Secrets of a Former Fat Girl (15 page)

Search for role models.

Nowadays you can't touch the remote without stumbling onto some kind of makeover show. I feel like I need a shower after watching some of them, particularly the ones where some twenty-something kid is putting herself through major surgeries because she wants to look like Pamela Anderson. It's just depressing when the woman getting lipo is already a size 4. So for future Former Fat Girls' sake, flip right by those.

Some makeover shows, though, can give you a powerful dose of inspiration. One of my favorites,
The Biggest Loser
, follows seemingly normal women (and men) as they compete to see who will lose the most weight during the course of the show. You see people like you who are sincerely struggling and week after week are actually changing their bodies, their self-image, and their lives inch by inch. And it isn't all pretty, which is what makes it so inspiring. You get to see these women and men fight the same difficulties and pain you're facing. You can even see them puke (if you really want to) after a grueling workout. Watch how they change not only physically but in the way they talk about themselves and start caring more about primping and pampering. Watch as they grow to like and respect themselves in a way they didn't on the series premiere. And know this: That could be you. Sure, they're competing to win $250,000; sure, they have the pressure of knowing millions of people are watching them; sure, they have trainers and nutritionists. All of those things have to make a difference in their motivation, but resist the urge to dismiss them with “I could do it, too, if I was looking at winning a quarter of a million bucks.” I'll bet that even the contestants who don't win the ultimate prize walk away with something just as valuable: a new image of themselves, a sense of self-control, and a stockpile of self-confidence that they didn't have before.

Magazines, too, can be great sources of stories about women who have shed their Fat Girl self-image (my particular favorite is
People
's Half Their Size issue). Picture your face on their before and after shots. And note the nonphysical payoffs, how energized, confident, and sexy they feel. Remember that being a Former Fat Girl is as much about the transformation inside as it is about dropping dress sizes.

Dial back to the future.

Think about it: Was there a time in your life when you were thinner, fitter, and more confident? If so, try to re-create what your days were like then. Did you wake up happy? Did you look forward to work, school, parties, trips? Was your life bigger and busier? Were you more in demand? Did you laugh out loud?

Don't go getting all wistful on me; that's not what this little trip down memory lane is for. It is meant to inspire you, to reconnect you with the way you felt when you were at your best physically and emotionally. Try using old photo albums, videos, journals, and diaries (if you still have them) to bring that person back to life. You might even want to pull out little reminders to keep you motivated. Post a photo or two; clip a couple of quotes and put them on your computer monitor, bulletin board, or refrigerator; reread a letter from a friend that really made you feel good about yourself. These little things can keep you mindful of what you're working toward and make your goal more real for you.

Take a look at the family tree.

Some of you will say that you've never been the life of the party and never looked and felt great in a pair of jeans—that you were a Fat Girl from day one. I know it's harder for you to believe that you can overcome a whole lifetime of plus-size shopping and Fat Girl slurs. Obviously, the back-to-the-future fix won't work for you. But you know how you can often see echoes of physical characteristics among relatives, even distant ones? Try using that to your advantage. Look through your family albums to find a cousin, aunt, or grandmother with a similar body type. Try to find photos of her at her best weight. That can give you a physical point of reference to keep you motivated.

Create a virtual you.

I'm not the most technologically savvy person around, but I do know a couple of ways to use a computer to preview the new you. One option is to co-opt a tool like LandsEnd.com's My Virtual Model. You're supposed to use it to create a kind of stunt double who will “try on” clothes to see how they would look on your body (presumably as a way of finding out that the jeans you chose are cut impossibly low
before
you pay to have them shipped to you). All you do is enter your height, weight, and measurements, and up pops a computerized clone of you. To get a glimpse of you as a Former Fat Girl, create one version that reflects your body now and then take a few inches off here and there.
Voilà
! A mini you.

Another way to do it is to use a digital photo manipulation program like iPhoto or Photoshop to resize yourself. I'm not skilled enough to take on such a project myself, but I know it can be done. There's even a digital camera with an “insta-slim” feature that takes 10 pounds off with a click of a button (if only it were that easy). You could also take the low-tech route and paste a photo of your head on someone else's body. Who cares if it's silly? Whatever it takes!

Fast—the smart way.

I know what you're thinking: Is there really such a thing, a sensible way to fast? Isn't that an oxymoron like “smart bomb” or “sensitive guy”?

I'm tiptoeing into dangerous territory here, but I submit that certain types of fasts can be done safely. Simple fasting—eating nothing and drinking only water—is not one of them. But what's called a modified fast, where you eat fruit and/or vegetables and drink fruit and vegetable juices, can be safe if you limit it to no more than three days, consult a doctor, and have no preexisting health issues (diabetes, heart disease, kidney or liver problems, for instance). You will feel weak and maybe dizzy, and you may suffer from diarrhea and the embarrassment of audible and odiferous gas, so plan the fast around any physically or socially demanding activities.

Any weight you lose during that time is water weight, and you will gain it all back, like I did. But you may also gain two things: that vision of yourself as a thinner person and a sense of control over your body that you might not think you have right now. Just being able to stick to a fruit and vegetable juice fast for one day is a willpower workout that could end up strengthening you in the long run.

If you are tempted to fast any longer than three days, this should give you pause: Prolonged fasting actually makes it harder for your body to lose weight. When it's not getting enough calories to get by, your body dials down your metabolism in an effort to conserve energy. So when you go back to eating more normally, your body will likely burn calories at a slower rate—not exactly the desired outcome.

The Obstacle: A Body That's Destined to Fail Because of Age, Pregnancies, or Less-Than-Perfect Proportions

So you don't have a supermodel inside you just waiting for her turn on the runway. Few women do. But don't let that or an aging metabolism or baby weight keep you from reaching for that Former Fat Girl life. Here's how to keep your eyes on the real prize and how not to get hung up on the myths that can keep you from grabbing it.

Former Fat Girl Fixes

Focus on your attitude, not your age.

Can you expect to regain the body of an adolescent girl if you're ten, twenty, thirty, or fifty years older? Not likely. The fact is, every woman's body loses muscle beginning in the early to mid-thirties. That contributes to a drop in metabolism of as much as 5 percent per decade after age thirty, which means that by age thirty-five you're burning about 75 fewer calories per day than you did when you were twenty-five. That means you stand to gain an extra eight pounds a year if you don't do anything to prevent it. Let me repeat:
if you don't do anything to prevent it.
Which means that
you can
. A number of researchers have shown that reasonable, regular workouts can undo, slow down, or stave off the age-related muscle loss and fat gain that could threaten your quest for Former Fat Girldom. Weight training is a particularly powerful antidote. It has even helped women in nursing homes take decades off their bodies by building muscle and bone (another thing that declines with age). The next time you're tempted to whine about being too old to change your life, just think about those iron-pumping grannies.

Chances are that it's the age in your head and not your physical age that's holding you back. We get so cynical, so jaded, don't we? With every year that passes and every life stage you blow by, it becomes harder to believe that you can make any kind of change without a whole lot of pain. You get used to driving a particular way to work, arranging your underwear drawers just so, loading the dishwasher so that all the plates lean the same way, like soldiers in formation. Any little deviation from the plan rocks your world. So why would you want to mess it all up by actually trying to be happy?

The other thing is, you're too wise for your own good now. Your faith in yourself, in other people, and in the world has been chipped away by disappointments. You aren't as ready to believe that the guy will call, the sun will shine, or the check is in the mail. You just aren't that naïve anymore. But don't use age as an excuse for not believing. If you look around, there are plenty of people who have coped and changed and reached and achieved despite the odds against them—like, uh, me.

Don't blame baby.

If you have ever been pregnant, you've experienced the curious tendency of just about everyone to tell you horror stories about botched births, hellish hospital experiences, nightmare nurses—you name it. You probably also heard that your hips, abs, butt, boobs, and basically your entire body would “never be the same.” There is some truth to that. Frankly, I can't see how my body could ever be the same after squeezing an 8-pound 6-ounce person out of such a tiny place.

Pregnancy affects all women differently, but there are some universal truths about the physical aftermath: saggy breasts (that is, if you had any to start out with; I was spared this result), stretch marks, and spider veins. The ligaments holding the pelvic girdle soften while you're pregnant, sometimes leaving a pooch where you didn't have one before. Studies show that most women carry an extra five unwanted pounds into their next pregnancy. But nowhere does it say that weight gain is physically predestined. There is no law of the universe that says you can never get back to your pre-baby weight. If you tell yourself that often enough, it will be true. All you're doing is adding that to the list of assumptions you're carrying around.

Most likely, the logistics of your life as a mom are keeping you from getting your weight where you want it to be, not some pregnancy-induced metabolic glitch. Whether you are home with the kids or working in an office, you're probably…stressed out (strike 1), surrounded by kid-friendly snacks (strike 2), and have no time to yourself (strike 3).

I know this little revelation doesn't make it any easier for you to lose the weight, and I sympathize, I really do. But as long as you think your status as a Fat Girl is out of your control, that it's merely a physical condition, you won't be able to do anything about it. After all, I'm right there with you. As I write this, my son, Johnny, is a couple of weeks away from his fifth birthday, which means that not only am I dealing with the usual stuff—trying to keep the dust bunnies from taking over our house, making sure there's something edible for dinner tonight, helping him remember that
r
sounds like
errrr
and not
wuh
(which is kind of how he says it), and, oh yeah, working a full-time job—but I am facing the prospect of having a chunk of leftover birthday cake in my kitchen.

I gained about 42 pounds with Johnny. Breastfeeding didn't make the weight melt off magically, like it does for some people. I was a bit lactationally challenged, so that might have been it, or it could have been my hormones (I swear I looked bigger after I had Johnny than I did when I was pregnant). No, I had to work at it, and I had to make it work in this chaotic new world of mommyhood.

And it is possible.
After a little more than a year, I was back in pre-baby shape without having sacrificed time with my family or jeopardizing my job. I was forty when I had him, so it wasn't as if I was dealing with the metabolism of a twenty-year-old. (In chapter 6 I'll tell you how to deal with the time pressures that only a mom can appreciate, how to keep your fingers out of the Goldfish and Oreos, and how to manage to do this for you when it seems as if your life is all about
them
. So stay tuned.)