onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “responsibility”

14 Dec 2025

An almost 20 year head start

I got my eating under control at 28. And that is a miracle. For me. But also, it’s not common. 

Most people (definitely not all) who come into food recovery are women. And most women come in about my age now. I’m 48. Essentially, when their hormones are changing. And when that need to please is greatly reduced.

I heard a woman say that society calls menopause “The Change” because that’s what it is for men. Their wives and mothers change. The women they relied on for everything are no longer as reliable, and some of the wives just LEAVE! (Can you imagine????) 

The older I get, and the less “reliable” my body gets, the MORE reliable my heart and soul and passion are. The more creative I am. The more proud I am of the time I spend learning and making and the product of my work. The more inspired and excited I am.

And I have all of this because in January of 2006 I decided that my sugar addiction had such a hold on me, that it would be better to give up all of my joy (I really thought that food was my only joy) than to live the rest of my life with the compulsion to eat and all of the shame that came with it.

A thing I hear a lot now is “I love your energy.” And they are right! I have great energy. I know I do because I WORK at it. And it’s a product of a lot of things that most people don’t actually like when it’s happening to them. 

You love my energy? I say NO to things that drain my energy. I limit my interactions with negativity and greed. I limit my interactions with drama. Even if I like you. Even if I love you. I say NO! I protect myself first, my family second, my friends third. 

And all of this is cumulative. I am just weeks shy of 20 years of taking care of my eating and letting that be the first step in taking care of the rest of my life. All of the rest of my life. So I have an almost 20 year head start of loving my body, of choosing my own peace and my own path, of living without resentment for the way I failed to measure up to someone else’s standards. An almost 20 year head start on so many women addicted to food, to sugar, to the idea of a perfect woman and the perfect body, or at least a “better body” that someone wants to sell us all. And I refuse to take that for granted. 

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28 Sep 2025

The gifts of being a slow learner

I have my first pet at 48 years old. A little black kitten named Harlow Gold. And if she has taught me anything, it’s that I have not eradicated that part of my brain that does not trust me.

Growing up addicted to sugar and carbohydrates I never trusted myself. I shut down emotionally when things went wrong. I second guessed every decision. I blamed Life and circumstance and other people for every failure. And I saw failure as a state of existence rather than a momentary experience in a longer process. So ultimately, I was, indeed, untrustworthy. 

When I got my eating under control 19+ years ago I learned to trust myself. I was being more and more authentic. Doing things because I wanted to do them, not to obtain a specific reaction from a person or persons. And I began to honor my word. Have my very basic understanding of integrity. Doing what you saying you are going to do when you say you’re going to do it and telling the truth. Things I was not good at before. 

So I began to like and respect myself. By not eating drug foods. By mending relationships. By being accountable for my own actions and their repercussions. 

And all of that made me feel like I really trusted myself. Until I got a little life to take care of. And now I can hear all of my second guessing in my head. 

This is a thing I have a lot of feelings about. That I might harm others. I have theories about why I have these feelings/fears but regardless, I do have them. And now that I have this kitten, that I am already in love with, I am constantly wondering if I am doing the wrong things. Now with a life in the balance. 

I could never have done this if I were in the food. Because I could not manage my emotions.

The truth is that I am a responsible, grown, disciplined woman. I was a nanny for newborns and children. I am a good care taker and nurturer. I have always been able to do this. But could I *handle* it? For me? Aw hell no.

I am a slow learner. I used to think I was a fast learner. And then,  when I realized I was not fast, I was ashamed of being slow. But honoring that I am a slow learner means that I can be 28 years old and quit sugar, 38 years old and learn how to drive, 48 years old and have my first pet. And they can be done with more joy than fear. With more love than punishment. 

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21 Sep 2025

From out of my mind to into my own

As a sugar addict in recovery I have a person I call every day and tell her what I am going to eat for the day. I “commit my food” to her. And there are people who call me every day. And they commit their food to me. 

Well my friend is on a road trip and it’s hard to coordinate times so I’m committing to another friend in the program. And this friend and I had a miscommunication. 

As with all communities, there are little cliques and divisions within the group. Like orthodox vs reform. Because *for the most part* we all do all the same things. But some people do some things just a little bit differently. And within these little groups there is often a line between *how different* people can be comfortable with. 

Well I committed my food and she heard something different than what I meant. And it was a little too different for her to be comfortable taking my food commitment. 

But this is the point. She came to me so generously. She pointed out her issues. She even spoke to her friend in the community before she responded to me. And she asked that I either commit to her within her comfort zone, or find another person to temporarily commit to. And then, when I understood that there was as miscommunication, I apologized for my confusing language and asked if the communication was the issue. Or if she still needed me to make any changes or find another friend to commit to. And she was so happy to say that it was just a matter of phrasing that had confused her and that all was well. 

It was so loving. It was without drama. It was two people who genuinely like each other coming together authentically to solve a relationship issue. 

I got even the ability to do that from getting my eating under control. I have friends like that because we are all growing and shifting, some also specifically by not drugging ourselves with sugar. Building up our self respect so we can go into our relationships liking ourselves enough to be peaceful. Peaceful enough to be generous. 

I spent the first 28 years of my life terrified of being caught on the wrong side. Of anything. To be wrong felt shameful. And when I was ashamed I lashed out. I got angry first. I doubled down! I would go out of my mind doing mental gymnastics to spin a situation so that I was right. I was filled with more misplaced pride than properly placed honor. 

But in having put the sugar and simple carbs down and come into my own, truly my own peace and joy and contentment, I don’t have to cling to the things that don’t work for me. I don’t have to be right. I don’t have to be ashamed of being wrong. I don’t have to be anything. And that makes me want to keep my eating under control. 

Also, for those only here for the kitten updates, Harlow continues to be the sweetest baby in the whole entire world. She is full of piss and vinegar and when we play she loves to do all the weird stereotypical things black cats do. The arched back, the sideways walk, the twinkle toes. She’s perfect and hilarious. 

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06 Apr 2025

I (over)stepped in it.

I violated a friend’s boundary this week. With no malice or ill intent. And I didn’t even think I was in the moment. But I did. And shit, did that suck!

My immediate internal reaction when she called me on it, even though she was so sweet about it, was defensiveness. All of these rebuttals flashed through my mind! *But you said! But I thought! But I didn’t mean it and you can’t blame me.* 

But years ago when I wanted to find my husband and fall in love, the best advice I got was stop looking for a husband and start *being* the kind of partner I wanted to find. And that is just great life advice. Be the kind of person I want in my own life.

How would I want someone to react to a generously set boundary? 

So I did what I have heard called “fall forward fast.” I immediately apologized, assured her of my good intentions, but also acknowledged the harm I did. I asked for forgiveness and immediately set to make it right based on her desires. 

And how she came back to me later was with so much additional generosity. Coming up with ways that she could accommodate me and keep her own boundaries. And that was amazing. And I feel even closer to her! Which is a joy! 

But I also want to say, I had a hard time forgiving myself. I slept uneasy that night. And I woke up still a little ashamed. 

Part of me thinks that this stuff is supposed to feel good. A weight off my shoulders from knowing I have honored another person. And usually it does. But right now it just makes all of the relationships in my life feel more important. And maybe more fragile. And like the stakes of being a person who can be trusted and counted on, are higher than ever.

I learned to set boundaries at all when I learned to set them around my eating. But they have turned out to be one of the best tools for living I have. Because boundaries aren’t to shut people out. They are to keep people in our lives. 

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29 Dec 2024

The sanity, but also really, the vanity.

This week a young person mistook me for a fellow young person. (Cue that Steve Buscemi gif.) And when she asked for my skin care routine, I told her. (Cosrx hyaluronic acid serum and moisturizer. Sunscreen every day.) But I also really felt the need to say that it *really* is the no sugar no alcohol. 

When people come to do what I do with food, almost all of them come to get skinny. They come for intentional weight loss. It’s why I came in January of 2006.

But it’s kind of a trap. A nice, gentle trap. Because I have not been skinny the whole time I have had my eating under control. But I have always been peaceful. A kind of peace I have never had before quitting sugar and putting boundaries around my eating. 

We call it “coming for the vanity and staying for the sanity.”

But here is the other thing. We are GORGEOUS! We are stunners all the way into our 60s, 70s and 80s!!!! I’m talking about women I know personally. Women who lived fast and wild in their youth! Women who ate themselves into wheelchairs before quitting sugar and becoming beautiful. Giving up sugar and alcohol is a kind of fountain of youth. 

I don’t miss sugar. I don’t miss alcohol. I don’t miss worrying about becoming diabetic because I can’t stop eating. And I don’t miss worrying about and hating my looks!

I spent the first 28 years of my life constantly simultaneously hating myself and worrying about what other people were thinking about my body. And now I don’t think about my looks except to assume that everyone thinks I am beautiful. It’s never on my mind. That’s so much extra room to do things that make me happy!

It’s a miracle. It’s the vanity and the sanity. 

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10 Nov 2024

My body. My choice. In all things.

When I got my eating under control, I acquired a new level of responsibility for my body. I was purposefully aware of everything that went into it. And as time went on, I took on various commitments to take practical actions toward caring for my vessel. And by practical I mean specific, quantifiable, measurable steps. What a workout looks like and how many days a week I will do that. How much water I will drink a day. How much sleep I will get and what that means about getting to bed. How many journal pages I will write every day. How many minutes I will meditate. Whatever I need to put in place to consistently take care of myself.

Before that, I didn’t know what went into my body because I did not want to know. I didn’t know how my time was spent because I didn’t want to know how much time I wasted. I didn’t want to look. And I didn’t want to see the results. 

But not knowing makes everything worse. The stories in my head vacillated wildly from a total lack of consequences, to a fate worse than anything imaginable. My head is a dangerous neighborhood.

Not looking never did me any good. 

And looking always let me see that my list of problems is truly finite. There is an end. And (so far anyway) my issues are all surmountable through attention and action. 

After all, I never thought I would be able to stop eating compulsively, and here we are, 18+ years later, and sugar doesn’t control me anymore. 

I am reminded this week that it’s more important than ever that I be aware of and responsible for my body. Fully. And unapologetically. My body. My choice. In all things. 

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03 Jul 2022

The potential to show up is enough

This past week has been a week of not much. I have done some knitting, and some daydreaming about my doll and how to proceed with embroidering her dress and crocheting her shoes (daydreaming is definitely part of the process) and I have done some cleaning, but really, I have not done much to be productive. But I was reminded this week that just keeping my food boundaries is enough.

In the beginning of having my eating under control, when people used to tell me “all you have to do in a day is weigh and measure your food,” I could really feel that. Because in the beginning, that was all I *could* do. Often! How I managed to make any money at the time is a bit of a mystery to me. The first year and a half of keeping my eating boundaries is a blur. But I know for sure it included a lot of sleeping, and a lot of watching anime.

But after 16 years, I can accomplish a lot. I have a huge capacity to get things done. I have a huge amount of time and patience and space in my head. And I like it! I like being productive. I like being good at things. I like being capable.

But the fact remains that 16 years in, it is still enough to have weighed and measured my food every day without exception. Because every day that I do that is a day that gives me the potential to do more.

Here’s another thing I understand. That having my eating under control means that when a thing needs to get done, I can do it. And I do do it. I can be counted on. I can count on myself. So if not a lot got done today, then not a lot needed to get done. And as long as I keep my eating boundaries, I can trust that I will show up for the stuff that needs showing up.

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12 Sep 2021
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It Sucked, But Then It Passed: A Life Story

This past week was challenging. In particular, because so many things happened all at once. One of the wheels on one of our sliding glass shower doors broke, so we couldn’t touch that door at all, or the door would fall off the track into the tub and inevitably shatter. But then, our pipes got clogged and we had to call a plumber to snake out the tree roots that grow in our pipes sometimes. (It’s an old house with old pipes in a neighborhood with a lot of trees.) So we needed to make sure everyone knew not to touch the door while neither of us could be there personally. And of course that was also the day the mechanic called to say that my car, which had been damaged in a small accident a month ago, was finally ready to be picked up. And we had been paying a lot of money for a rental car. All while I’m working 12-13 hour days with an hour commute each way, and my husband is doing the same, only also on Saturday and he works the night shift. 

Thankfully, I know how to ask for help. My mom and step-dad really came through for me. Coming to my house to deal with the plumber, *and* picking up my car from the body shop. 

I also know how to take care of things myself. I drove my rental back to the airport, and took a ride share back home on my own so my husband and my mom didn’t have to deal with that as well after doing so much. 

And my husband ordered parts for the shower door and managed to fix it himself. Though the parts didn’t come until after the plumber came. 

In other words, it all went to hell in a day or two, and within another day or two, all of it was resolved. 

This too shall pass. 

I don’t want to say that it was easy. And it would be a lie to say that my husband and I didn’t fight over logistics, and who needed to be responsible for what. Because we did. Because we are both tired and overworked and having emergencies come up in our personal lives, while we are already putting out work fires left and right, is a lot, and sometimes felt like it was more than we could handle. Or at least more than *I* could handle. But in the end, it was manageable. And together, and with help, we managed.

When I was eating compulsively, I could never see a way out of any difficult situation. It always felt like every problem would persist eternally. And that terrified and troubled me. And it often made me make stupid, reckless decisions. Or paralyzed me so I couldn’t do anything at all, a kind of stupid, reckless decision in itself.

The truth is, I can’t usually see a way out of difficult situations now, either. The difference is, I know now that all things pass. I know that situations change and work themselves out. I know that resistance usually makes things worse, not better. I know that if you ride the ups and downs, they all smooth out in the end.

That surrender, that willingness to trust that this or that rough patch will get worked out, either by me, or someone else, or perhaps just by life, is something I got only by putting boundaries around my eating. The addict in me has no use for patience or peace or trust. Chaos was a great chance to retreat from the world and eat a cake. Both because I wanted to forget the chaos, and because I got so high on the cake.

When I was in the food and eating compulsively, my life was mostly trouble and chaos with very few moments of peace and clam, or at the very least it felt that way. Since getting my eating under control, my life is mostly peace and calm, with a few moments of trouble and chaos. Part of that is my perception. But part of that is also my ability to take action with a clear head in the face of fear. The fear has always been there. It just gets less of a say in my life now.

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29 Aug 2021
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“How do I flip this PDF?”and other terrifying questions.

I have been having a hard time thinking about what to write today. Because all I do right now is work. But I suppose there is something to say about work in my food addiction blog. It’s about what I sometimes call my “primordial brain,” and how much of my thinking stems from a deep seated expectation that I am always in trouble. 

Regularly in my job, my boss will call me into his office. And every time he does, my immediate thoughts are that I am in trouble. That I have royally screwed something up. That I have single handedly, through some colossal data entry error, cost my company *billions* of dollars. And every time he calls me in, it is over some form of IT trouble he is having. Why won’t this print 11×17? How do I flip this PDF over? How do I get rid of/add this line to a Word doc?

For over a month I have been having a mild panic attack every time he calls out to come to his office. Even though I have never been in trouble. Because being in trouble is so old and historic that it lives in my body like a truth.

So here is why having eating boundaries saves my life. When my eating is under control, I can feel the primordial panic, tuck it away into a far corner of my brain, and walk into the office. Once it is clear that I have not cost the company billions and brought ruin upon my home and family for all of eternity, the little nugget of panic can fall away. 

But if I were eating my drug foods, that panic would eat at me. I would hear that call and immediately begin cataloguing all of the things I did wrong. Or potentially did wrong. Or could be perceived as wrong by someone in charge of my job. I would be coming up with excuses to make and people to blame for problems that didn’t even exist. I would be figuring out how to avoid going into that office. The point is that even if I didn’t do anything wrong, I would do “wrong,” or desperate, or disingenuous things to avoid getting in trouble. I would be *making* trouble for myself to get out of my fear of being in trouble. It wouldn’t matter that I had not done anything wrong in the first place. 

When my eating is under control, I see things clearly. I see myself clearly. And I don’t have to project my greatest, and unfounded fears onto the future. I can stand up, walk into the office and face whatever there is to face. Like a frustrated boss asking, “why can’t I open this attachment?”

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25 Jul 2021

A job, some fear and anxiety, probably a miracle.

One of my favorite things I had the opportunity to learn when I got my eating under control is how to go with the flow. How to let life happen as it does (because it will) and to make the best of it. To handle new and difficult situations with grace and ease.


On Tuesday morning this past week I got a call from management in my company, asking if I would take on a new position. And could I start the next day?


I was certainly happy to take it on. I have mostly just been working part time for almost a year now. And while I have enjoyed it, because I love having lots of alone time, the truth is I like work. I like being of use. I like being good at what I do. I like the feelings I get when I accomplish things. I like being impressive. My best friend’s old therapist said that a huge portion of our self-esteem comes from our job.


And there is another part of it for me right now. I am not working with my husband on this job. My boss is someone I just met for the first time on Wednesday. And while I love working with my husband, and we make a great team, there is something exciting about getting the chance to show someone else what I can do. And knowing that what he has to say means something different to the company, coming from a stranger and superior, than it does coming from the person who chose me as a life partner.


The other important thing about getting my eating under control when it comes to this job is that keeping my food boundaries has taught me how to manage my fear and anxiety. Because for as excited as I am to do this job (and I am very excited), my brain goes on a little merry-go-round ride of thoughts and feelings, and a good portion of them are fears. Fears that I will fail, that I am not as good as I think. That I am not good enough in general.


It doesn’t matter that these thoughts are irrational. Anyone with irrational thoughts will tell you that knowing you are being irrational does not change the experience of it. It’s why self-knowledge was never enough to lose weight when I (and seemingly everyone else) cared so much about my weight. (I’m sure the world still cares about my weight because it cares about weight in general. I just don’t care that it cares anymore.)


But in getting my eating under control, I learned how to stop thoughts. I learned how to change my mind. I learned how to change my thinking. I learned how to harness control over my thoughts as a tool.


Eating compulsively always had me too high on sugar to manage anything, especially my thoughts. It had me foggy, and careless, and numb. These are not ideal circumstances to take control of one’s own brain. The point of getting high was always to stop thinking and feeling entirely, not to control myself.


I am very excited about getting a new opportunity. And if you read last week, I do believe that this job came straight out of a miracle door. So I am going to keep meditating on miracles and the doors they emerge from. And I am going to keep my eating boundaries. And I am going to do an amazing job! Probably. And if not, I expect there will be another miracle coming through another door. But for right now I’ll do the work in front of me.

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