously be quite fast and precise.

But those first few days this week of “being deliberate” were terrifying. Because I realized that my default is mind chaos. My default is waking and thinking in circles (literally, though I do sometimes dance, not in circles.) And I had to “change the channel” so many times I thought there must be something fundamentally wrong with me. (Oh, this thought is an old friend from when I hated myself for being fat and thinking it meant I was “fundamentally broken.”)

I would realize how amped up I was. I would calm down body and mind. And within seconds I would realize again. And do it again. And then again too quickly.

I thought about giving up. Which is not a thing I think very often anymore. 

But I trusted that almost everything can be built like a muscle. Or at least I acted like I trusted.

Just like when I got my fancy new mini stepper and I had to put my whole foot on each pedal, until I built the core muscle to balance on my toes. There was no way to start on my toes. And if I had given up, I still wouldn’t be able to do it. But I can.

So I just keep plugging along. Changing the channel. Going to that peaceful place over and over again. Building my Peace muscle. And already it is stronger.

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