onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “self-care”

13 Apr 2025

Practice makes me proud of myself

I watched a video on social media this week about how if you want to truly be an activist a great step to take is to start some slow hobbies. To learn how to continuously work and wait with hope.

Not results.

And I looked at myself, which I do when I am confronted with something that I want or am afraid that I lack, and I realized that that is what having my eating under control has been teaching me, a day at a time, for over 19 years. 

In fact, it was in getting my eating under control that I not only returned to crochet, but for the first time in my life, had the wherewithal, the attention span, the patience, and the cognitive capacity to significantly advance my skills. Then I had the desire to take on yet another craft, knitting. Then embroidery. Weaving. All the while still learning new crochet techniques. New knitting. Trying new things. Designing! Designing crochet dolls. Designing crochet doll clothes. Designing accessories for dolls. 

I can make things that only existed in my head before! Things that were once just yarn and stuffing and my imagination are now art.

But that took time. So much time. So many years of trials and failures and biting off more than I could chew. And sometimes managing to succeed anyway! And sometimes just not. And having to take 2 steps back. And having to take 200 steps back! Years, coming on decades.

Addiction and instant gratification have a lot in common. And there are many ways that they overlap. When I was in the food, actively in my sugar addiction and eating compulsively, the instant gratification of sugar always got me too high to really be able to advance in learning much of anything. And any project that didn’t come out the way I expected was a miserable failure. And anything I did had to be done in a frenzied burst, before I got too high on sugar and sort of ran out of steam.

I did creating but it was always long on idea and short on execution.

When I put boundaries around my eating, first thing I had to learn was to wait at least 4 hours between meals, plus over night for breakfast. That felt like an eternity to me. It was literally painful sometimes. It sometimes felt like I was going to die. That’s not hyperbole. It’s addiction.

So learning to wait to eat was a lesson. Then doing something to pass the time was a lesson. Then rediscovering my love of learning was a lesson.

Keeping my eating under control is a practice. There is no end goal. It’s an ongoing lifetime goal of authentic living. It’s a lifetime commitment to process. And I only have that because I happen to be a sugar addict, who is now in recovery. A happy outcome to a shitty situation.

So many of the best and most fulfilling aspects of my life are a direct result of getting my eating under control and thereby gaining the ability and possibility of choosing delayed gratification. The possibility of practice. Of doing something just because I do it.

Because if I am goal oriented, at 4:30 in the morning, my butt is not going to be as good an incentive to get out of bed. But I am going to get out of bed anyway, because I work out with my husband at 5, so I may as well get that butt. It’s the workout that is the practice. An hour a day, 5 days a week, to practice loving movement and strengthening of my sacred vessel.

My workout, my meditation, my sleep, my skin care, and my eating are all ways that I take care of myself every day. And any results are from consistency and are a bonus. I do them because the practice makes me proud of myself. Period.

It is a blessing for me to have learned the lesson of patience, of growth, of worthwhile things taking time to build, before the pervasiveness of things like Door Dash and Amazon Prime. Because I cannot imagine how much less patience, or how little capacity for change I would have now if I had not put boundaries around my eating 19 years ago. 

It’s worth the reminder for myself that worthwhile things take patience and time. And that the things that I want and want to be a part of, are going to take, not just work, but work, plus time and hope. 

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16 Mar 2025

To trust and be trusted

Today is 12 years with my husband and our 9th wedding anniversary. He was my only boyfriend ever. And he didn’t come into my life (back into my life – we were childhood friends) until I had my eating under control for 7 years. 

SEVEN YEARS! And I was GORGEOUS! And 35 and single that whole time. And that sort of frustrated me, and made me angry at Life. Like I did the thing to be socially acceptable and I wanted my “reward.”

But as I mentioned earlier, I had had my eating under control for years. And those years really do accumulate in terms of clarity and self-trust. So I knew better than to decide that just anyone would do. 

I chose a partner who would grow with me. Maybe not at the same time or at the same rate, but by their own standards and choices. And I could do that, see and choose that, because I was growing the whole time I wasn’t eating compulsively and high on sugar. And he was either going to like that and choose to stick around. Or he was going to be disappointed and leave. 

That is what I have learned the most clearly from having my eating under control: My life is the most fulfilling when I am unapologetically myself. I attract MY people. I repel people who are offended by me or the fact that they cannot change me. 

I won’t imply that I am not physically beautiful, because I certainly am. But I am also weird. And loud. And ridiculous. And purposely annoying. And I live 300+ days a year in yoga pants and an oversized men’s hoodie. And I leave a trail of either yarn or hair or both positively everywhere. And I sob until I’m dehydrated, sometimes because I’m desperately sad and sometimes because the character in the audiobook I’m listening to has been grievously betrayed and humiliated. And I am also not a spectacular housekeeper. 

But I AM a quality partner and friend. A person my communities can count on. Honest, honorable and generous. A person of integrity. An empathetic and loving companion. Because I have my sugar addiction and my compulsive eating under control.

When I was eating compulsively I only thought about how things would impact me. How they would hurt me. I didn’t care about the impact I had on others. And I would throw anyone under the bus to “take care” of myself. I would not have been a good partner. I would only have been looking at myself. But I was still very upset that I was not a “girlfriend” or a “wife.” That I had not been chosen!

Being a member of the community of men and women who support one another in keeping our sugar addiction arrested taught me that being of service is its own kind of self care and spiritual nourishment. And because of being active in my community I know that allowing someone to be of service to me is also part of love and community.

When I asked a friend in my community how she found her partner, she said she stopped looking for a partner and became the kind of person she wanted to date. Basically, don’t wait to be someone’s partner to start to learn how to be a good partner. A sort of spiritual Be Do Have. 

I am very grateful for my husband. And for 12 years of partnership. And for all of the ways we have inspired each other to be better for ourselves. But also very much for my own willingness to trust and be trusted.

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09 Mar 2025

Do the next thing and hope it’s the right thing

Throughout my life I spent a lot of time being told “the way it is” about so many things. And really just not believing. Just deciding that I was going to do it my way and see what could happen. 

I definitely did not choose the path of least resistance. Kind of ever. 

But when it came to my body I *never* believed there was any other possibility than the very narrow one I felt confined to. I was fat. I had a certain shape. That was just the way it was.

When I quit sugar and carbohydrates and started to weigh my food 19 years ago, that was the very first time that I felt like I had any control over my body. Before that my own body had felt like a curse and a force of nature. I could lose weight, but I could never really stop eating. Every weight loss felt like a lie. I KNEW that it was unsustainable. Until I stopped putting my drug in my system. 

So ok. That was amazing. I could stop eating sugar and I could be “not fat.” But I still had a very specific shape and it was “weird.” I had to dress to “hide my flaws.” My weight distribution was all up front. I had  big belly. I had wide hips but no butt. My shorter right leg (from when I was born with a club foot and they put me in a full cast from hip to toe) was bigger and stronger and so was/is my right foot. I carried almost all of my weight on it all the time. My right hip hurt constantly. It was just the way it was. And it was still a more comfortable and easy body than when I was eating compulsively.

And then I started walking stairs and as my butt got bigger my center of balance moved way back so I was no longer balancing on my toes. And my belly got smaller as my balance shifted back. But as my legs got stronger and stronger my back started to get tighter and I had to spend a lot of time stretching and massaging my leg muscles to open my back up.

So a couple of weeks ago I started using a lift in my right shoe to accommodate the full one inch difference between my left and right legs. And that ended up making a huge difference in my back. 

In less than 2 full weeks it has reduced my back and hip pain and significantly increased my range of motion backwards. 

None of these things ever felt like anything I had any kind of power over. They felt predestined and set in stone. But I just didn’t know anything. And when people or media or movies told me about “how it was” with bodies like my body, I just believed them in a way I didn’t for almost anything else.

I was ashamed of myself and my body when I was in the food. Ashamed of my fatness, ashamed of my shape, ashamed of any anomalous aspect. And that kept me from even thinking of simple fixes. I would have to be worthy of that. I would have to just be in need of a little help. Not irrevocably broken…

But now that my eating is under control, I love my body. The beautiful, the weird, and the weirdly beautiful. And by loving my body I have a shot at taking an action that leads to me loving it more. Like putting a lift in my shoe. 

I am trying to remember every day and in all things that there is no “way it is.” There is only the way it has been and my choice of what to do next for myself and my community. And I’m trying to remember that I did not know what was possible before I started any of these things. I just did the next thing and hoped it was the right thing. 

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02 Mar 2025

Connection collection

I don’t spend a lot of time with people other than my husband. And I like it that way. I have certainly set it up that way for myself. We often live in a different city every year or two and I am not out and about making friends. 

I am at the grocery stores and the craft shops or at home cooking and crafting. I talk to my friends on the phone who are mostly out of state anyway. 

But my husband turned 50 this week! (Yay!) And his grandma turned 90 the same day! (Wow!) So we flew from SLC home to Chicago for a few days. We drove to Indianapolis to visit his grandma. Plus he got to reunite with his step daughter and meet his step grandson for the first time. Not to mention hanging out with the usual suspects when we’re home for a few days. And the neighbor cat was convinced to love me again with (multiple) treats!!! So there was a lot of face to face interaction. With lots of people. Some new.

But it was easy. And the reason is because when I have my eating disorder and sugar addiction under control I don’t spend my time worrying about what other people think of me. I like me. I act and think and behave according to my own heart. And when I don’t I apologize and make amends. You either like me or you don’t. It’s not really my concern. 

And that leaves lots of room for connection. The people who love me and whom I love are MY PEOPLE. And I don’t have to do anything to make them like me. I don’t have to contort myself. I am just the most authentic that I can be. And in all that freedom there is so much room for friendship, camaraderie, community, laughter, mourning, and love. 

When I got my eating under control 19 years ago, I didn’t have a lot of sense of community. Actually I felt like I knew what community was. I came from a big family. But they felt very unwelcoming to me. And I had friends, but in retrospect, many of them were also unwelcoming. Jealous or snide or mean. And I was some side of that coin with many people. There are very few people from my past that I am friends with. (I have new friends. In my food program and out.)

But then all of a sudden I had a food program and these women (and men but mostly women) who wanted to help me keep my commitments to myself. And they were willing to give me their time and energy and wisdom, because someone had done it for them. And I was expected to do it as well when called upon. 

And the thing about community, even when there are people I don’t like, because there are definitely people in my food program that I don’t like, is that it makes for quality connections. And connections make us feel necessary. Seen and acknowledged. And that feels good. It even feels good to do something helpful and generous for the people you don’t like sometimes. Very proud, at the very least. 

It has been a joy to be around these people this week. Laughter and tears and intimate conversations and stupid stuff too. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m exhausted. I can’t wait to go hide in my SLC apartment and craft like the goblin I am. But this week has been a wonderful reminder of how much love there is in my life. And I only have it and feel it because I am not compulsively eating drug foods.

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23 Feb 2025

Is this growth? (Probably not but it is different.)

I have been rationing Sweet n Low since yesterday when I realized that I didn’t have any more in the house than what was on my counter (unheard of, frankly) and I didn’t want to leave the house to go get more. In fact I don’t want to leave the house until tomorrow. So I divided it up and I have been using it wisely. 

I need you to know that when I was in the food I absolutely would have left the house in the middle of a blizzard on foot to get ice cream. And maybe even have eaten all or most of it on the way home. So I probably got a lot more than just ice cream.

But now I keep my eating boundaries the way I chased sugar. So if I think I need some artificial sweetener or I don’t know what I am going to do, you’re damn right I am going to get me some artificial sweetener. 

But today, 19 years into having my eating under control, I can just ration out my artificial sweetener. I don’t need to go out in a blizzard, or even just when I don’t want to, to get my pacifier. I can manage.

If you think I am going to be ashamed or embarrassed by my “pacifier,” please think again. I do whatever it takes to keep my sugar addiction under control. And almost 2 decades of being in control doesn’t make me less of an addict, it just makes it harder to remember how desperate I was at 28, not being able to stop eating, and doing all sorts of awful things to my body to try to keep my weight down. 

But it feels kind of good to not NEED to leave the house. And honestly, I have not felt deprived using less. Perhaps I planted a seed for myself. To cut down (someday), or even let it go (eventually.) 

But not today.

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16 Feb 2025

Trusting Life to be exactly what I need

I’m feeling creative again. I’ve been trying new makes. And I made a short instructional video on “reading your knitting” for someone on social media. Lots of ideas and thoughts swishing around with no idea what I will settle on. Some trials and errors. Mostly imaginings and daydreams with a few shots at different fibers and sizes.

For a few weeks I was out of ideas. Not in a bad way. I was just creatively exhausted. I did some mindless knitting. Listened to my audiobooks. Went for a walk. Watched some videos on crochet and embroidery techniques. 

Having my eating under control let me create a life for myself where I don’t have to worry about if I am doing enough. Because all I have to do is keep my sugar addiction and compulsive eating under control. If I can do that then it was a successful day. And as long as I am not craving drug foods, I have a shot at doing something meaningful to me tomorrow. Or the next day. 

Keeping my eating under control is me taking the very best care of myself. Everything on top of that is a blessing. And the longer I keep my addiction under wraps, the more I am able to do big, beautiful things above and beyond keeping my eating boundaries.

I used to always wonder if I was doing enough. And the answer was always that unless I was working myself to death, I was not.

So I didn’t really do anything. I worried about what needed to get done. I froze up. I freaked out. And I felt really bad about it. And I drugged myself with sugars and carbohydrates to feel better.

Now I know how to do things with the time and energy and love that I have in the moment. And as an artist I don’t feel compelled to be making all the time. I don’t need to be creating and putting out art to feel like an artist. Plus I have never rushed myself into something spectacular. 

Having my eating under control has taught me that the most important learning is learning to be still and listen to my life and my heart. And the best thing for me to grasp was that it all takes much more TIME than I thought it would and assumed it should. That care and attention take time. That fully grasping something new takes time. That when it comes to creating my most authentic self, everything worth anything takes time.

So I didn’t have to worry about not creating for a while. And I don’t have to work in a frenzy to complete a project before the “magic” runs out. And I don’t have to distrust myself or my discipline or my work ethic. I could, and can, trust myself. And trust that the more authentically I live, the more I can trust my Life to be exactly what I need.

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02 Feb 2025

The Other F Word

A particular thing that has come up for me several times this week is the word fat, and how I feel about it and how the rest of society feels about it.

I use it as a neutral descriptor. But I forget that that is after well over a DECADE of dismantling my internalized fat phobia. 

See I *hate* the euphemisms. Every fat person has the ones they can tolerate and the ones they despise. But you sure as hell are not going to get any kind of consensus. And the truth is, we use the euphemisms because we have made the word fat an insult all the time.

Even after I have taken all of the sting of the word away for myself, there continue to be people who will hear me describe my young self as fat and insist that I was not fat! That I was pretty. (Spoiler alert: I was both!!!) For so many people fat is never ok. It has connotations of laziness, incompetence, dirtiness, and general lack of self control.

My husband does not like to use the word. And I have to say he regularly makes me cringe with his euphemisms of choice. 

I watched an American woman on social media talk about plus size stores in Japan and how they all have “fat” in the store name. And that it was clearly an insult. (The truth is, it probably is? But that is Japan.) We’re here in the USA and she was only willing to say “plus sized.” And made it very clear that in her world, the word fat is a rude slight. 

And then in a conversation with a friend on social media about the woman who was denied a Lyft ride, he very specifically chose not to use the word fat. And said so when I did use it. Because of the connotations. Because he was trying to keep it neutral.

The United States has a problem with fatness. We hate it as a culture. And the truth is, the refusal to use the word makes all of the euphemisms just reinforce the fact that we are being “delicate” about a thing we find shameful. When someone tells us we’re not fat we’re pretty, they are making sure we know we’re “one of the good ones.”

Once I made the choice to accept my body as the holy vessel it is, I do not judge bodies. And if I say that I was, or someone else is fat, it only means that their beautiful and unique vessel is bigger and has more fat than other beautiful unique vessels. Not that I have a judgement on their beauty or heart or their humanity.

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26 Jan 2025

Not the same person anymore anyway

I recently started doing my meditation practice as a walking meditation with a mantra. The mantra is Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

I made the change because I felt like my mind was wandering during sitting meditation. It has definitely been a good experience so far. My mind doesn’t wander nearly as much. Plus I am getting an interesting look at how many “programs” I have running at the same time in my head.

I don’t know if changing my meditation will change anything else, but my experience is that small changes *can* cause huge unexpected transformations. 

When I got sick in early 2022 I got adult onset asthma. But I didn’t know because I hated doctors. And I am deeply stubborn.

I couldn’t breathe to jog, but I had a commitment to workout 5 days a week. A COMMITMENT! I take that shit seriously. So for as long as I could I still jogged. And it was brutal. I was making myself sick and dizzy regularly. And then like NINE MONTHS LATER I started walking stairs instead of jogging. 

Stairs changed so many things for me. First by butt. I started to have a butt. Which changed my entire outlook on skinny. Because I *wanted* a butt. I was actively trying to get bigger not smaller for the first time in my life. For anyone who was ever a fat girl, you know this is monumental. And my daily cardio is still stairs, though now on a fancy stepper where I regularly step a 10 minute mile which both makes me deeply proud and keeps my butt getting bigger!

And somewhere in there, yes also with the desperate pleas of my husband who likes me very much it would seem, I even waded my way through first using urgent care, then getting myself a doctor and actually taking care of my asthma and the rest of my health. Like blood work and mammograms and the whole nine. Decades of terror and trauma dealt with in less than a year. 

How??? I don’t know. But I wasn’t the same person anymore anyway. 

I don’t know if walking meditation will change anything. But I can’t say that it won’t. The truth is I am ready for change. And I’m telling Life by making some changes of my own in my time. 

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19 Jan 2025

Worth every boring moment

I made another very cool pouch! A Taco Pouch, with a zipper and a taco fabric lining. It’s amazing! I love it!

But on Wednesday this past week I did not love where I was. All of the creative part was done. All that was left to do was assembly. So lots of detail work. 

My husband is a kind of construction worker, and he runs jobs where they build and install machines. And we sometimes talk about “show steel” which is the part of the job that looks impressive. Like if yesterday there was nothing but an empty space there and now there’s a bunch of machine standing up all over the factory. But for the next few days, the work will be detail work. It will be tightening bolts and putting up handrail, etc. Which still needs to be done, but doesn’t look like anything. And it doesn’t impress anyone.

So all I had left on Wednesday was detail work. And I had a great new idea for a cheeseburger pouch! So I didn’t *want* to iron fabric and make and cut out patterns on graph paper, and impale myself on straight pins while trying to cut and sew. 

But I did. Because crafting is not only about the creative part. For me it’s about details. About my own fastidiousness. About craft. About my understanding that a job worth my time and energy is worth utmost care and attention.

And I’m so glad I did. Because it’s a real masterpiece. I am so proud of it!

And then about 1/3 of the way through the cheeseburger, I needed a break. I had exhausted my creativity. 

So for the past few days I have been not creating. I’ve been cleaning. Doing mindless knitting that is all hands and rhythm and no brain.

I think if I had not finished Taco Pouch, I would not be able to. It would have been lost in the creative void with the pieces of a bunny and the head and body of a discarded character doll and a handful of other projects.

But I did complete it. And now when I am filled up again creatively and ready to make again, I can get back to my cheeseburger. And know that I have a history of completing these pouches, even when I am at the boring part. 

There is pride in knowing I will do what it takes to make something to completion. It doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s something I have had to cultivate. And it’s worth every boring needle pricked moment.

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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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