I’m a freak of nature. I’m a lifelong vegetarian whose parents never set out to raise her that way. Seriously. Everyone in my family eats meat, but for some reason, I just wouldn’t eat it when I was a kid. Well, to be honest, my father likes to point out that I used to like bologna…but I’m not even sure that that can really be considered meat and I stopped eating it as soon as I found out that it was made from an animal. I must have been Buddhist in a former life.

Yet I’ve never been someone you would consider slim. Chubby, plump, big-boned…and yes, even fat. Those are the terms that would describe me.

I know that many people think that vegetarians are by nature thin and healthy. And many are. But I’m here to say that it’s not always the case. There are plenty of foods that are both vegetarian and unhealthy and eating an abundance of these foods can indeed make you fat, even if you don’t eat meat.

Princess Dresses are not Drop-Waisted

I realized that I was chubby in first grade. My mom would always dress me in these god-awful drop-waisted dresses that she thought made me look slim. She’d even tell me to suck in my stomach (and, being six years old, the only way I knew how to do this was to hold my breath).

Well, one day we had to go shopping for a dress for my First Communion. Of course, my mom starts looking at all these drop-waisted dresses. But I didn’t want a drop-waisted dress. The regular-waisted dresses were so much more beautiful and princess-like. I wanted to be a beautiful princess and I knew that I couldn’t be that in an ugly drop-waisted dress. I fought and I cried. Eventually, the sales lady, bless her heart, convinced my mom that she ought to let me get the dress that I wanted.

The Curse of My Last Name

My maiden name is Tubbs. Yes, you read that right. A fat girl whose last name is Tubbs. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

Now, in high school, I wasn’t terribly fat. But like just about any other average teenager, I was self-conscious about my weight. And the last name.

I joined the drama club at the same time as another girl named Shannon, so the drama teacher nicknamed me Tubby…because of my last name (so he said. Of course all I could think of is “Why am I so fat?” every time I heard him say my “name”.). You’re probably thinking this talestory couldn’t get worse. It does. The other student with my name happened to be very tall and skinny, so the teacher started calling her “Stick Woman”. Stick woman and Tubby. Fantastic.

All of my girl friends, being modern women, used to talk about whether we would take our husband’s last names if we ever got married. Or would we hyphenate? There was never any question for me. I would take any last name my future husband came with.

Fat Acceptance

During college and in the years after, I started gaining a lot more weight. But I didn’t care. I was at a point where I knew that true beauty came from the inside and it didn’t matter what I looked like on the outside. I thought that fat was just how God had made me and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I didn’t own a scale and it was fashionable among my friends to wear very baggy handmade clothing, so I never realized just how big I was getting. Even if I did realize it, I wouldn’t have cared. I was fat and happy.

I had a doctor that told me I was too heavy and that I needed to lose weight. But he also said that all of my blood tests and other vitals were just fine, so I didn’t give it too much thought.

The Dreaded Diagnosis

Finally, when I was 23, another doctor diagnosed me with Polycyctic Ovarian Syndrom (PCOS). I was devastated. I knew some people with PCOS, so I had done a bit of reading about it. I knew that people with PCOS had a tendency to be overweight and have a hard time losing weight.

Now, I was comfortable at my weight, even though it was high, but for some reason the thought that the scale would just keep going up and up really upset me. I had a good cry and then did some more reading about PCOS.

Small Changes and Big Realizations

I read that a lot of women with PCOS had success following a low carb diet, so I decided to give that a shot. Of course, as a vegetarian, I failed miserably at that, however it did encourage me to begin changing some eating habits.

I went from drinking a two liter bottle of soda per day to drinking only diet soda, and a lot more water. I ate more vegetables and salads.

I was always under the impression that my diet was “pretty good”. After all, when I told people that I was a vegetarian, they’d all exclaim “Wow! You must be so healthy!”

Well, I wasn’t.

I realized that I had been eating different forms of pizza four times a week. I considered frozen pizza, pizza pockets, and delivery pizza to be different meals. When I wasn’t having pizza for dinner, I would eat pasta or macaroni and cheese. On the rare occasions that I did eat a salad (only when eating out), it would be loaded with ranch dressing. In addition to my unhealthy meals, I would daily eat bags of chips, candy bars, and ice cream.

Needless to say, by just making a few more healthy choices, I started to drop pounds. And the more small changes I’d make, like incorporating exercise, the more weight would come off.

Striving to be Better

I’m not a perfect person. I’m still not at my goal weight. I don’t eat completely healthy foods 100 percent of the time. But I do strive to always make more healthy choices to balance out any bad choices that I make. It’s been seven years since I started on this journey and I’m light-years ahead of where I used to be. In high school, I couldn’t jog around the track even once. Now, I often jog 5 miles or more!

I share my story because I know that there are other people out there who are where I used to be. Eating a vegetarian diet can trick you into thinking that you are always making good food choices. But that isn’t always true. If you are a fat vegetarian, and you’re unhappy with the way that your body looks, then take note of the foods that you are really eating. Perhaps you too can begin a journey to a healthier you, just by making a few small changes at a time.

About the author

Shannon Tani is a former fattie, who weighed over 220lbs. She has currently lost over 70lbs. One day she realized that people would rather hear dieting advice from someone who’s “been there, done that” than a boring old doctor who’s never been fat a day in his life. So she started the website Better Off Fat to share her experiences and ideas.