Secrets of a Former Fat Girl (13 page)

Split it up.

Can't find 30 minutes for a good treadmill walk? What about 15? Or 10? Research says that short bursts of exercise are just as effective as one long session. If you can't imagine getting up early enough to do a 30-minute walk in the morning, try 15 minutes then and 15 minutes when you get home from work. Or if you can walk at lunch, do three 10-minute segments. This strategy works best for walkers and people with home exercise equipment such as treadmills, bikes, and elliptical trainers.

Don't do nothing.

My grammatically correct grandmother is turning in her grave, but this situation calls for a double negative: Doing
something
physical is always better than doing nothing at all. Absolutely can't squeeze in thirty minutes on the treadmill? Fifteen minutes isn't so bad. Miss the start of your cycling class at the gym? Jump on a bike in the cardio room for twenty minutes. Lunchtime walk rained out? Climb the stairs in your office building for twenty minutes instead. Too many times, people let a glitch in their system throw them completely off track. Don't give in to that temptation.

Quit being a martyr.

My psychologist friend Alice Domar, Ph.D., has a much nicer term for it: self-sacrificer. The theory is that you really do have the time you need to do right by your body and your mind. But I say that because of your Fat Girl programming, you don't feel worthy of the top spot on your to-do list. Your name is inked in, typeset, right there at the bottom. So, naturally, everyone else and everything else defaults to a position ahead of you.

The first step in elevating yourself in your own eyes is to recognize that for the most part your so-called lack of time is the result of your own choices. You are choosing to put other people's needs above your own. Sure, you have housework to do and kids to care for—hey, we all do. But has it ever occurred to you that you could ask others to take on some of those tasks? Probably not, because that's part of the Fat Girl programming. Everyone else's “stuff” is more important than yours. To be a Former Fat Girl you have to stop thinking that way, stop self-sacrificing. To help give you a visual picture of how you're spending your time—and where you might find more time for you—see the sidebar on Chapter 3.

I can't tell you how much of a difference INO has made in my life, in the way I deal with food, in my commitment to exercise, and even in the decisions I make every day. Whereas I used to swallow my discontent, my creative ideas, my clever quips, now It's Not an Option
not
to. That mantra is one of the central themes of my life even now, after all these years. It keeps me going, day after day, helping me resist my self-sacrificing tendencies, my self-doubts, the temptation to sleep in, to pig out, to give up on myself.

While Secret #3 was about how to get to where you want to be physically and emotionally, Secret #4 will help you figure out how to know when you've actually arrived. It's designed to help you confront the assumptions and fears that have kept you stuck in your comfort zone and create a clear picture of what it means to be a Former Fat Girl: how you want to look, how you want to feel, how you want to act in the world. A tall order, I know, but it can be done. Read on to find out how.

Secret #4: “See” Yourself Slim

I
had done it. By focusing on fitness and not on dieting, by keeping my nascent Former Fat Girl journey secret from the people around me, and by using the INO mantra to stay focused and put myself first on my to-do list, I had dropped from a size 16-plus to about an 8. And I thought that's where my big-boned body was meant to be.

Not only that, I had started wrenching myself little by little out of the safe, comfortable cocoon of a life I had created. After all, I had always been afraid of moving on, of taking the next step. As a kid I moped around on Sunday afternoons, dreading the beginning of the school week; I literally mourned the end of summer break. When all my friends were dying to get their driver's permit at fifteen, I was happy to wait until seventeen, delaying that rite of passage as long as I could. As an adult, college graduation represented the end of another long, long summer for me. The campus was my home, my haven, and I didn't want to leave.

I had started to flourish there, indulging the overachiever in me like I was never able to do in my politically cutthroat high school. I was like Forrest Gump, popping up in almost every scene—tutoring underclassmen, working on any and every campus committee, cheering in the stands at all the basketball games (that is, if I wasn't taking photos for the newspaper), and planning student retreats. My status as
über
volunteer earned me the school's ultimate prize, Woman of the Year, given to the graduating senior with the longest list of extracurricular activities. No one else came close.

I did all this at the expense of my own schoolwork: Heading into my last week of classes as a senior, I remember having four research papers due, and I had yet to start even one. That was status quo for me throughout college, to spread myself so thin that I was sick with anxiety as finals approached and rushed to catch up—sick in the literal sense with symptoms that always seemed to strike a couple of weeks before finals: stomach cramps that had me running for the john, a heart racing so fast that I thought it would leap out of my chest, and backaches that left me sleepless when I finally did make it to bed after a late-night cramming session.

I was carrying such a heavy load, and I'm not talking about the eighteen class hours I took most semesters. With every activity I got into, I sucked up responsibility like a sponge. If something went wrong—a missed deadline, a low turnout at student elections, a typo in a front-page story—it was my fault, or so I thought, even if the mishap was completely out of my control. I was the one who took up the slack if anyone else didn't come through, which seemed to happen a lot, probably because everyone knew I was there, ready to come to the rescue.

I always managed to get my academic work done, though, and done well enough to make the dean's list most semesters. Looking back, I think I was hooked on the whole drama of it:
Would Lisa manage to pull off leading the end-of-the-semester retreat, close the last issue of the newspaper
, and
take three finals and write four papers in one week? Or will she self destruct under all the pressure? Tune in next week to find out.

But more than that, I loved being the go-to girl, the one everyone could count on. I wore my busyness like a badge of honor and took pride in my packed schedule. Getting an actual award for it made me wriggle with delight inside, like a dog that just can't wag its tail hard enough. I didn't even mind the glare of the spotlight as I walked across the stage in front of applauding family, friends, and faculty to pick up my walnut plaque with the engraved brass plate. All the praise, the applause, and the gratitude made the work worthwhile and made me feel worthy. To this people-pleaser, it was like winning an Academy Award.

The idea of leaving all this was terrifying—much scarier to me than going from high school to college. In high school I never even had a chance at the kind of go-to-girl status I had attained in college; that was reserved for only the most popular kids in the tightest cliques. Graduation meant I would have to start over somewhere else, tiptoeing around and testing the waters, figuring out whether I could speak my mind without getting shut down, figuring out who was friend and who was foe, figuring out how to please and whom to please. Graduation meant I had to find my place again.

 

But I couldn't stay.
I took too much pride in my smarts to be one of those students who kept delaying graduation, taking one more class, tackling one more major, so I did the next best thing: I signed up to get a master's in journalism at the University of Texas across town. The booming forty-thousand-student campus was like New York City compared to my tiny school, but it was still college, where A's were good and F's were bad, where the professors ruled. Not like the murky corporate world, full of unknown enemies, unclear politics, and often incomprehensible measures of success. Familiar territory, or more familiar than some cubicle in an office building downtown.

And, anyway, I rationalized, how did I even think I could be a journalist with my measly General Studies degree? Never mind that I had been editor of the weekly campus newspaper. Never mind that I probably had as much experience, if not more, than kids whose transcripts were full of classes in reporting and editing. In my mind there was no way I could measure up.

It wasn't until I started my whole Former Fat Girl journey a year into grad school that I began to see that many of the choices I'd made in life were made out of fear. That my fear of rejection had kept me from striking out on my own, away from the arms of academia. That I was so afraid that if I stopped giving, giving, giving—to the point that I didn't even know what I wanted for myself—there would be no more reason for my parents, my professors, or my peers to love me. That fear was what kept me from loving any guy who was free to love me back, as much because he
might
as because he
might not
. That fear was the real reason I couldn't shed the pounds I had been battling for so many years.

I was just as afraid of success as I was of failure. By not trying for the kind of job I dreamed of, I didn't have to face the idea that maybe I wasn't as smart or as creative as I thought. By not trying for the available guy and instead secretly pining for the boyfriend of a best friend, I was insulating myself from rejection. I was also protecting myself from the reality of relationships in all their complicated, messy imperfection. I preferred the perfection of my daydream trysts to the prospect of finding out that he (whoever he might be) wasn't perfect, that
I
wasn't perfect. And by remaining apart, by maintaining my buddy status, I was shielding myself from the real pain of losing someone I had allowed into my world. Losing a buddy is like pulling off a hangnail; losing a lover is like yanking out a molar sans anesthesia.

And if I lost the weight, I'd lose the perfect fallback excuse for the times I did try and failed:
Of course he doesn't want me—I'm fat!

It was like that excess seventyish pounds was some kind of impenetrable armor. Shedding it would leave me exposed, vulnerable to ridicule, to teasing, and to all the associated pain. I know it doesn't sound rational. I was teased as a Fat Girl, but I was afraid to lose weight because I might be teased for
not
being fat? I think I had become so familiar with my Fat Girl role that I was afraid of
any
change.

Now this was a different ball game. For years I had thought that if I could just find the right diet—the perfect scientific ratio of fat to carbs to protein to whatever—I could get that “perfect” body. I thought that if I wasn't such a weakling, I could resist those Girl Scout Thin Mints calling to me from the pantry.

I wasn't completely wrong about the weakling part. I did have to build my physical and mental strength to break out of that Fat Girl mode, but I figured out that I was fighting the wrong enemy. Instead of focusing on my appetite, I needed to set my sights on that fear—the fear that was keeping the needle on the scale stuck in the “heavy” position, the fear that was ruling my life in all kinds of ways.

I kind of backed into this whole revelation about the fear factor as I made it through each workout and saw the payoffs on the scale. I began to feel a little surge of strength inside and outside after every run around that quarter-mile track and every time I made it through the day without pigging out. I felt brave enough to push a little further during the next workout, more confident that I could resist the temptations of the treats I so loved. I started looking forward to the next thing instead of down at my feet, like you do out of shame, out of shyness, out of insecurity. And I had more energy to actually move toward it.

As I cast off my
“fat clothes,” there were signs that I was beginning to shed the Fat Girl image I had of myself. For one thing, I started experimenting with my wardrobe, my hair, and my makeup. You know something's going on when a Fat Girl actually looks forward to shopping. Trying on clothes was becoming less of a self-esteem-sucking experience and more like something out of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
: These pants? Too tight. This pair? Too loose. This one? Just right. Before, there
was
no “just right.” I'd had a closet full of supersize clothes, but I didn't feel “just right” in any of them. Now, even though I still experienced my share of dressing room disappointments, I was a little more confident that there was a “just right” somewhere on the rack waiting for me. Shopping for my size 8 body was—dare I say?—
fun
.

This was back in the 80s when Boy George-ish andro gyny was in: Everyone was wearing oversized, straight-cut, double-breasted suit jackets with baggy, pleated, menswear-inspired pants. I was particularly fond of the stretchy-stirrup-pants-with-big-sweater look. I took to wearing the occasional tie, like everyone else. I remember a particular wardrobe favorite, a linen-cotton blend suit jacket in a rust color with a khaki pinstripe. The shoulder pads were thicker than a sofa cushion. In it I looked like a gangster at a Gatsby garden party.

Hey, I never said the clothes were tasteful, but I loved them anyway. I hadn't felt this way about anything in my wardrobe since the white vinyl go-go boots I begged my dad to buy me on one of our father-daughter shopping trips when I was a little girl. And the fact that I even
cared
, even
dared
to dip my big toe into the deep blue sea of fashion was pretty amazing. For years my size had kept me from wearing what everyone else was wearing. Now more than ever before I was on trend. I even developed a fetish for chunky earrings, the chunkier and funkier the better. I invested in a palette of eye shadows worthy of a movie-set makeup artist, applying no less than three shades (and sometimes more) in combination. I wore
lipstick
, for God's sake.

Before, my only fashion goal had been to fade into the background; now, I wanted to be
noticed
.

Even so, a struggle was going on beneath the surface of my Debbie Gibson-esque exterior. With every step I took toward the spotlight, I had to fight back the old Fat Girl fears that had kept me in hiding for so long. Every change I made on the outside was the result of an inner victory in the battle between who I had been and who I was to become. Every decision about how I dressed was up for internal debate. The running commentary went something like this:
Don't you think that stripe is too bold? That sweater's a little, uh, bright, isn't it? What about that eye makeup? A bit clownish, if you ask me. And those earrings. Can't you wear something a little less…showy?
The thought that someone might actually start paying attention was enough to send the Fat Girl me into a panic. I was about halfway across that teetering, rickety bridge to becoming a Former Fat Girl, making my way one precarious footstep after another. The fear of what lay on the other side kept rising up, threatening to pull me back.

My first post-grad school job, in fact, was the result of one of those internal battles. After making it through the two years of classes I needed for my master's, I decided to get a job. I couldn't take being a student anymore. I was tired of being poor, of waiting for my life to begin. I was simply too impatient to stick around and finish my thesis. I'd get it done…sometime. So after a halfhearted search of the help-wanted ads, I was hired at a small-time restaurant-industry magazine. (Funny how I figured out a way to be around food as much as possible, isn't it?)

Before the end of my first day, I remember a little voice inside saying, “This is too easy for me.” Thanks to my Fat Girl programming, I had underestimated myself yet again. I know I was lucky to be working at all back then in 1984 when jobs were scarce, but like every other kid coming out of j-school, I fantasized about being a reporter for the
New York Times
or the
Washington Post
or even the
Houston Chronicle
—a job where I could do important work,
real
work. I know there was little chance that my meager resume would end up anywhere but in the trash can at one of those major-league operations. But it didn't even occur to me to apply. I didn't have the confidence, the faith in myself, the momentum and motivation to take such a risk—not yet, anyway.