My paradoxical weight loss story

July 2, 2008 by  

I’ve been asked by so many people how I lost weight and went down several sizes that I wanted to share my thoughts. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had weight problems; everyone is fairly tall and thin in my family. But over the past 15 years its crept up even though I figured a lot of it was muscle bulk due to taking up the sport of rowing 10 years ago and also, just getting older.

I workout most days for my rowing and I started doing the Five Tibetans after every workout to re-balance strength and energy. I don’t pay anywhere near strict attention to diet although I cut back on deserts. I found I just couldn’t leave them alone working from home, so I stopped buying them. A rower friend helped me improve my rowing technique, rhythm and posture. That, and the Five Tibetans, and the resulting improvements, translated to how I carry myself all the time. And that’s the sum of what I did physically that likely contributed to the inches I lost off my waist. It may sound like a lot, but I didn’t significantly increase my activity or radically change my diet. I just paid more attention to the quality.

But I also have this very strong intuition that the pounds I lost are directly related to the interior baggage that I lost over the winter. I was worried about my business, I wasn’t inspired to write or develop anything new, my closest family members had moved across country and I deeply missed them, the weather got me down and I got discouraged. On one hand, I was telling myself to work and try harder to improve and change things. But instead, I obeyed some impulses which included getting rid of TV and excess stuff and immersing myself for 6 weeks in self-awareness practice, reading, journaling and just letting go of trying to control anything at all. And that was significant. After that immersion period I found it easy to continue the practices in the normal course of the day because I’d formed habits.

I started noticing that my clothes, especially jeans, started to feel big, and then really big so that I had to give away 2/3′s of my closet. I replaced my jeans with a size that I wore 30+ years ago. I want to stress that losing weight was never a goal or even a back-burner issue; I was happy to be fit, healthy and to excel at the sport I love. Besides, I love food and would not dream of depriving myself of the pleasure of eating.

So the more I tried to explain it to everyone who asked me “how I did it”, the more I realized that my weight/size loss was tied to the old limiting beliefs that I’d shed and replaced during my self-imposed retreat. My weight loss, which meant I went from size 12 to size 6 jeans, presented itself more like a totally unexpected gift and surprise, because although I was not looking for it I really love and appreciate the results.

So its simply not possible to put my weight loss story into a “how-to” context because I believe if anyone tried to do the same, they would not have my experience…because they “tried”. All I can definitively say is that deep stillness, relaxation, consciousness examination and letting go of all concerns and control opens doors, especially doors that you don’t try to open because you don’t even know they exist.

If you’re curious about The Five Tibetans:


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Filed under: alignment, Belief, career, going solo, In Transition, intention, rowing, shift, weight loss
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