Living Yoga

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about women and body image.  I see women with beautiful athletic bodies express the desire to look thinner, women with beautiful hourglass figures hide them under baggy, dark clothing and women with beautiful lean bodies resort to surgery to add curves.  Working in fitness, I see this everyday (it’s hard to hide fake breasts while lying down in Svasana).  As a yoga practitioner and instructor, I personally believe that all body types are sexy and I’ve come to the conclusion that body type or a person’s weight has nothing to do with how happy that person is.  And I’ve also realized this important fact:

Fat people get laid and thin people get dumped.  Thin people get laid and fat people get dumped.

Therefore health and happiness is not about how your body looks, it’s about how you feel.  So if it’s not about how you look externally then diets, binge exercising and other forms of manipulation to force your body to lose weight won’t work as demonstrated by countless fad diets and exercise gadgets that have come and gone over the years.  In my opinion, those forms of weight loss are abuse on your body because it’s a way of  “tricking” your body temporarily.  However, your body is so much smarter than that.  Not only does the weight come back but it adds some extras to be ready for the next fight.  It becomes a losing battle because the body is so intelligent and will win every time.  Your body knows exactly the weight you should be at now given your diet, lifestyle and genetics and that cannot be changed.

So how can one begin to lose weight and have more energy without diets?  Don’t fight your body, love it now. Learn to love everything you can about it now and you’ll begin to treat it with the respect it deserves by consuming only high quality food as fuel, dressing to show how proud you are of your assets and exercising to add a little fun and movement in your routine.

On Friday I’ll give you six steps that I think are crucial to loving your body.  To be continued…