onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “weight loss”

01 Jun 2013

I’m like a super hero. I’m so fast, my own body has to catch up to me.

So it’s weigh day. And for the second month in a row I lost weight. (Yay!) I’m down another 1.4 lbs. I’m at 158.8. It’s good. I’m grateful for it. I’m trying not to wish for it to go faster.

I have done a pretty good job of not focusing on my body. (Except for my tan, anyway. I have spent a lot of time focusing on that.) I haven’t been eating “lighter”. I have not been choosing “diet” foods. I have been eating plenty of bacon and cheese. Always, of course, within my boundaries. But I have not been trying to help the weight loss along. Or hurry it up. I’ve got enough to process without also trying to manage my weight.

Eat within my boundaries. That’s all I have to do. It’s enough.

Also, I have been very emotional lately. Very emotional.

Yes, I am happy. Still. More happy every day, really.

But I forget that the kind of life change I just made, accompanied by a physical move half way across the country, is traumatic. That it would be for anyone in the world. And that love doesn’t make it not traumatic. It just makes me forget that it’s traumatic. But even if I forget or fail to notice that I just jumped into a new life with no preparation and almost no time to adjust, my body has noticed. My heart and soul are overjoyed. I know that I am in the right place. With the right person. But my body is letting me know that it has to deal with the upheaval.

There are two things that are happening that have me understand that my body is in shock. I have a stress-related form of eczema. I have had it most of my memorable life. And I am having a particularly severe outbreak right now. And on a few occasions now, I have found myself crying over silly things. Irrational crying. In other words, I am having feelings that I can’t explain and I don’t know how to manage.

And I don’t get to eat them.

These kinds of feelings and experiences are why I ate sugar. Why I was a binge eater and sugar addict. Because sugar got me crazy high. Anesthetized. So I didn’t have to deal with feelings. And I didn’t have to deal with discomfort. And the not dealing occurred like managing.

But that was not the reality. I was not managing. The thing about not dealing with feelings is that they don’t go away. They just become dormant. Until they’re not anymore. Until they come back with a vengeance. From out of nowhere. When I least expect them.

So I’m not eating over my irrational emotions. And I’m not trying to hide or stifle or contain them. I’m crying when I feel the need to cry. And honoring what is going on in my body. And letting it be what it is. Because it is what it is. And carbs and sugar and binge eating won’t change that.

And then I’m trusting. That everything is going exactly the way it should be going. And that life is giving me the right things at the right time. And that as long as I keep my food under control I can come from a place of love. And that when I come from love, I can’t do it wrong or mess it up or fail. Because I know I’m where I want to be. And where I’m supposed to be. And with the person I’m supposed to be with.

I have heard it said that the only way around is through. So I’m going straight through. Right through the center. Because when this adjustment is done, I want it to be really done. And when I have moved on, I want to really be moved on.

I like to live clean. Honest, with integrity, and in the present moment. And I can say at this particular present moment, as I hit the “publish” button to post this, that I am well and happy. And that there is nowhere else I’d rather be.

Posted in Body image, Inspiration, Life, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
05 May 2013
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Dear God, thank you for answering my prayer. Oh, and one more thing…

So finally, for the first time in 11 months, not only did I not gain weight, I lost weight! 2 whole lbs! I’m back down to 160.2. Which is about where I was back on February 1st. And I can’t really explain to you the relief.

The consistent, nonsensical weight gain is finally done. I don’t know what will happen now. But that irrational fear, that I would continue to gain weight endlessly, even while I maintained my food boundaries, has gone. And it feels similar to waking up in the middle of the night to find that your fever has broken.

But I am trying not to start projecting my weight loss into the future. Because I started to go there pretty quickly. Right away, in fact. I got off the scale and went into the kitchen to make breakfast, and started calculating losing 2 lbs a month. Or what if I lost more than 2 lbs a month?!? I could be down to 135 in under a year!

And then I started to ask myself “what if I don’t get that skinny again? What’s the highest weight I could live with?”

I want to stop that kind of thinking. I mean, “live with”? I used to weigh 300 lbs and I’m not dead, so I’m guessing I could live with any weight. I don’t want to love myself conditionally.

And also, ungrateful much, Kate? I prayed so hard for the weight gain to stop. Begged and bargained with God. Just for it to stop! And here it has stopped, and I barely took time to be grateful that I didn’t gain weight. I barely even took time to be grateful that I lost weight! Within minutes, I started worrying about how and when I was going to lose even more weight.

I really thought that the weight gain stopping would be enough to satisfy me. At least for a while. And the truth is that my relationship to my body is now different than it had been since the weight gain started. When I stop to think about it, there had been an underlying heaviness and a fear that permeated my daily life since last July. And yet, already, I am used to the “new normal” of not being perpetually worried about indefinite weight gain. And I have already begun having expectations of weight loss. And not just expectations. Ultimatums for God. You better, or else. Good Lord, Kate. Or else what? Or else, nothing. That’s what…

So all I can do right now is stay in the moment. When I find myself worrying or projecting or wishing or daydreaming about how long it will take me to lose the weight I gained, I have to stop thinking that thought. I have to change my mind.

And I have decided that when I start having thoughts about how it would be ok if I only end up losing 15 or 10 or X number of lbs, I want to stop having those thoughts too. I want to stop focusing on my body.

I wanted that before too, of course. And tried not to focus on my body. But while I didn’t know what was going on, or how much weight I would gain, or how long it would go on for, that wasn’t really a practical option for a girl with food issues and body image disorders. But now that there has been a break in the trend, I have some room to breathe. And to shift my focus.

Because I have many things to focus on. Being madly in love. Making sure my meals are delicious and within my boundaries. Figuring out what of my stuff is worth keeping and what is not. Boxing up my life and shipping it to my new home. Planning my going away party. Tying up the loose ends of the past 14 years of my life. Preparing for my biggest life adventure yet. And generally figuring out how to be the best girlfriend in the whole world. Important things. More important than what size I am.

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , ,
19 Jan 2013
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How I gave up chasing unattainable tail

At the beginning of fall, I bought two new pairs of jeans. I packed away the jeans that I wore every day last winter, and stuck them under my bed. I knew there was nothing to do about gaining weight. I knew I was going to have to wear clothes that fit me this winter. And that last year’s jeans weren’t them.

When I noticed that my metabolism was starting to kick back in and my body seemed to stop getting bigger and start moving in the other direction, I decided I wanted to see how far away I was from my last year’s body. Or more accurately, how far I had to go to get back into last year’s body. I went under my bed, pulled out the jeans and tried them on.

I didn’t think I had any expectations, but it became very clear very quickly that I had indeed. I pulled the jeans up. And that was it. That was as far as it got. There was nothing else to do, except take them back off again. I gained 24.4 lbs from June to January. And apparently, 23.4 of it settled between my waist and my knees.

Thank God I didn’t do this a month ago. I don’t know what I would have done. To myself. I really don’t think I would have been able to handle it. It is a blessing that I waited until I started producing dopamine again. (Thanks God! Good looking out!)

Very quickly and without tears (yet), I realized that I might never get back into those jeans. Or that body. (Since then I have cried about it a few times. I’m crying about it now. But it’s not despair. It’s mourning.)

If I have a lament, it’s that I didn’t know that I was skinny when I was skinny. I knew I loved that body. That I was comfortable in it. But I was skinny. And I didn’t know because I’m a fat girl. And skinny is something I can never be. It is incompatible with my existence. My mind has never been able to wrap itself around the idea. Which is a shame, because I would have liked to have enjoyed the experience.

And then I had an epiphany of sorts. And I took a bold action. Yesterday, I got rid of last year’s pants. I put them in a donation box. I made a decision. A really freaking empowering decision. I will not chase that body. It was a good body. It was beautiful. But it’s in the past.

There are things that I like better about this body compared to that one. I’m more hourglass than I was a year ago. Last year’s body was more pear-shaped. My hips have always been kind of square, and now they are round. I really like the curve from my waist to my hips right now. It’s beautiful. And I have a butt, which has not always been the case.

Oh, right! And I was poisoning that body. It’s not a moral issue for me. I am not lashing myself over having been a smoker. But it is probably safe to say that in the long run, the body I’m not poisoning with cigarettes will end up more beautiful than the body I was.

I like that I have given up the idea that there is a specific mould I’m supposed to fit into to (literally). It gives me a certain amount of freedom to let me be in the body I’m in now. And to let it go where it’s going to go from here. And to let me see the beauty of my body as it unfolds. Instead of stubbornly insisting that my beauty can only exist in a form that doesn’t exist anymore.

And it turns out that stores are still carrying jeans. If I do lose a lot of weight (I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for that, of course…) and need to buy some new ones next fall (I don’t wear pants in the summer), chances are good that there will be a pair or two that fit next year’s body.

Posted in beauty, Body image, Inspiration, Life and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
12 Jan 2013
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Knock knock. Who’s there? Dopamine and metabolism. Thank God!

I have had an exciting couple of weeks! I got my dopamine back! To tell you the truth, it didn’t occur to me that it went anywhere. But now that it’s back, it’s obvious. And my metabolism started back up again!

It’s funny. I knew that quitting smoking was affecting me. And it was clear from the weight gain that it was affecting me physically. But it didn’t exactly register that it was affecting me chemically.

I knew that I was not quite right. That I was having a hard time. I think I thought about it as a “spiritual” problem. Or a “mental” problem. I knew that I had to readjust the way I dealt with things. I knew I had to learn new coping mechanisms. And I definitely learned a lot about my feelings. And how to deal with them. And (one baby step at a time) how to honor my own life without regard to how I would be judged by others. And how to make decisions that honor my heart even if they seem unreasonable, or foolish. Or scary. But I didn’t understand that my brain had stopped producing happiness chemicals. That just like my body was going to have to heal, my brain was going to have to heal. I think I thought about it as mind over matter.

In practical terms, I suppose it is just mind over matter. At least in terms of waiting out the withdrawal. It’s the actions I take and don’t take in the end that make up my life. My self-respect. My character.

I don’t smoke. I don’t eat compulsively. I don’t eat sugar. I don’t take laxatives. I don’t make myself throw up. I don’t take any drastic actions. I don’t act out. I just live with the fact that it sucks until it stops sucking. It doesn’t matter how I feel. It doesn’t matter how much weight I gain. It doesn’t matter what thoughts I have. The promises I made to myself matter. Commitment matters. Everything else is vapor and ego.

What I have learned is that these commitments end up culminating as my self-respect. They are my self-esteem. They are my dignity. And I don’t need a substance to get high. I don’t need to eat sugars, grains or starches to numb out. Or create enough crazy to escape reality. I could skip a meal. And lie about it. And I would be just as high and sick and screwed up as if I ate a chocolate cake.

But I was keeping my commitments these past seven months, and still having dark thoughts. I was unhappy. And I couldn’t seem to “bright side and gratitude” myself out of it. On a good day, the best I could do was change the channel in my head and not obsess about how much I hated my body. Or what a loser I felt like. Or how I was certain that I’m unlovable and destined for loneliness. And on a bad day, all I could do was cry. And manage to not hurt or numb myself. All I could do was keep my promises to myself and live in pain.

And now that I can feel the relief, I can see how scary that time was. How it’s kind of a miracle that I came out on the other side with my integrity. I wrote in this blog that I was unhappy, but that I was not depressed. But I was wrong. I was absolutely depressed. But it was exactly that integrity that kept me from despair. My brain was incapable of producing happy without cigarettes. My dopamine levels dropped severely. But it was nothing like the horror of 28 years of sugar addiction and self hatred.

What is interesting to me is that I knew that it would pass, because I know that’s how life works. All things pass in time. But I didn’t expect it to pass all at once. I didn’t expect it to turn on a dime. I didn’t realize that my brain would just start producing dopamine again. I didn’t even know that my dopamine levels had dropped until this week when I realized I was happy again and googled “quit smoking depression”.

And as if it couldn’t get any better, my clothes are getting looser. I bought a very sexy dress when I gained the bulk of my weight. It was sexy because it was tight. Now it’s not tight. And it’s not so sexy anymore. Now it’s just a cute dress. And I can’t tell you how happy I am about that! Plus for the first time in many months, I have been hungry between my meals. (Is that you metabolism? I’m so glad you’re here! Why don’t you stay a while…)

So hooray for going through hell and coming out on the other side! And thanks to you for being there while I got through it. I’m hoping that I am now back to my grateful, joyful self. And that I’ll get to stay here for a while.

Posted in Inspiration, Life and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
21 Apr 2012

How the Kate got her stripes

Since I told you all about my irrational body image issues in my last post, I decided it’s time to write about my rational ones. I decided to talk about “what is so” about my body, so it seemed like a good idea to mention the things I am embarrassed about. Still. At least sometimes. Even after going from 300 lbs to 133ish.

Let’s start with my knock-knees. This is not a genetic trait. It is something I did to myself. First, and nobody’s “fault”, I was born with a club foot. To remedy this, doctors put me in various hip-to-toe casts as a baby. They were changed regularly, of course. But this still stunted the growth of my right leg, which is now an inch shorter than my left. Then, growing up fat, my thighs were so big that they kept my feet and knees from ever meeting. Walking and standing while carrying so much excess weight as I was growing made my longer, left leg grow crooked. The femur has a slight bend to the right, the tibia and fibula an exaggerated bend to the left. When I lost my weight, and my thighs got thin, it turned out that when my knees touch, my feet are still six inches apart. When I bring my feet together, my left knee overlaps my right. This embarrasses me. I don’t know why. Maybe because I did it to myself. I wear heels to make it less obvious. And I have a modified “supermodel” walk so that my knees don’t bang together.

But even more embarrassing to me is my skin. I have a lot of it. A crap-load more than I need. It hangs. And it is covered with stretch marks. And there is nothing natural to do about it. The most noticeable places are my arms, breasts, belly, and upper thighs.

I was in a tank top at the playground the other day, and the 3-year-old I take care of said, “Kate, look!” And she pointed to my under-arm. “You have stripes!”

I said, “It’s true. I do.”

“Why?”

I said, “That’s a long story.”

She asked, “Do you have it at home?”

“Do I have what at home?”

She said, “The book. With the story of why you have stripes.”

I read a great analogy once about skin after a huge weight loss. It said that if you take a garbage bag, and stuff it too full of cans, when you take the cans out, the bag is still stretched out of shape. Even if you do it slowly, one can at a time. It is not that I lost my weight too fast. It is that I got so fat at all. I realize that skin is a living organ. That it’s different from a plastic bag. And, indeed, my skin is not still the skin of a 300 lb woman on a thin woman’s body. It has bounced back quite a bit, to be sure. But I still have plenty of extra. And after years of being thin, it is clear to me that it’s never going to go away entirely and leave me with a lean, smooth, tight body.

And I worry about what other people think of that. I would be lying if I said I didn’t. I am afraid of having my body judged. Partly because I’m very protective of it. It’s mine. It has been very good to me. And partly because I am ashamed of having done to it what I did. I scarred it. And I am afraid of owning that. And being reminded of that. Especially if it’s because someone else brought it up because they saw something they found unattractive. (No, I don’t mean the 3-year-old. She loves me just the way I am.)

I have worn a bathing suit in public maybe 4 times in the past 20 years. Always with my family at a hotel pool. Never comfortably. Not even since I got thin.

Being with a man, actually just the thought of being with a man, can bring up a lot of insecurity about my body. I have learned that if a man wants to see you naked, he’s never disappointed if he gets to. But knowing this has never made it easier to take off my clothes in front of one. And I have always wanted to apologize for my body. As if skin and stretch marks make me the booby prize. As if any man wouldn’t be damn lucky to be with a beautiful, intelligent, fascinating, and incredibly sexy woman. All of which I am. If I do say so myself…

But here’s the interesting part of it for me. The truth is that when I am alone with my naked body, I think it is positively beautiful. Saggy boobs, belly flap and all. It is certainly not “conventionally” pretty, but conventional has never occurred to me as all that pretty in the first place. My body is interesting. And womanly. It has a history. And I love it.

As I said, there is nothing natural to do about “fixing” my skin. But there is, of course, something to do about it. Plastic surgery. And I don’t want to. It’s not that I’ve never considered it. It’s not that I’ve never thought it would be nice to wear a bikini to the beach without worrying about the shape of my stomach. Or a backless dress, which can only be worn bra-less. (Which is just not a possibility when you’ve gone from a 44DDD to a 34D…and straight down…) And my step-mother even offered to help me pay for the plastic surgery if it was something I decided to do. But when it comes down to me and me, my relationship with my own body, I like it just the way it is. Flawed, weird, interesting, and beautiful as hell. It’s me. It is exactly who I am. And I don’t need to forget that, or deny it, or pretend that it’s not.

What I’d like more than surgery, is to wear my bikini in public. In my gorgeous, sexy, flawed body. Without shame or embarrassment. Baby steps, Kate…

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16 Mar 2012
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I can see you rolling your eyes at me…

When I was growing up fat, I wanted to be beautiful. (I can understand that to some people, size and beauty do not have anything to do with each other. But I never felt beautiful when I was fat. Nor was I ever treated like I was beautiful.) I thought that being beautiful would solve most, if not all, of my problems. But then, I thought that my problems arose from outside of myself. I thought God, and the world had done me wrong. God by giving me a broken body. The world by judging me for having that body.

When I got control of the food, I became beautiful. I’m pretty, by genetic luck. I sleep well and regularly. I’m present and aware because I’m not high on sugar anymore. I have a nice figure because I eat well, walk a lot, and again, got genetically lucky. Plus I’m confident, which makes me sexy. Basically, I got what I always wanted. And you know what? I still have most of the problems I had when I was eating compulsively. I’m just not fat or crazy anymore. And now I have a whole new problem. Unwanted attention.

This morning I was walking to the train on my way to work. A man coming toward me had been ogling me for a whole block. When he got to me, he literally said, “Damn, I would fuck the shit out of you.” I literally said “blehhhhhgh!” I kept walking. But I was upset. It made me feel gross. And unsafe. It was attention because I’m beautiful and sexy. And I didn’t want it.

The truth is that I love the way I look now. I look in the mirror (most days) and think I’m gorgeous! I love the way I feel now. I love loving my body. I love loving myself in general. I deal with food the way I do for myself. And that’s good. Because what happened to me this morning is exactly the kind of thing that would make me eat a chocolate cake if I did it for anyone else.

Living inside a fortress of fat made me invisible for most of my life. It meant that I didn’t have to know how to reject boys, and eventually men. They were the ones doing the rejecting. I didn’t really understand that girls/women were being liked and pursued by guys they had no interest in. And if you had explained it to me then, I probably would have scoffed at such a “problem”. Oh, poor baby! Too many men like you. Boo hoo. I didn’t know that fat made me feel protected until the fat went away and I was left vulnerable. Yes, being overlooked made me lonely. But there was a safety in that loneliness. No, I wasn’t getting attention from men I was interested in. But I didn’t have strangers making lewd comments about or at me at 8 in the morning either. I didn’t have strange men touch me when I walked down the street. (Yes. That happens to me now. Yes. I throw an unholy fit and publicly shame them. Grab my ass, and you’ll think twice before you do it to another woman. Just so you know.)

I know other women like me. Women who got control of their food, lost a lot of weight, and found out that they were beautiful. Some of them, like me, found strategies for dealing with this unwanted attention. We found a reason to keep the food at bay that had nothing to do with society or people outside of ourselves. But some of them couldn’t handle it. They would rather eat themselves to death. They would rather be eternally lonely. They would rather have the misery of fat and insanity, than the fear of unwanted attention.

For me, it is fear. Fear of not having my person, my body, and my life respected. And it’s a different kind of disrespect than I had for most of my life. Until I was in my late 20s, I was at best, ignored. At worst, humiliated for being unattractive. I am grateful now to be attractive to men I am attracted to. That part is fantastic! But before I got a handle on my eating, it had never occurred to me that if I were attractive in general, all sorts of men would be attracted to me. The ones I liked as well as the ones I didn’t.

With respectful men, it’s both easier and harder to deal with. Easier because I don’t feel threatened. Harder, because I don’t like rejecting people. Especially when they have been genuine and vulnerable. Especially if they’re nice guys. But I had to learn how to say no gently and sweetly. And I did learn how. Because the truth is, attention from any man I am not interested in is unwanted for me. I am not the kind of girl who likes attention for attention’s sake. I got used to being left alone. I had to learn how to be a beautiful woman in the world. And like most things that have to do with male-female relationships, I did not get my education growing up. I got a crash course around 30.

The other thing I don’t like about rejecting men is that there is a shamed fat girl living inside me. And she doesn’t think she’s good enough to reject anybody. She’s got a whole lot of who-do-you-think-you-are going on. It’s sometimes hard for me to remember that I’m not a fat, lying cheater anymore. That I’m kind of a catch now. And there’s also the irrational panic of scarcity. If I reject this one, maybe another one will never come along.  Though rational Kate thinks If you’re not interested, you’re not. You would still not be interested in this one, even if nobody else ever did come along. (I’ll say it helps that I like somebody at the moment. It keeps me from worrying about who is coming along.)

Maybe you’re reading this and scoffing, like I would have. Boo hoo. You’re beautiful now. Life is so hard. But I want to say that this is an actual issue for me. It’s something that I have to deal with day-to-day. Without cake. It’s something that fills me with anxiety. But every time I find myself getting attention I don’t want, that makes me uncomfortable, I have to choose it. I have to accept that it’s a part of my new life. It’s the trade-off. Because being beautiful is merely the byproduct of having a handle on my food. Which I do because it makes me happy. Beauty is the side effect of loving my life.

But here’s where it balances out. When I have my food under control, I can deal with life. I can find peace inside myself. I can get through a difficult situation. I can deal with an uncomfortable feeling. I can manage feeling unsafe. It’s not that I hate being beautiful. Like I said, parts of it are fabulous. I just don’t like everything that comes with it. And it sure as hell is not the magical answer to all my troubles I thought it would be when I was eating compulsively. What I love is being sane and capable. And being able to deal with whatever comes my way. And having the ability to say, “No. You cannot have my number. You cannot walk with me. But I’m flattered. Have a nice day.”

Posted in beauty, Life and tagged , , ,
10 Jan 2012

Unburdened

I happen to be the product of a wildly unsuccessful marriage. Sometimes I look at each of my parents and wonder who the hell thought that union was a good idea. Of course, I didn’t know them through their youth and courtship. (They had known each other in highschool, and married in their early twenties.) But in my lifetime they have been as different as can be. My father is a Harvard Ph.D. and atheist who wears bow ties and thinks intellectual discourse and art are fun. My mom is a Catholic with a dirty sense of humor who thinks Disney World and midnight showings of blockbuster movies are fun. They were divorced, oh…about 15 minutes after I was born.

When I was 27, I had a conversation with each of them (separately) about why their marriage didn’t work out. My mother’s explanation was that my father didn’t want a family. (This is not an insight into my father, by the way. He has always been in my life. Always as a father.) This is an illustration of the context of my childhood. My father didn’t want a family meant my father didn’t want me. Of course, my mother never said this to me growing up. I certainly don’t think she ever considered his leaving my fault. Both of my parents are good people who love me. But my mother believed that he left because he didn’t want a family, and technically, I was that family. A context like that is insidious. It does not have to be distinguished to be lived. It does not have to be named and expressed to be understood. That my father didn’t want me is the water I have been swimming in my whole life. To the child in me, I chased the man away with my very existence.

34-year-old, intelligent, rational Kate knows that her parents’ marriage is between them. That their choices to communicate or stay silent, fight or make peace, stay or leave, had nothing to do with her. But baby Kate got the burden of being a burden. And she’s been carrying it dutifully her whole life.

I have never been available for love. I shut my heart down early. But the thing about a heart is that it will love if you let it. So I didn’t let it. I anesthetized it with food. I ate every feeling constantly for the majority of my life. I built myself a fortress of fat and I lived inside it.

So fast forward. I got control of the food. I got hot. I got some integrity. But I kept the fortress around my heart. And then I started dating. I mean a *lot*. I internet dated. I went out with my cab driver. With my waiter. Bankers, lawyers, architects, construction workers. Even a chef. I met men on the subway. In airports. On the street. In the park. Starbucks. (Starbucks, single ladies! You just have to go there and smile.) But it didn’t matter how many men I met or how many dates I went on. I was all surface. I was all face and body. I never let anyone into my fortress to get a glimpse of my heart.

What I am starting to see now is that cowardice begets cowardice. That grace is a muscle. I let mine atrophy for 28 years. Perhaps if I had faced my fear and shame, I would have found that it was a paper tiger. But there is no perhaps. My story is that I fed my shame with cake and I hid away from life.

About two years ago, I was seeing this guy. (Starbucks. I’m telling you!) And wow, did I like him. I had had my food under control for a few years by then. I looked great and I was at a place in my life where I genuinely respected myself. So I got up all the courage I could muster, I found a little chink in the wall of my fortress and I told him that I liked him. (Like. Not love. I have never been in love.) He didn’t feel the same.

Now most girls can figure out how to deal with this kind of rejection by the time they are 14. But I was in my fortress at 14, cowering in the corner and stuffing my face. I did not know how to deal with it. I didn’t have that muscle. So I went back into my fortress and lamented my lot as the unwanted one. This guy is not a jerk. He was not cruel to me. He and I are still in touch occasionally. We exist somewhere between friends and acquaintances. He thinks I’m “really special”. (Ugh! I hate “really special”!) He says I’m his biggest cheerleader. He loves my honesty and seeks my opinion. And of course, he would still sleep with me if I were available for that. (Which I am not.) But what I have just come to realize, is that for the past two years, I have been feeling sorry for him. Sorry for having burdened him. Sorry for wanting what I don’t deserve. Sorry for making him look at my heart.

But now it’s been a couple of years. The food is still under control. And the longer it is, the more alert my heart gets. It wants out of the fortress. It woke up, looked around, and wanted to know who left the fat girl in charge!?!? It wants me to stop locking it up every time the fat girl and the baby and the burden in me get scared. It wants to get to work on building my grace muscle.

I hope that the next time I tell a man I like him, I will remember that whenever a person shows their heart to another person, it’s a gift. Even if that person is me.

Posted in Life, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
07 Jan 2012
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…Always a fat girl

Origionally posted to Facebook 1/2/12

So I’ve decided to take risks in 2012. Wtf am I thinking? I do not like to take risks. I like my life comfortable. Who cares if it’s small?

Right. I care. I’m lonely. If you’ve seen me, you probably think that I’m a knockout. If you’ve met me, you probably think that I’m honest, graceful, generous and loving. And I’m single. I have always been single. I have love issues. I have fear issues. I have worthiness issues. In short, I’m a fat girl.

If you’ve met me in the past 5 or so years, you might not understand. Even if you’ve known me my whole life you might not understand. Because if you look at me and see my thin body, you might think that the way you see me and the way I see myself are the same. But you would be grossly mistaken.

At 19 I weighed 300lbs. I could not stop eating. I hated myself. I hated my body. I was filled with shame. But I could not stop.

For years now, (6 years today, as a matter of fact) I have had my eating under control. At 34, I live very happily. I have a normal body. But I have certain thoughts. Irrational thoughts. They are fat girl thoughts. And I understand that they will never go away. (Even if you don’t.) Seriously. Never.

I am unworthy of love, hence no one will ever love me. I should prepare for a life alone. I should resign myself to solitude. I am fundamentally broken. Who would chose the broken woman when he could have a whole one. A bright shiny new one. With a world full of women, who would choose me?

I am not stupid. I am just emotional. It’s not that I don’t know that this is false; that this is not how love works. But it lives inside me like a truth. This is *my* fat girl curse. I don’t claim that every fat girl has the same. But I know many women like me. Fat girls (thin or not) who have something similar. That shame and disgrace. That self punishment. That belief that if only they were better and more, they could deserve. Deserve whatever it is they don’t deserve. Love. Money. Peace. Joy.

I decided years ago to make friends with my fat girl. She was good for my life in some ways. I wasn’t pretty, so I had to cultivate a personality. I had to be smart. I had to be funny. I learned to be decidedly quick and devilishly clever. That was all her doing. I am grateful to her for that. And she got me through a difficult childhood. Sure she did it by getting fucked up on sugar and just not dealing with shit. But she got me through none the less. And I’m here now in a different place and a different life. The same body, of course, but God, how miraculously different.

But she is not dead or gone. She cannot die before I do. I can usually distinguish her voice in my head. Partly because she’s a total Debbie Downer. She reminds me not to think big. Not to dream at all. She reminds me that I will only be humiliated. But I know that she just wants her cake back.

So this year, I want to take some risks. Not subway surfing or tightrope walking. But risks with my heart. Risks of rejection and humiliation. I can hear her even now. “You’ll be sorry. It can only lead to suffering. Don’t you see? Chocolate cake will never reject you.” But I know that cake will never love me either. And that it will never let me love myself.

If I spend my life without ever being loved and in love, so be it. I have spent my first 34 years that way. But living in fear is heavy. And as time passes, it seems silly to have lost 165 lbs from my body, only to carry it in my heart.

Wishing you many blessings for 2012!

Posted in Life, Relationships and tagged , , , ,

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