I was fat on my wedding day.

In fact, I was at my heaviest weight I’ve ever been when I got married this past New Year’s Eve.

Like most American girls, I have issues with food and body image. Over the last ten years, I’ve oscillated between overweight and underweight, depending on the intensity of my exercise routine and the consistency of my bulimia. When I got engaged and knew I had just over twelve months to get ready for the day, I had a pretty bold plan to go from a size fourteen to a size four. In a year, people can lose fifty pounds, right?

Here’s what happened instead: I moved. I tried an internship in NYC. I started a new job. I wrote a book. I campaigned.  I paid college loans. I got rejected from Seminary. My (now) husband started Law School. My car broke down. My best friend got married. I started running. I stopped running. I started yoga, and got really good at it. I took the LSAT. I reapplied to Seminary. I got married. I did not lose fifty pounds. I didn’t even lose one. (Perhaps I lost a dress size or two, but the scale never moved. I even bought a new scale.)

My wedding day was still the best of my life. I wore glitter sneakers, and married my favorite person. We had an after-party open mic, and my husband and I got to throw a mini concert for our family and friends. It was truly magical.

…And then the pictures came back. One of my biggest concerns had become reality: my arms didn’t look toned. Initially, I compensated by making my profile picture one where my arms (and most of my body was covered).

It’s still a beautiful photo (shot-out to Emma McMahan Photography!), but that’s not really what I looked like. I looked like this:

I didn’t want to show anyone my photos, because I worried they didn’t reflect the way I felt when I got married. It was as though all the love at my wedding made me feel like my fat arms or big booty didn’t matter. I felt like I had tricked myself into thinking I was beautiful on my wedding day, and that the photographic evidence proved otherwise.

And then I realized that on my special day, I looked like my grandmother.

My grandmother joked that she was born a forty-two-pound baby, and was heavy her whole life. Really, she was only ever not overweight at the end, when the cancer had destroyed her body but not her spirit. My grandma was the most caring, fun-spirited, faithful, and loving and person I’ve known. I only got a few years with her as a child, but she was one of the purest sources of love and goodness in my life.

My grandmother was fat, and so am I.  I hope I also inherited her kindness, her devotion to her family, her love of God, and her joy. I get sad when I think that my grandma was probably sad about her body. Especially since she’s gone, it seems like a silly thing to spend much time in your life worrying about.

Through further looking at old photos, I realized I also looked like my grandmother’s mother. (She’s the classy gal seated).

Turns out, most of the women in my lineage were thick.

I have had wild swings of weight in the past, but in my post-college life, I get my 10,000 steps nearly every day. I do my yoga, eat 80% vegan meals, and balance my carbs, proteins, and vegetables like nobody’s business. I have an excellent resting heart rate, normal blood pressure, and a body that does what I ask it to do. I’m still fat.

I was fat on my wedding day, and maybe I won’t be come New Year’s Eve 2017, but I’m not too worried about it.