onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “self-care”

01 Mar 2026

Not right. But just right

This week my husband and I had a talk about money and how he wants to move some around. 

The truth is I disagree with his plan. But entirely intellectually. And his plan is not bad. Just different than what I think we should do. What I think would make *his* long term money goals a reality. Because if we are honest my only long term money goal is to continue to never be stressed about money ever again.

But there is a part of me that is sort of trained to want to be recognized as right. Don’t you see…if we do it MY WAY you will get what you want. 

But I don’t do that.

What it comes down to is that honestly, I don’t actually care. Not the way my husband does. I don’t have the same kinds of *feelings* about money that he does. And there are very few money hills I will die on. 

Obviously I tell him what I think. But not in depth. If he pushes back even a little, I drop it. Because I am not emotionally invested the way he is. I don’t think about it the way he does. It does not affect my quality of life the way it does his. 

But I do have my own hills. Food of course. But also other things. After we ended up having to drag our kitten out from under furniture to get her on the road twice in 24 hours last week. My husband asked if I wanted to try to leave her home next time. It’s less than 24 hours. 

I said I was not comfortable with that and probably wouldn’t be for a while. That I would come up with some strategies for making it easier, but I was willing to drag her out if need be.

And he said “fair enough.”

There is voice in my head that says it’s stupid to care more about leaving my cat for a day than money. That money is objectively more important. More valuable. There is a voice in my head that says that it’s easy for me to not care about being poor while I am not poor. 

But I remember that I was poor for my pre-married adult life. I didn’t have high paying jobs. I did what I had to do to get by. (Like a quintessential xennial, I was participating in the gig economy before it was cool…) When I got married I stopped worrying about money. And when I stopped worrying I stopped having most feelings about money.

(Wow, I just realized that’s also true of fatness and Valentine’s Day. Maybe I should look into that pattern.)

But ultimately I most want to enjoy the peace of knowing I don’t need to be right. I don’t need to force my ideas on someone else’s feelings. I don’t need to judge myself for not caring about the things that most people care about. And I know how to take care of myself, and ask for what I need. 

So maybe not right but still just right.

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22 Feb 2026

I probably won’t stop, but I can learn

My husband and kitten and I all packed ourselves into the truck for an hour and a half yesterday, to spend less than 24 hours at our house, and then drive an hour and a half back to our apartment this morning. 

The other day I packed all of my food for those next meals. Then I packed the cat’s toys and food. The cat’s water fountain. Then my clothes. Craft stuff. 

I could have literally just packed my food and Harlow’s cat fountain. (When I type it out even that seems a little overkill. No I will not stop bringing her fountain.) 

We were barely there to need anything. I never opened the suitcase. I never made anything. Food or craft wise. I went from one home to another and anything I brought to one was already in the other one.

Really I just hung out with family and ate the meals I brought. Then we left this morning. After repacking all of the cat stuff. And dragging the kitten out from under furniture…

But even though I can see that I’m a little obsessive, I know I feel better when I am prepared. For eventualities. I feel better when I know I have taken care of my own comfort, peace and happiness. It keeps me from being mad, at myself or anyone else, if things DO go pear shaped. When I am prepared I know I did what I could, so I can just shrug and say “that’s life,” and do what I can to fix it. 

So I will still probably over pack two weeks from now when we go back for less than a day. 

But also. I can learn. That I don’t need to bring two outfits a pair of pajamas, and 4 pairs of underwear for 20 hours at home….

Harlow Gold on the road in her harness giving me the ears
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15 Feb 2026

Right now that doesn’t seem too bad

My kitten, who is almost a cat, is a very independent girl. She has a limit to how much touching she likes. And how. There is generally more wrastlin’ (pronounced RAS-lin) and more games of “bite the mamma” and fewer snuggles and pets.

But she loves to sit on my lap while I am eating. 

She doesn’t try to eat my food. Usually. She is occasionally interested in knocking my silverware off the table. But in general she doesn’t need anything. Not pets or scritches or even my attention. She just wants to be there.

I was a nanny for several years and I love babies. Like *baby* babies. I know how to communicate with them. To have them understand the important things at the very least. I love you. I see you. I care. I’m here. I’m happy when you are happy, and I want to soothe you when you are not.

And communication with a cat is similar. They don’t know words. They know energies. They drink intentions, feelings, experiences. 

And I can imagine that my meal times create a kind of palpable joy in me. A peace and also an excitement.

And here is the other crazy thing. I LET HER! I let her sit in my lap during my most treasured time: meal time!

I am forever and eternally obsessed with my food. I have never wanted to divide my attention between my meal and literally anything. Not even with those beloved babies I nannied. And here I am eating one handed with a cat in my lap and I am not even annoyed or begrudging. 

Here is the thing about babies. They are only babies for a year. Those babies I nannied are in their late teens and early 20s now. Grown ups or close to it. 

But having a cat is like having a baby forever. So maybe it’s me eating my meals one handed for the rest of my life. Which right now doesn’t sound too bad.

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08 Feb 2026

Maybe someone else will get suckered into loving themselves too

I’m on the cover of Woman’s World magazine this week. I’m in the top right corner. It’s exciting!

Mostly.

Actually I have had a lot of thoughts about it. Mixed feelings. Because over the past 20 years of quitting sugar and having my eating under control, I have learned to separate my feelings about my body from my feelings about food. I have learned to love my body for all that it is and does. And to be able to love it and call it beautiful on my own terms. And to also know simultaneously that there are foods that I am addicted to. That when I eat grains and processed sugars and even some high sugar and starch whole foods, my body craves more. And those cravings are painfully intense. And that even if I don’t have to hate being fat, I can hate the way those foods make me feel.

I think all the time about how I got basically suckered into getting my eating under control. 20 years ago I had a life coach who told me I just had to get 90 days and then I would prove that I was not a food addict. (HA!) And then I thought it was going to keep me skinny. (HA HA!) I mean it did for years. But even having my eating under control, when I quit smoking almost 14 years ago, I gained weight seemingly indiscriminately. Weighing all of my food. Cutting my portions. Gaining weight anyway.

And I still kept my eating under control. Because even though I was terrified to gain weight again, and be fat again, I was more afraid of the insanity of eating compulsively.

I had to learn to honor my body at any weight. 

But magazines don’t sell that. It’s hard to get a before and after shot of joy. Or freedom. It’s hard to get a before and after shot of “I hated myself here, and here I love myself.” 

But an extreme weight loss? That is an easy thing to show.

And I should remember that I started doing what I do with food exclusively to lose weight. And it was only a series of (un)fortunate events that led me to loving my body unconditionally, and keeping my eating boundaries in all circumstances. Not to be thin, but to be grounded, nourished, and sane. 

So if Woman’s World selling weight loss through me lets someone find a solution to their eating problems, that’s another person who may get suckered into loving themselves unconditionally too.

Photo and makeup by Holly Michelle Makeup and Beauty
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01 Feb 2026

Snipped Threads

This week my account on my favorite social media platform (Threads) is glitched. I cannot get on to access it but it seems to still exist. I have been getting notifications but I can’t access them. And the truth is I don’t really want to do anything to get my account back. And I don’t even know if it’s possible. And actually taking action about it doesn’t appeal to me right now. 

So I have been on social media significantly less. And I am all the happier for it.

I am not one of those people who think the internet is “not real.” There is plenty of real news and information there. Plenty of interesting perspectives backed by science and educated experts. There are plenty of real people there.  And I have made real, true, lasting friendships there.

But it has been so peaceful to not be dealing with personalities this week. Because another thing that is on the internet is bait. To be enraged. To be mean. To be justified. To be brutal. And even after years of personally taking steps to protect and regulate my mind and body when I am on social media, that is a lot of work! I still have to stop. Breathe. Remember I get to choose my actions. I don’t need to react. I don’t want to react.

One thing that is not really on the internet is accountability. A friend of mine (whom I know through social media) says that the internet eliminates “reputation” in a way that those of us who are over 40 *had to* learn because all of life was in person. (Ok, fine. Cyrano was managing to catfish in the 1890s. But it was harder and you had to be really smart…) On line, you can disappear after you make a mess. You can hide behind a blank profile picture. You can pretend to be someone you are not. You can have a thousand different accounts presenting a thousand different personas.

I, on the other hand, didn’t take accountability in the 3D world until I got my eating under control. For the first 28 years of life I was just ruining my reputation right there in the open. I didn’t have the skills or the confidence to be honest, take responsibility, or make amends. And when I began to learn 20 years ago, I learned that you can’t really be accountable for anything if you don’t have accountability as a way of being. The way you do anything is the way you do everything. That I can really only be the one me that I am.

I couldn’t be accountable for my food and then lie about my work, or my responsibilities. And conversely, I couldn’t be a liar and keep my eating under control. 

When I stopped eating sugar and eating compulsively, it became clear to me that I couldn’t compartmentalize my life and be content. I couldn’t only be myself when it was convenient for other people. So I became more and more myself. Unapologetically. Joyfully. And it continues to this day. 

Because I am accountable to myself first. Because I care about reputation. Because I choose my actions based on my own thoughts and beliefs. Not as a reaction to rage or hurt or difficult feelings. And when I fail I make amends. 

I am not accountable *for* others. To be liked o admired or praised. I do it because it makes my life easier, better, more peaceful. Because it makes me LIKE myself. I am accountable because when my words thoughts and actions all align that way of being makes me feel free.

I may get back on my favorite platform. I may not. But I am going to enjoy this break for as long as it lasts. 

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18 Jan 2026

An eat real food pyramid?

There is a new food pyramid. And…I…like it?!

There is seemingly only one hard division, making only two separate groups. The really big one with meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables and fats. And a small one with whole grains. And the directive to eat real food and limit ultra processed foods.

I say it all the time: I am not the food police. But I also have 28 years of experience in eating sugar and ultra processed foods nearly exclusively. And 20 years of eating mostly real food and not eating my drug foods. And I can tell you that everything about my life is different than it was before I got my eating under control. And part of it is *what* I was eating. 

My body, my mind, my hormones, my skin, my emotions, my cognitive functions, literally everything works better when I eat real food. That I also abstain from sugar and simple carbohydrates I’m sure helps.

Look, I DO still eat processed foods. Dehydrated cheese and pork rinds are indeed processed. Not like, say, pizza rolls and pop tarts, but still processed. There is propylene glycol in the chocolate flavor that I put in my ice cream. I sometimes wonder if I am single-handedly keeping sweet-n-low in business…

But most of my food is food. Butter and olive oil and green beans and gorgeous steaks and full fat Greek yogurt and so much bacon! 

I like that we as a culture are moving away from carbohydrates. Not because there is anything inherently wrong with them. But because the food industry in the US and the average American diet abuses them. Sugar and carbohydrates are the primary ingredients in our ultra processed diet. Always making ALL food sweeter. Not just sweets. To get us hooked enough to eat more than we want and much more than we need. People from other countries think our regular grocery store bread tastes like cake. I have seen sugar in frozen fish! I have had to stop buying so many products over the years because the formula changed to include sugar, starch, or alcohol in the first 4 ingredients. To this day I still read labels in case some sugar or starch got snuck in.

I know that not everyone is going to be addicted to sugar. Just like not everyone is going to be an alcoholic. But that doesn’t mean it’s not hurting everyone’s bodies and brains when they use it. 

I know that “fed is best” for all people, not just babies. I know that there are a million and one reasons, political, social, and personal, why someone may only eat processed foods. I am not the food police!

But I hope this change on a bigger scale can help change the ideas of people now, and find more young parents, more kids growing up now, and maybe make a difference for their kids in the future. And maybe that’s a kid who doesn’t end up an addict.

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11 Jan 2026

A 20 year wish come true

I had my photo shoot for that magazine this week and one thing it reminded me of is how comfortable I am in my body. Just really IN it, as opposed to trying to see what others see and judge as I think they are judging. Which was my experience the first 28 years of my life.

The photographer sent me a pic for myself to keep that will not be used in the magazine, and you can see the outline of my belly in my clothes. Not my favorite, but not emotionally devastating.

But when I was posing, I was not thinking about my belly. Or my chins. Or my arms. I was not thinking about anything but following directions. Or maybe that I am pretty. And when it was done I sent that picture with the belly to a couple of people. Because I did not feel the need to hide it or hate it. (Ok I didn’t and wouldn’t send it to everyone…a girl still needs to know her audience and hold her boundaries.) But I did not hate my body for having a belly. And that is a miracle. 

When I got my eating under control, I had been volunteering in a self help seminar, and the leader asked me what I wanted to get out of the seminar. And I said “for my body to stop being an issue.” And literally 20 years later I live every day in a body that is not an issue.

The problem when I was eating compulsively was that I made my body my enemy for a long time. I didn’t give it what it needed and I expected it to give me what I wanted. And instead it gave me what I needed. And I was ungrateful. 

Food saved me when I needed it. I could not manage my feelings and emotions as a small child. I really thought they might kill me. That is not an exaggeration. I was terrified of not being capable of living with so much pain. And food got me through. Right up until it started to kill me. 

Now I give my body what it needs. Not as an ultimatum. Not like training an animal. Like nurturing a plant. Water and light. Exercise for strength and mobility. Good food for both energy and pleasure. Rest. Learning.

No where in there is anything about my weight. I am perfectly comfortable in this body. Happy to make it bigger with muscles. Not worried about making it bigger with fat. 

So I am grateful to have the shoot over and done. It was more thinking about my body than I like. But I am even more grateful that I got to experience myself just being, even when the focus *was* on my body.

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28 Dec 2025

Twenty years ago and a lifetime ago

Twenty years ago today I was pretty miserable. 

I don’t think about it much at all now. Not even as my anniversaries approach year by year. 

But someone said something to me recently that reminded me that 20 years ago right now, I was 28 years old, I was an exercise bulimic and a regular old stick a toothbrush down your throat bulimic, I had gained 30 pounds since Halloween two months earlier, and I was terrified because I could not see a way out. 

But also, it was good for me. A kind of shock to my system. I had hit a bottom. 

Once I started trying to make myself throw up, I could not pretend that I didn’t have a problem. We had reached After School Special levels of not okay.

As I approach my 20th anniversary this week, I get to really remember the excruciating pain of existing in the food. I could not stop eating. I could not stop punishing my body for it. With laxatives, with bulimia, with exercise to the point of and past injury, with harming myself any way I thought I had to so I could be in a different body. BUT STILL I COULD NOT STOP EATING!

So yes, it basically comes down to the fact that I am grateful for the ability to stop eating. Food thoughts don’t plague me. All of my eating is guilt free. I have a life beyond my wildest dreams. I have the ability to live a life between my meals. And love my meals 3 times a day. 

These boundaries are freedom. This freedom is liking, loving, and trusting myself. This is nearly two decades of increasing peace.

So here’s to my gratitude for the past almost 20 years and here’s to a lifetime more. 

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21 Dec 2025

The least interesting thing about the whole thing

I have been thinking about my body a lot lately. Because people are probably coming to take my photo for a magazine. It is to accompany an article about a book that talks about addictive eating. And I am an example of someone who successfully changed my eating lifestyle. 

Right around the time I had just turned 28, I was doing a self help seminar and the instructor asked me what I wanted to get out of it. And my answer was “for my body to stop being an issue.” 

By the end of that seminar I was no longer eating sugar and grains and I was weighing and measuring my food. My body didn’t stop being an issue at that very moment, but it was the first step in a long and continuing journey. And it worked. 

In getting my eating under control I started to think of my body as myself. I started to think of my body as a wonderful vessel that provided all of my abilities! I started to think of my body as sacred and undeserving of being judged. ESPECIALLY for its size and shape and “perceived beauty.” I started this blog to really start to dismantle all of the ways I lived small. And hating my body was one of my biggest obstacles.

The way I think about my body and my weight has slowly but entirely shifted in the past almost 20 years. But here is a situation where it is in someone else’s best interest to “show off” my body in a certain way. In a certain light.

And it’s making me feel insecure. What if I don’t look thin enough? What if I don’t impress everyone the way this magazine wants me to?

Which makes me a little mad at myself. And a little ashamed. Because I don’t want to feel insecure about my amazing body. And I don’t want to reduce getting my eating under control to “weight loss.” Because losing weight is the least important or interesting thing about getting control of my sugar addiction.

But I also know that I only started to get my eating under control because I wanted to stop hating my body. And what I hated at the time was being fat. And I don’t think I could have found myself all the way over here honoring all bodies and dismantling my anti-fatness if I hadn’t been desperate to stop being fat.

What I have been reminding myself is that I am not selling anything. And that I am not invested in having my picture in a magazine. But I am VERY invested in sharing the message that if you can’t stop eating and it’s making you miserable, there is a solution. 

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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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