Stories about life, food, and becoming—with simple, satisfying recipes for real life.

identity

  • Maybe Becoming Someone New Starts With a Decision

    Maybe Becoming Someone New Starts With a Decision

    I think becoming someone new starts with a decision.

    Not motivation.

    Not confidence.

    Not finally getting your thoughts under control.

    A decision.

    I’ve been thinking about the things that have actually changed in my life lately.

    And they all seem to have started the same way.

    I decided.

    When I stopped binging, there wasn’t some magical moment where I suddenly stopped wanting to do it.

    I decided I wasn’t going to be the woman who binged anymore.

    That’s it.

    I was done.

    It wasn’t good for me.

    It made me feel like shit.

    I hated how I felt afterward.

    And I didn’t want to keep doing that to myself.

    So I made a decision.

    But making that decision didn’t mean the urges magically disappeared.

    I had to start doing things differently too.

    I made sure I was eating enough.

    I stopped restricting.

    I started actually nourishing myself instead of spending the day trying to eat as little as possible and then wondering why food was screaming at me by nighttime.

    I focused on protein and fiber because I noticed how much more satisfied I felt when I ate enough of both.

    And that helped dramatically with the urge to binge.

    I started paying attention to what was actually happening when I wanted food.

    Sometimes I was hungry.

    So I ate.

    Sometimes I was bored and my brain suggested food.

    And I could recognize:

    I’m bored.

    That’s all.

    I don’t actually want food.

    And here’s the part that still kind of blows my mind.

    I’ve lost fifteen pounds since I made that decision.

    Not because I got stricter.

    Not because I started eating less and less.

    Not because I was white-knuckling my way through hunger.

    I lost fifteen pounds while nourishing myself.

    I ate when I was hungry.

    I stopped when I was full.

    I ate food I actually wanted.

    I stopped making every single thing I ate mean something about whether I was being “good” or “bad.”

    For so long, I thought losing weight required more control.

    More rules.

    More restriction.

    More ignoring myself.

    And somehow, what actually started changing things was doing almost the opposite.

    I fed myself.

    I listened to myself.

    And I stopped binging.

    Not because I never had another urge.

    But because I’d already decided what I wanted to do.

    And now I’m realizing I’ve been doing this everywhere.

    Writing is another one.

    For a long time, I wanted to be a writer.

    I wanted to grow Chaos & Carrots.

    But I kept waiting to somehow become the kind of person who wrote consistently.

    Then I decided I was going to write.

    So I started writing.

    My thoughts didn’t have to agree first.

    Walking is the same.

    I wanted to be someone who walked every day and got her steps in for SO LONG.

    And my brain always had a reason not to.

    I’m tired.

    I don’t feel like it.

    I’ll do it later.

    Until eventually I decided:

    Okay.

    This is who I am now.

    I’m someone who walks.

    So when the excuses start, I don’t need to sit there and have a philosophical debate with myself.

    Avatar mode.

    Shoes on.

    Start walking.

    My brain can catch up later.

    And there’s an even bigger decision I’ve made recently.

    I’m going to have another baby.

    And holy shit, does my brain have some thoughts about that one.

    I have a four-year-old and a seven-year-old.

    They’re not babies anymore.

    We’re out of diapers.

    We’re out of the newborn stage.

    We’re sleeping.

    What am I doing starting over again after all this time?

    There are fears.

    There are insecurities.

    There are moments when I think about everything that could change and wonder if I’m crazy.

    But underneath all of that?

    I still know what I want.

    I want another baby.

    The fear that comes afterward doesn’t get to make the decision for me.

    And maybe that’s the part I’ve been missing about decisions.

    Making one doesn’t mean your brain immediately gets on board.

    It doesn’t mean doubt disappears.

    It doesn’t mean you suddenly feel confident and certain every second of every day.

    Sometimes you decide…

    and then your brain absolutely loses its shit about it.

    That’s okay.

    It can have its thoughts.

    I don’t have to make a new decision every time it does.

    I think that’s where I used to get stuck.

    I’d make a decision, feel really good about it, and then doubt would show up.

    And I’d think the doubt meant something.

    Maybe I shouldn’t do this.

    Maybe I’m not ready.

    Maybe this isn’t actually what I want.

    Maybe I need to think about it some more.

    So I’d reopen the decision.

    Again.

    And again.

    And again.

    But what if doubt is just allowed to be there?

    What if I don’t have to treat every new thought like new information?

    I already thought about this.

    I already know what I want.

    I already decided.

    That doesn’t mean I can never change my mind.

    It doesn’t mean I ignore new information.

    It doesn’t mean I ignore my body or my needs or force myself through something that genuinely isn’t right for me.

    It means I don’t need to reconsider the direction of my life every time my brain comes up with a new reason to be scared.

    Because my mind can go all day.

    Seriously.

    Ask it why I shouldn’t do something and it will come up with a million reasons.

    And then tomorrow?

    It’ll have some new ones.

    It’s actually kind of impressive.

    And part of this for me has been deciding I’m not putting up with my own bullshit anymore.

    Not by being cruel to myself.

    By recognizing when I’m about to reopen a decision I already made because I’m scared, uncomfortable, tired, or suddenly full of doubt.

    My brain can tell me I don’t feel like walking today.

    Okay.

    Shoes on.

    It can tell me I don’t have anything interesting to write about.

    Okay.

    Open the laptop.

    It can tell me I’m crazy for wanting another baby when I already have a four-year-old and a seven-year-old.

    Okay.

    I still want another baby.

    I don’t need to win the argument with my mind.

    I don’t even need to participate in it.

    The thoughts can be there.

    The fear can be there.

    The doubt can be there.

    I don’t have to reopen the decision.

    I already decided.

  • The Person You Want to Become Might Be Waiting on You to Move

    The Person You Want to Become Might Be Waiting on You to Move

    I was on one of my walks when I had an incredibly profound realization.

    What would a writer do?

    Well.

    She would write.

    Obviously.

    That’s it.

    That was the revelation.

    Very deep stuff happening over here.

    But for some reason, it hit me.

    Because I had wanted to become a writer for a long time.

    I wanted to grow Chaos & Carrots.

    I wanted to write consistently.

    I wanted this to become something real.

    And then I would go weeks without posting anything.

    I think part of me was waiting for something to change first.

    Maybe I needed to feel more like a writer.

    Maybe I needed to feel inspired.

    Maybe I needed to believe I was good enough.

    Maybe I needed to somehow become the version of myself who writes consistently…

    before I could write consistently.

    Which, now that I type that out, presents a slight logistical problem.

    So I started thinking about it differently.

    What does a writer actually do?

    She writes.

    Okay.

    I can do that.

    I started writing a little bit every day.

    Not finishing a blog post every day.

    Not sitting down for some impressive three-hour writing session.

    Just writing.

    Then I started paying attention to myself.

    When do I actually want to write?

    When does it come most naturally?

    And I realized it’s in the morning.

    I meditate.

    I spend some time focusing on gratitude.

    And by then, my brain usually feels a little quieter.

    And that’s when I want to write.

    I also realized I love writing outside.

    Something about being outside gives me clarity.

    So instead of deciding that becoming a writer meant I needed to develop an extraordinary amount of discipline and force myself to write under any circumstances, I started creating the circumstances where writing comes naturally to me.

    Meditate.

    Gratitude.

    Go outside.

    Write.

    Then I go for my walks.

    And now that I’m writing more, something else happens on those walks.

    I notice things.

    An idea comes to me.

    Something that happened with my kids suddenly feels like something I want to write about.

    I start thinking about something weird I’ve been doing with food or shame or gratitude or my brain.

    I notice a thought I’ve had 700 times before, except this time I actually notice it.

    And I think:

    Oh.

    I want to write about that.

    Then I write again.

    And there’s this certain momentum that happens.

    The more I write, the more I think about writing.

    The more I think about writing, the more ideas I notice.

    The more ideas I notice, the more I want to write.

    The more I work on Chaos & Carrots, the more real Chaos & Carrots feels.

    And because it feels more real, I want to work on it more.

    It’s this weird little loop.

    And somewhere in that loop, something changed.

    I stopped spending so much time wondering if I was a writer.

    I was writing.

    So…

    I was a writer.

    Apparently the paperwork was much simpler than I thought.

    And I’ve been thinking about that.

    Because I recently read something about taking the action before your thoughts and feelings catch up.

    I don’t remember the exact wording, but the idea stuck with me.

    We tend to think change is supposed to happen from the inside out.

    First I become confident.

    Then I do the scary thing.

    First I become motivated.

    Then I exercise.

    First I believe I’m good enough.

    Then I put my work out into the world.

    First I feel like a writer.

    Then I write.

    But I’m starting to realize that sometimes becoming happens in the opposite direction.

    Sometimes it happens from the outside in.

    You take the action first.

    And then your internal world starts catching up with the fact that you’re actually doing it.

    Because I didn’t sit around thinking:

    I am a writer.

    I am a writer.

    I AM A WRITER.

    until I finally believed myself enough to open my laptop.

    I just started writing.

    And then I did it again.

    And again.

    Eventually I had all this actual evidence.

    I write almost every day.

    I notice things I want to write about.

    I get ideas on my walks.

    I work on my blog.

    I care about sentences.

    I get excited when I figure out what I’m actually trying to say.

    At some point, calling myself a writer stopped feeling like something I was trying to become and started feeling like a description of what I was already doing.

    And I think that’s the part I was missing.

    I thought I needed to change the stories my brain was telling me first.

    I’m not really a writer.

    I’m not good enough.

    I’m not the kind of person who does this consistently.

    But maybe I didn’t need to convince myself otherwise first.

    Those stories could still be there.

    I could write anyway.

    Because it’s a lot harder for my brain to tell me I’m not a writer when I keep writing.

    Not impossible, obviously.

    My brain enjoys a challenge.

    But now I have evidence.

    And I don’t think that’s “fake it till you make it.”

    I’m not walking around in a beret telling strangers about my manuscript.

    I’m just doing something I genuinely want to do without waiting for my thoughts and feelings to grant me permission first.

    But there’s another piece of this that feels important.

    I didn’t just tell myself:

    Writers write. Now force yourself to write every day forever.

    I started learning myself.

    I learned that mornings work better for me.

    I learned that meditation helps.

    Gratitude helps.

    Being outside helps.

    Walking helps.

    I started building my days in a way that makes writing easier.

    And maybe that’s part of becoming too.

    Not endlessly forcing yourself to behave like some imaginary better version of you.

    Maybe it’s asking:

    What would she actually do?

    And then:

    What would make doing that feel natural?

    Because I don’t want to spend my life dragging myself toward the person I want to be.

    I’d rather create a life where I keep accidentally meeting her.

    Maybe she writes in the morning because that’s when her mind feels clear.

    Maybe she goes outside because that’s where ideas come.

    Maybe she walks because that’s when she seems to notice things she wants to write about.

    Maybe becoming her isn’t one giant transformation.

    Maybe it’s a bunch of very ordinary Tuesdays where I keep doing the things she would do.

    And eventually there’s less distance between us.

    I thought I had to figure out how to feel like a writer.

    I didn’t.

    I needed to write.

    So I did.

  • Fat Is Not My Identity

    Fat Is Not My Identity

    I was holding one of our new kittens the other day.

    I sat down with her, hoping she’d finally just curl up on me for a minute.

    She immediately took off.

    “She never just wants to lay on me when I sit down,” I said.

    And my son, with the completely unfiltered honesty only a kid can deliver, said:

    “Well, maybe it’s because you’re kinda fat.”

    Cool.

    Cool cool cool.

    There are certain things your child can say that you know, logically, were not designed to emotionally destroy you.

    And then there are the things they say that somehow locate your deepest insecurity, walk directly up to it, and punch it in the face.

    This was the second kind.

    Because my first thought wasn’t:

    He’s a kid. He doesn’t understand what that word means to me.

    It wasn’t:

    The kitten is a kitten and probably just wants to run around.

    It wasn’t even:

    Ouch.

    It was:

    Yeah. I am just a fatty.

    And then:

    Why would she want to sit on my fat lap?

    And then, almost immediately:

    Why even bother trying?

    And THAT is the part that gets me.

    Not that my son called me “kinda fat.”

    But how quickly my own brain took his comment and turned it into an identity.

    I wasn’t a woman who has been trying to take care of herself.

    I wasn’t a mom sitting on the couch holding her new kitten.

    I wasn’t a whole person with a body that happens to carry more fat than I want it to right now.

    I was just a fatty.

    And apparently the kitten agreed.

    Which, with approximately five seconds of emotional distance from the situation, is objectively ridiculous.

    She’s a kitten.

    I’m pretty sure she didn’t jump off my lap because she conducted a quick assessment of my body composition and decided the conditions were unacceptable.

    But shame isn’t particularly interested in logic.

    It heard one word.

    Fat.

    And it grabbed it.

    See?

    Other people see it too.

    This is what you are.

    Why even bother?

    That last one is the dangerous one for me.

    Because I’ve been here before.

    The place where not seeing the progress I want fast enough becomes a reason to stop trying altogether.

    Where one bad weigh-in becomes, What’s the point?

    Where one comment becomes, See? Nothing is changing.

    Where feeling bad about my body somehow becomes a reason to stop taking care of it.

    But this time, after the initial sting wore off, another thought came in.

    Fat is not my identity.

    I can have fat on my body.

    I can have more of it than I want.

    I can want to lose weight.

    I can actively be working toward changing my body.

    And none of that makes fat who I am.

    I don’t have to pretend my son’s comment didn’t hurt.

    It did.

    I don’t have to immediately counter it with, No! I’m beautiful! I love every inch of my body!

    That’s not even what this is about.

    This is about refusing to take something about my body and turn it into a definition of myself.

    But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I don’t just do this with my body.

    I’ve carried shame as an identity for so long that sometimes it feels like I’ve been doing it for lifetimes.

    It’s my go-to.

    It’s familiar.

    It’s addicting.

    And as uncomfortable as it is to admit, sometimes there’s even a kind of pleasure in it.

    Not because I actually want to feel terrible about myself.

    But because I know this place.

    I know how to suffer here.

    I know the thoughts.

    I’m worthless.

    Why even bother?

    I know exactly how the story goes.

    And recently, I felt myself going there again.

    Back into shame.

    Back into the familiar suffering.

    Back into those thoughts that wanted to tell me what something happening in my life meant about me and who I was.

    Except this time, I watched it happen.

    I watched that familiar suffering show up and try to claim me.

    And instead of completely disappearing into it, I could see what was happening.

    Oh.

    Here we go again.

    This is the story.

    I’ve been working really hard on recognizing these stories when they come up instead of automatically believing them.

    Not necessarily getting better at feeling them.

    But getting better at seeing them.

    I could still feel the heaviness there.

    Honestly, I can still feel it sometimes.

    Like a shadow hanging around, waiting for another opportunity to claim me.

    But it isn’t becoming me this time.

    And really, that’s exactly what had happened with the kitten.

    My son said one thing.

    And within seconds, shame had turned it into an entire story about who I was and why I should stop trying.

    Then I noticed something else.

    Lately, it had felt like one shameful thing after another.

    Boom.

    Boom.

    Boom.

    I was sitting there feeling all of it, listening to that familiar voice tell me:

    You’re worthless.

    Feeling that familiar shameful identity settle over me again.

    I know this version of myself.

    I’ve been her for a very long time.

    But this time, I could almost see the whole thing from the outside.

    And I thought:

    Oh my God.

    I’ve been looking at my life through a shame lens.

    Of course I’m seeing shame everywhere.

    I’m focused on the things that confirm it.

    Something happens, I interpret it through shame, I feel more shame, and then I notice the next thing that gives me another reason to feel ashamed.

    Maybe it wasn’t just one shameful thing after another.

    Maybe shame was the thing connecting them.

    And suddenly I had this little aha moment.

    If I can do that with shame…

    Can I do it with gratitude?

    If I’m constantly looking for things that confirm shame, what happens if I start looking for things to be grateful for instead?

    And if I take it even further—could focusing on gratitude actually attract more experiences into my life that give me something to be grateful for?

    I don’t know.

    But I know I’ve watched the opposite happen.

    I’ve watched shame become a lens.

    I’ve watched one experience seem to lead straight into another and another because that’s what I was looking for.

    That’s what I was expecting.

    That’s what felt familiar.

    And for a long time, I didn’t even realize I was doing it.

    I just thought that was my life.

    Maybe that’s what I’m most curious about now.

    What happens when I stop looking at my life through the emotion I’ve practiced for so long?

    What happens if shame isn’t the place I automatically come home to?

    What if I practice gratitude instead?

    I don’t know yet.

    But if I’ve spent this long practicing shame, I think I’d like to find out what happens when I practice something else.

    Because all of this started with one completely unfiltered comment from a kid who probably hasn’t thought about it again since.

    Meanwhile, I’m over here having an entire existential crisis because a kitten wouldn’t sit on my lap.

    Motherhood is magical.

    But I’m not giving up.

    Not because I’m suddenly unbothered by my body.

    I’m not.

    Not because words don’t hurt me anymore.

    They do.

    And not because shame doesn’t still know exactly where to find me.

    It does.

    I’m going to keep going because fat is not my identity.

    Shame isn’t my identity either.

    Shame can show up.

    I can feel it without letting it become me.

    But I don’t have to keep practicing it.

    And maybe now I get to decide what I practice instead.