onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “integrity”

29 Oct 2023

Gross sack of meat grace

When I was fat, I used to relate to my body as if it were not really me. Like it was the loaner car the dealer gave me while my real one was in the shop. In my mind I was my mind. I was my thoughts and feelings and words. I loved being my words! But I hated my body and I didn’t like to think about it. I tried to both disassociate, and dissociate myself from it.

But when I got my eating under control, I could not do that anymore. I could not get numb enough without my drug foods to not experience my body. It was right there. And it was yelling at me that it was me and I was it. So I had to change the way I dealt with it, thought about it, talked about it, talked *to* it, treated it.

When I was in my early thirties, I danced with a modern company in Brooklyn. And one day one of my fellow dancers, also 30ish at the time sighed and lamented “remember when you were 16 and your body was perfect and the world was yours?” And I laughed because no. At 16 I was worried about who was climbing the stairs behind me and how big they thought my ass was. (And not in a good way, like now.)

But one advantage I think I got from having my story be my story, is that I know how to deal with a changing body with grace. And I have the lived experience of getting better, not worse, with age. I am not talking about my weight. Since I put boundaries around my eating, I have been chubby and I have been skinny, but I have still consistently been getting fitter, stronger, and more physically attractive (at least to myself!)

I feel (I probably really am) stronger at 46 than even at 30, dancing on stage and throwing around and catching the smaller girls. I think I get better with age because I am constantly learning to be more myself. To settle further down into my most authentic self, and settle ever more comfortably into this fascinating machine/gross sack of meat.

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15 Oct 2023

You can take the fat out of the girl (but the damage was probably already done)

I was talking about this blog to some friends who do what I do with food. Many of them don’t read it, or didn’t know I wrote it. So I was telling them the name. But it was hard to hear or understand on the zoom call. So I said “It’s Once A Fat Girl, as in ‘once a fat girl, always a fat girl.’” And this bunch of women who have had their eating under control for years, some for 25 to 30 years, all nodded sagely.

My relationship to food and my body is the defining characteristic of my life, and the filter I see absolutely everything through. Even now, well over 17 years of having boundaries around my eating.

I come from a big (number of people), fat family. And because of that, I can see that even when I was not actually fat (yet), fatness was projected on me.

And then I really was fat.

You might think that being fat in a fat family would mean the family could see the beauty in fatness. But that was not the case. The “pretty” girls were the few thin ones. (Ok, but in retrospect, I was a stunner!)

Also, I was fat in the 80s and 90s when fewer people were fat. I was one of 2 or 3 fat girls in the schools I went to. 

Existing in a fat body took up at least a third of my brain space at all times. And if I was in a “danger zone” of humiliation, (a group of attractive people near by, a group of mean boys or girls, a wardrobe malfunction, an event where eating was expected, sharing seats when your butt hangs over your allotment) it was taking up way more space than that. And it was all terrifying, terrorizing, and exhausting. 

I was once in a conversation on social media where fat people and people with the experience of being fat talked about the fat shaming moments in movies and TV shows we saw growing up that still haunted us. And we all had them. So many of us had the same ones. The casual cruelty towards fat people is ongoing. (Fat Thor, anyone?)

I am grateful for the totality of my experiences. If I had not gotten my eating under control, I never could have begun to separate the fat hatred that I internalized from the real and debilitating addiction to drug foods that I needed to deal with. I was so desperate not to be fat I was willing to give up sugar entirely. And that turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me. But why did I have to be desperate to just get a modicum of respect?

Having my drug foods down and having a clear head let me really wrap my mind around how I did not deserve the fat hatred I had been receiving every day all the time. And it let me see how I was also contributing to it, by hating myself. By blaming myself for not being able to stop eating. By showing the people who shamed me that I was properly ashamed. 

The longer I have my drug foods down, the more authentically me I become. And the more me I am, the more capacity I have to see all of the ways I unfairly judged myself, and the better I can love the people in my life exactly where and who and how they are.

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08 Oct 2023

No intuition. Just a routine and some friends.

I love my routine. But on Friday I got food poisoning for seemingly the first time ever. (I literally just said something about never having had it a month ago. And clearly forgot to knock wood.) So normally Saturday is the day I grocery shop, but I was resting yesterday. So now I have to go today, along with all of my other Sunday errands. And I don’t wanna!!!! 

Last night I went to bed without cleaning the kitchen, knowing this morning I would have to wash some dishes before I could eat breakfast. Ugh. And it meant I didn’t have enough fresh milk for my breakfast coffee so I had to use part of my portion from a box of milk I keep on hand. And it meant I didn’t have any grape tomatoes (my favorite dinner salad) so I had to have an orange pepper instead. That turned out great though because the pepper was perfect and sweet. 

But for as much as I hate a break in routine, and I really really hate it, I have learned from getting my eating under control that I need to take care of myself first.

For the most part, my routine is self care. It’s how I make sure I do all of the things I do for my mental, physical and emotional wellbeing. It’s how I make sure I get my workout and my water and my sleep and my meals and my meds and my errands taken care of.

But I am very bad at knowing what is good for me. I am very bad at listening to my body. Because it *always* wants to eat. And it *never* wants to workout or drink water or sleep. So I do the self care I do by routine. But that means I sometimes have to listen to other people when they tell me to take it easy.

And just like there is someone in my life who mentors me with my eating boundaries, I am the mentor of other people. And one came to me last week and said she was not feeling well, but she hoped her body would “snap back” the next day. And I could hear for her what I cannot hear for myself. That “snap back” was a judgement of the worth of her body based on its usefulness.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I felt compelled to tell a mentee that her body deserves gentle treatment and attention, and then, with loving urging from another friend, I was forced to take my own advice days later. 

But I did. And I am grateful. And once I get back from the store today, I can get back to rotting on my couch with a cozy fall audiobook, and some knitting.

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01 Oct 2023

Apologies to my fiercest protector

My mom and I sometimes refer to a study she read about once where they asked men and women what scared them most about the opposite sex. And men said they were afraid women would laugh at them. And women were afraid men would murder them. 

I bring this up because I am afraid of men. No, I am not afraid of all men all the time. But I generally fear men as a group. (Duh.) And when I think about my body, I know that much (no, not all, but a lot) of my fatness when I was younger was a fortress to keep me safe from men. Because, in general, men don’t want to be associated with fat women. 

I have written about my “fortress of fat” before. And how, when I got thin and conventionally beautiful, I didn’t have any coping mechanisms for dealing with unwanted attention, so I built a “fortress of bitch” to keep myself feeling safe.

I have been losing a lot of weight very quickly in the past 6 months. In April I was a U.S. size 14 and now I am a U.S. size 8. There are a few relatively obvious reasons for this. I started a new cardio workout on a mini stepper, as opposed to jogging. Plus I got put on a maintenance inhaler for asthma and can breathe all the time now, including while I exercise. 

Plus, I initially started to gain weight 11+ years ago when I quit smoking. So perhaps it has been long enough that my body/hormones have done some healing. 

But something else occurred to me this week. Yes I gained weight when I quit smoking. But I gained more when I started working in construction. Now I have not worked in construction for 2 years. And I know that I never want to work in construction again.

And the weight is just melting off? 

I am not eating less to lose this weight. I am eating heavier and fattier to keep myself from getting hungry. I am not working out more than I was. I was jogging 30 minutes and now I am stepping 30 minutes. 

But I don’t have to navigate men right now. I don’t have to be productive and professional but also feminine and friendly enough make them comfortable. I don’t have to have my work judged against the ego of a man. I don’t have to worry about my attractiveness (either way) to men who have a say in how much money I make or how I am treated or how I am referred to, either in company or when I leave the room.

My weight has always fluctuated, even after quitting sugar and putting boundaries around my eating. And even once I took my drug foods out of the equation, I have never been able to “eat lighter” into a particular sized body. I was no longer fat once I got my eating under control. But I wasn’t necessarily skinny either. Even when I ate “light,” eliminating things like bacon and pork rinds and eating more raw veggies and less starchy vegetables cooked in fat, I couldn’t make myself lose weight. So I stopped trying.

In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense that my body chose to protect me from that kind of attention and association in my daily work life. Whether or not it was “necessary,” it clearly was necessary. For my own sake.

And it reminds me that I owe my body the living amends of giving it good food and loving care, for the ways I treated it like it was my shameful problem, and not my fiercest protector.

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17 Sep 2023

Am I the drama???

Last Sunday I went out to dinner with my dad and stepmom. And I had a difficult time getting what I needed. Definitely not the worst experience I have had by a long shot, but annoying and frustrating.

I had a waiter who kept saying “but…” every time I asked for something out of the ordinary. When I asked for my burger to be “just the meat on the plate” he tried to explain to me how the burger comes. I said that it was fine, but I only wanted the meat on the plate. Then I asked for a big plain salad. He explained to me that the burger comes with a little side salad. I told him it was not enough and I needed a whole big salad on the side. He never did get it for me. And rather than ask for it again, I just reached into my purse and pulled out a bag of cherry tomatoes I had brought for just such a situation, and put them on my plate right in front of the staff. He also didn’t put in my order of 3 orders of sautéed spinach, so I had to wait until everyone else was half way through the meal to even start. I also asked for a big extra plate and he stared at me and told me the burger would come on a plate. But I weigh my food. Even at restaurants. So I need a plate to put on the scale, weigh my meal, and then I send the rest of the plates back. But I don’t think I should have had to explain that to this guy. I just needed him to follow directions. I feel like I must have been glaring at him. But frankly I don’t care. I definitely snapped at him once. Thankfully my husband stepped in at every moment I needed him to, to get the waiter to just do what I needed.

I don’t like to eat out because of things like this. Frankly, most of the time, waiters are great, and follow my directions perfectly, and the food is delicious. We are good tippers even when the service is bad. Even this guy got over 30% and I was annoyed at him the whole time. 

But even when it’s good and easy, the possibility of trouble is stressful. Plus, I had this experience at a place I have eaten at many times before AND I called ahead this particular time anyway to make sure I could get what I needed. Even after all my due diligence, the experience was lacking. Though the food was absolutely amazing.

Even after 17+ years, there are times and moments when I have to deal with stumbling blocks to keep my eating boundaries. The good news is that after 17+ years, nobody is thinking I could or should or would just let it go. Just accept what I was given and make nice. I don’t make nice around food. It’s life or death for me. And if you think I’m being overly dramatic, you are clearly not an addict. Addiction is dramatic. And so is recovery.

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10 Sep 2023

Get you a partner who grows!

There are all sorts of big changes going on over here. My plumbing works like a dream, and my patio, which had to be dug up to replace some clay pipe, has been reinstalled, but with a handy-dandy new access point so we won’t have to dig it up again. The shrubberies in front of our house have been removed. Plus, new siding has been ordered, and hopefully that and the porch will be replaced by the end of the month.

But even bigger than that, my husband and I have started a new morning routine working out together. And it’s pretty amazing. 

The truth is it’s nothing crazy. He has a rowing machine and I have a mini stepper. We wake up at around 4 in the morning and do half an hour of cardio. I do some floor exercises and stretching while he showers. I see him off to work and go about the rest of my day. By 7am I have drunk my water, worked out, showered, done my writing, meditation, and written my gratitudes, and had a big, delicious breakfast. 

I love that my husband has made this choice for himself. I did not ask him to, I did not need him to, I did not think he “should.” He told me he was thinking about it. I asked him if he would like me to join him if he did. He said he would. 

But phew if it isn’t sexy as hell. It’s not about bodies or attractiveness. (I sent him a screenshot of an ad with one of those fitness couples and captioned it, “It’s us!” And boy did we laugh. Friends, it will never be us…) It’s about having a partner who wants to grow. It’s about having a marriage that is so good we both want to be around for it longer. It’s about being a better version of myself so I can be a better wife. And having a husband who sees that and thinks “ok. Bet.” 

I’m still in limbo in terms of what comes next for me in my work and money life. But I have a good feeling about this new routine. Fingers crossed that this new way of life shakes something loose for me.

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03 Sep 2023

No time to need to know

I can’t find my car keys. I have *a* set of keys to my car, but not *my* set. 

I ran errands on Wednesday. I didn’t do anything Thursday that required leaving my house. And then on Friday, the plumbers called to say that they were on their way to dig up and replace my pipes, so I needed to move my car. But I couldn’t find my keys.

After a very long time looking, I finally decided to just use the spare set to move my car. And then I used the spare set to run more errands.

But once I got home, I was back to looking for the keys. I would partially do some task, thinking about where my keys could be, and then stop what I was doing to go check some really ridiculous place. At one point on Friday, I was literally wearing one sock with my hair half braided because twice I felt compelled to stop getting ready for my workout to go look in my underwear drawer or my laundry hamper or under the bed.

I didn’t want to keep looking. I knew that it didn’t matter. I had the spare set. Surely the keys would turn up eventually. But I could only wonder if I put them in the fridge when I put the groceries away on Wednesday. Did I go upstairs to get yarn at some point? Did I leave the keys in my yarn closet?

My brain is obsessive. I already know that. And there was a time when I could, and sometimes did, lose whole days to looking for something I lost. But when I got my eating under control I *had to* eat my meals three times a day. That meant stopping what I was doing. It meant making and eating my portion-controlled, sugar-free meal, no matter what obsessive thoughts I might have. It meant getting the distinction of “priorities.”

When I got my eating under control, I was told I had to call someone every day and tell them what I was going to eat the next day. Over 17 years later, I still do that. Every single day. (Ok, occasionally I text or leave a voicemail. But still every day.) It taught me that there is power in telling another person my intentions. 

Finally I called my best friend and I told her “I need to tell someone that I am going to let this go because I am obsessed with needing to know what happened to them. And I don’t have time to need to know!!! I have to workout and eat lunch! I have shit to do!” 

My bestie said that it was clear that I was not done looking. (She was right.) And that that was ok. But that now was not the time. It was time to workout and eat lunch. (Right again!) Did I already know that? Yes! Could I get there on my own? No!

Days later and I still don’t know what happened to the keys. And I still take a moment occasionally to look in ridiculous places. (The box where we store the outdoor cushions? The countertop behind the microwave?) But the truth is, missing the set is barely even an inconvenience. And I expect the keys will turn up eventually. And even if they don’t, if it becomes a problem in the future, I will deal with it then. But I was probably on track to lose a whole day. When all I needed was a little help to reset my brain.

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09 Jul 2023

Ready to be of service

I have been reminded this week that if nothing changes then nothing changes. It’s a saying I heard a lot when I first got my eating under control. If I don’t do anything different, I won’t get different results or a different life. 

I spent much of my young life wishing things were different than they were, especially my body. I wanted to be thin and I was not. But also, I wanted to be thin, while I simultaneously wanted to eat whatever I wanted. And I wanted both of those things to be true at the same time. And any time I did lose weight, I was eating smaller quantities of the same foods, until I was thin enough, or just not invested enough anymore, to go back to eating the way I wanted to. Which led to me being fat and hating my body again.

But this was true for lots of aspects of my life. I used to be late a lot. If it should take me 20 minutes to get to work, I would leave the house 20 minutes before work. And I would only make it on time about 2/3 of the time. And even if I said I would try to be better, I didn’t really *do* anything different. I just got angrier at traffic or the subway or my job. Like the “trying” was just wishing harder to be on time.

But I eventually got my eating under control because I changed the way I ate. I stopped eating simple sugars and carbohydrates. I started weighing my food. I only ate 3 meals a day with nothing in between. And I only changed because other people had gone before me and told me that if I did what they did, I could have what they had. A body and a life that were different in their joy and freedom than I had ever experienced before. And they were right. I ate differently, I thought differently, I lived differently and I got a different life.

And lately I’ve been changing again because, again, I have been making changes. I have been going to the doctor after 20 years of avoiding it, and I am taking care of my health. I have changed my workout, so my body is changing. And I signed up for The Craft Yarn Council’s Certified Instructors Program to get certified to teach crochet. So I’m acquiring new skills and techniques and learning how to make my passion for making into a shareable product. 

And all of these changes, that already feel pretty big on their own, are combining to make me feel like maybe I am on the precipice of something even bigger. Perhaps something new and exciting that I haven’t even considered before. 

I don’t know what happens next. But I am kind of thrilled. I am ready to be surprised! I am ready to be tickled! But maybe most importantly I am ready to be of service.

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02 Jul 2023

I’ll cry instead

I am a crier. I have always been a crier. And for most of my life it was a source of shame. It was not ok o cry. I was supposed to be strong. I was too sensitive. I was wrong, and I needed to stop crying. But I could not. I have never been able to just stop crying. It has never been a thing that I could just have a handle on. Never.

But in the past 17 years I have had to cry less and less. The longer I have my eating under control, I less I need to cry. I am generally much less unhappy. And generally have much less stress. For myriad reasons. Plenty of them things like meditation and exercise. But also getting myself into fewer bad situations because I’m not lying and cheating. I don’t act like an addict anymore.

But I actually love to cry in safe situations. More than love it. It’s probably one of my favorite things in the world. I am obsessed with novels. And I realized years ago that I am much more likely to give a book 5 stars if it makes me cry. Especially a particularly emotional and cathartic sobbing. (My poor sensitive husband. I always make sure he knows that it’s the book, just the book! But he still doesn’t actually like to see the crying.)

And then I read an article this week that said that crying is the nervous system’s way of regulating after “fight or flight.” And that it sends out all of these really good feeling brain chemicals to calm you down. And that all made a *lot* of sense to me. And shifted the way I think about certain things.

It gave me an inkling as to why I have never been able to get control of it. It made me recognize that I was sent into that fight or flight response a lot for most of my early life. Easily and regularly. And that probably for exactly that reason, I was kind of addicted to the chemicals of crying. Also, that I generally do it less now that my eating is under control because it’s much rarer for me to be in a position to go into fight or flight mode. And it makes a lot of sense to me that I still want to be getting all the brain chemical rewards without the actual danger.

I made friends with my crying a long time ago. People hate it. I know that. But I had two choices. Hate myself for not being able to control it, or get a sense of humor about it. I choose the humor. And the safety of novels.

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18 Jun 2023

Another bacon shake up

I had to start buying a new brand of bacon from a different grocery store recently. Because the brand I had been buying changed their recipe. And can you guess what they added? 

You got it! Sugar! (DING DING DING)

Which is why I still occasionally read the labels on foods I have been buying for years. Because sugar is a cheap. And it keeps people coming back for more. And it finds it’s way into so many things you wouldn’t expect. (I wonder how it could have gotten there?!?!)

It didn’t help me that this particular bacon recipe changed over while I have been on the biggest bacon binge of my life. (My mini stepper workout has me positively ravenous almost all of the time. And since I only ever eat at meal times, lots of bacon -yes, and pork rinds- at those meal times really keeps that gnawing hunger feeling at bay until the next meal.)

There is so much talk about “obesity related illnesses” and “an obesity epidemic” but what almost nobody is talking about is the food we consume and what is in it. And how it has changed. Nobody seemingly wants to put those puzzle pieces together. 

Society thinks we should all collectively just “push away from the table.” They don’t seem to have any questions about why so many of us can’t. Or why so many *more* of us can’t than ever before.

We talk about eating as if it were easy, natural and cost effective to eat whole unprocessed foods. That anyone who doesn’t lacks common sense and willpower. That the fact that more people are fat is some sort of onset of cultural laziness.

It takes a great effort to eat real food. It costs a lot of money. It requires that you or someone in your household prep and cook it. And while it does satisfy true hunger, it doesn’t light up a brain the way sugar does.

When I was fat and eating compulsively, I purposely kept what I was eating and how it was affecting my body separate in my head. But that wasn’t doing me any favors. And I only stopped doing that because I found a way to put boundaries around my eating and that required that I take an unflinching look at the reality of what I was putting in my body. And why. But it took my own individual total desperation to get me to that point.

What would it take to get the world to that point? And why would people profiting off of our inability to push away from the table let that happen?

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