onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “personal choices”

23 Jul 2023

The slow crawl to spectacular

I saw a pulmonologist this week and it could not have gone better.

A little over 2 months ago, I got sent for a lung function test. Afterwards, a doctor called me and told me that my lungs were fine and to stop taking the medication I had been taking. And I was upset. Because my lungs were very clearly not fine.

It was more of the same thing that I had always felt about doctors growing up. That nobody was listening to me. That the relationship was about power and submission. And that I was always the small one expected to submit. They were the doctors. They knew everything. I knew nothing.

But I was feeling panicked and crazy and scared. And I called a friend crying and she told me that she had to learn to advocate for herself with doctors. That it was a skill. And that I should figure out what I want for myself. Which is so not how I have ever thought about doctors.

So first, I took the doctor’s advice, knowing I already had a pulmonologist appointment, and I stopped taking the medication. And then I started taking notes on my lung function every day in my journal. And how often I had to take a different medication (fast acting instead of long lasting.) And then I psyched myself up to duke it out with this pulmonologist to get back on the medication that had been helping. Because no matter what that test said, there was something wrong!

But I walked in and he looked at my test results – the same ones from months ago when they told me my lungs were great – and he said I have a very specific kind of asthma. That the tests look great because I seem to be at the highest level of lung function, but that it’s misleading because actually, there is too much air in my lungs. I am getting air trapped in there and then breathing more air on top of it. And then he asked me how I felt being on the original medication and I told him “spectacular.” So he put me back on it. I didn’t even have to make the request. 

But wait. There’s more! He then told me that this particular kind of asthma often goes away on its own and that we will revisit it in 6 months, but there is a good chance that this too shall pass. 

Then he said I could take a blood test and they could see if I had certain markers for asthma. But I told him that I have a really hard time with blood tests and that if it was necessary I would but I would rather not. And he told me that it was not necessary at this point. So we wouldn’t do it.

Before I got my eating under control, life happened to me all the time. I was powerless. I was just dragged along. And I didn’t even realize that there was another way.

When I put boundaries around my eating, I got clarity. I got responsibility. I got the ability to ask for help. To learn a new way to do things. 

But also, I just want to note that it took 16 years of having my eating under control plus a health condition to actually go to the doctor. And the help and guidance of loved ones to begin to understand how to navigate that world. So I’m not saying it’s quick, I’m just saying it’s a slow crawl to “spectacular.”

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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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25 Jun 2023

The perfect body

This week I had to do a mid-week grocery run. And there is a discount department store right next to that grocery store. So I went in to get myself some workout pants that fit. And I figured while I was there, I should try on some real actual pants with things like buttons and zippers and figure out what size I actually am at the moment. 

I bought size medium workout clothes and figured out that I am currently a U.S. size 10 in pants, down from a U.S. size 14.

I have so many very complicated feelings about this.

This weight loss is, at least in part, the result of the workout I am doing. And one of the reasons I am doing it is because I love the effect it is having on my butt. I have never before had a butt, and now I do. And I really really love it. I can see the difference in the mirror and feel it when I sit down. And now that I am enjoying having a butt, I have a different feeling about pants in general as a clothing option. 

But I have spent the last 11 or 12 years trying to dismantle the ingrained idea that thinner is better. And yet, when I see the “M” or the “10,” I have a huge reaction. My brain sends out all sorts of happy messages! Skinny! Pretty! Good Girl! And then it gets excited about how much thinner I could get. Could I be an 8? A 6??? Could I be a SMALL?!?!?  And then it follows up with a burst of fear! How will we keep it going? How can we speed it up? What if it stops?

And in a blink, staying a size 10 is the worst possible thing that could happen to me. 

So what I have decided to remember is that as long as I am keeping my eating boundaries, I am in exactly the right body I am supposed to be in. That whether I am a 6 or a 16, as long as I am weighing my food and abstaining from sugars and simple carbohydrates, I am in the perfect body for me and my life.

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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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28 May 2023

Less stuff. More love.

On Monday my husband and I had a dumpster dropped off in our driveway, and since then we have been deep cleaning our home. We pulled everything out of our attic spaces to clean them, and go through all of the stuff we had in there and decide what was worth keeping. And what was not.

It feels amazing.

I have never been great at letting go. It wasn’t until I got my eating under control that I learned how to let go of things that didn’t serve me anymore. Then I lived in small New York City apartments that had limited storage space. So twice a year, when it was time to switch out my seasonal wardrobe, I would do a big cleaning purge. What I didn’t learn right away was how to stop acquiring new stuff.

Baby steps.

First, I had to see the clutter I had everywhere, then get clear about how stressed out it made me. And then get to the point where the pain of letting it go was less than the pain of keeping so many things.

Part of learning how to stop eating compulsively was to learn how to sit in discomfort. “How to not numb a feeling with cake” eventually turned into “how to not numb a feeing with an impulse buy.” (But let’s be clear. In the beginning, those impulse buys made it possible to not eat the cake. I always quit the thing that’s killing me quickest. It’s just that when the food got easier, I could let go of those little “treats” too.)

Getting addiction under control is almost always about connection. I regularly feel like there is a giant hole inside me. And I tried to fill it with food. And stuff. But the only thing that really fills it is being in relationship with other people. It gets filled with love and laughter and tears and compassion. It gets filled with quality time and acts of service. 

It feels amazing to have taken a real, exhaustive inventory of what I have, and like a huge relief to have a dumpster full of the stuff gone. It leaves so much more room in my head and my heart for the people in my life.

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14 May 2023

Isn’t it ironic?

I have been thinking about writing about the weight loss drug, Ozempic, for a while. There are so many things about it that I have thoughts, but maybe more importantly, feelings about.



So first, I want to say that I don’t want it. Even if I could get it, I would not take it. I have a solution to my eating problem. And I have learned to separate my weight from my eating problem. It would not do me much good to be thin and obsessed with food. The obsession is the problem. My guess is a pill can’t fix that. And also, I have no proof that it would work better for me than my eating boundaries. And I am not interested in messing with a 17 year proven solution.



Second, weight loss drugs have been around a long time. And yet, individually, none of them are still around. I am personally old enough to remember Fen-Phen. And I am old enough to remember the commercials in the subsequent years claiming that if you had heart problems from it, you might be entitled to financial compensation. Plenty of women who have the same eating boundaries that I have remember being prescribed amphetamines by doctors when they were younger. Plus downers so they could sleep at night.

Third, you need to take it for life. Which actually  makes sense to me. I mean, I have to do what I do for life. But a lot of things can go wrong with something like that. The drug could be taken off the market. It has already become prohibitively expensive for most people. 

But I guess the thing for me that makes it all the more frustrating is that while it really may help people who have diseases like diabetes, it is mostly being used by celebrities and various rich people to stay skinny and cultivate “a look.” A friend of mine was even on it for a while and lost a lot of weight. But then he was no longer big enough to “qualify” for it, and his prescription was taken away. But like I said, you have to take it for life for it to work.

I suppose ultimately it’s all tied up for me in the fact that we have scientists making junk food addictive on purpose, we have a “fitness” industry telling us that if we would only work hard enough (and buy the right products) we could, and should, look like a magazine cover model, we have a culture that hates and vilifies fatness as a personal and moral failing, and when we do come up with a possible medical solution, wealthy people commandeer all of it to fit into a smaller size for their social media accounts.

I’m just going to be over here reading ingredients and weighing out my food. Ironic, but honestly, seems so much simpler than taking a pill every day.

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07 May 2023

When it’s not about the sugar

I accidentally ate sugar. Everything is fine. Nothing is wrong. It wasn’t very much at all and I didn’t notice until days later. And an honest mistake doesn’t count against my eating boundaries. But I ate sugar. And when something like that happens it really really matters that I acknowledge it. 

I saw something on social media the other day that the first thought you have in a situation is the thought you are conditioned to have. And even after 17 years of being honest about my eating and my food, my first thought was to not say anything. After all. It wasn’t that much, and I didn’t even notice it until days later, when something urged me to read the ingredients list on the pork rinds I had just bought. The same kind I had eaten the other day. And they had both maltodextrin and brown sugar. 

I did make a call. I told the truth to a person I trust who does what I do with food. But it’s particularly interesting that I wanted to lie. About an honest mistake. About one rare lapse in rigor even after over 17 years. I should have read the ingredients before I bought them. I will be more careful moving forward. But that instinct to hide any imperfection or weakness, to deny the truth of any blunder or error on my part, runs deep. 

And that is the reason it matters that I acknowledge it. Not because it is so terrible. But because if I don’t acknowledge it, it becomes shame. And then it is not about the sugar. It is about the lie and the shame.

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30 Apr 2023

Keep doing what I do and maybe a little more

A lot of things are changing in my life right now. From being back in our house, to the start of a new personal health journey, to cleaning out our attic, to changing aspects of my workout and eating (but still within the same old boundaries I have had for 17+ years), things are shifting a lot for me right now.

When I was younger I was really into self-help. I read books and went to seminars and did workbooks, alone or with friends. But I was never really able to use the tools I learned from these things until I got my eating under control. Perhaps it was because my brain was too foggy. Or because so much of my personality was tied up in food. But either way, I was not able to implement a lot of the really quality advice and coaching I was getting from these sources.

I wanted change, but I didn’t know how to do that. And I didn’t want to have to change myself. I just wanted my circumstances to change.

Here’s a thing that I understand. When I keep my food boundaries and my eating under control, I change. And it usually looks something like a series of nearly imperceptible changes and then a big, noticeable change. And I *think* I am on the precipice of another big, noticeable change.

Practice and consistency have changed my perspective, and yes, even my circumstances. Weighing my food, doing my writing and meditation, working out. All of these things are practices. I do them consistently. They are my priorities in action. It is me telling me that my body is beloved, that my mind is important, that my life is mine to honor. And it has occurred to me that maybe I need a new practice to tip me over the edge into some new, elevated state of being. Some new something to put in place to move me along. And I have no idea what that could be at the moment. But if there is one thing I do understand it’s that my change is a product of me changing something.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Either things will shift in a big way or they won’t. The only thing there is to do is keep doing what I do. And maybe do a little something more. If I figure out what that is, I will keep you posted.

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23 Apr 2023

A new spin on the same old cantaloupe story

About once a year I write a blog about how I found a giant cantaloupe at the grocery store, and ate half of it and made myself sick. I can have half a cantaloupe for breakfast and it doesn’t matter how big the cantaloupe is. I get half of a 1 pound cantaloupe or half of a 10 pound cantaloupe. And usually my eyes are bigger than my stomach. So I see that giant fruit and get excited and then…I don’t think regret is the right word, but I don’t enjoy it as much as I think I will. 

Well, when we got back home a few weeks ago, I bought myself a small, cheap step machine. My house here does have stairs, but they are from the 1940s when this house was built. And they are steep, and they have a turning at the top, and they are just not conducive to a safe workout. So I got a machine and it turns out that this machine makes for a much more intense and rigorous workout than I was doing before. And I have to say that I love it. I get kind of excited to do it on workout days!

Ok, back to the cantaloupe. This week I bought a ridiculous cantaloupe, I cut it up and put it in a giant bowl for breakfast on Monday, and while I was doing that I was thinking to myself, this is going to make you sick, Kate. But I was starving! So insanely hungry! And I surprised even myself when a huge breakfast of bacon and eggs and half of a cantaloupe as big as my head did not make me sick. In fact. I could have eaten more!

I don’t know if it’s entirely the new, more intense workout, or the fact that I am breathing better all the time, including when I am working out. Or my body recognizing the change of seasons and no longer wanting to hold on to weight and warmth. Or just that sometimes, for reasons I don’t understand, I am hungry when I am usually not. But I am hungry lately and I am eating heavy. 

One thing I love about my food boundaries is that I have lots of leeway to eat in a way that makes me happy. I can eat light, with more salads and lean meats, and fewer things cooked in fat. Or I can eat heavy, with veggies sautéed in butter and giant fruits and more bacon. 

Having rules has made it so that I don’t have to question my food or my eating. I don’t have to ask myself if I am doing something I shouldn’t be, or something that doesn’t serve me. I don’t have to be afraid of food or ashamed of anything that I eat. If it’s in my boundaries, all is well and I don’t have eating taking up precious space in my brain.

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16 Apr 2023

Change is inevitable. But I don’t have to like it.

A month or two ago, the manufacturers of my favorite zero calorie drinks changed their formula. And in a brand new turn of events, they didn’t change it so I *can’t have it* anymore. They changed it so that I *don’t want it* anymore. Except that I do. Of course I do. But I want the same old one I have been drinking for years. Not the new, sort of plastic tasting ones.

This has happened to me many many times over the past 17 years. Something I love, that I consume regularly, changes. Usually it changes so that it doesn’t fit my boundaries anymore. It now has added sugar or starch. Or alcohol. But however it happens, something I want stops being available to me. And I have to mourn it.

I feel like the socially acceptable thing to do is shrug and say “oh well” other people have it worse. And of course they do. In the grand scheme of the world, I am rich and privileged. And I do know it. And I am grateful for it. But I am still sad. I have still lost something that made me happy. And I still have to mourn it.

For the past several weeks I have been looking for and trying alternatives to my drink, on grocery store shelves and pages and pages into an Amazon search. And so far, no joy. But I do not doubt that I will come up with a great solution and find a drink I love the way I loved my old one. 

Change is the nature of life, but I can still hate it. Especially when it comes to my food. The things I eat and drink still bring me joy and happiness. Now they just don’t get me high to do it.

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