I Love My Body

I once thought I had this really great idea for one of my next books. I wanted to call it: For All The Fat Girls: Who Never Thought Their Dreams Could Come True.

Whew.
Long title.

It took me even longer to realize it was kind-of-offensive. Whoops. Maybe that’s because I was used to carrying around the label that:

I
Was
Fat.

One thing I know: labels might lie, but clothing labels sure don’t!

Just try putting on a size 9 when you’re a ballooned sized 24. Yep. That was me in high school. Last week, I mentioned in more detail about my health issues related to eczema, and how I lost the skin off my face and feet.

The medicine (Prednisone) they gave me made me gain 100 pounds in 10 months.

Stupid drug.

Because of that stupid drug I was fat, and I thought no man would ever love me.

When my skin healed though, I finally cycled off 80 of the 100 pounds.

It took me two years.

That was two years of wearing the fat girls label.

Two years of watching my body get massacred with stretch marks and floppy boobs.

I was pretty much doomed to live up in a castle and remain single forever without my handsome prince. Like all other girls, I based my worth on another label:

My
Relationship
Status.

Single sounded so cold and lonely and depressing. And what was even more depressing is that I was single pretty much my entire life except for one boyfriend—but he didn’t last long.

The more I lived in labels the more I saw the lies for what they were: Wrong.

I was desperately seeking truth, and I knew I needed to be able to handle it when it finally came.

So I spent a year.

I devoted my one of my New Year’s Values to:

Truth.

I’m too much had to be replaced I’m just enough.
I’m too loud was replaced with passionate.
I’m too aggressive with assertive.
And I’m too fat with….

Uh-oh. Humm.

Come to think of it, I’m not really sure what I replaced that lie with.

Instead, I furiously threw myself into business and concentrated my efforts elsewhere.

I graduated college.
I got a dream job.
I published a couple of books.

But nothing seemed to satisfy my insatiable appetite. I hated being single.

In my second book Not Another Dating Book–I did my best to cover every label of relationships I could think of—over 80 in total.

I wrote about labels that not only plagued me, but singles everywhere.

The bad boy.
The drama queen.
The perpetual bridesmaid.
The nice guy.
The good girl.

The list goes on and on and on and on. And for whatever reason grace decided to show up.

His name was Marc.

He asked me out.
We fell in love.
He put a ring on my finger.
And bought me a house.

My editor gave me a second chance to rewrite the ending to my book.

“I’m too fat” became “he calls me beautiful.”