Secrets of a Former Fat Girl Read Free Page A

of the back row; you’ll be the one on stage. You’ll be the one who says what no one else has the courage to say. You’ll be the first girl on the dance floor—with or without a partner.
    I know you can get there, and I’m going to show you how. In this book I’ll share the seven secrets I discovered on my journey to becoming a Former Fat Girl, the secrets I know will work for you, too. Along the way I’ll reveal my struggles with the same issues you’re facing, the issues that hold you back from having the body and the life you really deserve, from being the person, inside and out, you really are.
    You might hate me now because I’ve done it and you’re just getting started. You’ve had your hopes dashed many times before. But believe me when I say that you can do it. I know you can. I’ll be with you all the way. Because if I could leave the past behind—with its broken chairs and stolen cookies and midnight McDonald’s—you can, too.

Secrets of a Former Fat Girl

Chapter One
    Secret #1: Forget Dieting
    I didn’t start out thinking I was doing anything revolutionary. Like most serial dieters, I had begun every other weight loss quest with a list of “no” foods—chocolate (of course) and desserts of any kind, butter, sugar, bread—all the things that made eating my favorite pastime and, it seemed, made life worth living.
    But one day, on the heels of my ice cream–induced aha! moment, my friend Tracey (some names have been changed to protect the privacy of those individuals) invited me to her Jazzercise class, and, on a whim, I said yes. You know how it is: As many times as you might have failed in the past, you continue to have those flashes of hope that maybe this time things will be different. Maybe exercise won’t be such a struggle; maybe you’ll actually like it, like the skinny girls who hang out at the health club as if that were the most natural thing in the world.
    If I had known what I was getting into, though, I probably would have stayed home. (Lesson #1: Ignorance can be a good thing.) Jazzercise was one of the early forms of aerobics—you know, back when Jane Fonda was feeling the burn in her leg warmers and matching headband. The class was part dance, part drill team routine set to the music of the time. I still remember part of the sequence to “What a Feeling” from the iconic 80s film Flashdance . One of the moves was derivative of John Travolta’s signature Saturday Night Fever pose. We threw our hips to one side, jabbed our fingers into the air, and then switched to the other side on the frenzied beat. Thank God we didn’t have camera phones back then.
    At the time, I was a beleaguered graduate student in Austin, Texas. I had decided to go for my master’s degree instead of getting a real job after college and was regretting my decision. I was tired of being a student; I felt as if I was in some kind of purgatory, waiting not so patiently for real life to begin. My life had stalled like my dilapidated four-door Datsun, and I needed some kind of push to get it going again. Before that flash of clarity on the bathroom floor, I would have told you that feeling was all about wanting to get out of school and start my career. But, looking back, I think it also had something to do with being stuck in a five-foot-four body that I had allowed to balloon up to 185 pounds—the heaviest I’d ever been.
    Maybe that was why I said yes when Tracey suggested the class. Like me, Tracey was always on a diet, getting ready to go on a diet, or cheating on a diet. It was as if she and I were members of a secret sorority of Fat Girls (Thi Omega Phat?). We understood each other. We could joke about things we were too ashamed admit to anyone else—like the habit of eating while standing over the sink or at the refrigerator door or wearing your “fat pants” for the third day (or month or