Secrets of a Former Fat Girl (16 page)

Remember, the goal is not perfection.

If you asked five different women which celebrity has the “perfect” body, chances are you'd get five different answers. The point is, there's no such thing. So if you are chasing perfection, how do you know when you get there?

I know my body is not perfect. My chest is flat, my hips are wide, and my legs are big—with muscles now, not flab, but big nonetheless. I have stretch marks on my hips, and not from having a baby. There are still certain styles I can't wear, like clingy knit dresses (there's not much except hips and thighs to cling to). But this is the best body I'll ever have unless I go the surgery route, and that's not going to happen. “Easy for you to say, Ms. Size 2,” you're thinking. Don't get me wrong: I'm not trying to rub it in. All I'm saying is that the way I feel matters more than the size I wear or how close I come to some idea of perfection. I have the confidence and courage to go for what I want in life; to speak, knowing that I could say the wrong thing; to reach beyond my limits, knowing that I could fall. I don't let the chance that I might fail stop me.

So when you start thinking, “My body's too old” or “My abs are shot from too many babies” or “My proportions are all off; I'm just not built that way,” remember this: A Former Fat Girl isn't defined by her measurements. There isn't some qualifying weight you have to reach to be part of the club. You know you're in when you stop letting the Fat Girl programming direct your life. You know you're in when you, too, have the confidence to live life on your own terms. When you are chasing a feeling and not some nebulous idea of the perfect body, you'll know you have arrived.

After all, Secret #4 is about how to see the
whole
Former Fat Girl you, not just get an idea of how you might look on the outside. It's about imagining yourself going from wherever you are now emotionally
and
physically to where you want to be. For me, it was about seeing myself as a powerful, confident woman who was not afraid to take a risk, whether that was striking up a conversation with a guy or sending off my resume for an impossible job. Secret #4 forces you to confront the hidden assumptions about who you are and how you relate to the world, and it gives you a clear idea of where you want to go and what success will look and feel like. Read on for Secret #5, a powerful tool to help you get there. Its fixes will transform your relationship with food, a relationship that's hardwired into your Fat Girl programming.

Secret #5: Remember, You Are Not Like Other People

W
hen I finally started getting serious about my diet, I became a complete complainer. I had gotten used to the idea that if I was exercising regularly, I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain weight, an amazing accomplishment as far as I was concerned. If someone brought a box of doughnuts into work, how could I turn them down—even if I had already eaten a trough of cereal for breakfast? I was only being polite.

I would try to resist, but my obsession was so powerful that it wouldn't be denied. It was an itch that I just had to scratch, a flashback to childhood cases of poison ivy that burned until I just couldn't take it anymore.

Determined not to give into temptation, I would saunter by the break room, struggling to keep from looking in the direction of the Dunkin' Donuts box on the table. I would return to my desk and try to focus on my to-do list, but all I could think about were those pillowy orbs of sugar-coated goodness. After a few futile minutes of trying to stave off the inevitable, I'd nonchalantly wander back into the break room, hoping to find the objects of my desire alone. I'd start by innocently scraping a smear of glaze from the box with my finger, telling myself that I would stop there, that I would walk away, that all I needed was a taste to satisfy me. But all that did was make me want more. “Okay” I'd tell myself, “I'll only have a half.” I was only fooling myself. Half would always lead to a whole and leave me with a case of guilt worthy of a day-after adulteress.

So you can understand the problem when I joined Weight Watchers and had to come clean about every morsel I put in my mouth. Why Weight Watchers? Well, it wasn't as if my decision was the result of any kind of serious analysis of diet programs. I really didn't know anything about the Weight Watchers plan except that you ate real food, as opposed to slurping shakes or choking down prefab dinners, and that you were supposed to show up at some weekly rah-rah meeting. More important than the details of the program was what signing that check to Weight Watchers symbolized. For the first time I made a real commitment to breaking out of that Fat Girl mode I had lived in for so long. Somehow, deep inside, I knew I needed more than just a diet book or a vow to skip dessert to propel me to my future as a Former Fat Girl. I needed something more formal: a contract with my name on the dotted line. That's what Weight Watchers was to me.

Even though I thought I was ready to leave my Fat Girl past behind, Weight Watchers would be no picnic. The program forced me to become some kind of culinary accountant, a bean counter in the most literal sense. Every fingerful of frosting, every nibble of a french fry, and every shard of potato chip no matter how small factored toward my daily quota. In those days WW gave you a kind of “budget” of a certain number of servings per food group—starches, dairy, proteins, veggies, and fruits. Throughout the day you'd deduct what you ate from that budget until you had a balance of zero. No deficit spending allowed. (Maybe we should get Congress in on that action.)

WW had strict specifications for what constituted a serving. A “bowlful” or a “hamburger patty” or a “pizza slice” wasn't enough. How big was the bowl? How much did the burger weigh? What were the exact dimensions of the pizza slice and the cheese-to-crust-to-sauce ratio?

You know I was no stranger to dieting, but this took calorie conservation to a whole new level. I had to buy a tiny scale to weigh my cereal, use a cup measure to parcel out my measly portion of sliced strawberries, and pull out a ruler to calculate the precise size of the cheese slice I was preparing for my afternoon snack. I felt like one of those science geeks on
CSI:,
as though my kitchen had become a lab where I was constantly dissecting my diet, parsing out nutrients so I could match my meals to the Weight Watchers specs. This was back in the old days, before you could simply key the components of your meal into your Treo or laptop and have it magically calculated for you. It is still the same attention to detail but with a lot less hassle.

I felt like I was suffocating under all these rules, rules, rules. I resented sacrificing the freedom to indulge my appetite. I was used to grazing in open fields without any real restrictions; now this damn diet was fencing me in, cutting me off from the foods I loved before I had eaten my fill. I literally mourned the absence of my food faves, especially carbs—pasta, rolls, biscuits, you name it. It wasn't like my beloved starches were completely verboten, but the drastically downsized WW portions were just a tease. Anything less than my usual plate of spaghetti the size of a Hummer hubcap, and I was miserable. And I let everyone around me know it.

Nevertheless, I dutifully
abided by the WW guidelines, but not without a whole lot of kvetching and obtrusive stomach growling. I felt like I was more obsessed with food than ever. I had to plan everything I ate down to the tiniest morsel, to calculate the impact of each nibble on the day's bottom line. There was no longer such a thing as a casual bite; everything I put into my mouth was intentional.

I started bringing my lunch to work to avoid having to navigate restaurant menus for WW-appropriate meals (and the temptation of blowing an entire day's quota by noon). Lunch consisted of a turkey and low-fat cheese sandwich on low-cal bread and carrot sticks. Now remember, this was before there were entire aisles of reduced-fat and fat-free foods. There was no low-fat mayonnaise. There were no Baked Lays or cheddar soy crisps to sub for a bag of greasy chips. The light bread wasn't bad except that it was so airy you could practically read a newspaper through it. Cheese was another story. Its texture was not unlike the paste that we used to make crafts in elementary school, and the taste wasn't far off, either (and I'm speaking from experience). It was nothing like the low-fat cheeses you can get today that are almost identical to the real thing.

As unsatisfying as my main dish might have been, I tried to eat it as slowly as I could, struggling to make it and the bag of carrots last the entire lunch hour. If I ended fifteen minutes short, I would spend those fifteen minutes thinking about what I
could
be eating or how long it would be until dinner when I could eat again.

Compared to the sandwich, the carrots were a treat. Raw carrots were practically the only vegetable other than potatoes and corn that I actually liked at the time. I couldn't stand them cooked to an orangey mush; but raw, they had a nice crunch and a subtle sweetness. And on WW, back in the day, they were a “free” food, meaning they could be eaten in unlimited quantities. (I love the phrase
unlimited quantities
.) Since veggies were the only thing I could let loose on, they became my staple. I started eating carrots the way I used to eat popcorn (see
unlimited quantities
reference above). They became my snack of choice, anytime, anywhere.

After several months of feeding my carrot habit, something curious happened: I started turning orange. A friend noticed it first, catching a glimpse of my palms that looked a bit like they were stained from a bad self-tanner. The color soon spread to my arms, feet, legs, and face. I didn't really see it, but other people did. I guess I had just gotten used to the look. One friend grew so alarmed that she looked it up in a medical text (remember, this was before Google). Diagnosis: beta-carotene overload. Common in vegetarians and infants who OD'd on pureed carrots and sweet potatoes, in extreme circumstances too much of this form of vitamin A can lead to brain damage, or so they say. I certainly haven't seen any evidence of that in myself, unless you count short-term memory loss (“Now, what did I come in here for?”), long-term memory loss (“What do you mean I was born in Kentucky?”), and lack of mental focus (I was going to give you an example, but I got caught up staring out the window at nothing in particular).

Seriously, all is well. I curbed my carrot obsession a bit, substituting celery, which held no similar risks but wasn't as exciting (not that carrots were exactly thrilling, either, but you know what I mean). The whole experience became something of a joke among my friends, so much so that I dressed as a carrot for a Halloween party one year. I was orange from the neck down, my face was green, and my equally as green hair was spiked like a punk rocker to simulate the stem and leaves.

If that getup doesn't prove how far I had come in my whole social development cycle, I don't know what will. Little old wallflower me, dressed for Halloween not as a ghost or hobo or something equally as nondescript, but as a neon orange, look-at-me-I'm-on-display carrot. Little old hermit me with a party on her calendar—one that doesn't involve family members. Little old misfit me with friends to call her own and not imaginary ones.

I was continuing to work the Former Fat Girl program. I was still running, feeling better and stronger after every day on the trail. Plus, I was making other kinds of strides. Soon after dabbling in the Beverly Hills Diet, Kim, Gabriele, and I vowed to get new jobs and get out of our workplace hell. We made a bet: Whichever of us got a job first won a fabulous lunch at the place of her choice, courtesy of the other two. With a prize like lunch, there was no competition. I had to win.

And I did. I landed a job at the weekly business newspaper in Austin. It was no
Wall Street Journal
, but it was a teeny step up from what I had been doing. It also said something for my self-esteem to make the break from my beer-bellied boss and his prison rule. (Lunch, in case you're interested, was at The Four Seasons. Delish, as my nana used to say.) I was at the business journal when I joined Weight Watchers.

In the meantime, I had started going to a new church with a cool pastor and a small but active group of twenty-somethings. I had found the church through a friend from college who was working there as the youth minister. I was drawn to the no-nonsense, real-life way that Father Jordan spoke to us at Mass. I was drawn to the energy that the young adults group seemed to have as I sized them up over the first couple of months after I started attending services there. They were a very social crowd; it wasn't all Bible study and prayer meetings. (We're talking about Catholics, remember.) They had happy hours, Super Bowl parties, after-Mass brunches, all kinds of stuff. There were people from all over, transplants to Austin during the tech boom of the mid to late 80s: Eddie from Cleveland, a loud guy with a kidlike sense of humor who wore his passion for his hometown on his sleeve; Maureen from somewhere in the Midwest who told sweet, funny stories about her special ed students; and John, a New Yorker whose know-it-all tendencies could get a bit obnoxious but who was one of the quirky characters that made the group fun.

Slowly, slowly, I started getting involved. I went to a Mass at one of the group members' homes and chatted over dinner afterward. I helped with a fund-raiser for a sister church in a poor central Texas town. I showed up at one of those happy hours and then another and another. Someone talked me into signing up for the group's volleyball team. Ten years after I had flunked tryouts in tenth grade, there I was, serving and setting (I was too short to spike) on a shiny wooden court.

The interesting thing was, these people—like Kim and Gabriele—didn't know the old Fat Girl me. They only knew the size 8 me standing in front of them. They knew me as a runner, as an athlete, even! They didn't know how socially inept I had been, how terrified the old Fat Girl would have been at the idea of showing up in a pair of shorts to run around and sweat with
boys
.

I was again establishing my identity with a new group of people, much like I had done as a freshman in college. But I wasn't the Fat Girl I used to be; no, far from it. I found myself taking chances with this new group as never before: dancing by myself, laughing out loud, and courting attention (at least a little). I was inching my way out of the dark anonymity of the wings and closer to center stage, and it was scary—but I liked it. I liked it enough to keep going.

All of those
good things—the new job, the new friends, the revenge of the nerd on the volleyball court—made me want even more what Weight Watchers was offering: a chance to become even more of myself, to truly become comfortable in my own skin. Even so, I had moments when my mouth watered for a late-night burger and beer with the softball team, when I was dying for an order of pancakes at brunch after church instead of the scrambled eggs and dry wheat toast on my plate.

It would take an offhand comment from a fed-up friend to jolt me out of my self-pity and into a new attitude about the whole Weight Watchers thing. It happened one day after I had finished counting out a paltry pile of Wheat Thins to accompany a postage-stamp-size cube of cheddar. “Why do I have to think about food all the time?” I bitched to my friend Kim. “Why can't I eat like other people?”

I didn't really expect an answer, but I got one. Kim looked at me and said in her matter-of-fact way, “Because, Lisa, you are not like other people.”

Now that, Oprah fans, was an aha! moment.

I know Kim didn't realize she was saying anything particularly insightful. She was probably so sick of my bellyaching (how's that for a play on words?) that she was just trying to shut me up. And she did. That statement was so right, so brilliant, so straight to the heart of the matter that I was speechless.

You are not like other people.
Of course I'm not! I realized that those good old days I yearned for when I supposedly ate what I wanted without a second thought were only an illusion. In reality, I had never taken food lightly. I had never been able to think about food without conjuring up all sorts of emotions. From the outside I might have looked as though I just didn't care when I went back to the dessert buffet for seconds, but inside there was a world-class battle going on. My insatiable desire for food and lack of control over my appetite made me feel worthless, insecure, and inadequate. In the face of temptation, I felt weak, hopelessly weak. Oh, and the guilt; can't forget that one. It was like I was born with a physiological response: As soon as I started to chew, the Fat Girl feelings began to flow.