onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “self-love”

16 Jun 2024

This one maybe has too many different metaphors?

I heard someone say this week that having a bigger life is not actually about adding, but about giving up. I immediately understood what she meant. Because I’m an addict. 

But it’s not just about drugging or not drugging myself with food. It’s about all of the ways I fail to be present. Not just fail to be. Avoid being present.

I have a lot of compassion for my childhood self. I think one thing I have learned in recovery is that we do the things because they work. They help. They protect us. Until they don’t. They hurt. They kill us instead. 

But food was my friend for a long time. Smoking was my friend for a long time. 15 cups of coffee a day were my friends for a long time.

But there is so much more. Resentful people pleasing and martyrdom were my friends. Suffering. Perfectionism. Overthinking. 

As I peel back the layers of my own inauthenticity, by intentionally seeking peace, by cultivating my own joy, by curating my time, I can see all of the ways that I have been choosing various different kinds of protections, much like the protection food was. 

There is a Zen Buddhist saying. Before Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; After Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. 

The goings on of my day are much the same. Laundry and dishes and cooking. Knitting and crocheting and audiobooks. 

But to be at peace, with both my actions and my inactions, to enjoy my moments for the moments themselves, to become freer and less encumbered by the expectations and the “truths and understandings” of others every day, is making me happy. Content. Pleased. 

Present

I *want* to be present. I want to be here. Wherever here is. Right here at this moment. I’m starting to recognize that it’s the only place magic lives.

But here comes the annoying part. This actual shucking of inauthenticity takes time. So much time. So much work. So much growth. So much vulnerability…But mostly it’s the time. It’s hard to remember that this new era of my life right here took 18 years of work just to arrive at, and I just now feel like I am scratching the surface of the goldmine. 

What do I know about gold mining? Maybe I am about to strike it rich.

I guess if you need me I will be over here peeling off my layers of protection…

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09 Jun 2024

A welcome homecoming

I have had many complaints about perimenopause in the past several years. Because it has its annoyances. Brain fog, memory issues, hot flashes – especially at night, plus irregular and more painful periods. 

But there are some things that I positively adore about my life right now and I am starting to understand that perimenopause is actually a part of that. 

I have heard a few stories over the past year or so that have had an impact on me. 

First I saw some speaker (maybe a Ted Talk?) say that when women go through menopause we call it “the change” like we are turning into monsters. But really we are just returning to the same hormones we had before puberty. In other words, I realized that would mean I am reverting back to my 9-10 year old self! That’s fantastic! That’s so fun!

Then my best friend and I were talking. And she is an award winning director of singers. And she said that there was an experience she had. A woman of a certain age has raised her kids and she and her husband are empty nesters, and now she has an itch to be on stage. And as she gets deeper into it, and she’s good at it, her husband gets more uncomfortable. “Where did this singing come from? She never sang before!” And it was not once. But repeatedly. And she and her piano playing partner would say “here we go.” So is it a coincidence that this is also the time most women are going through perimenopause? Is it a coincidence that I am feeling more creative, more confident, more excited about doing things now even though I don’t have kids? There was no nest to empty.

And then a friend who does spiritual work told me that one very particular message for me was to revert back to the time when I was free. And she said that it was told to her that it was when I was 10 or 11. Is it possible it’s a coincidence I was last “free” around early puberty and now am being told to find it again after my baby making hormones are almost done? Of course it’s possible. But would it really be that crazy?

The idea that my changing hormones might affect the way I interact with society feels like an important bit of information. For me if no one else. It feels more connected than not. 

Because truly, I am feeling content and free and unencumbered in a way I don’t remember ever feeling. And It feels like a brand new kind of freedom. I mean I feel deeply unburdened in my heart and head and soul. (In other words, it’s probably hormones and brain chemicals.) 

Also on that note, shout out to my antidepressant. That certainly changed my life for the better. Along with over a decade of building good habits and learning how to maintain my integrity.

When I got my sugar addiction and compulsive eating under control, I discovered that I hated myself. But I hated myself so deeply that I didn’t even know it was there until it stopped. And it stopped because I was able to keep a promise to myself.

So I have spent the past 18 years keeping that promise and then more and more promises to myself. And liking and loving myself more. And then in the past year the antidepressant has really allowed for me to be comfortable in my own head for the first time. And here I am, 47 years old, and I love myself. Not just “don’t hate” but LOVE! I am joyful to be alive. I am tickled to be me. I feel like I am the most beautiful, likable, hilarious and generous I have ever been.

So I guess what it comes down to for me is that in my life I do the work and keep up with the maintenance, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. And my body does what it does. And sometimes that is difficult or uncomfortable. But this change – The Change – also feels like a kind of homecoming. And I welcome it.

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19 May 2024

Living the loose life

I had a super exciting Friday night this week. A family friend was in town running sound for a touring band and I got to see him and their amazing show. And I got to meet an internet friend for the first time! And it was all magical!

One of my favorite sayings is “how you do anything is how you do everything.” And in getting my eating under control I ended up changing basically everything about my life. 

I never wanted to do anything in preparation for anything when I was growing up as a sugar addict and compulsive eater. And as a really talented and intelligent addict, that was an easy lifestyle to execute but a difficult one to bear. It meant never preparing for anything and then having to constantly worry and overthink and perform spectacularly in the moment. I always wanted to “fly by the seat of my pants” but I don’t think I understood the toll it was taking on my peace and joy. All because preparation felt like work and work felt hard.

In order to get my eating under control, I had to start planning and preparing in advance to have what I needed to eat. I was told that I should be the most important person in my own life and that if I cared about getting sober from sugar and not eating compulsively, I was going to have to make sure that my food was taken care of. And that *I* very specifically needed to do it. 

I must weigh my portions myself. It’s part of my spiritual relationship with food and my ability to be totally honest and responsible for everything that goes into my mouth. I need to read ingredients. I need to ask how things are cooked at restaurants. I need to refuse to eat things that are not on my approved menu. Even if it’s something made just for me. Even with love. 

So now, I find that my life is so much the opposite. I plan and prepare all the things so I can relax in the moment.

Friday before I left I made sure everything was taken care of: My home, my husband, my food for the weekend, my dinner for the night, my tickets, my Ubers, my friends’ needs, my schedule, ALL THE THINGS! And that made me feel great about myself. That made me feel calm about my night. That made me feel like now all I had to do was go with the flow. And then I just got to be in the moment. I didn’t have to worry or overthink. I got to enjoy the moment and the music, my new friend and my old one.

Growing up my eating was addictive and out of control and it forced me to use ridiculous amounts of energy to try to keep myself together and show up for the most basic life tasks. I had to keep myself so tight and reined in, because of how loose my eating was. Now I keep my food tight so I can live my life loose instead. 

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12 May 2024

Ready for a nice time on a nice day

In 45 minutes, I need to be out the door for Mother’s Day. We have to pick up the beef sandwich set ups and the appetizer tray, and the chicken tenders. And my brother-in-law is bringing the sodas and the snacks and dessert. 

And none of it is for me. I have a lunch packed. I will bring my diet soft drinks because I’m the only one who drinks them. I even bring my own silverware and a mini spatula so I don’t lick my plate or bowl in front of everyone. Because I would. And in a pinch I still will. Hence the bringing of the spatula. 

I leave nothing about my food to chance. And I love that for me. I know I can count on myself to do my best and care. 

I don’t miss Chicago Italian beef sandwiches, though they have been off the list for over 18 years. Are they spectacular? Of course. Are they worth picking up the drug that makes me hate myself? Absolutely not. 

A lot of people say just have one. As if it were an obvious answer. 

If I could just have one, my friend, I would not do this. Why would I choose all this work if I were capable of moderation?

I am happy to provide fun party foods to others. I am happy to go to a family event with people who have never known me any way but bringing my own food to every event. It’s a nice day and I’m ready to have a nice time. 

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21 Apr 2024

Another make coming

I have been thinking a lot about the addiction part of my life lately. (Not that I am ever not thinking about it on some level.) About the part of me that always wants more. That wants to be filled up. Sated. And never quite is.

People who keep the same eating and food boundaries that I do have a handful of slogans. And one is There Is Another Meal Coming. Because that is what addiction feels like. Dearth. Void. Scarcity and Deprivation. 

And even though I used to cringe at the cheesy nature of having slogans, that one, and many others, got me through. Reminded me that there was ALWAYS another meal coming. I was guaranteed three meals a day. I am guaranteed! I get to eat things I love. And none of them are drug foods.

But since I have been actively trying to create a year of joyful, peaceful, purposeful creation, I have noticed that I still live my creative life like there is not, in fact, another meal (project, idea, time to make) coming. I am thinking like an addict about making. Frenzied, overwhelmed, excited but in a way that leads to disappointment. Half finished, lost steam, too many ideas, not enough time.

In all seriousness, I feel like it’s a miracle I make and design and create as much as I do for as much chaos as I court around it in my head. 

So my goal moving forward is to remember that there is another make coming. 

I already know that this lesson comes with some practical considerations, like time and logistics, but there is something to Fake It ‘Til You Make It, and for now it feels good to trust that stuff will get made. And maybe in the end, with a little more room in my head for something bigger.

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07 Apr 2024

Keepin’ it clean

This week I made all of my maintenance style doctor appointments. It’s a thing I hate that I literally avoided for over 20 years. But I have a philosophy that I learned when I got my eating under control. I quit the thing that is killing me quickest. 

First it was simple sugars and carbohydrates. Then cigarettes. And eventually it was my staunch refusal to go to a doctor. 

I’m 46. I will turn 47 in June. I am not young. And I am not stupid. I know people live longer because we have preventative measures as well as improved drugs and technology. So I put on my big girl panties and I scheduled my exams and check ups. 

But as a person who grew up fat, I want to say that the medical system traumatized me. And the only reason it does not continue to do so is that I have spectacular boundaries. And I put them in place vigorously and shamelessly. 

When I was single and dating, I remember having a date coming up, and I was eating my dinner in a coffee shop before hand and dropped some on the floor. I was not going to eat it. And frankly, it was so little that under different circumstances, I would not have thought about it. But I was going on a date. So I called someone who does what I do with food to “turn it over.” Just tell someone the truth about it because part of being an addict for me is being a liar about food. I told her that when it comes to dating, I want to be “clean.” I didn’t want anything to muddle my thinking. 

And I am so glad I did. Because the date was terrible. He was mean to me. When I told him that, he tried to make out with me. Which, obviously hell no! And then he got mad when I would not let him drive me home because he had been drinking. 

Now all of this might sound like an obvious progression of no on my part. But if it does, you have never been a woman out on a date who was trying to deescalate an uncomfortable situation. I almost let this drunk man drive me home because he was pressing me in an upsetting way. 

But I didn’t. I was clean. I knew my worth. I knew that I did not want what was on offer. And I knew that I had the right to say no however I needed to.

Well I am looking into finding some voice work and voice acting as a job soon. I love to act and do improv. I am naturally clever and I have enough experience to know that being quick is a muscle you can build. 

So this feels like that meal before that date. I want to be clean! I want to keep this vessel healthy. It is my instrument. And I want to signal to Life and the Universe that I am ready to take whatever comes. To take it seriously. To take it with grace and humor. And to make something out of it.

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03 Mar 2024

Stay where it’s warm

I have had a really intense week of spiritual awakening. It was around some inner child healing work. And it was made clear to me that around the time I was 12 or 13 was when I really shut down. Buttoned myself up. 

If you know me, you may think that this me who is “buttoned up” is still pretty wild. I think that is probably true. There have always been things about me that have been intense for the people around me.

For example, I cry. I have always been a crier. And to basically everyone’s chagrin, I never learned how to get control over it. So when I say that the crying I have been doing this week is “different” than usual, there is, indeed, a “usual” and this is not it.

The tears this week have been big. And hot. These are kid tears. These are the kinds of tears I saw on children when I was nanny when they didn’t have the words to express themselves, or the power to change things without an adult. They are tears of fear and powerlessness, and have probably been buried in my heart for 40 years. 

Over the past couple of years, I have come to understand that the people around me didn’t feel about me the way one might expect them to feel about a kid in the family. They ways they didn’t like me. The ways they didn’t want to deal with me. The ways they did deal with me which were often mean. But it was the water I was swimming in. A fish doesn’t know what water is until they end up out of it. Except fish die out of water. And once I got out, I thrived.

One of the things that happened to me when I went to college, and then even more when I moved away to New York City at 21, was that I ended up spending time with people who actually did like me. Who thought I was fun and funny and nice. Who thought I was worth time and energy and effort. People who didn’t think I was a know-it-all. People who didn’t roll their eyes at me or make me the punchline of a joke because I was sensitive and it was fun to make me cry. People who actually sought me out. 

All of a sudden it was warm.

I’m not saying that all of the adults in my childhood were awful to me. But there were plenty. Plural. And nobody to tell me it wasn’t me. It was them. No one to tell me that as a child, I could not really have deserved the kinds of bullying and just mean-spiritedness I received. I am saying that I was a grown up before I had any sense of myself being likable or worth liking. 

“Stop being so sensitive. If you didn’t cry so easily, you wouldn’t be such an easy target.”

So I tried to make myself small enough to fly under the radar. I’m not saying I was good at it. Just that it was what I had to work with. 

The idea that I am supposed to let that little girl out and tell her she is allowed to be as big and weird and fun and stupid and overly confident and creative and daring as she wanted to be before 12 is terrifying. One bitten twice shy is a whole different world when it feels like you were the sacrificial meal for years.  

When I got my eating under control, I wanted to be done. To be cooked. To be complete. But instead it has been a long process of uncovering my most authentic self more deeply every day. And 18+ years into it, the lessons and gifts are deeper and more profound, not less. 

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25 Feb 2024

Apparently, you don’t know what you’re missing

When I first got my eating under control, I lived in a bit of a fog for about a year and a half. I wore pajamas everywhere. I left my house in the middle of the night to drink diet soda and read manga in those pajamas in the bar down the street so I didn’t eat compulsively. I don’t remember a lot of that time. 

But then I got clear headed. And I realized that for the first time since I was 5 years old, I was very conventionally attractive. That was both the good news and the bad news.

When I say I was conventionally attractive, I mean I was hot. I mean that the kinds of things that happened to beautiful women in movies happened to me. 

Once, my mom was visiting me in New York City. We were getting into a cab, and as it was pulling away, a guy jumped in front of it so he could get my number. I remember my mom looking at me kind of funny and asking me if that kind of thing happened to me a lot. And me saying…well, kind of.

But when I think about that me, that 30 something girl who felt 16 again only actually excited to be here, I can see I really was like a 16 year old girl. I had to learn how to navigate the world differently. I had to get a crash course in having social currency.

I was completely unprepared for the differences in the way I was treated. Good, bad and heartbreaking. Completely insecure about my new place in the world. When you are fat, even though it’s a terrible one, the world has a place picked out for you. Completely unsure of who I wanted to be now that it felt like I could be anyone. And I tried on a bunch of new clothes and personalities. 

But the thing is, that 15+ years later, at 46, what I am is authentically me. Or the most authentically me I have ever been. I feel so much more confident, beautiful, sexy, sure, secure, and comfortable. That was 15+ years of making amends, changing behaviors and setting boundaries, loving myself and learning to love others as they were. And yet, nobody has rushed into traffic to get my phone number in many years. Which seems a shame really. I mean, I’m married, so I would refuse anyway, but I’m way more appealing now than I was teetering on my hot girl fawn legs.

I’m not saying I’m not a beautiful woman. I am. I know it. I enjoy it. But beauty without youth is not as in demand. And frankly, that’s a relief. But also, a pity. You clearly don’t know what you’re missing.

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11 Feb 2024

Just a member of a community and also on a dance floor

Yesterday my nephew got married! Congratulations to him and his wife! And hooray for me to get a night of dancing like when I was young and wild and living in the city!

I brought my own food to the event. It was part of my RSVP, and I had discussed it with the couple before hand. I let the waitstaff know. I told ours that I had everything I needed for myself and she should just pretend that I didn’t exist. (And even still the waitress kept asking if I was sure I didn’t want the salad, the palate cleanser, the after dinner palate cleanser…”oh right. Pretend you don’t exist…tee hee hee.” Sigh. ) 

But the other wonderful thing about the night was how much I didn’t need it to be about me. 

Now you may think, “Kate, it was your nephew’s wedding! How could it possibly be about you????” And that is how I know you are not an addict.

For most of my life everything was about me. It’s common in this culture and society. The importance of the individual. The sanctity of the person. And what person could I care more about than myself?

When I went anywhere socially before I got my eating under control, if it wasn’t about getting high on food and drinking or drugs, it was about getting high on attention, and attraction and the possibility of personal pleasure.

Last night, I wanted to be a part of a celebration of love and commitment. Not as an individual, but as part of a community. And as the member of an even smaller community, my family. My nieces and my nephew, my mother in law, my brother and sisters in law. And my partner in crime was my youngest sister in law. (It turns out we are both former party girls who married men who don’t dance…) We got to be the groom’s two hot old aunties making a scene on the dance floor – in the good way, not the dramatic way.

I learned to put things in their proper place and perspective when I got my eating and sugar addiction under control. There is a lightness to not being so important. A freedom to being one piece of a bigger machine. A joy in being wanted but not needed. 

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04 Feb 2024

The luxuries of 18 years

One thing about having my eating under control for 18 years is that I’m well into the life stuff. The relationship stuff. The dealing with stuff stuff. 

In the beginning all I could do was focus on keeping my eating under control. I had been addicted to sugar for almost all of my 28 years and I spent all my beginner energy making foods that fit my boundaries, and distracting myself from the foods I used to binge on. With books and manga, and that one anime (Fushigi Yuugi) that I watched on a loop for like a year and a half.

But this shit works. Putting down the sugars and things that turned into sugar in my body, and then taking responsibility for my actions. And living my most authentic life.

It has been a long, slow and unsteady process. It was worth every uncomfortable and insecure second.

The truth is now I have a healthy fear of the food. As one might have a healthy fear of the Ocean. But avoiding it and preparing to resist it does not take up my time at the moment. A true blessing and miracle.

But I am in some life lesson place and I feel a little crazy. A little stupid. A little frazzled. And I have been literally walking in circles.

And then this morning I was telling this to my best friend and she said “you’re the one who always talks about my ‘spiral staircase.’ You’re on yours. Plop your ass down on the steps and have a look around.”

(I mentor food addicts and one thing I talk about is how we are always coming to the same problems on a new level. Like a spiral staircase.)

Ah! I keep getting my own advice turned back on me. The joy and curse of being a mentor and knowing that means being available for mentoring…sigh

So I am reminded that it’s life on Life’s terms, not on Kate’s terms. That time will pass whether I wear a hole in my Luxury Vinyl flooring or sit my ass down.

I keep my eating boundaries a day at a time, and I get to contemplate luxury problems between luxury meals. Truly a life beyond my wildest dreams. 

But let’s be honest. Still uncomfortable, difficult, and scary. Makes me want to get up and walk around in circles.

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