And happy birthday next week! Enjoy the cake and all that goes with it.

This is me, too. I don’t feel like I belong in the Fat Girl club, not having suffered horrible discrimination for decades like some have. I’ve only gotten fat in the last few years (my thirties) and partly due to inadequately treated chronic illness – though I’ve noticed treating the illness did not result in a corresponding loss of fat, just feeling better.

Usually this isn’t good enough for people who know me who think I should be working at all times to become more like what I was, or that I’ve ‘let myself go’ (what a phrase) or that buying comfortable clothes for my fatter body is laying out the red carpet for more fat to come stay with me. As if hating, denying, and making my fat body uncomfortable would make any of this easier to live with. More people will talk about dieting as reasonable than having useful health insurance. (Anyone can afford to diet! You just eat less! And exercise!)

Accepting that this version of ‘me’ is a completely legitimate part of being ‘me’ is hard to do. It requires some Zen thinking: just this very moment, this is me, not what I’ve cooked up about myself from my own history and thoughts and snee snee snee – just this moment, just me.

But I’m not forty yet either, so I’ll just wait interestedly for the article.

I figured if nothing else, the fact that I’m planning a wedding and have vowed NOT to lose any weight beforehand might gain me some points on the interesting-o-meter…..

You impress me!

One day, as I stood in the bathroom, I looked myself in the mirror and heard a voice in my head tell me I had to learn to love who I was, or I’d never be happy. Between age 21 and 25, my weight went up and it seemed nothing I could do could stop it. I went to college, then a year of grad school, the weight coming back. After leaving grad school, I learned that there might be underlying reasons for my weight. I started working on accepting myself and learning how to eat. I knew people in AA and joined OA. I gave up sugar and meat and became macrobiotic. The weight came off again, but I couldn’t enjoy food and had stopped menstruating.

I thought of being macrobiotic as a healthy lifestyle choice, but it was just another diet. I was about a size 16 when I met my husband. Funny how I mark time by what size I was. We started dating and it’s hard to go out to eat when all you can eat is brown rice and steamed vegetables. I started eating and my weight started slipping up. Again I tried healthy lifestyle choices (aka diets) but it seemed that unless I did something drastic, I didn’t lose weight. I read books by Geneen Roth and started appreciating eating, but it still felt like a diet to me.

At some point, I realized I just didn’t have the strength to go on another diet. I just couldn’t put myself through it. I was healthy and happy, if not in complete acceptance of my size. I started hearing about research being done that debunked the fat is unhealthy idea. It’s been a process, but today, I wouldn’t think about going on another diet. I’m far more accepting of my body and enjoy eating whatever pleases me. I have read Linda Bacon’s Health at Every Size and started working those principles into my life.

I still struggle with being public about it. Sometimes I feel it’s like coming out gay. I’m afraid I’ll lose friends. I have many friends who are on this or that corporate diet and don’t want to hear about HAES. They don’t want to give up the hope that one day they’ll be thin. My hope has changed, from hoping I’ll be thin to hoping someday, I’ll feel completely comfortable in my skin and not care what anyone else thinks.