When I was heavier, it was really hard for me to admit that I wanted to lose weight.
I was earnestly striving to accept and love myself as I was.
Admitting that I didn’t like being overweight felt like:
-weakness of character. I should be one of those bold women who doesn’t give a f@ck!
-an opportunity for others to talk about my weight with me (super uncomfortable)
-like being a loser, diet culture and commercialized standards of beauty had WON.
I felt like I SHOULD feel beautiful, happy and confident at any weight.
So I kept this desire to myself, I wouldn’t tell my intimate partners or friends.
I would actively speak to all bodies being beautiful at any weight (while internally excluding myself).
I felt annoyed that I knew I felt best without that extra 10/15/20/30 lbs. (my weight fluctuated a lot).
I would privately suffer when I stepped on the scale and saw that I’d somehow regained all the weight I lost the year before.
Losing weight also felt really hard. It meant:
-implementing a lot of vigorous exercise (which often led to tension and pain)
-restricting my already restrictive diet (I had a bunch of food sensitivities)
-the exhaustion of detoxing, fasting, cleansing
And while those efforts were relatively effective, they didn’t seem to consistently keep the weight off.
This secret pain about my weight I was carrying didn’t seem to shift no matter how many affirmations I said or body positivity books I read.
Finally, at my heaviest, two years after the birth of my son, I was able to confess to my husband that I didn’t feel healthy and I wanted to lose weight.
Then I did all the unhealthy stuff that I’d done before to lose the weight!
(It’s what my keto-running podcast is all about)
I found myself closer to the weight I wanted to be but feeling drained, miserable and not at all healthy by the end of the experiment.
Then my friend shared 2 books with me: Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman and Fiber Fueled by Will Bulsiewicz.
Reading these books changed my life.
And truly accept that I wanted to be truly healthy, inside and out.
They showed me there was a way.
Plus, both methods (while quite different from each other) seemed to compliment my somatic philosophy and principles.
Eat to Live being a more analytical, Yang or aggressive approach and Fiber Fueled being a more intuitive, Yin or gentle approach.
With the knowledge in these two books, something in my awareness and body intelligence began to awaken.
I quickly and effortlessly lost the last 10 lbs. of baby weight (which I thought would be the hardest) and I began experiencing a tremendous sense of well being in my body that told me:
My microbiome is healing, my body is happy and my soul feels truly fed.
This was incredibly motivating to continue eating in a healing way and suddenly heavy comfort foods and sugary treats just didn’t have the same pull.
I had heard much of this knowledge before (although a lot was also very new!) and I’d even been at this weight before but I had not felt this same sense of safety and aliveness in my body.
I knew it was the foundation of somatic work that I had been doing through movement.
This advanced body intelligence was what allowed my to finally admit I wanted to lose weight in the first place why my soul was aching the entire time I was trying to achieve my desires through force and control why the information about the impact of food affected me more deeply why the life-affirming lifestyle shifts (even seemingly extreme ones) felt possible, even easy.
I could sense that if stayed on this path of daily cultivation of body awareness
nervous system regulation and nutritional healing
I would actually reach my full potential as human being.
I began to radiate my health and vitality.
I inspired my husband to shift his eating habits and both my parents to move towards a whole food plant-based lifestyle.
And I didn’t have to lecture or push. All I had to do was share and be a living example of the result (not necessarily in that order!)
This experience has become the basis of The Radiance Program.
Somatic Education and Food Healing for Heart-led Leaders
This program is primarily about somatic education : freeing your body/mind/spirit from the inside out
The food piece is secondary but necessary because eating is so deeply tied to our internal experience.
Food is part of our conditioning. It’s an other, part of our environment that we take in and immediately make part of us.
And it instantly has an effect on our internal experience (whether we are conscious of it or not).
Long-term, unconscious and unhealthy habits can lead to disease and all kinds of limitations.
Taking the steps (even small ones!) to heal on a gut/body system level is a tremendous act of self love.
And it pays off in a sense of peace, sovereignty and radiance that can be felt by all those in your presence.
Now, some people will be inspired. Others will be triggered.
The best is when people and inspired and triggered at the same time.
That means they already sense a change is calling.
I send them all love.
The truth is, it doesn’t make you better or more valuable to be healthy, fit or at the “right weight”.
It’s about internal happiness at end of the day and if you are living life with true satisfaction and peace in your actions.
There are some women who I truly believe are happy being overweight.
This just wasn’t me, no matter how hard I tried.
It felt so dissonant to live pretending to be “liberated” about my weight when I was suppressing all my frustrations, judgements and fears.
There is more than one way out.
Perhaps some people can change their mindset and say a bunch of affirmations and that’s all they need (although I’m skeptical).
It was only when I started changing my physiology through action that everything started to shift and align.
Come join me on November 4th for a 6 Month Program to Radiance to learn more click button below.
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