I watched Dana eating carrots and celery for lunch as she talked about her boyfriend. That was the moment I thought, “YES. If I eat only carrots and celery then I can look like Dana.” Dana was my friend’s college roommate, and I think she weighed about 100 pounds. The last time I weighed 100 pounds I was in 5th grade. In my early twenties I could have eaten Dana’s weight in pizza and weighed about 40-50 pounds more than I do today.
With great resolve and an irrational urgency to return to my 11-year-old weight, I started my carrot and celery lunches, and what I like to now call, “Angry Walking”. We’ve all seen the women in the Taebo videos punching and kicking for all they were worth…I’ve been there. But, I liked to be outside, and I thought walking with arms swinging, kicking at the neighbors’ plant hedges would make me look crazy. So, instead, I walked at insane speeds and with ferocious intensity (probably still looking a bit crazed). After about 6 weeks of this regime, I starting dropping weight…but I felt like crap. I was tired, stressed from school, work…and Angry Walking. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I needed to find something that would help me reduce stress where I could still move my body.
I don’t know where the idea came from, maybe divine intervention, and hopefully not from the same place that inspired Angry Walking, but I needed to do yoga. I became obsessed with finding a class. The only person offering yoga classes in my community taught them out of her basement. In retrospect, that seems a bit shady, but after a diet of anger, carrots, and celery my brain probably wasn’t functioning at peak performance.
It was through these classes that I learned to slow down and relax. I learned awareness about my breath and my body and that all of it is inextricably linked. I never would have believed that stretching and deep breathing could change my life. It took years for me to refine this awareness, but eventually it has contributed to my mindfulness of food and how I used, and sometimes still use, food to reward or punish my body, control my situations, and sooth my nerves. It is this mindfulness that enables me to trust that my body knows how to regulate itself if my mind is willing to work with it instead of against it. I have been relatively close to my current weight for close to a decade. No weird diets, no scheduled workouts. I do what feels right and that continues to change as I change.
Many people wonder why I show up to the Weight Loss Wednesday (WLW) Coaching Interactive. I’m currently in a healthy weight range. But, I wasn’t for most of my life. I go because it keeps me accountable to my body, mind, and spirit. It reminds me of the link between these three parts of myself. They are all one in the same and when we cut off one part or forget to nourish one aspect, the whole is affected. The mental aspect of yoga and mind-body coaching remind me that we are never 100% fixed, 100% sad, or 100% happy. I have created a relationship with a sense of acceptance through these continued practices. It is this sense of acceptance that allows me to eat pizza, carrots, celery, and chocolate without extreme self-loathing or deprivation. It is also the same acceptance that lets me off the hook if I decide to walk instead of jog, take the elevator instead of the stairs, or occasionally Angry Walk on the Bridle Trail.
My relationship to food has been a physical manifestation of my relationship to self. A relationship that is never “fixed”, but through yoga, is one that I have learned, and am still learning, to love and accept.