onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “self-love”

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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
23 Jul 2023

The slow crawl to spectacular

I saw a pulmonologist this week and it could not have gone better.

A little over 2 months ago, I got sent for a lung function test. Afterwards, a doctor called me and told me that my lungs were fine and to stop taking the medication I had been taking. And I was upset. Because my lungs were very clearly not fine.

It was more of the same thing that I had always felt about doctors growing up. That nobody was listening to me. That the relationship was about power and submission. And that I was always the small one expected to submit. They were the doctors. They knew everything. I knew nothing.

But I was feeling panicked and crazy and scared. And I called a friend crying and she told me that she had to learn to advocate for herself with doctors. That it was a skill. And that I should figure out what I want for myself. Which is so not how I have ever thought about doctors.

So first, I took the doctor’s advice, knowing I already had a pulmonologist appointment, and I stopped taking the medication. And then I started taking notes on my lung function every day in my journal. And how often I had to take a different medication (fast acting instead of long lasting.) And then I psyched myself up to duke it out with this pulmonologist to get back on the medication that had been helping. Because no matter what that test said, there was something wrong!

But I walked in and he looked at my test results – the same ones from months ago when they told me my lungs were great – and he said I have a very specific kind of asthma. That the tests look great because I seem to be at the highest level of lung function, but that it’s misleading because actually, there is too much air in my lungs. I am getting air trapped in there and then breathing more air on top of it. And then he asked me how I felt being on the original medication and I told him “spectacular.” So he put me back on it. I didn’t even have to make the request. 

But wait. There’s more! He then told me that this particular kind of asthma often goes away on its own and that we will revisit it in 6 months, but there is a good chance that this too shall pass. 

Then he said I could take a blood test and they could see if I had certain markers for asthma. But I told him that I have a really hard time with blood tests and that if it was necessary I would but I would rather not. And he told me that it was not necessary at this point. So we wouldn’t do it.

Before I got my eating under control, life happened to me all the time. I was powerless. I was just dragged along. And I didn’t even realize that there was another way.

When I put boundaries around my eating, I got clarity. I got responsibility. I got the ability to ask for help. To learn a new way to do things. 

But also, I just want to note that it took 16 years of having my eating under control plus a health condition to actually go to the doctor. And the help and guidance of loved ones to begin to understand how to navigate that world. So I’m not saying it’s quick, I’m just saying it’s a slow crawl to “spectacular.”

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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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25 Jun 2023

The perfect body

This week I had to do a mid-week grocery run. And there is a discount department store right next to that grocery store. So I went in to get myself some workout pants that fit. And I figured while I was there, I should try on some real actual pants with things like buttons and zippers and figure out what size I actually am at the moment. 

I bought size medium workout clothes and figured out that I am currently a U.S. size 10 in pants, down from a U.S. size 14.

I have so many very complicated feelings about this.

This weight loss is, at least in part, the result of the workout I am doing. And one of the reasons I am doing it is because I love the effect it is having on my butt. I have never before had a butt, and now I do. And I really really love it. I can see the difference in the mirror and feel it when I sit down. And now that I am enjoying having a butt, I have a different feeling about pants in general as a clothing option. 

But I have spent the last 11 or 12 years trying to dismantle the ingrained idea that thinner is better. And yet, when I see the “M” or the “10,” I have a huge reaction. My brain sends out all sorts of happy messages! Skinny! Pretty! Good Girl! And then it gets excited about how much thinner I could get. Could I be an 8? A 6??? Could I be a SMALL?!?!?  And then it follows up with a burst of fear! How will we keep it going? How can we speed it up? What if it stops?

And in a blink, staying a size 10 is the worst possible thing that could happen to me. 

So what I have decided to remember is that as long as I am keeping my eating boundaries, I am in exactly the right body I am supposed to be in. That whether I am a 6 or a 16, as long as I am weighing my food and abstaining from sugars and simple carbohydrates, I am in the perfect body for me and my life.

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28 May 2023

Less stuff. More love.

On Monday my husband and I had a dumpster dropped off in our driveway, and since then we have been deep cleaning our home. We pulled everything out of our attic spaces to clean them, and go through all of the stuff we had in there and decide what was worth keeping. And what was not.

It feels amazing.

I have never been great at letting go. It wasn’t until I got my eating under control that I learned how to let go of things that didn’t serve me anymore. Then I lived in small New York City apartments that had limited storage space. So twice a year, when it was time to switch out my seasonal wardrobe, I would do a big cleaning purge. What I didn’t learn right away was how to stop acquiring new stuff.

Baby steps.

First, I had to see the clutter I had everywhere, then get clear about how stressed out it made me. And then get to the point where the pain of letting it go was less than the pain of keeping so many things.

Part of learning how to stop eating compulsively was to learn how to sit in discomfort. “How to not numb a feeling with cake” eventually turned into “how to not numb a feeing with an impulse buy.” (But let’s be clear. In the beginning, those impulse buys made it possible to not eat the cake. I always quit the thing that’s killing me quickest. It’s just that when the food got easier, I could let go of those little “treats” too.)

Getting addiction under control is almost always about connection. I regularly feel like there is a giant hole inside me. And I tried to fill it with food. And stuff. But the only thing that really fills it is being in relationship with other people. It gets filled with love and laughter and tears and compassion. It gets filled with quality time and acts of service. 

It feels amazing to have taken a real, exhaustive inventory of what I have, and like a huge relief to have a dumpster full of the stuff gone. It leaves so much more room in my head and my heart for the people in my life.

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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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30 Apr 2023

Keep doing what I do and maybe a little more

A lot of things are changing in my life right now. From being back in our house, to the start of a new personal health journey, to cleaning out our attic, to changing aspects of my workout and eating (but still within the same old boundaries I have had for 17+ years), things are shifting a lot for me right now.

When I was younger I was really into self-help. I read books and went to seminars and did workbooks, alone or with friends. But I was never really able to use the tools I learned from these things until I got my eating under control. Perhaps it was because my brain was too foggy. Or because so much of my personality was tied up in food. But either way, I was not able to implement a lot of the really quality advice and coaching I was getting from these sources.

I wanted change, but I didn’t know how to do that. And I didn’t want to have to change myself. I just wanted my circumstances to change.

Here’s a thing that I understand. When I keep my food boundaries and my eating under control, I change. And it usually looks something like a series of nearly imperceptible changes and then a big, noticeable change. And I *think* I am on the precipice of another big, noticeable change.

Practice and consistency have changed my perspective, and yes, even my circumstances. Weighing my food, doing my writing and meditation, working out. All of these things are practices. I do them consistently. They are my priorities in action. It is me telling me that my body is beloved, that my mind is important, that my life is mine to honor. And it has occurred to me that maybe I need a new practice to tip me over the edge into some new, elevated state of being. Some new something to put in place to move me along. And I have no idea what that could be at the moment. But if there is one thing I do understand it’s that my change is a product of me changing something.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Either things will shift in a big way or they won’t. The only thing there is to do is keep doing what I do. And maybe do a little something more. If I figure out what that is, I will keep you posted.

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19 Mar 2023

Change takes change

There is a sentiment that I have heard many times from women who are already married or in a relationship when they get their eating under control. Their spouses say things like “I just wanted you to lose weight. I didn’t want you to change.”

When I first got my eating under control I had a kind of revelation. That if I was going to change the way I ate, I was going to have to change the way I ate. But also it meant I had to change other things about how I went through my day. Because eating was a major part of my day-to-day life.

Before that, I had wanted to change my body. And I was only vaguely aware of the fact that it had something to do with my eating. (Sugar is a hell of a drug.) But I didn’t want to change anything significant. It didn’t occur to me that success in arresting my compulsive eating meant I had to change anything except to do the few very specific things it took to “keep to a diet.” And I somehow expected it to work. 

Except that I didn’t. I always knew, and always FELT deep in me, that whatever diet I was on would not work. Wouldn’t work for me, at any rate. 

And I was right. Because there was no endgame. I was eating to get thin enough that I could eat the way I wanted to without judgement. But I did not want to stop eating. I simply wanted to avoid the consequences of it. 

I certainly could not have put that into words until I got my eating under control, but ultimately that was what it was. Because what I did NOT want to do was give up sugar.

What I really learned early on in recovery was that in order to make a real and lasting change in my eating and my body, I had to make other lasting changes. And in many ways, the things I had to do to get my eating under control made that part easy. It meant I had to go to the grocery store. I had to schedule that into my week. I had to cook meals within my boundaries. I had to figure out how to do that and still get to work on time. And I had to figure out how to get to meetings and talk to other people recovering from their own food addiction. I had to make time and put in effort. All of those things changed the shape of my days. And changing my schedule was the perfect way to change my actions and my results.

To change my life and get something different from what I have had, I have always had to change my life in practice. To take new and different actions and approaches. To behave differently. And it has always been worth it.

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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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