onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “self-care”

06 Aug 2023

I’ll think I was cute in ten years

The hardest part of this blog is that there are only so many things to say and only so many ways to say the same thing when it’s such a specific topic. Sugar addiction and the associated eating and body image disorders. I struggle, often, to find something to say that I don’t think is repetitive. I have even considered retiring this blog. But then I remember that I don’t write this blog to be read. I write it to say the truth I need to hear. For me. With the additional hope that it can help another addict.

So with that in mind, I have learned to honor that they won’t all be great posts. I try to remember that making great great art is contingent on one’s willingness to make bad art. So I just keep writing them. I keep committing to the practice. 

Recently I noticed someone reading through the archives of this blog. (Hi person! Thanks for reading!) I certainly don’t remember all of my posts. (It’s 52 a year for over 10 years.) So I went through and read the ones my new reader was reading , and I was happily surprised to find that I thought they were good. Interesting. Thought provoking. Funny! (I’m a lot less funny in this blog than I have been in years past. Part of it may be that I am comfortable enough in the writing that I spend less time trying to impress my readers. I feel like I should work on that.)

Certainly I noticed that there were sometimes points that I failed to make coherently. Plenty of punctuation and grammar errors. (I should probably have an editor. I mean I probably won’t, but I probably should.) But in general, I am proud of this body of work. It’s good work. Some of it is even great. 

In having my eating under control, I don’t have to have doubts about that pride. I don’t have to be falsely humble. I don’t have to ask you if you think it’s good work. I absolutely hope you do! I hope you love it and find it helpful! But I don’t need to know. I don’t need to ask. It’s really none of my business. And I don’t make it my concern.

You know that thing that happens, where someone takes a picture of you, and you think you look terrible at the time, but then you look at it years later and you realize that you looked good, you looked like yourself, not at all the weird troll you thought you looked like 5 minutes after the photo was taken? That is what it has felt like to look back at my words for the past decade. Oh! I was clever. I was wise. 

But it is also really special see the sparks of a change in thinking that would affect the trajectory of my life. All before I knew I was doing those things, thinking those thoughts, changing those patterns. All a record of the process of me becoming the most authentic person I can be. 

And I suppose it reminded me that I feel like I am in the middle of a change now that I don’t fully grasp. That it will only be in retrospect that I will understand what is going on right now with my body and my work life and my health. So perhaps in another ten years, I will look back at this period of time, and see the whole picture. And realize how cute I really was.

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30 Jul 2023
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Coming around again (as long as I am not dead yet)

In my life, both before and after I got my eating under control, my weight has fluctuated. I have lost a significant amount of weight a few times. And a thing that happens every time is I have to figure out what to do about clothes. 

Over the past 4 months I have been losing a lot of weight relatively quickly. Right now, the only things that really fit me are some workout clothes and a pair of linen pants that I bought recently, and a handful of dresses I already had with elastic waist and/or top bands.

I don’t want to buy more clothes right now. I don’t want to spend the money until my body and I find some equilibrium and I can be relatively sure that they will fit me for more than a couple of weeks.

But also, it’s not fun to get dressed in clothes that don’t fit anymore. Even if they don’t fit because I am getting smaller. 

I loved my body in a U.S. size 14. I felt beautiful. I felt sexy and womanly and wonderful. I wasn’t self-conscious or embarrassed. I loved my food,  and my eating was under control. And I love clothes. So I had a lot of clothes that I loved that fit me. 

This weight loss was not planned and it is not really important to me. But it does have these very real consequences. And they can take up a ridiculous amount of space in my head. I can worry about the money and the timing. About whether I should get rid of my size 14s, or keep them in case I need them again in the future. About where to shop and what I want. About how to teach my Amazon account that I am no longer the size it thinks I am, so it can stop recommending everything too big. All while knowing that I am not even going to do anything about it for now anyway.

When I was eating compulsively, whether I was fat or not, I was constantly thinking about my body. CONSTANTLY! It was a program running in the background all the time. But since I got my eating under control, when my weight is stable, I don’t think about my body almost at all. All of my “body crazy“ goes dormant and I just sort of float through life content to be in my vessel. 

But when my body is changing it is on my mind almost as much as before. It’s not as traumatic, and not as dramatic, but it’s there and it’s intense. 

In my life I have a handful of recurring lessons. Things that I have to tackle and retackle, growing a little at a time. And one of them is learning to have a loving relationship with my body. So this too shall pass. And then come around again. And I suppose as long as I am not dead yet, around yet again.

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
16 Jul 2023

Less bacon…but still a life beyond my wildest dreams

I was talking to a friend this morning who does what I do with food, and we were talking about how when we were eating compulsively we could never listen to our bodies because we were stuffing them too full with food for them to really tell us anything.

Over the past couple of months I have been losing weight quickly. And since I only eat 3 weighed and measured meals a day, I was eating a lot of high fat proteins like bacon and pork rinds to satisfy my hunger. It allowed me to feed myself enough calories to stave off the gnawing stomach pains. And that really helped. Until last week. When it became clear that my body didn’t need that much fat every day anymore. And it didn’t want it anymore either. 

Over the past few days I started eating more leaner proteins with my meals along with my fatty ones. I am still me and I will always eat bacon. But in smaller quantities for now. 

It’s a miracle that I can hear what my body has to say. That I knew to eat heavier, and now I know to dial it back. That my body is an ever changing vessel and it needs different things at different times and that if I pay attention, it will make it clear to me what it needs. And that I am not shoving it full of so much junk that I have numbed myself and smothered anything it had to tell me.

When I keep simple sugars and carbs out of my body, I keep a clear head, which lets me listen to my body and my life and make choices accordingly. And because of that I have a life that I could never have imagined before I got my eating under control. Truly a life beyond my wildest dreams.

Posted in Body image, Inspiration, Life, Personal Growth, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
09 Jul 2023

Ready to be of service

I have been reminded this week that if nothing changes then nothing changes. It’s a saying I heard a lot when I first got my eating under control. If I don’t do anything different, I won’t get different results or a different life. 

I spent much of my young life wishing things were different than they were, especially my body. I wanted to be thin and I was not. But also, I wanted to be thin, while I simultaneously wanted to eat whatever I wanted. And I wanted both of those things to be true at the same time. And any time I did lose weight, I was eating smaller quantities of the same foods, until I was thin enough, or just not invested enough anymore, to go back to eating the way I wanted to. Which led to me being fat and hating my body again.

But this was true for lots of aspects of my life. I used to be late a lot. If it should take me 20 minutes to get to work, I would leave the house 20 minutes before work. And I would only make it on time about 2/3 of the time. And even if I said I would try to be better, I didn’t really *do* anything different. I just got angrier at traffic or the subway or my job. Like the “trying” was just wishing harder to be on time.

But I eventually got my eating under control because I changed the way I ate. I stopped eating simple sugars and carbohydrates. I started weighing my food. I only ate 3 meals a day with nothing in between. And I only changed because other people had gone before me and told me that if I did what they did, I could have what they had. A body and a life that were different in their joy and freedom than I had ever experienced before. And they were right. I ate differently, I thought differently, I lived differently and I got a different life.

And lately I’ve been changing again because, again, I have been making changes. I have been going to the doctor after 20 years of avoiding it, and I am taking care of my health. I have changed my workout, so my body is changing. And I signed up for The Craft Yarn Council’s Certified Instructors Program to get certified to teach crochet. So I’m acquiring new skills and techniques and learning how to make my passion for making into a shareable product. 

And all of these changes, that already feel pretty big on their own, are combining to make me feel like maybe I am on the precipice of something even bigger. Perhaps something new and exciting that I haven’t even considered before. 

I don’t know what happens next. But I am kind of thrilled. I am ready to be surprised! I am ready to be tickled! But maybe most importantly I am ready to be of service.

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07 May 2023

When it’s not about the sugar

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

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

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

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

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26 Feb 2023

Commitment and follow through >>>

One of the ways I have created a life I enjoy is through the liberal use of benchmarks and bare minimums. There are things that I do daily or weekly as means of self care, and I do them because I do them and not because I like to. Not even because I like the results. (Though I do like the results of my commitments.)

I never feel like exercising. Ok. That is not entirely true. About twice a year, I really look forward to it. That leaves another approximately 258 days a year in which I know I should work out, for my physical health, my mental state and my spiritual life, but still really really REALLY don’t want to. (Ok, that last REALLY is probably a little bit overboard, but just a little.)

This past week I had a hard time getting myself to exercise. I did it, but I started later than usual because I was unmotivated. My ass was draggin’, if you will. And it took days to realize that it’s because I’m a little sick. (I swear! I have been sick more in the past year than I have in the past 20.) Nothing crazy. Not covid. And not bad at all. The kind of sick that pre-2020, I would have easily gone into work with. The kind that barely phases a person. 

But it made me deflate at the idea of working out. And then *that* made me feel bad. It made me feel like I was wasting my time. That two weeks ago I was done before 9:30 in the morning and here it was, after 10 and I was still not moving.

So I started to remind myself this week, that it is a matter of my priorities. And that I don’t have to do things perfectly. 

My acts of self care are a priority. But I can be hard on myself for the way I feel about it. Or I can get caught up in the “right way” to do those things. Or I can be upset about not doing them as early or as quickly or as enthusiastically as I can, or did yesterday, or feel like I should. 

These kinds of feelings used to take me out. Exercise was an hour later than yesterday? Might as well not do it at all. I didn’t drink all my water before noon? Do I really care about drinking water? I didn’t do my writing meditation yet? Is it really doing anything for me anyway?

My life is made better by my “practices.” The things I do because I do them. Not because I’m looking for results. The irony, of course, is that doing things as a practice rather than with an eye towards results is the best way for me to get actual results.

I am remembering today to be kind to myself. That I do the things I do because the act doing makes my life better. Because the commitment and the follow through are creating results, whether or not the workout itself is.

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29 Jan 2023

Mad, but not at me or my integrity

Years and years ago, before I got my eating under control, I used to occasionally do “The Artist’s Way” which is a creativity workbook. I did not know it at the time but it is based on the 12 steps. And part of doing the “program” (for lack of a better term) is to write 3 pages of handwritten stream of consciousness every morning. The woman who created it called them “morning pages.” And they are based on the practice of prayer and meditation that is a big part of the 12 steps.

So when I was still eating compulsively, I was doing this workbook. And I hated morning pages. They made me frustrated and angry. And there were whole days in a row that I would literally just write “I don’t want to do this” over and over for 3 pages. 

I certainly didn’t understand it at the time, but I was angry because there were so many things on my conscience that I had shoved down so I didn’t have to look at them. And the writing was trying to bring them to the surface. To be healed. To be dealt with. To be put to rest. 

But putting them to rest meant I would have to acknowledge them. And my part in them. And the ways that I was behaving that left me ashamed. And while I was still in the food, I was never going to be able to deal with my shame.

For the last several years I have been struggling to pray and meditate. I have been angry at life. I have been so afraid for so long that it just sort of lives inside me now. My constant low level anxiety ramping up into a constant mid level anxiety. And the basis of my belief system, that Life is always right and always giving me exactly what I need, suddenly seemed untrue. Not just untrue. Like bullshit.

So I stopped praying and meditating. But that wasn’t really working for me either. I did try to get back to the happy, daily meditation I had been doing for years. And it never worked. That old routine was broken for me now and it was not going to get fixed.

But I did still want to get back into some sort of meditation practice. So I went back to “morning pages.” And it has been a great opportunity for me to clear my head. And get a good look at the things that are not clear while they are rattling around in my brain. 

But here is what I have noticed. There is no anger. There is no frustration. The past 17 years of having my eating under control, and looking at my life, and making amends for my mistakes, and owning the harm I have done, means that there is nothing in my head or heart that I can’t look at. There is nothing shoved down so I don’t have to deal with it. And if there is something that makes me uncomfortable or gives me that sense of dread, I know to look directly at it. To put it down on the page. To put the idea into words and deal with the reality of the situation.

I don’t remember what it was like to be filled with shameful secrets most of the time now. I don’t generally remember how it felt; all of the thick, slimy, suffocating feelings that went with being a person I could not like or respect. But when I do remember now, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my freedom from self hatred.

I may still be angry. And I may still be frustrated. And I am still very much afraid. But having those feelings project out, at an unfair and cruel world, is so much easier than having them project inward, at me and my own integrity.

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11 Dec 2022

First steps Vs Last resorts

I went to a doctor this week. The truth is, I went because my husband was at the end of his rope with worry. I would not have done it on my own accord. I don’t like doctors. At all.

I don’t have good associations with doctors. The closest I ever got to liking one was the sweet nurse from Planned Parenthood who did my yearly exam in my 30s and who was kind and gentle and patient with me. From the time I was very young I can remember being shamed by medical professionals. First for being afraid. Eventually, as I got older, for being afraid and then also getting emotional. And of course for being fat and “not following my doctor’s advice.“ But no doctor ever gave me any advice other than “don’t eat so much.” Or “just have one.” And never a word about *how* to just have one. (Spoiler alert: I am constitutionally incapable of just having one.)

I don’t remember the doctors that I had growing up ever offering me any kindness. Perhaps they did, but I don’t recall it. I remember the judgment of my being fat, but the doctor was also fat. I remember being terrified of having my blood drawn, and the nurses rolling their eyes and trying to shame me into calm. I remember asking for a phlebotomist who does babies and being told that it’s all the same and they are all professionals, and then leaving with a giant bruise from my bicep to my forearm and the understanding that I was the problem. (Planned Parenthood was the only place that took that seriously too. And I had a wonderful phlebotomist who used butterfly needles and called over a maintenance crew to talk with me and keep me distracted while she drew my blood.) 

Even this most recent doctor experience was frustrating. When she first examined me she was positive I had pneumonia so she had me take a chest x-ray. And when my lungs were clear and my heart was normal, she seemed annoyed. So annoyed that I literally had to ask her if that was a good thing, which she eventually agreed it was. And when I told her that I did not, in fact, have any kind of chronic lung problems and I had never had bronchitis before, she seemed incredulous. Why would I lie about having bronchitis???? I’m so sorry my relatively good health is such a blow to your ego! 

The truth is that because I went to the doctor I feel better and it’s a relief. Yes, I am glad I went. And I will have to remember this relief the next time I get sick. One thing I have learned in getting my eating under control, it’s to quit the thing that is killing you quickest. I quit sugar first. And then smoking.

But there is this other side to that. There were things that I was not doing that needed to be done. Things like drinking water and working out and meditating. And like those things, I can see objectively that going to a doctor makes sense. 

But I am a baby steps kind of person. So I am not going to start searching for a primary care physician today. All of those negative associations are still there. But maybe I can start to find my way to seeing a doctor as a first step instead of a last resort.

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27 Nov 2022

Doing the work scared.

I saw a meme with a quote the other day that really struck me. The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.

I love my comfort zone. Adore it. If my options are go big or go home, I’m going home. I’m putting on some yoga pants, taking off my bra, putting on an audiobook and doing some garter stitch knitting.

A friend of mine is an artist who makes her living painting. She was recorded speaking about it and she said one of the things that makes her a success is that she loves being afraid. I have never been a fan, personally. And perhaps that is a gift she was born with. But for me, it had to be cultivated and nurtured. And I still don’t love it. I just love the results.

When I got my eating under control I learned to make friends with being afraid. Or I became willing when I realized that the things that I wanted for myself, like a body I was comfortable in, and a level of integrity I was proud of, and a clear mind, and great relationships, and love were all on the other side of things I was terrified of. These were all things I both desired and lacked. And I wasn’t going to find them in any of my usual haunts: my couch, my bed, a pack of cigarettes or a box of Little Debbies.

In our Western culture, we have a lot of fad diets. And one of the most common things about them is they claim that you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight. One of the hardest lessons I learned was that in order to change my life, I had to change the way I was living my life. If I could eat whatever I wanted and still lose weight, I wouldn’t have needed to lose weight. (Not that I needed to lose weight. I was a beautiful fat woman! I needed to get my eating addiction under control.)

I am ready for a new chapter in my life. I would love to find a job I love. I would love to write some fiction I am proud of. I would love to complete some fiction whether or not I am proud of it! I would love to create new crochet doll designs that bring my skill level up a notch. Or ten.

But right now I’m in my comfort zone and right at this moment I don’t even know exactly how to get out of it and scare myself proud. But I am keeping my eating under control, and doing my spiritual writing and meditation. And trusting that Life will lead me in the right direction. I know that the next right thing will come to me as long as I’m willing to do the work scared.

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13 Nov 2022
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A memory of exhaustion

The other day I was writing my stream of consciousness meditation pages and I wanted to stop. Just stop in the middle. More like the beginning, but I had already started. I did not stop, but it gave me a kind of emotional flashback.

I used to do this particular form of quitting all the time when I was eating compulsively. It is specifically around some commitment I have made to be a better person. Or at least a person I personally like better.

There is a particular example of this that I sometimes think about just because of the timing. In September of 2001, I was taking a self-help seminar in the World Trade Center. I think the seminar was on a Wednesday or a Thursday so it was probably the 6th or the 7th, and I don’t specifically remember but I am reasonably certain I didn’t do my homework, and I was probably ashamed of that. And just in general I didn’t want to show up, and I knew that I should. And on this particular day, I schlepped myself all the way there to the World Trade Center, which was nowhere near anything else I did like my job or my home. I walked in the big doors into the giant corridor with the security stations and the big banks of elevators on the other side, and then I just turned around and left. Got all the way to the seminar, spent all of that time and energy to travel there and still didn’t show up to take care of myself. And of course, I would never go to the WTC again.

I did this with all sorts of things that I had started doing to make myself feel better, feel good, feel like I had my shit together. I would get my running clothes on, and start a jog, but I would just quit. In the middle of a jog. Just stop and decide I didn’t want to do it anymore. And I would feel awful about it. But the idea of effort was so terrifying to me that I often just shut down. I feared any pain, but especially the pain of growth.

It was interesting to have that feeling again about a writing meditation. Kind of scary, a little uncomfortable. Because that part of me is still there. But since I got my eating under control, it doesn’t win. I can feel it, acknowledge it, but not bow to it. I can want to quit and not quit.

When I put boundaries around my eating I got what some people call “abstinent references.” I learned, first hand, that I would not starve if I didn’t eat between meals. I learned that I would not die if I admitted my mistakes and made amends for them. I learned that effort is not the level of suffering I always feared it was. I learned that that once something was begun, like a workout, or showing up at the place I was supposed to be, it was actually easier to keep going and follow through than to quit. That the level of justification I would have to maintain to not feel awful about myself over it would be way more effort than just doing the workout or attending the meeting.

To remember what I used to be like is to remember how exhausted I was all the time. Because second guessing myself and stressing about everything, and being afraid of the world, and being afraid of my life was so much more exhausting than all of the food prep work and the shopping and chopping and working out and writing and meditation and that I do.

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