I’ve been accidentally eating two breakfasts a day for four months (which makes me like Frodo and Sam who had second breakfasts every day).

Then, it seems, because of eating two breakfasts, I accidentally gained about ten pounds. I know this because my “boyfriend” pants are so tight that I can hardly zip them up.

Before I realized the second breakfast part, I’d been feeling as if I’d had an alien inside my body who decided to turn whatever I was eating into mountain-thighs and moon-belly. Who wanted me to gain more weight and then more.

Finally, I realized the culprit was the morning coffee to which I’d been adding a tablespoon of ghee and a tablespoon of MCT oil. And can I just say, without hesitation, it was delicious. Like having a coffee milk shake every morning and following it with a high-fat breakfast an hour later. Heaven.

When I did more research on this high-fat-Bulletproof concoction, I saw that it was designed to be used instead of breakfast, not in addition to. I’ve never been adept at following the fine print. Also, I really like eating breakfast.

Watching the weight come on and not making the connections to why was quite a process, given my history with eating disorders and body size. It brought up years of high school. Not being picked for the Kilties because I wasn’t part of the in-group, which I took to mean that I was too fat). It brought up years of feeling as if I was out of control of my body. It brought up all my associations with fat and thin and self-worth and value. And each time a negative association came up—you’re gaining weight, look at the size of your thighs, what happened to you—I’d ask myself if it was true. The weight part was true but the rest—the part about value and bigger bodies and mountain-thighs—not true. And I got to see again how deeply this way of thinking and believing is laid down in my nervous system. How it takes constant attention to question it, come back home, remind myself that the size of my body is not the size of my life. That it is possible to have thighs rubbing together and to outgrow my pants and to still, still, still shower this sweet self with goodness.

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