onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “self-love”

07 Jun 2026

Whatever it is, it’s not a moral issue

There is a way of thinking about life that I chose after well over a decade of having my eating under control. And it is that whenever I don’t get what I think I want, I choose that Life or God or The Universe is protecting me from something I will never know. And it has changed everything in my experience.

Now, if I drop or mis-weigh some expensive food, I assume it would have given me food poisoning. It’s actually easy to “give up” poisoned food. When I missed my exit driving back home this morning at first I was super annoyed. And then I decided I got saved from an accident or an emergency. Driving an extra 11 or 12 miles to avoid pain and harm is a no brainer. It would not make me feel bad. But missing my exit because I made a mistake? That would have been my “fault.”

Nothing changed about the circumstances. The only thing that changed was my framing. But what that framing does, is take morality out of the equation.

Because it “feels bad” to make a mistake. And that makes me feel bad about myself. But there is no real morality in it. It is just an unmet expectation. I expected to get home 20 minutes before I actually got home. Sometimes I expect to eat some particular tomatoes, but then I drop them and those tomatoes end up at the bottom of a dirty garbage disposal. I’m not going to eat them either way. So I can feel bad about it or I can reframe it.

I used to go looking for the meaning and morality in all things. And now I trust that as long as I keep my eating under control and don’t eat my drug foods, the meaning will find me. I trust that Life is looking out for me. And that as long as I am living according to my conscience, whatever it is, it’s not a moral issue. 

And as for the reality of the actual individual situations, I can’t prove that I was spared something , but you also can’t prove me wrong…

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31 May 2026

Giving Nature a vaccuum

As of Wednesday, my husband and I are the proud and happy owners of a high rise condo in the South Loop of Chicago. Today we went to just be there and enjoy it. There is nothing there. But it’s beautiful and it makes me so happy.

We also just finished moving from one town to another for my husband’s job because he finished one construction job and started another.

And BOTH places are MUCH smaller than their predecessors.

We gave ourselves a week to move from one work apartment to the next. And it was not the wisest decision we ever made. Because instead of packing efficiently and throwing away the overflow, I just moved everything one car load at a time. And too much came with me. And now I have to cull.

This is actually good. I know. I am reminded that clearing space, internal or external, makes room for what’s next, what’s better, what’s currently unimaginable.

Historically, when I have gone through my clothes to see what I want to keep or toss, there were a number of things that I didn’t like or really want that thought I “should” keep. It’s a basic piece, so everyone should have one type of thing. But I don’t wear plain white shirts. Because I spill coffee on myself regularly. So I would have a white shirt simply taking up space. But I had the space.

I no longer have space, and that is so freeing. I don’t need to keep pants because they are cute and new and I have never worn them. In fact, I NEED to give them away because I don’t have room for them.

Here’s the thing. I know that I always feel better after I get rid of things. But it doesn’t always feel like that before I let it go. It feels like “but what if I *need* it?” Which is how change always feels.

Since I got my eating under control, I have experienced first hand the ways that letting go of difficult things is worth it. Every time. And it still isn’t easy. I just have a past reference that if I give it a shot, it will probably work out for the best.

So the people I know are about to get some free high quality clothes. (And yarn.)

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17 May 2026

At least on par with my wildest dreams

Over the past few weeks, since we started the process of buying our new condo, it occurred to me that at 48 years and eleven months old, my childhood dreams are all coming true. 

I love my body, I am a decade married to the childhood crush of my life who I lost touch with for 20 years, and now I am going to be traveling the country but coming home to a high rise South Loop Chicago apartment with amazing city views, and some of the best public transportation in the world. 

And all of that has me 1) recognizing how powerful I am. And 2) realizing that I don’t know what I want for the future.

I have been asking myself what I want to create for myself, who I want to be, and what that would look like. And frankly I am coming up blank. 

And not just coming up blank. Blocked. It feels like hitting a different kind of glass ceiling. Self imposed, and at least a little opaque. A frosted glass ceiling if you will.

So I have been looking. For directions on how to unblock my creativity. For physical actions I can take to shift my thinking. For solutions, both practical and woowoo.

Because if there is one thing I have learned about my life since I have had my eating under control, it is that if I seek, I will find. Maybe not what I expected, but something as good or better than I asked for.

So I am out here seeking. What I want to put out into space. How to be more authentically myself. How to be of service in the best way for me. How to hold my own joy and peace and also bring joy and peace to the people around me. What my next right move would be. 

I trust that as long as I keep my drug foods out of my body and live my most authentic life, that I will continue to have a life beyond my wildest dreams. Or at least on par. 

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10 May 2026

An excess of homes

The next month is going to be long and difficult. Two moves. From two different places to two other places. At basically the same time. While my husband works most days. So a lot will be  up to just me.

We are moving from our apartment on the road to a new apartment on the road for my husband’s next job. And we are in the process of buying a city condo, and selling our suburban house. That is going to mean lot of driving and lifting and moving and driving back. A lot of planning ahead and scheduling because one of our buildings requires the reservation and use of a service elevator. 

And we have not been planning to make one big move per house. We have been planning to do what we can with the time we have. Which is already split between 2 houses. (As my mom pointed out from 5/27-6/1 we will be in possession of four (4) homes. Which is doubtless excessive.)

I have my eating under control. I have time between my meals, and clarity between my ears, to break my life into tasks and check them off one at a time. I have the wherewithal to know when I don’t know what is going on and to call someone to ask for help, or information, or to ask to be pointed in the direction of help and information. 

Having my eating under control means that I don’t have the option of getting so high I can ignore my little problems until they become big problems.  

Don’t get me wrong. I am feeling pretty anxious about the next month. But not that it won’t all work out. Just that I know it will be uncomfortable, and sometimes trying, and probably pretty stressful in the moment. 

But this too shall pass. And when it does I will be in a home of my dreams. 

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03 May 2026

It’s not called a super chill system for a reason

I have had an absolutely insane week. Before we went to sleep last Sunday, we heard that our offer on a high rise condo with amazing Chicago city views had been accepted.

One thing a lot of people don’t actively think about is the fact that when we change, especially when we grow into people we have been hoping to become, our brains don’t cheer us on. They send our nervous systems after us. Like thugs in flat caps with tire irons. (My nervous system is apparently Irish.) 

So I have been managing a series of mini panic attacks in between filling out paperwork, signing electronically, and uploading documents. 

But there is a thing that having my eating under control for 20 years has done: it has taught me that I can act through my fear and my panic. That I can just take the next right step. I don’t have to feel like it to do it. I don’t have to be ready. 

What I am talking about is not just worry that I made a mistake or missed something. It’s not just about the process of buying a condo. It’s worry about all of the things that come from this change. For example, downsizing. 

I have been changing my wardrobe over the past year or so. Entirely switching up my style. And while I have had an apartment on the road and big house in the suburbs, I have not been thinking about space. I just get the new clothes I want. But there are still so many old clothes. Or new clothes that I realize I am just kind of meh about. So after a series of panic attacks about downsizing my wardrobe, I just took some steps. And it was a relief. I literally just made some piles to give away and packed them up. 

I have a problematic amount of craft supplies too. And this little voice in my head that sees something that inspires me, but that I have no current need for, and thinks “you have room.”

Guess what, voice, there is no more room for potential. 

So the purging of the craft supplies will be coming soon to a suburban house near me. (Mine.) 

Every time my nervous system tells me we are making a big mistake, I remember that it is fighting for the status quo. Because it knows we are surviving here. But survival and thriving can’t live in the same place.

As a person who wants more, who wants it all, love and friendship and joy and contentment without complacency, I can make friends with the panic, and move forward anyway. As long as I weigh and measure my food and keep my drug foods out of my body, I’m available to show up and do things, big and small, mundane and life-changing.

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26 Apr 2026

If it’s right it will be

Four months ago I assumed my husband and I would live in our house in the suburbs of Chicago until he retired. And then we would move somewhere warm.

And today we put in an offer on a Chicago condo with the expectation that we will keep it until we move to a lakefront Chicago condo in retirement. 

I absolutely love this! I am a city girl at heart. When I started this blog 14 years ago I was a single girl living in NYC. I love public transportation. I love walkable neighborhoods. I love the energy of a city. I love city fashion. I love 24 hour convenience. The ability to blend in or stand out as you see fit in the moment. I love the ability to find anything and everything you are looking for and so many things you didn’t know you were looking for until you found them.

When I keep my eating under control I can be flexible, I can go with the flow, I can enjoy the ride. I can change my mind, and I can be available for my husband to change his mind. 

Don’t get me wrong. If I would have been unhappy I would speak up for myself. It’s not that I would be unhappy, so much as overwhelmed. Stunned.

We have had a loose plan for most of our relationship, and one day about 4 months ago, my husband said he wanted to entirely change the plan. And if I were in the food I would have had to have a whole-ass panic attack about something like that. 


Because even if I love cities, it’s a huge change. It’s a major downsizing of our stuff to fit into a smaller space. It’s leaving the place that has been my home for 13 years and my husband’s for over 25 – a place we renovated to be just our taste. It’s grocery shopping with a cart not a car. It’s keeping my 10 year old car until the wheels fall off instead of getting a new one because I will need a car to live on the road for my husband’s job, but won’t want a nice car in the city.

It’s a whole bunch of future happenings that I have not had a decade plus to consider and imagine and troubleshoot. 

But I trust. 

For as long as I have had my drug foods down and my compulsive eating in check, whenever I didn’t get what I wanted – the job, the apartment, the boyfriend – I always ended up with better than I thought I wanted. 

I really want this condo. I love it. But I also believe very strongly that I get the best, most right, most beneficial treatment from life. Every time all the time. And that if we don’t get this home, it’s because the best home for us, the “right” one, is somewhere else. 

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19 Apr 2026

I set myself up

There is a concept/dichotomy that has come up for me in two different contexts lately.

Internal vs external. 

First it was an Instagram reel about tight hips.

I have very tight hips, particularly my right one. It has been an issue since my late twenties. I have lived in pain on and off since then. And over the past 5 or so years, I have found more and better stretches to get them to release. But there was a portion of my right hip, deep in the joint, that never got any real satisfaction. 

And then I saw this video a couple of weeks ago, of a woman saying if you have tight hips and you get a “cramp” kneeling, it’s not a cramp. 

It turns out it was the end of my range of motion for my “internal rotation.” The same with the top of my right foot. All of the stretches I have been doing up until now are working, but only for part of my motion, my external rotation. And then she demonstrated stretches for internal rotation. 

And if that didn’t change my life! It took more than one session of these new stretches for my hip to get full range. But I have finally managed to hit the spot!  THE SPOT!

Since then I have been doing my new stretches with every workout. And additionally any time my hips are paining me. I have the most relief and least hip pain I have ever had in my adult life.

The other thing was a reel about the differences in the brains of people who live by internal validation vs external validation. That there is a difference in their brains. But it’s not about parts. It’s about practice. That the rewards and the reward systems are different. And lead to very different life experiences.

And this made perfect sense to me because what the reel described was the difference between me before getting my eating under control and after. 

And it also made other people come into clearer focus for me. It made strangers on the internet make just that much more sense.

I definitely didn’t know when I got my eating under control that what I was *doing* was engaging in less external validation seeking and more internal, but I ABSOLUTELY knew I was rewiring my brain. 13 years ago I was writing blogs about it. 

One thing I know from 20 years of having my eating under control. That my brain is as elastic as I let it be. My hormones are not entirely in my control, but they are not entirely out of it either. That when I make a choice to remain calm, I can take actions to remain calm, and I can stop from brain from flooding my body with hormones. I can make friends with my body. I can retrain my brain. I can choose peace. I can set myself up for the best experience.

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05 Apr 2026

Know what they’re selling so you don’t buy it.

It is now clear to me that we have entered another phase of pro-extreme-thinness in United States’ culture. People are admitting for their social media audiences to doing things like taking meth to stay as thin as possible. And they are framing it as if this is totally normal. 

 The early 2000s had this too. Both the culture extolling the virtues of taking up little space, and the common use of drugs to accomplish it. Or anything to accomplish it. As long as you got smaller. I knew a girl in those years who was both tall and already extremely thin, who was offered heroin by her modeling agency in case she wanted to lose a few pounds.

There is a scene in the original Zoolander movie (2001) where the beautiful but normal girl is talking to the male models and she ashamedly admits she used to be bulimic. And they both tell her that everyone does that. It’s a great way to keep your weight down. It’s meant to be funny because that mentality was alive and well then. 

And then we had Love Actually (2003) where a thinner than average woman is cast as a character who is repeatedly mocked as chubby and for having “thighs the size of tree trunks” and a sizable arse. This is blatantly false, but instead of believing my eyes, I believed those words.

There are so many more.

My point is we have been here before. And it is an ugly place to be. And the internet is only worse in the past 20 years. Not better. Once photoshop was the best tool for image manipulation. Now AI brings the game to a whole new level. The girls and boys who are exposed to this kind of cultural propaganda are less equipped than ever to understand what is being done to them. 

And that is the other thing: it is already established that KNOWING ALONE WILL NOT STOP IT. You really have to not see the propaganda. You have to know BEFORE hand and not be exposed. Because knowing it’s happening does not stop it from *working.*

I already limit my exposure to diet and thinness culture as much as possible, and I still can’t entirely eradicate it from my screens. I literally cannot. The algorithm will not let me.

And It’s not just social media and online influencers. It is and will be anyone in an audience facing job. This extreme thin bias will be noticeable in the actresses who get roles (and the ones who don’t), it will be in the headlines about a pop star’s weight gain presented as news from main stream news sources, it will be in some off handed remark by a weatherman on your local news about some woman’s “outfit.” It will be everywhere. And it will be sold as virtue.

Don’t buy it.

So I hope you are protecting yourself. But also, I hope we are all protecting the young people in our lives. And hey. Don’t talk about people’s bodies.

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22 Mar 2026

Available for connection

Last night I went to a party with a dozen or so awesome ladies, about half new to me. And it was a delicious delight. (And I didn’t even eat the party food!)

There was so much laughter, candor, humor, insight, and love. There was a spirit of mutual respect and appreciation. There was the desire to support each other.

A few years ago I made the deliberate choice to cultivate my friendships. Especially with women. I felt like I had lost my connections to people who liked me, and whom I liked. Not for any other reason than grown up life doesn’t have a lot of built in structures for relationship that aren’t partner and kids. As an individual, one has to make it a priority. Or not as the case may be.

13 years ago, I moved away from my friends when I left New York City to be with my husband. And we were all already grownups. Navigating partnerships and parenting while we were in the same city was hard enough. From long distance, it takes even more. And I am inconsistent. And so are my long distance friends. This is not a judgement. It’s an observation. Life gets lifey fast and sudden.  

So when I noticed the lack of everyday friendships in my life, I took actions to change that. To reach out to old friends. To make new friends. To be an asset to communities. To find new people that I like, that like me back.

When I was heavy in my addiction and depression, I would isolate for long periods of time. I would hide away in my room and binge eat and avoid my friends. And then when I was better or lonely or ready to be back in the world, I would have to go mend the friendships I had harmed. And that made friendships feel like a kind of burden. And it made me feel bad about myself. And all of those feelings led me to want to isolate more, eat more, hate myself more. 

By keeping my food boundaries and bringing my own food to this party, I looked a little weird at first. But I got to be authentic and funny and fully present. And that is when I can be part of the community. That is where I can make a difference. Just by being there, available for connection. 

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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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