Fat Girl Shares Her Cookies 4.0

When I first saw Julie & Julia (2009), I wanted to keep a daily blog. Be a blogger. I thought Julie Powell was brilliant. I am seduced by challenge. And I love cooking and food. The challenge. The blog. Julia Child. French cooking. The film, directed by Nora Efron, is chef’s kiss.

I hadn’t been out of college long. Blogs were becoming popular then. But that’s when Internet connections didn’t have capacity for video and including a photo on a webpage meant slow loading time. For further reference, Facebook was new.

Blogging sounded like letting the world read your diary. I was dumbfounded by why someone would want to be that exposed. It was a vulnerability that invited hurt.

And then it became the norm for our lives to go online.

Julie & Julia showed that a blog doesn’t have to be a diary. It can be a journey. Or it can be an interest, a passion. Or a mashup. It can be what you make it.

After watching the film, I immediately launched a blog: Fat Girl Shares Her Cookies

I posted. I took it down. I restarted. I took it down. I relaunched…

My life is more than disordered eating and obesity. My story is more. My blog is more.

Food is a part of health. Physical health is a part of mental health.

To be 25 again…

I was having a quarter life crisis. (Those are real.) Mine was triggered by the youthful thinking, “By the time I’m 25…”

By the time I’m 25, I’ll be married.

By the time I’m 25, I’ll own my own home.

By the time I’m 25, I’ll have children.

I did not.

It might have warranted a crisis because I didn’t marry until I was 37. All of my ideas about life had to change. I wasn’t on the road of traditional milestones.

Writing a blog could be an achievement. It was something I might could do and succeed at. I could be a blogger. I would have identity.

Fat Girl Shares Her Cookies is now 4.0… Because I’m in my 40s… This isn’t a weight loss journey. It’s a mental health journey;

Julie & Julia is still a favorite movie. I still romanticize blogging. I still love cooking and PBS.

And I have identity as a blogger and a foodie.