HOW to make a change
No one likes embarrassing photos, but without them we obscure real change
No one wants to put up embarrassing before-and-after photos. But I gotta say something for my friends and peers who see me and think I have always looked like this.
I got my body back at age 40. Five years later its a distant memory that I had ever lost it. And Govert Van Lankeren Matthes at Kata Hot Yoga is how I got it. I was just like the other adults of my US generation. Addicted to alcohol, overweight, eating my emotions, angry, and uncomfortable in my own skin. My habits had undone me.
But when I fell into the hole so many of my friends and peers have, I had something other adults didn't have, medical training and behavior change training. So I sat down, and made a promise to myself I would figure out how to reverse what had happened to me.
It was a result of the environment I was living in, and the medical literature said it was irreversible. Once someone acquired a bunch of weight, they would never lose it. A severe back injury would never heal. So I looked further, and I found the answer in yoga. The battle was incredibly personal.
I started with Tiny Habits, progressed from Bikram yoga to Ashtanga yoga and added intermittent fasting for my German genetics (cold climates select for genetics that do better with a bit of hunger). Five years later, I have a completely different appearance and a healed back injury. I wrote a book during this period which was very emotionally cathartic. I started over, and I am so glad I did.
You CAN have a healthy body into old age, but you can't listen to Western science about HOW. This is not biohacking; this is a daily attention that becomes a habit and forms the body you want over time
It was particularly painful and embarrassing for me to work out overweight for about a year. I was ashamed about my body, and my injury, and embarrassed I had let myself get so out of shape when I was an athlete in my youth. I finally understood what it felt like to be dismissed and badly treated because of how I looked.
This was a very personal and very frustrating period for me, and I am so glad for myself that I sucked it up and dealt with it. We can choose, but we don't control the consequences of choice. I wanted different consequences, so I had to change my choices and really stick to it.
And I learned a very hard lesson about myself, and about reality. So if anyone reads this, I just want to share hope. There ARE solutions for the problems we face, they are usually not EASY solutions. It is not a pill or a chemical, but it is very possible to remove obesity permanently and be comfortable in your skin for the rest of your life.
I do know what it takes to REALLY change. In so many ways, the work I do is about that hard lesson, and teaching it easier so people don't have to play out pain. Govert is enrolling teachers this week. I cannot recommend his training enough.
Resources:
Tiny Habits are TRULY the only way to get started. I used this science to break the chain FIRST.
Govert Van Lankeren Matthes is truly the real deal as a yoga teacher. I looked all over the world and recommend him as the top teacher who really gets it, AND gets how to teach it.
You need strong foundational training to do it safely, and I always recommend 90-min hot Bikram training from an intact hatha lineage like Kata Hot Yoga or people they reccomend. Afterwards, you can maintain a daily practice with Ashtanga. I use this book.
Intermittent fasting was the answer for me, but in the industrialized world, you'll need this book for food. Tosca Reno nailed and democratized the food science and chemical reduction with the Eat Clean Diet.