I took a week’s holiday at the beginning of August which I chose to spend at a Yoga Retreat in Turkey with a teacher that I loved to practise with in London.
Most people wouldn’t choose to spend their time off practising 5 hours of yoga a day, staying in a little wooden hut in 40 degree heat, no air con with very few modern conveniences, even if the surroundings are beautiful. But for me, it is a gift I give myself.
It is the one time each year when I can completely disconnect from my laptop, my tablet, my phone and technology generally and totally immerse myself in a simple life. It feels amazing.
However, even when the technology has been left at home, my brain is not as easy to turn off. Throughout the whole retreat I was constantly drawing parallels between the art of learning yoga and the art of losing weight.
Tick, tick tick…
When I came back I had a call with a couple of ladies in my coaching group and I had some very interesting conversations with both of them. One was very eager, despite making good progress so far, to see MORE progress, faster.
Another had been doing what we call a reverse diet. She had come from a background of eating very little for a long time and continuously struggling to lose weight. Our goal for her was to build her calories slowly up to a healthy level while keeping her weight stable to give her metabolism a boost. It was working, she was almost at 2000 calories and she had not gained any weight, yet she was anxious to see the results and wondering what was going to happen next. When could she start taking them away again?
It was perfect, I could use a yoga analogy to help them.
They were probably rolling their eyes with all my post yoga retreat philosophical lessons but I think what I said made a lot of sense. I asked:
Why are you in a rush?
Where do you want to get to?
What happens when you get there that is so important that it needs to happen NOW?!
Often we rush because we are not happy to be in the present we are constantly trying to get somewhere else because where we are right now is painful. But we need to be comfortable in the present and develop the right focus because this will make the journey so much easier in the future.
You see, on my yoga retreat, we were learning arm balances. I have been working on my arm balances for a while. Balancing on my forearms and trying to kick my legs up above my head whilst not taking out the furniture in our small living room.
What I learnt on retreat was, although I felt like I was doing something useful and maybe getting there,this was pretty much a waster of time I was never going to get anywhere doing it like this.
Because I was rushing.
I needed to take the time to lay my foundations. To develop the strength and mobility in my shoulders.
To learn to engage my core properly and to make the whole movement less about momentum and more about grace and balance.
Unfortunately this means going back to some pretty painful and pretty boring and much less impressive progressions. The end result however, will be that when I am ready I won’t have the bad habits which in the long term would result in shoulder, neck or back injury, setting me back months or even years.
So what has this got to do with weight loss?
Everything.
If you are chasing the results with quick fixes (extreme carb restriction, calorie restriction and excessive exercise)…
You might not get anywhere. The equivalent of me kicking up and falling back down again… and again… and again…
[this is what it looks like, it’s not pretty]
[PS. picture on the left was taken in the 1 second I actually did anything useful!]
If you take things to the extreme (shake diets, liquid meals, 500 calories a day or whatever it is) maybe you do get somewhere (like my 1 second of glory above) but you set yourself up for a relapse (the equivalent of a shoulder, neck or back injury) and you could see yourself gaining that weight back within a few weeks or months time.
So, just like my arm balance practise we have to lay some boring foundations. We maybe need to take it a little more slow, we have to set your metabolism up right (like we were doing with the reverse dieting client), we have to get the foundations and the positive habits in place and then ease you into position.
Which would you rather be?
[Above: the beautiful Naomi Absalom doing arm balances as they should be done. Find our more about her here…]
