The Fat Girl's Guide to Living

Well, we asked and you delivered. I am so grateful for the feedback you’ve given us on our first year, your comments were insightful, detailed, creative and all-around helpful in letting us know what’s working, what isn’t, and what you wish we’d cover here at FGG. Thank you!

Toni and I will be scouring the responses in detail, and making adjustments in the coming weeks based on what we’ve learned about you. Stay tuned for more great stuff soon.

We had our trusty number-picker at random.org select the survey respondee number for our Walmart gift card giveaway. Congratulations to response #68, Cindy Saunders! We’ll get your gift card out right away, and thanks again!

If you haven’t already, head on over and let us know what you love (and don’t) about FGG – so we can make our second year even better than our first! You’ll be entered to win a $20 Walmart gift card in thanks for your feedback. Deadline is 11:59 pm (PST) on Friday, June 25.

See the original contest post here, or go straight to the short survey here.

Thank you!

Who you callin’ fat by Jamie Bates

Choosing this month’s photo challenge winner was tough because so many new and colorful photos landed in our FGG Girls photo group. Jamie’s image (above) is December’s winning photo because of her distinctive, electrifying, and inspiring self portraiture style. Congrats, Jamie! Send us your mailing address and we’ll send you a prize.

If you can’t relate to the sentiment expressed in this photo, we might have to revoke your honorary fat girl card and boot you from the clubhouse. Okay, we’re kidding, but we know that struggles with the scale can be epic for women of every size, and that’s what made this photo as evocative as it is funny. And while not everyone worries about this issue, however you feel about weighing yourself (or not), it’s sometimes easy to forget that there’s so much more to us than our waist size or weight. Taking racy, playful, or soft self portraits – or having a friend or professional photographer take quality photos of us – is a great way to capture and celebrate who we are now.

If you saw our Mid-Week Mini Challenge from last week, we’re extending it by 24 hours, because 01.01.10 is such a tantalizing kick-off date for a creative self portraiture challenge.

Here’s the scoop:

Join a Flickr self-portrait project group like 52 Weeks or 365 Days, upload your first self-portrait, then commit to at least one self-portrait each week for a year. When you’ve joined the group and added your photo (which should be taken just for this project), come back here and link to that photo in comments, which then enters you to win the mini-challenge mystery prize. Deadline: 11:59 p.m. (PST) on January 1, 2010, and the winner will be chosen at random on January 2.

I’m having another go at 365 Days of self portraits (my first 365 was in 2007), but of course *I* can’t enter to win the prize. We welcome other takers, however, so show us what you’ve got, girls!

Into the Ocean, by Cat804

Join Our Photo Challenge!

Beginning this month, we’ll be hosting a contest each month for winners of our weekly photos. We’ll post our weekly photo challenge, and if you accept, you’ll add your photo to our FGG Girls Flickr group. Each week, Tee and I will select a photo-of-the-week, and then at the end of each month, we’ll draw a prize winner from those. October’s prize: an awesome book thong of your choice from Lonna’s Book Bangles (an Etsy shop). These as cute as they are practical, and Tee and I use them to feed our reading addictions.

Last week, Tee asked readers to share an image that evokes the end of summer. And while nobody has answered the call (sob!), we plucked this image by from the FGG Girls Flickr Group because the soft light gives it a vintage feel while also nicely evoking the waning days of summer.

There’s still time to join our photo challenge! We’re making the theme a monthly challenge – and starting with this week, it’s all about fall in October. There are so many directions you can go with this theme: raking leaves (or jumping into a big pile of them), lining up pumpkins or Halloween luminaria, or self portraits of you looking adorable in cozy jackets, boots, and knee high socks. If you’re camera shy and/or would like to see examples or hear suggestions, ask us in the comments section.

@photobonnie!

Congratulations to @photobonnie for winning the Omron HJ-112 Digital Pocket Pedometer, and a copy of Victoria Moran’s Fit From Within.

And a special thanks to everyone who entered, and who passed our contest along to friends and followers. Don’t forget to join us tomorrow for our official launch!

(subscribe to our RSS feed here)

With the Fat Girl’s Guide to Living launch right around the corner (Monday, June 22!), we’d like to kick things off and spread the word with a Twitter giveaway.

Up for grabs are a an Omron HJ-112 Digital Pocket Pedometer, and a copy of Victoria Moran’s Fit From Within: 101 Simple Secrets to Change Your Body and Your Life – Starting Today and Lasting Forever.

Both of these have gotten awesome reviews from users on Amazon, and they can be yours by simply Tweeting the following line:

I’m entering the launch giveaway at http://www.fatgirlsguidetoliving.com! Check out @fatgirlsguide – a life hacker for the full-figured set.

And that’s it! We’ll keep track in our @ replies, and choose a random winner at noon PST on Sunday, June 21. The winning tweeter will be notified via Twitter, so keep an eye out at @fatgirlsguide.

Ready, set…. GO!