onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “personal choices”

16 Jan 2022

Delicious but different

Today my husband and I are having some family over for a late lunch. Two of our guests are picky eaters. And not only are they picky eaters, but they don’t like the same things. One will eat beef but not pork, one will eat pork but not beef. One will eat pasta, but the other won’t. You get the point.

My husband told them that they had to figure out what he was going to make. And they did! They wanted chicken parmigiana. And roasted potatoes. And my husband decided to make himself and his mom some bruschetta as an appetizer, and hopefully the picky eaters will like it too.

But there is almost nothing on this menu that I can eat. (I will possibly eat the tomato topping from the bruschetta as part of my salad.) And that is not a problem.
I learned early in having my eating boundaries that there is a difference for me between the meal and the company. I learned that I don’t have to eat at celebratory meals. I don’t have to eat at dinner parties. I don’t have to eat at restaurants. I can literally just go and be with the people, have a coffee or a soda, and talk. I can eat before or after. Or like today, I can eat my own food while everyone else eats the food my husband skillfully and lovingly makes for them.

I love to eat. I love my food. My husband regularly makes me special foods just for me. He made me homemade barbecue sauce just this week and I have been eating it twice a day since he made it. Lunch and dinner!

And I don’t miss my drug foods. So I am not jealous of their chicken parm. I am not jealous of roasted potatoes. I am not sorry to miss anything that is being served today. I only want to see my guests and enjoy chatting and spending time with them.

When I was eating compulsively, I probably would have been more excited for the food than the company. I probably would have been in a fog. And trying to get more than my share. And feeling bad about how much I ate.

But today I am excited to talk and laugh. I will still love my food. Whatever I decide to make. And it will be delicious, but different. But I don’t mind being different. And my company, not the potatoes or the bread, will get all of my love and attention.

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09 Jan 2022
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Musin’ from a Bruisin’

Last week while I was coming downstairs in my house, one of my slippers came off and I slipped down the last few steps and banged hard on the back of my thigh. And I mean hard. My vision went black from the pain at the time. I have a giant purple bruise bigger than my hand just below my butt. And it sucks.

So this week I attempted to find a workout that was gentle enough. I tried yoga for literally the first time ever and it made me nauseated! And when I looked it up, I learned that apparently that is common. COMMON!!! (Are you guys seriously doing this and it’s making you sick?!?!? Anyway, I hope not but that is none of my business.) So the next day I went for a long walk. Which was mostly great, except that it was below freezing the whole day and there were patches of ice everywhere. I had a few precious moments, though I managed to stay upright. But I decided I didn’t want to do that either. The last thing I needed was to fall on the bruise again!

I decided that until the bruise is healed a little more, I am not going to work out. And that is a blessing. But also kind of scary.

It’s scary because I have a story about myself. That I am lazy and that I can’t be trusted to follow through on a commitment. It’s scary because I have a very old voice in my head that says I will get fat and my body will be ugly (again.) It’s scary because I wonder how slippery that slope is, and will I eventually give up 16 years of having my sugar addiction under control if I don’t keep up all of my commitments? No, none of these thoughts are particularly rational, but they are deeply emotional, and it’s always the feelings that hook me, not the ideas behind them.

But it’s a blessing because in getting my eating under control, originally in order to not be fat anymore, I acquired the ability to separate my fatness from addiction. I learned to stop hating fatness. I learned to stop hating the girl I was when I was fat. And I learned to hear that voice that is terrified of being fat, and let it hang out in the background like radio static. I learned to feel those feelings that stemmed from those irrational thoughts, and then unhook myself from them. I learned to love my body. Not tolerate it as long as it “behaved.” To really love it. Exactly as it is. (That is what love is, arguably. The acceptance of someone or something exactly as it is.)

When I was eating my drug foods, and worrying all the time about my fatness, all exercise was exercise bulimia. I mean as young as 11 and 12 “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” with my mom and Richard Simmons, all the way up until I put boundaries around my eating, it was only ever about managing my weight. There was a kind of mantra in my head that was probably there the whole time, but would come through loud and clear in my mid 20’s. Getitoutgetitoutgetitoutgetitout. Get it out! I did not exercise to be healthy or strong. I did it to get rid of any and all food I ate before it showed itself on my body. I did it to wrangle my body into a socially acceptable size and shape.

I don’t need to exercise right now. I am 44, not 24, and a hand-sized bruise is a trauma. I *do* want to workout even if I love having worked out more than I enjoy the act itself. I love the ways it makes me feel, physically, and emotionally. I love the ways it clears my head. I love the ways it signals to my beloved body that I do love it. I love the ways it helps me regulate my feelings. But I don’t need to do it at the expense of my physical health. And this bruise, like all things, shall pass.

One more thing I want to express is that when I got my eating under control, and got sober from sugar, I also started a new way of living. And that way was to learn to take life as it comes, and go with the flow. To trust that Life was always giving me the right things. To stop fighting against what was so, and start taking the path of least resistance when it came to circumstances. I stopped my regular workout in August to take on a 60+ hour a week job. But since I left that job, I have been feeling like I need to get back into my workout routine. Soon. Now. I decided that I rested long enough. Perhaps Life is trying to tell me that it has not, in fact, been long enough. Perhaps I should listen.

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02 Jan 2022

Here’s to many more

Today is the 16th anniversary of my giving up simple carbohydrates and man made sugars and putting boundaries around my eating.

There are things about that time of my life (mid to late 2005) that I don’t think about too often anymore. But at the time I was 28, and I felt crazy. I had lost a significant amount of weight through dangerous restriction of calories, over exercise, and laxative abuse. And none of those things was sustainable. And it was becoming very clear to me that any of the weight that I lost was on its way right back. And that was terrifying.

At the time, agreeing to eating boundaries was about my weight. And that was a blessing in its way. If you had told me “if you give up sugar you’ll have peace around food.” I would probably not have even understood what you were offering. And I definitely would have kept eating cake. But there is saying among people who have the same eating boundaries that I do. “Come for the vanity. Stay for the sanity.” And I did not know then that the sanity would be the best part, but here we are.

I have a different relationship to my weight now. I am not skinny. I don’t worry about being skinny. But one thing I will say about the difference in my weight, I am incredibly grateful to have a body that flies below the radar. People don’t really notice it. But they sure did when I was fat. And that anticipation of cruelty and judgment from others made me think about my body all the time. I almost never think about my body now. And that is a huge relief.

For well over a decade, I have not had to think about my body. I don’t hate my self for either my body or my inability to control my eating. I don’t think about what I look like or if people are judging me. I am free from my obsessions! Ok, I’m still pretty obsessed with fantasy novels. And yarn craft. And…oh, you get the point! What I am not obsessed with is getting high on food and then making sure nobody can tell by my body that I am obsessed with getting high on food.

So happy anniversary to me! And (fingers crossed) many more.

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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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12 Dec 2021

How not to ruin someone’s holiday

This week I saw a social media post reminding everyone that commenting on someone’s weight is not a holiday greeting.


So friends, I am reiterating that lovely reminder, and adding that other people’s bodies are none of our business. What other people are eating is none of our business. How other people dress their bodies is none of our business. Yes, I am talking about your mother, your sister, your nephew, your children and grandchildren. That love is not conditional on beauty, or behavior, and not health either. If you can unconditionally love someone with lupus or cancer or epilepsy, you can unconditionally love your fat friends and family, even if (and it is an “even if” and not an “even though”) they are unhealthy.


There are things that 12 steppers are regularly reminding one another of: That our friends and families have their own Higher Powers. That unsolicited advice is a form of abuse. That we keep our eyes on our own plates. That we worry about cleaning up our own side of the street.


Also, nothing anyone has ever said about my body ever changed my life for the better. It never made it easier for me to love myself. It never made it easier for me to control my eating. In fact, when I was fat, it pretty exclusively made me eat things to numb the pain those “well meaning” people caused with their “concern.” Now it just makes me feel like I can’t trust the people who say those things.


So here is to happy holidays to you and yours. May you spread love and good cheer.

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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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