onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “integrity”

13 Feb 2022

A Pickle On An Easy Path

One thing about having my sugar addiction under control for so long is that I do not want sugar anymore. I do not crave it. But also, I do not want it. There is nothing in it for me anymore.

The idea that a little would be a “treat” is ridiculous to me now. Because when I was addicted to sugar and eating compulsively, it made me numb. And it made me embarrassed and ashamed. And that had some connection to my weight. But separately, it was connected to all of the ways I failed to show up in my life. It was connected to all of the ways I lacked integrity. It was connected to my being dishonest and manipulative and cruel. Because it made it so that I didn’t have to look at myself or contemplate what kind of person I was being. It made me numb enough that I didn’t have to be confronted by my own actions.

I am an addict. And I, personally, don’t believe that once you have become addicted to something you can ever cease to be addicted to it. You can’t get the cucumber back once it’s a pickle. But even if you could, why would I try? Why would I potentially throw away 16 years of growth and peace and happiness? Why would I give up my eating boundaries for a moment of flavor when I don’t know what other consequences would come with it?

I think that fact that I do not crave the things I used to be obsessed with is a pretty good sign for me that they were always an addiction. If it were really just about food being delicious, then 16 years later, you would think I would still want it. But I look at cake and I don’t see anything. I don’t see deliciousness or excitement or even that hit of getting high. Much of the time, even if it is right in front of me, I literally don’t see it, as in it does not even register.

I am so grateful that it is so easy to keep going down the path. Because getting on the path was hard. It was uncomfortable and painful and difficult. And it lasted a long time. It didn’t really get easy for a year and a half. And that is a long time to stick with pain and discomfort.

But it was worth it. I am free from my eating disorders and my sugar addiction. I am free to enjoy my food and also enjoy my life. And I don’t miss foods I don’t eat.

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06 Feb 2022

The self-esteem of estimable acts.

It’s amazing to me the way taking an action can shift everything in my life.

I have a very nice acquaintance who is helping me navigate the world of changing career fields. And I had been behind on my homework for him. Which made me feel bad. And then I sent it and didn’t hear back from him. And I thought that perhaps I had taken so long to turn in my work and he didn’t want to work with me anymore. That I had failed to meet his expectations and he now considered working with me to be a waste of time.

I was afraid of being told that I was not good enough, and I did not want to hear that. I did not want to know. So I avoided it. And it made for a week of not getting anything done. No knitting. No working out. Very little cleaning. I don’t even know if I could tell you what I did. But I didn’t feel good about myself and every day I didn’t do anything made me like myself less.

So last Monday, first thing in the morning, I wrote to my career coach and basically asked if he was still interested in working with me. I told myself and the universe that I was willing to look at the reality of the situation. And if what there was to learn was the ways in which I was lacking, so be it. And I didn’t hear back from him.

But here is the interesting part. It did not matter that I did not hear back. It suddenly did not matter whether or not he liked or approved of me. Acknowledging that I had been late, and that I was willing to accept the consequences of that head on, made *me* like me more. It shifted everything. It shifted *me* and where I was in my own head.

With that email sent out, I did my meditation, drank my water, did my workout, cleaned my house, responded to friends I owed emails, and worked on a novel I am writing. It gave me room to accomplish all of these things every day. Every. Single. Day.

And then this morning I heard from my career coach. My emails had ended up in his spam folder. He *is* still interested in working with me.

When I got my eating under control, I got a crash course in how integrity leads to greater integrity. That doing estimable acts makes me proud of myself. And doing things that make me proud of myself makes it easier to do other things that make me proud of myself.

I’m not saying this wasn’t already true when I was eating compulsively, it just means I wasn’t present and aware enough to recognize it. And hopefully the next time this happens, because humanity always happens, I will use my tools to get myself back on track even quicker. (But it’ll be okay, even if I don’t.)

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30 Jan 2022

It’s not what it looks like and other unbelievable truths

I have been thinking a lot lately about what having my eating boundaries looks like from the outside. And I really get how it looks crazy to some people. I can really see how it can look like an eating disorder instead of a solution to my disordered eating.

I weigh all of my food with some very few exceptions, and even those have rules. I entirely avoid a whole group of foods that most people all over the world eat every day. I make a point of *not* trusting my body and it’s feelings about whether or not I am hungry. So I really get how that can look crazy and weird.

So here is what I think the real difference is. I am happy and at peace in my life in a way I have never been before. And I never want to lose that. I would rather be this happy and never eat sugar again while simultaneously dealing with how upset people get when they learn I plan to never eat sugar again.

I can’t trust my body to tell me when to eat. And I know that because I have eaten things I didn’t want and didn’t like because they were there and I just could not stop eating. I have eaten when I was full to sickness and did not physically want anything more, but I could not stop eating. I have stolen food and lied and cheated for food, even though I felt intense guilt and humiliation, because I just could not stop eating.

Whenever I tell someone what I do with food and their reaction is to tell me that they “should” do what I do, I tell them that I don’t care what they eat. I am not judging. I am not the food police.

I eat the way I eat because I am an addict, and eliminating my drug foods is a solution to my eating problem. Not a weight problem or a health problem. A self-esteem problem. A self-love problem. A sanity problem.

I have had/do have eating disorders, by the way. Not just binge eating, but also exercise bulimia, and stick a toothbrush down your throat bulimia, and I have occasionally exhibited anorexic behaviors, though not very often. I have never had much “willpower” when it comes to food. (If you have read my blog for any period of time, you probably already know that I don’t believe in willpower.) So I want to say I have points of reference for eating disorders. And I never felt less peaceful or more crazy than when I was “managing my weight” with actual eating disorder behaviors.

So if you look at what I do and you see an eating disorder, I don’t really blame you. If I were doing what I do and starving (I am not, by the way) I would also be worried. But I am happy, joyous and free. I love my life. I have relationships that I never thought I could. I do things I never had the courage or drive to do before. I love my life *because* I have boundaries around my eating, not in spite of it.

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23 Jan 2022

Vanity, Pride and wanting to be skinny enough to be loved

I was talking to some friends who do what I do with food the other day. And I was reminded that the difference between me as a kid eating compulsively and me as an adult with boundaries around my food is much bigger inside than outside. I did lose a lot of weight. And that is one thing. But most people I still have in my life didn’t care about my weight when I was fat. And they really think that I am basically the same as I ever was. Only not fat. And they don’t care about that.

This is interesting to me because I feel like an entirely different person. On the inside. And not just because I don’t think about my weight or my body anymore, which is HUGE, because when I was eating compulsively I thought about my body and my weight all the time. I worried about what other people thought about my body. But more importantly I worried about who was going to humiliate me because of my size and shape. Because people loved to humiliate me. People love to humiliate fat people in general.

But aside from not having that constant nagging fear and shame, I feel entirely different than I did when I was in the food. And it is about having my addiction under control. I have a clear head. I have a clear conscience because I have done my best to clean up my past messes and to “clean as I go” in my relationships now. I have a peace around not only my actions and words, but also my circumstances. I have a new relationship to what happens to me and how I react to it. One where I assess what is the reality of the situation, accept it, and act (or abstain from acting) according to who I want to be in my life.

Here is the deal. I believe whole heartedly that the people in my life would still love me if I were fat. I believe my husband would still love me. I believe my friends and family would still love me. That they would not see me as all that different.

And if what I do with food were only about being thin, and I knew that people would still love me fat, I would have quit. A long time ago. If it were about my body, and my weight, and I knew that my husband did not really care about my weight, I would have said screw it. I would have gone back to cake. Because when I got my eating under control, it really was to be skinny enough to be loved.

But now I do what I do because when I do it, I love myself. And I do not love myself because I’m skinny. I am not skinny. I love myself because I do what I say I am going to do. I be where I say I am going to be. I tell the truth and I honor myself. These were not things I could do before. Because how could I have been honest about anything when I could never be honest about food? I have sometimes heard “how you do anything is how you do everything.” And I was a liar about food. How could I not be a liar in any other aspect of my life?

As time goes by and I get more clearheaded, I know that weight is less and less important to me. That I don’t keep my eating boundaries for physical vanity. Though I’ll admit it is a kind of vanity. I like looking like I’ve got my shit together. But also, I like that I actually have my shit together. So maybe that’s more pride than vanity. (Do I sound like Mary Bennet now?!?) Either way, I am grateful that my happiness is not all tangled up with my weight anymore. Even if it is still tangled up with my food.

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26 Dec 2021

I’m no mathematician, but one day at a time sure adds up

Christmas is done, and my eating boundaries are still in tact. This is my 15th Christmas with eating under control. It’s funny to think about it that way. It’s kind of hard to fathom, even having lived it. No matter what, it’s still a day at a time.

I didn’t just “end up with” 15 Christmases with my food issues handled. I quit eating sugar and put boundaries around my eating on January 2, 2006. And since then I have had to make choices every day. And some of those days, and some of those choices, were *hard.* There were days when something went wrong with my food 3 or 4 or even FIVE times with just one meal, and I had to throw some part, or all of it, away and prepare the meal again (and again.) There were times when I could not get what I needed at some restaurant or another and I had to leave a get-together early to get home and eat my dinner by midnight. There were times I had a food problem in the middle of an event or at my lunch break on a work day, and I had to make a call to have someone help me figure out what to do. And every time, every single time, I had to make a choice about my eating boundaries. I had to choose what was important in the moment. Because a commitment like the one I have is about the moment I am in.

One of the things that freaks people out about what I do is the thought that if they took it on for themselves, they would *never* have (insert favorite comfort food) again! NEVER! It’s all they can hear. It’s all they can imagine. No cake for the rest of eternity! The horror!

And I am, admittedly, a bit of a weirdo in that I am perfectly fine with the “never.” I don’t miss cake. I don’t miss foods I don’t eat. And I am very comfortable with “never again.”

But most people are not. Which is really normal. And one helpful thing to remember is that for most people, it’s enough to say “not today.” Or even “not at this moment.”

That is what we tell new people. *Don’t* think about the infinite future. Just make the decision about right now. Will you keep your commitment today, this meal, this moment? It’s a day at a time, or a meal at a time, or a minute at a time, or a second at a time. You can feel free to break up the time in as small or large increments as you see fit to get yourself through a rough spot.

But for me personally, in making each of those individual choices to honor my commitment to control my eating , I have racked myself up 15 Christmases. And a week from today, if I keep my eating boundaries (which I have every intention of doing, but I know not to get ahead of myself) I will have kept my addiction at bay for a full 16 years.

In all that time, I have never been sorry I didn’t eat cake. And I have never been sorry I took the time to make that meal that 6th time. And I have never been sorry to end a holiday with my eating boundaries well in place. Not even once in 15 years, 11 months and 3 weeks.

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28 Nov 2021

My body just is.

Ah…It’s officially holiday season. And it is not my favorite. Not because I crave or miss the foods I don’t eat anymore, but because for just about everyone else in the world, holidays are about food. And also how upset or resigned or worried they are about their holiday weight gain. And also what diet they are trying in the new year. And how unhappy with their bodies they are currently, or are afraid they will be shortly. But it’s the holidays, so…pie anyway apparently.


I don’t care about food anymore. No. That is not true. I don’t care about foods I don’t personally eat anymore. I don’t miss pie, or cake, or seasonal cookies. I don’t miss any of the things I thought I would miss when I first got my eating under control.

I do, however, still care very much about food. Which I guess is probably the single most important thing that I have that keeps my eating under control. I am not on a diet.

Again! I am not on a diet.

I have a physical reaction to sugars, grains and starches that first gets me high, and then leaves me with intense, overwhelming cravings, and finally, makes me hate myself. I am an addict. So I am not on a diet. I *have* a diet that does not include drug foods.

So how do I not eat outside of my food boundaries? I make absolutely positive that I love my food. I fight the food with the food. I make sure my meals are all always delicious and satisfying. I don’t eat things I don’t like. And I don’t eat things because I want them to change the size and shape of my body. And I don’t *not* eat things because I am *afraid* they will change the size and shape of my body. If they are allowed on my food plan, and I like them, I eat them. I don’t worry about gaining or losing weight. I don’t think about my body in terms of weight at all. I have food issues. That is separate from my weight.

It took years of having my eating under control to come to this point. My life for over 35 years was all about how “broken and ugly” I thought my body was because I was fat. Or how proud I was for having wrangled into a socially acceptable size and shape; how I had “accomplished” that.

But now I love my body as it is. And it is just me, not an accomplishment or a failure or a measure of anything about me. It just is. And it just is me.

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21 Nov 2021

A chance to make healthy choices

I started my morning workout again this week and it has been amazing! I am only doing 1 mile instead of 2 for the moment. After months of no exercise, I decided to ease back into it, rather than jump in with both feet. But it feels great. I look forward to getting back up to 2 miles. And I can see that I was doing myself a disservice by not doing it.

I knew when I took my job that I was not going to be able to work out and work the hours I was working. At least not if I wanted to sleep. And sleep is a huge priority for me. This is not meant to be a judgement on my choice. I did what I needed to do with options I had. I chose the job and the money. It seemed like the obvious right answer at the time. And even if I can now see that the choice did not serve me as well as I would have hoped in terms of happiness and self-esteem, I learned when I was dabbling in Zen meditation that there is only ever what actually happened. The past could never have been a different way. If it *could* have been different, it would have been different. Even in Multiple Worlds Theory (or Many-world Interpretation) there is still only one outcome in the world I am in. Hindsight may be 20/20, but it is also useless in a practical sense.

I have also had a revelation about my meditation practice this week. A realization that for years now, I have not been doing the “praying” part. That I have only been doing half of it. I have been trying to do a lot of listening to what Life had to tell me, but I was not doing the part where I tell Life what I am willing to offer. I had stopped offering my service, and my surrender. I was all take and no give.

I am reminded this week that self-care is hard but worthwhile. That doing the things that suck in the moment, like working out, and praying, and drinking water, make my life easier and better. And that I have suffered for letting them fall by the wayside. And that I didn’t even recognize that I was suffering from the lack of them until I started doing them again.

Everything feels better in just a few days with just a few changes. And I look forward to everything getting even better from here. And I want to note that I never got lax with my eating boundaries. And it is because of that that I can move forward to more and better self-care. Because as long as my addiction is under control, I have a chance to make good, healthy choices.

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14 Nov 2021

No such thing as comfortable misery (anymore.)

When I was growing up, I was often told, both implicitly and explicitly, that I didn’t understand how the world worked. That the things that I wanted were silly, impractical, simplistic or impossible. That the plans I wanted to make were ridiculous and juvenile. And especially if/when I was trying to act from a place of growth or transformation. (I read a lot of self-help books and went to self-help seminars.) I knew that I was not happy where I was in life, and I wanted something better. And people scoffed. 

I am sure they wanted me to “not get hurt.” But I was already hurting. And I am sure that a lot of my wishes didn’t come with particularly good plans to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. But the message I continually got, at least the message I continually *heard* was “stay in your lane. Accept this existence. This is the life you got and there is no way to change it.”

I certainly got shot down a lot for a long time. And I certainly succumbed to that fatalism for a very long time. But there has always been a nonconformist in me who refused to fully accept the finality of my situation, whatever situation that might be. There has always been a searcher and a seeker and a believer in me. 

That part of me never really got going in any useful or practical way until I got my eating under control. But also, it is that part of me that let me get my eating under control in the first place.

I have talked before about how it makes people uncomfortable that I have a particular food plan. No, I’m not *on* a diet. But I *have* a diet. And that really messes with people’s heads. They want me to eat cake at least sometimes. It would make them feel better. They want me to not be so rigid. They want me to not be so disciplined. 

But I have never needed to fit in in that way. I have never needed to be like everyone else, and I have never particularly cared about making other people comfortable when it comes to my life and my choices. Is that selfish? Perhaps. But if so, I am so selfish that I don’t really care if it’s selfish. So I am rigid, and disciplined, and I have, indeed, transformed my life. Not just my eating, but the way I work, and the way I love, the way I take care of myself and the way I take care of others. Who I am in the world for myself and in my relationships is completely different than it was before I put boundaries around my eating. All for the better. All leading to me becoming a person I like and love and respect.

Now that I am coming to a place in my life where I want to transform (again) my work life, I can feel all of the “practical” advice I have been given all of my life bubbling up. I can feel all of the people who don’t want me to go blindly into a new chapter in my life. They want me to play it safe. To stay in “comfortable misery.” But the problem is that in having my eating under control, there is no such thing as comfortable misery anymore. There is only miserable misery and my own spiritual need to get out of it.

People in my life definitely didn’t want me to be fat anymore when I was fat. But oddly enough, they also did not want me to change in any way that would be uncomfortable for them. They wanted to have their cake and for me to eat it too. They wanted me to have a great life, as long as it didn’t push up against their beliefs about the world.

I have to keep reminding myself lately that in choosing to leave a job that no longer serves me, I am telling Life that I am ready to accept something better. I learned that by blindly giving up sugar 15+ years ago. By willingly doing this crazy, rigid, extreme thing with my food all in the hopes, but with no guarantee, that I would get something better. And I did.

I will close by saying this. I know that a lot of people say it’s unwise to leave a job without already having another one. And I have to acknowledge that I have the privilege of being in a two income household, which makes a huge difference in terms of money and survival. But the truth is, I have never done that. I have always left a difficult situation first, even when I was poor. Has it always been wise? Absolutely not. But I also have to ask, while I am at this job that is making me so unhappy, how do I create a space in my life for something different? How do I get a better job that suits me better, when I am living in the energy of this job with this culture. How do I “vibrate on a different level” when I am still here in this place. How do I not just make a lateral move to an equally unhappy job if I am living in the unhappiness of this one? I don’t know that I can. And I don’t think I want to try.

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07 Nov 2021
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The devil I knew had a lesson I didn’t

I never know when my life will take a turn. And then another. I never feel like anything will ever get better, but then it does. They say that fear and excitement are the same physical experience in different circumstances. 

I gave my job two months notice a couple of weeks ago. My company has already found my replacement, whom I have been training, and I *might* be let go of earlier than expected. (Which I welcome wholeheartedly. The only thing keeping me there longer is having given my word that I would.) And the level of relief I feel is astounding. 

And even if they decide to keep me through December, there is someone to share the workload with. Which is my biggest issue at the moment. Either way, I win.

When I got asked to do this particular job, I had not been working very much, only about 10 hours a week, and I had been about to start a job hunt. I knew I didn’t like the culture of the company. I knew I didn’t really want to work there for reasons other than no work or too much work, feast or famine. But the opportunity to work came up, and I am not independently wealthy, so obviously, I took it. 

I already *know* that when I make a decision to change my life for the better, to take a spiritual step up, Life will always give me the opportunity to go back. To choose the devil I know. *Always.* Jobs, men, friendships, anything that I value in life.

I fully understand that this job was a test. And that I chose to go back. But clearly I was not ready to make the big leap. And so in going back, I also learned some things I needed to learn. I needed to have someone (who was not my husband) see that I was *great* at the job. And my boss did. And that was important. And I needed to be reminded that I am not lazy. That I not only do work hard, but that I love it. That for as much as I love, cherish, and literally *need* (literally meaning literally, not literally meaning figuratively) my free time and my down time, I get high on being spectacular. My best friend likes to remind me that everyone gets the majority of their self-esteem from their job. And I am sure that it’s true for me.

Yes I am terrified to find a new job. To even just look. To have to prove myself. To fight through the imposter syndrome. To have to *trust* that it will all turn out better and not worse. 

And I have to remember all of this if/when my company comes back to me and asks me to work again. Especially if I don’t have a job yet. Especially especially I have been searching for months and it feels like I will never get one. 

In order to get my eating under control, I had to start trusting Life. I had to trust that everything was going exactly the way it was supposed to. I had to trust that all was well and would only get better. When I did that, I didn’t have to drug myself with food. I could stay calm and clear and take the next right action, whatever that was. I could feel my feelings and let them be signposts pointing me in the right direction. 

For the past 15 years and 9 months of not eating my drug foods, I have gained greater clarity and peace. And to be so uncomfortable and unhappy is to see that I have outgrown old beliefs, about the world and about myself. It is time for me to move on to something better. 

I will end by saying that about 10 years ago was the last time I went through a personal, emotional, and spiritual upheaval like this while my eating was under control. I came out of it on the other side with a life beyond my wildest dreams. With a relationship/marriage better than I ever could have imagined, and a relationship with my body based on love and gratitude, instead of judgement and punishment. (And this blog, which might have a lot to do with all of those things.)

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24 Oct 2021

37 years of stories about my work ethic

I put in notice at my job this past week. I won’t go into details, but starting two weeks ago, I was crying basically non-stop until I did. I hated my job. I hated my life with the job. And for as much as I have loved the work itself and how good I am at it, I have known for a long time that I was not a good fit for the culture of the company. I told them they could have me until January, and that I would do a great job until then, but then I was done.



Having my eating under control means that I cannot ignore my feelings. I cannot eat my feelings. And I cannot live a life that makes me miserable. I cannot cry over something for days and not see that there is a problem that I need to take action to remedy.



I want to say that I am low key terrified about having to find another job. I have some long-held, deeply difficult stories about myself and my work ethic. They go all the way back to the kind of student I was. Not just in High School, but in 2nd grade and 5th grade and 7th grade. I have stories about being lazy and not living up to my potential that reach back to me at 7 years old. Can you imagine that? I’m 44 and I still have to deal with 7-year-old Kate not doing her homework. And in retrospect I can see that 10 and 12-year-old Kate probably lived with that too, and how do you shift your thinking about yourself when you are still so close to having been the 7-year-old only 3 or 5 years before?


The thing about transforming every aspect of your internal life is that it doesn’t happen overnight. And it is usually the oldest wounds that you get to last. And this definitely feels like a wound.


But there are lots of things about me that are completely different from who I used to be. And not only that I have a very right-sized work ethic. (I am definitely not a workaholic. I want to do a spectacular job for fair compensation for 35-50 hours a week and be done.) And one of those things is that I know how to take action in the face of terror. I know how to sit with the feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. I know how to keep moving forward.


I was paralyzed when I was eating compulsively. I was always avoiding and deflecting. I got scared, panicked, and then ate drug foods until I couldn’t feel the worry anymore. And then stayed in a food coma until the consequences caught up with me. And they always did. And someone (99% of the time, my mom) would bail me out of whatever conceptual prison I had landed myself in.


I don’t know what happens now. And really, nothing yet. I still have a 60+ hour a week job to take care of for the next 2 months. But I keep reminding myself of 2 things:
1) At least half of the jobs I have ever had came to me without my seeking them out. My professional acting job, my start as a newborn nanny, and even the job I have right now, were acquired by someone coming to me out of the blue and asking if I wanted the job. Which, in retrospect is kind of crazy. Who gets that kind of care from Life?
And 2) Every time I say “no” to something that doesn’t serve me, Life gives me better than I had before and usually even better than I thought I wanted.

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