onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “shame”

04 May 2025

Impact. Not intention.

I made a joke on social media this week that landed so badly. I meant it to be a word joke. But if I had rubbed two brain cells together I would have realized it could be taken as racist. So I made a racist joke. (FUCK!) And I was even slow on the uptake and when someone said “that’s not funny” I thought they meant my pun! (FUCKING FUCK!!!)

I am obviously rightly, deeply humbled and ashamed. I harmed a parasocial relationship I enjoyed with a woman I like and respect as well as harming a group of people.

I considered not writing about it this week. Not bringing other people’s attention to it. It’s embarrassing and emotional. I had to ask myself if I meant it subconsciously, which was terrifying. (I do not believe it was a subconscious thing. I do believe it was a true accident.) And yes I hate the idea of looking like a terrible person. But I did a thing. It’s out in the world. Even if I wish I could take it back.

It’s not a thing I can take back. It had an awful and ugly impact. Intentions pave the road to hell. Of course I deleted and apologized. And I sent a private message apologizing and offering amends. But the harm is done. And I am the only responsible party.

But this is my blog about me. And for a moment I want to separate what I did to her, from me, and my own personal growth in the face of this. Because there is something else that is deeper in there for me, about me accidentally hurting people and how it has haunted me in my life. And when I was talking to my best friend about this particular incident, what I did and how I was ashamed, I started talking about some of the times in my life that I accidentally harmed people and when I got to when I was 5 and I laughed when a girl fell but she hurt herself, I started to hyperventilate cry, the way I would when I was 5 years old.

Also, just to be clear, this list of my harms does not include any other racisms. This is not a regular occurrence for me. It’s things like when I was 10 and I accidentally sat on a classmate and I sprained his ankle, or the time I was 30 and said *in front of my friend’s boyfriend* that a different guy we knew should be her new boyfriend. This coming to terms with the unintentional harm I do and trying to mend it is apparently a long time coming for me. A lesson about myself. 

But in the end for this specific incident, it’s still impact not intention.

I am clear that I am not the victim. I am the perpetrator. I harmed another person. It doesn’t matter that it was not on purpose. It doesn’t matter that it was on the internet. It does not matter that I did not mean it. I was absolutely unsafe for another person.

I have also been in physical pain on and off over it. The humiliation and shame. A loop of dread. And the question of what to do to get complete with having done harm and knowing I do not want to do it again. But being afraid that I will do it again. I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter. This is not an “it’s in the past” so I should let it go kind of situation. Because I am clearly haunted right now.

I talked to my best friend about it. Because she has her eating under control. And because she is not going to tell me that it’s ok because I didn’t mean it.

She is going to tell me that it’s my responsibility to clean my side of the street.

I hope sincerely that the woman I harmed does not give a flying fuck about me. I hope I am barely a blip on her radar. And while I would be honored to make amends, she has not requested that. So I am leaving her alone and fixing my own shit for myself with my own spiritual community. The people who will not try to tell me that it’s all fine. The people who help me be responsible, accountable, a person with integrity.

So I need to come up with an action to take for me. An amends I can make to somehow mend the break I made in my own world. Because again, it’s about impact. Not intention. And I also hurt myself by harming her. So I need to get myself right with me!

Like my best friend told me: You don’t get to let yourself off the hook but you do have to figure out your way past it.

I never had to “watch my mouth” as a white woman growing up. And it is a *good thing* that I do have to watch it now. It’s not a punishment. It is an opportunity. It’s a gift. It’s a boundary. And I love boundaries. They changed my life! They saved my life. So yes. I need to be ever more careful with my words and my actions. And yes of course I already should have.

I don’t want to hurt people or harm people. I don’t take that lightly. And having to be accountable for literally everything that comes from me is just life. It’s the natural order of things. I was thoughtless and it was a cruelty. Period.

I am going to think more about what actions to take next to get my self complete. I’m also going to watch my mouth. I’m going to remember that wanting to be a safe person and being a safe person are not the same thing. But I am also going to take whatever actions I can to truly be a safe person.

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20 Apr 2025

Shameless food shameless body

I have been having a little bout of body dysmorphia this week. I looked in the mirror yesterday and I looked very fat to myself. And I had some kind of judgment about it. Not positive. But also sort of disconnected from any real physical sensation. There was not the pain of hating myself. There was not any despair or dread. Just a kind of mean thought like if I saw a really unfashionable woman at the mall. (Yes. I am judging your fashion, people!)

I need to say that I am objectively the same size I have been for months because I am wearing clothes that fit the same. If anything I may be slightly smaller. But my body dysmorphia is not rational. If it were they would call it something else.

So I kept looking at myself until my body lost its already minimal emotional charge. 

Even in that moment that little judgment didn’t go away entirely, but I don’t expect it  ever will. All of my addictions and disorders are just reined in for the time I have my eating under control and I’m taking care of myself, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. 

One of the strongholds of my body dysmorphia when I was still in the food was eating foods I was ashamed of eating. Shame feeds the body dysmorphia. (Which is not to say that they were bad foods. I’m not the food police. I’m a sugar addict.) 

I (we all) had been told what good women with good bodies ate, but I wasn’t eating those things. So I was fat. Plus I hated my body. Plus I was ashamed of the foods I was eating. So when I looked in the mirror and saw something I hated, even if it were objectively untrue, it made sense. It *felt* real. 

Taking the morality out of food loosened the grip of my body hate. And that blunted the majority of the agony of the body dysmorphia. Sugar is a drug to me. My body is a still. It turns sugar and grains to alcohol on its own. I don’t need to eat skinless chicken breast and steamed broccoli to be a good woman with a good body. I do need to quit and stay away from foods that will get me high and kick off cravings. And also stop caring about whether someone else would call me a good woman with a good body…

I have eating rules. Foods to eat and foods to abstain from, weighed and measured portions and timeframes.  But with the *understanding* that I should be eating foods I LOVE. Every day. Every meal I can! I belong to a community that is for abundance not deprivation. It’s how I can do it for over 19 years. It’s how I still love it 19 years later. It’s how I feel good in my body. Because when I don’t feel shame about my food, why should I feel shame about my body?

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09 Mar 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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02 Feb 2025

The Other F Word

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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28 Jul 2024

To die trying

I have always had my own internal game of tug of war with non-conformity and people pleasing. I was not a kid who fit in. Or who wanted to fit in. Or to do the stuff other kids were doing. I liked adults. Or I liked intellectual stimulation. And I can remember being 8 and realizing that not all adults were capable of intellectual stimulation…

But I was also fat, and a girl, and boy crazy and funny, and clever. Which gave me a fear of being shamed, plus a desire to be liked and approved of, and a couple of ways to get that. 

When I got my eating under control, I really let go of most of my people pleasing. And I think I thought I had gotten rid of all of it. Or at least any active people pleasing. 

But the more I get right down to the nitty gritty of myself, I can see that there is an underlying fear, that *nobody* will love me if I don’t pull it back, calm it down, be more quiet, smaller, easier, less annoying or abrasive, not so loud, and for heaven’s sake, not so damn sure of myself. 

Even if most people don’t like me, I don’t care. I don’t like most people. But what about my people? What about the ones I care about losing? 

Look. I already know the answer. The answer is I become my most authentic self and my real and truest people will show up, and the rest will either level up, or give up. And that is how it always has been anyway. And that is a blessing! I know.

But this is the terror of a child. I am bumping up against a very old boogie man. But knowing that doesn’t make it any less scary. 

But you know what kind of does make it less scary? That I did this before. With my terror that I would never have love and partnership. I spent the first 35 years of my life not only single, but without any hope that I could have the kind of companionship and love that I have now. And now I don’t just have it, I know that I deserve it. 

And that took 7 years of having my eating under control and doing the work to become a person I wanted to be, before I even found my husband. (Or re-found him.) And then over a decade together changing. So now, 18 years in of keeping my compulsive eating under control, and doing the spiritual work and continuing to do it, whatever is on the other side of this fear of myself, is worth it. I already know.

So I will get to the bottom of this, or die trying. But I guess there will always be another part of myself to grow, so maybe the goal is to die trying *something.* 

Put that on my tombstone. Here lies Kate, who died trying. 

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23 Jun 2024
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Am I being…sane about this????

My dad’s mom was the love of my life before my husband. She got sick when I was 33. And in the few months that she was in the hospital before she died, in my mourning, my body got small. 

I don’t mean I did anything to make it small. It was not like I was so sad I didn’t eat. I was already in my food program and had my eating under control. But that didn’t mean eating “up to” a certain amount, it meant eating an exact amount. Whether I wanted to or not. And I often did not. But I ate it. I choked every meal down for months. And still by the time she died, I was by far the very tiniest  had ever been.

The person who helped me deal with my eating boundaries was worried how small I was getting and how quickly, and made me eat another piece of fruit every day. And still I was over 5’6” and in a U.S. size small (4/6.) 

A few years later on my 35th birthday, 12 years ago this month in fact, I quit smoking and I gained weight. So much weight. Not only did my new extra fruit get taken away but my vegetable portions were cut. I was eating quantifiably less and less nutrient dense foods, and still gaining weight. 

That kicked off my body dysmorphia in a whole new and exciting way! I had crazy nightmares about getting on the scale. I started to dread weigh day 28 days before it happened each month! I started to think about all of the ways I could diet and lose this weight. And since all of the normal ways were already not working, they were some crazy thoughts. Bulimic thoughts. 

And then I realized that at that moment I had absolutely zero control over my weight. Like none. And that was the beginning of my understanding the difference between hating my sugar addiction, and my internalized fat phobia and fat hatred, and separating them for and from myself. 

And so from that time on I made a point to think of my weight as “none of my business.” I have not been on a body scale in over a decade. I even just say no at the doctor’s office. And since nobody has had to give me medication by weight, it has never been an issue. I look in the mirror, I think I’m gorgeous. No matter what size. And though my weight fluctuated, I never ever got back to that skinny girl.

But here we are 12 years later and I am approaching, or maybe even am, a U.S. 4/6 again right now. And not because my body is eating itself in mourning this time either. I am not entirely sure why but I do know that I have changed the size and shape of my butt by building muscle and that I can now breathe when I work out, which are two really important aspects of my daily routine that directly coincide with the timing of my weight loss that I did not have when I was in my 30s.

But this is what I want to point out, to you and to me. This is the absolute SANEST I have ever been around my body and weight loss. This sanity is the result of years of curating my media/social media to see a full gamut of people and bodies. This is a result of actively changing my thought patterns around my body and other people’s bodies. Literally noticing a thought, stopping it, and redirecting my brain. This is the result of taking direct actions, having explicit conversations, making deliberate choices to consider bodies the sacred vessels they are, rather than the targets of judgement and ridicule. 

I’m not immune to the ingrained thoughts. I do still get a little zing of happy at “small” “skinny” “finally.” 

But I also know I don’t have to do anything about it. Don’t have to romance thinness as an ideal. Don’t have to feel proud of something that is a side effect of a certain other goal (the butt was on purpose, the weight loss was not.) Don’t have to do more or eat less or try this or that.

I just have to love my body the way it is. And I do. 

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26 May 2024

Bodies gonna body

There is a brag that I have heard older women make my whole life, on TV and in movies and in real life. That they can still wear their clothes from 30 years ago or they can still fit into their wedding dress or some other claim of victory that their bodies have not changed significantly in their lifetimes.

And this is not my story. Not even a little. And not even since I got my eating under control. Actually I hear it more since quitting sugar because so many woman who do what I do with food used to yo-yo diet and then, once they gave up sugar and stopped eating compulsively, they, too, have been in the same clothes for decades. But not me.

Just in the past 18 years I have been a US size 4 and a US size 14. All weighing all of my food. When my beloved grandma was dying, I was eating bacon at every meal and giant fruits twice a day and was losing weight like crazy. Sometimes more than 5 pounds a month. When I quit smoking, my quantities of food were cut and I quit eating bacon and ate less fat and more raw vegetables and still gained weight. Over 30 pounds in 3 months. Literally eating quantifiably less, both calorically and by weight.

This was actually an important lesson for me. Because we are told and taught and treated like we have more control over our bodies than we do. At least aesthetically. And health wise too I imagine. And having specific measurable actions failed to give specific measurable results. At least not the ones I wanted.

Look. I do the things that one is supposed to do to stay healthy. I exercise regularly. I eat nutritious foods in amounts that keep me fueled mind and body. I drink water and meditate and sleep 8 hours a night. I am not saying that a person’s lifestyle doesn’t directly impact a person’s quality of life. I believe it does.

But bodies gonna body! Hormones and genetics and even brain chemistry and any of the myriad experiences that living in a meat suit offer, are all components of what I LOOK like. Of what you see when you see this body. And I am telling you that I have so much less control than I ever thought I did.

Of course I do have some very specific examples of how I do have some control. And that is fun and fascinating. I have absolutely changed the size and shape of my butt in the past year and a half through muscle building exercises. And I LOVE it. 

But when it comes to fat, to the distribution of fat, to my weight, to my size, I don’t have the kind of control I have been told I should have. The kind of control that says I can diet and exercise my way into a certain size or shape. I cannot. I have tried. It is *why* I got my eating under control in the first place. And even quitting sugar and weighing all of my food, I did not have that kind of command over my body.

But in getting my eating under control I got a clear enough head to see that I could only do my best. I could only keep my promises to myself, and let my body do its thing. And it’s doing a great job, frankly!

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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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03 Dec 2023

Retroactive love

Someone posted on social media the other day that they used to think they had a high pain tolerance, but then they realized they are just excellent at disassociating from their body.

That is how I got through a lot of the physical pain of being fat. And for me personally there was a lot of physical pain that came with my fatness. Foot pain. Back pain. Period pain.

Well right now, perimenopause is kicking my ass. I am not disassociated from my body anymore and my periods are as bad as they were when I was eating sugar compulsively. I have been in pain for the last few days. And none of the pain medication I have taken has worked well or for any prolonged amount of time. And I am reminded of what a gift it is to live the majority of my time in an easy body. 

I am grateful to be in communication with my body. I am grateful for a relationship with my body based on gratitude and grace. But more than that, I am thankful that I don’t have to live with pain every day. Because for as much as I take care of my body with nourishing food and water and gentle loving exercise, much of that is still luck. 

I used to think of and treat my body like my own enemy. It was fat and I blamed it for being fat. It was always hungry and that was shameful, so I blamed it for the uncontrollable need to eat. It was an easy target, so I blamed it for being the easiest joke in the room. It was the problem. It was the root of all my problems.

I gave up sugar to lose weight so I could get rid of the ugly body I hated and get a new, better body I didn’t think I deserved, so other people would stop being able to target me.

But giving up sugar let me get to know this body. The old body. The same one that I hated and pushed away so it would just work like a machine, even while in pain. I wanted to shame it into perfection, and instead I learned to like it and love it and be grateful for all of the ways it took care of me while I was hating it. To love it for being me. To love it retroactively, all of my iterations and presentations.

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29 Oct 2023

Gross sack of meat grace

When I was fat, I used to relate to my body as if it were not really me. Like it was the loaner car the dealer gave me while my real one was in the shop. In my mind I was my mind. I was my thoughts and feelings and words. I loved being my words! But I hated my body and I didn’t like to think about it. I tried to both disassociate, and dissociate myself from it.

But when I got my eating under control, I could not do that anymore. I could not get numb enough without my drug foods to not experience my body. It was right there. And it was yelling at me that it was me and I was it. So I had to change the way I dealt with it, thought about it, talked about it, talked *to* it, treated it.

When I was in my early thirties, I danced with a modern company in Brooklyn. And one day one of my fellow dancers, also 30ish at the time sighed and lamented “remember when you were 16 and your body was perfect and the world was yours?” And I laughed because no. At 16 I was worried about who was climbing the stairs behind me and how big they thought my ass was. (And not in a good way, like now.)

But one advantage I think I got from having my story be my story, is that I know how to deal with a changing body with grace. And I have the lived experience of getting better, not worse, with age. I am not talking about my weight. Since I put boundaries around my eating, I have been chubby and I have been skinny, but I have still consistently been getting fitter, stronger, and more physically attractive (at least to myself!)

I feel (I probably really am) stronger at 46 than even at 30, dancing on stage and throwing around and catching the smaller girls. I think I get better with age because I am constantly learning to be more myself. To settle further down into my most authentic self, and settle ever more comfortably into this fascinating machine/gross sack of meat.

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