Yoga and Healthy Eating: How Yoga Helps You Tune in to the Effects of Your Dietary Choices

by Baxter

Fresh Bread and Fresh Butter
made and photographed by
Rosie Gibson

It is always a bit bittersweet for me come mid-July when I return from my annual yoga retreat at the Feathered Pipe Ranch  in Helena, Montana. It is a magical place for my students, and me, and most of our every-day needs are met by the staff at the Ranch, freeing us up to dive deep into the yoga and community. 

At this year’s retreat, I focused on many of the concepts we talk about here at Yoga For Healthy Aging, including therapeutic sessions on topics ranging from arthritis to digestion. One of the lovely things about going on these sorts of retreats is that all of your meals are prepared for you, and all you have to do is show up for meal times. The Ranch is no different, and they pride themselves of the variety of healthy, mostly organic foods that they prepare for us each year, from Indian to Thai to Mexican, to the “Toledo Lunch” (a throwback to my childhood favorite, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup). In addition, they always have tempting desserts, from fruit cobbler to fresh baked cookies and cakes to something outrageous called Chocolate Decadence! The downside to this, at least from my perspective, is that the food is served buffet style, so there is the daily opportunity to overeat, despite the overall healthy options provided (minus some of the desserts, of course!)

I have to remind myself to be more mindful about my eating when at the Ranch. It is very easy to make a second trip up for some more of my favorite things, even when my first plate of food was more than sufficient to satisfy my hunger. Satiety is different than eating until I feel “stuffed.” which unfortunately happened a few times last week. But because I was also on retreat in my own way, even though I was teaching twice each day, I was able to have the time to meditate consistently first thing in the morning for about 15 minutes. I found that as I sat quietly focused on my breath or simple mantra (see How to Start a Meditation Practice), I became acutely aware of how my body was feeling and responding to the previous day's food choices. I also would recall if I woke in the middle of the night with indigestion, gas, bad dreams, or the urgent need to use the bathroom. This feedback allowed me to more consciously set an intention around my food choices for the rest of the day.

Since I tend to desire more processed sugar than is healthy for me, (is it really healthy for anyone?), I began to modify my breakfasts, the only meal I prepared for myself in the little teacher’s cabin kitchen, leaving out the jam on my toast and adding in a piece of fresh fruit to satisfy that sweet taste desire that I have. And I began to notice that my energy levels were higher for the rest of the morning as the week progressed. Quite motivating! I have to admit that dessert time was still a tough one, but was at least more mindfully dished and consumed than earlier in the week. 

Surprisingly, I realized I was looking forward to being back in my own kitchen where I could more easily design my meals for not just quality, but also quantity.  All these insights about behavior changes and choices arose directly out of the introspective practices of yoga, like simple breath awareness. They were there for me, and they are available for you, too. As we keep reminding you, consistent practice is a key feature of transformational practice. I did my meditation first thing today again, and my continued healthy, well-proportioned meals choices are reflecting it!

I've been thinking a lot about healthy eating and healthy digestion because my two-part online course at Yoga U is coming up soon. To sign up for the course, you can register here. For a free audio interview with me on yoga for healthy digestion, download the interview here.

Changing How You Eat

As you may know, not fueling up with the right nutrients can affect how well your body performs and your overall fitness benefits.  Even though healthy eating is important, there are myths that hinder your performance if you listen to them.

Below, you'll find some myth busters on healthy eating.

1.  Working out on an empty stomach.
If you hear a rumbling noise in your stomach, the rumbling is trying to tell you something. Without listening to them, you are forcing your body to run without any fuel.  Before you exercise or do any physical activity, always eat a light snack such as an apple.

2.  Relying on energy bars and drinks.
Although they are fine every once in a while, they don't deliver the antioxidants you need to prevent cancer.  Fruits and vegetables are your best bets, as they are loaded in vitamins, minerals, fluid, and fiber.

3.  Skipping breakfast.
Skipping breakfast is never a good idea, as breakfast starts the day.  Your body needs fuel as soon as possible, and without it, you'll be hungry throughout the day.

4.  Low carb diets.
Your body needs carbohydrates for your muscles and the storing of energy. 

5.  Eating what you want.
Eating healthy and exercising doesn't give you an all access pass to eat anything you want.  Everyone needs the same nutrients whether they exercise or not, as well as fruits and vegetables.

6.  Not enough calories
Although losing weight involves calories, losing it too quickly is never safe.  What you should do, is aim for 1 - 2 pounds a week.  Always make sure that you are getting enough calories to keep your body operating smoothly.  If you start dropping weight too fast, eat a bit more food.

7.  Skip soda and alcohol.
Water, milk, and juice is the best to drink for active people.  You should drink often, and not require on thirst to be an indicator.  By the time you get thirsty, your body is already running a bit too low.

Changing how you eat is always a great step towards healthy eating and it will affect how your body performs.  The healthier you eat, you better you'll feel.  No matter how old you may be, healthy eating is something you should strive for.  Once you give it a chance, you'll see in no time at all just how much it can change your life - for the better.

Healthy Eating: You Are When You Eat

by Ram

That our personality is determined by what we eat is based on the belief “You are what you eat” expounded by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin and  Ludwig Feuerbach who declared that food affects one’s health and state of mind. The philosophy of conscious eating is emphasized in the Ayurvedic texts, the Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads. According to these texts, if digestion is not optimal, it can trigger imbalances in other systems of the body, including the mind. Optimal digestion directly and swiftly corrects imbalances and in doing so, brings an end to suffering and prevents future disease. Most of us experience digestive disturbances at some time in our lives, some acute and some chronic that cause both discomfort and embarrassment. Correction of the digestive system is a part of the treatment of every imbalance in the body.

The above texts also stress the importance of being in tune with nature while eating consciously. Through food we connect to nature and become one with it. When we live in harmony with nature we experience optimal health and digestion and peace of mind. When we are out of harmony, we experience suffering. In realizing our connection to nature through eating, our relationship with food becomes a sacred experience. Furthermore, our close connection with nature also helps us to become aware of the role of the movement of the sun in influencing and impacting our digestion. The sun represents the fire element and in the physical body this is reflected as the process of transformation of the food by the heat of the digestive juices (jatharagni in Ayurveda). Thus, when the sun is at its peak in the sky, digestion is stronger and optimal. Similarly, digestive capacity is at its ebb during dawn or in the evening twilight when the sun is either rising or setting. Therefore, the above texts also recommend eating our largest meal during the midday hours when the sun is at its peak and smaller meals in the morning and evening. Such timed meals based on the sun’s position not only prevent weight gain and onset of other digestive-related problems but also ensures a disease-free long life. Some of these facts were clearly laid out in Nina’s post Yoga for Healthy Eating: An interview with Dayna Macy

Glad Day by William Blake

The above mentioned principles of consciously eating in tune with the sun’s position is now supported by a recent research study Timing of food intake predicts weight loss effectiveness  that suggests that you’re not only what you eat, but when you eat. According to this research study, having lunch as the main meal of the day (anytime before 3 pm) in fact could help you lose weight. The study just published in the International Journal of Obesity was carried out by a team of researchers at Spain’s University of Murcia, Boston's Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Tufts University in Medford, Mass. In this prospective study, 420 overweight men and women who lived in the Spanish seaside town of Murcia were monitored for 20 weeks while restricting their calorie intake to about 1,400 a day. The participants were divided into two groups: early-eaters who ate their lunch anytime before 3 p.m. and late-eaters that ate after 3 p.m. Among the findings reported in the journal:

• Early eaters lost an average of 22 pounds in 20 weeks; late eaters lost about 17 pounds.
• The late eaters consumed fewer calories during breakfast and were more likely to skip breakfast than early eaters.
• The late eaters had lower insulin sensitivity, which is a risk factor for diabetes.

The researches also noted that the effects of sleep and biological clocks have a close association with weight regulation in animals. If the timing of meals doesn’t match with the sleep cycle, there is a disconnect between the different body’s biological clocks leading to obesity and other physical problems. Thus, the results of the study not only demonstrate the need to avoid eating late at night but also the findings unequivocally demonstrate that timing of meals is a clear predictor of weight-loss effectiveness. While shifting to an early feast may not be too difficult for folks in Spain where the main meal of the day happens to be at mid-day, it could take quite an effort to convince folks here in the U.S., where the largest meal of the day (aka dinner) coincides with the setting sun. But give it try—remember to make hay and eat your biggest meal while the sun shines.

Cultivating the Opposite: Yoga Philosophy for Healthy Eating, Healthy Aging

by Nina

“People in America are addicted to sugar, and to fat and to salt,” he says, and as a nation, it’s holding us back. “Food is intensely pleasurable, and people are afraid that if they change the way they eat, they’ll stop having pleasure.” —Jan. 17, 2013 interview on NPR with John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods

This morning, as I was helping Baxter prepare for his workshop on Yoga and Healthy Eating at the upcoming Yoga Journal Conference, he told me he was struck by this quote from my interview with my friend Elizabeth D, who lost 50 pounds and learned how to eat a diet that suited her particular body:

“I also changed my perspective by viewing eating healthy and exercising as a way to do something positive for myself, not something to dread.”

Baxter went on to say that this was a form of “pratipaksha bhavanam,” which Patanjali recommends in the Yoga Sutras.

II.33 Upon being harassed by negative thoughts, one should cultivate counteracting thoughts. —trans. Edwin Bryant

The Sankrit words “pratipaksha bhavanam” from the original text of this sutra literally mean “cultivate the opposite” (or “cultivate counteracting thoughts” in Bryant’s translation). That’s what Elizabeth did when she said she changed her perspective about how she viewed healthy eating; she contemplated her original view and then consciously took another one. That reminded me of an interview I heard this morning with John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods. He talked about, among other things (most of which I do not agree with, but let’s not go there right now), why Americans have trouble with unhealthy food addictions. He said that people “are afraid that if they change the way they eat, they'll stop having pleasure” and recommended they take the same approach that Elizabeth took, changing to a different perspective, in this case, that healthy food is as pleasurable as junk food. So that’s our thought for the day about yoga for healthy eating: use Patanjali's yoga philosophy to change your thinking about the way you eat.

Seattle Garden (A Detail) by Joan Webster

But, of course, Patanjali wasn’t talking about healthy eating in the Yoga Sutras. He was addressing  a much more all-encompassing subject, which is that negative thoughts can lead us away from the behavior specified in the yamas and the niyamas—including non-violence, non-stealing, non-greediness, and truthfulness—which is necessary to achieve the equanimity that is yoga. For example, thoughts about violence can lead to acts of violence. Here’s the next sutra:

II.34 Negative thoughts are violence, etc. They may be personally performed, performed on one’s behalf by another, or authorized by oneself; they may be triggered by greed, anger, or delusion; and they may be slight, moderate, or extreme in intensity. One should cultivate counteracting thoughts, namely, that the end results of negative thoughts are ongoing suffering and ignorance.  —trans. by Edwin Bryant

Again, Patanjali recommends “pratipaksha bhavanam” or “counteracting thoughts” in this sutra. As Edwin Bryant says, “For example if any aspiring yogi experiences feelings of dislike for a person, which is a type of himsa, violence, then, upon becoming aware of this feeling, the yogi can make the effort to think of the person in a nonviolent fashion, perhaps viewing him or her as simply an embodied being who is victimized by the gunas and karma, etc. and ultimately as a pure purusa soul.”

How does this tie into healthy aging? Spending less time in the grip of negative thoughts, especially anger, and thereby avoiding negative interactions, will obviously help reduce stress and stress-related diseases. And the ability to re-frame our perspective on a situation is a valuable method we can use to reduce the klesas, the five afflictions I discussed in my post The Pains Which Are To Come. Edwin Byrant likens negative thoughts to weeds in a garden:

“As in a garden, the more one makes an effort to uproot weeds, the more the bed will eventually become a receptacle for fragrant flowers, which will then grow and reseed of their own accord until there is hardly any room for the weeds to surface.”

Healthy Eating, Stress and Self Control

by Nina

One of the most important things you can do to support healthy eating is to practice stress management. Thought the reasons for this weren’t immediately obvious to me, the more I’ve looked into this topic, the more compelling those reasons become. Recently I wrote a post Yoga, Stress and Weight Management about how chronic stress causes weight gain by stimulating your appetite. As if increased hunger isn’t bad enough, it turns out that being stressed out can pose an even bigger challenge to your commitment to eating right: it weakens your willpower and causes you to be more impulsive. Say you had a long, traffic-jammed commute on the way to the office, there’s a critical meeting with a client that you make with a minute to spare, and someone’s left a big, pink box of fresh donuts glistening there on the table. Then, even though you planned a day of healthy eating, with a homemade lunch and a healthy snack, before you have time to stop yourself, you somehow you find yourself with a half-eaten donut in your hand.... Does this sound familiar to anyone? According to The Willpower Instinct by Dr. Kelly McGonigal, you’re more likely to cave in to temptation when you’re experiencing the stress response than you are when you are in a state of relaxation.

“While your body was getting ready to defend your life, the alarm system in your brain was busy trying to make sure you didn’t get in the body’s way. It focused your attention on the saber-toothed tiger and your surroundings, making sure no stray thoughts distracted you from the threat at hand. That’s right, the fight-or-flight response wants to make you more impulsive.”

As is often the case, a response that makes sense when your life is actually in danger (a time when over-thinking is probably not a good idea) can backfire on you in modern times. The traffic jams and the meeting with the client that were stressing you out weren’t exactly life threatening, so not being “distracted” by your plans for healthy eating won’t improve the situation (and might even make you feel worse after you come down from your sugar high).

Line of Moss by Brad Gibson

Fortunately, yoga has a few solutions to offer, both for the short term and the long term, to help you reduce the impulsive behavior that can accompany chronic stress. For the short term, Dr. McGonigal recommends slowing down your breathing to four to six breaths per minute, which she says helps shift your body from a state of stress to “self-control mode.” This is obviously something you could do discretely at your desk or even in that conference room where the donuts lay glistening at you. (Your meeting might even go better if you stopped for a minute to “center” yourself this way before it begins.) And since lengthening your exhalation is also a good way to turn down the stress response, I’d add that you could practice any form of pranayama that emphasizes the exhalation over the inhalation.

For the longer term, Dr. McGonigal recommends that you spend some time practicing conscious relaxation to “restore your willpower reserve.” She suggests lying down and breathing deeply, which sounds like Savasana (Relaxation pose) to me! Besides this, of course, yoga has a huge repertoire of ways you can de-stress, including meditation, yoga nidra, restorative yoga, supported inverted poses, and active asana poses practiced with mindfulness (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga for further information).

So if you’re having trouble sticking to your healthy eating plans for the new year, why not experiment by trying one or more of these relaxation techniques and see if they strengthen your willpower. I’d love to hear back about any results. (Besides, if worse comes to worst, you’ll at least be less stressed out!)

Yoga, Stress and Weight Management

by Nina

Are you planning to relax over the holidays? Because if you’re not and you are worried about gaining weight, perhaps you should set aside some time for yoga.

You see, I’m helping Baxter with research for his upcoming workshop on Yoga for Healthy Eating at the San Francisco Yoga Journal Conference in January and I’ve learned exactly how stress can induce weight gain. Of course, we all know about so-called “stress eating,” but I wanted to know why that happens (I’m like that, you know, always wanting to the whys and hows as well as the whats). And I found that it’s due to the combination of hormones that are released in our bodies when we’re under stress.

These hormones include  adrenalin, which gives us instant energy, along with corticotrophin releasing hormone (CRH) and cortisol. While high levels of adrenalin and CRH decrease your appetite at first—we usually don’t have much of an appetite during a crisis—the effects usually don’t last very long. That’s when the cortisol—whose job is to help you to replenish your body after the stress has passed—kicks in, increasing your appetite and driving you to eat more. And because most of us no longer expend extra calories while in the acute phase of stress (we’re no longer actually fighting or running when our “fight or flight” responses are triggered), we don’t really need to replenish our food stores. So the increased appetite results in, you guessed it, unwanted weight gain.

Chocolate-Almond Candy Heart Made and Photographed by Brad Gibson

In addition, while we’re under stress, we typically have an impulse to do something, to move. So unless you respond to your impulse to move with actual physical activity—yoga asana, anyone?—eating often becomes the activity that relieves the stress.

This is why both relaxation and exercise are recommended for reducing your appetite. When you use yoga or meditation to trigger the relaxation response (see Stress, Your Health, and Yoga), your parasympathetic nervous system reduces the levels stress hormones in your body. Exercise is also excellent for stress reduction as it, too, triggers the release of biochemicals that counter the negative effects of stress hormones. In addition, exercising will satisfy your impulse to move and hopefully prevent you from turning to food as a way to relieve your stress.

My prescription for preventing weight gain during the holidays? An active yoga practice followed by conscious relaxation (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga). And if you’re short on time, try even 10 or 15 minutes of conscious relaxation.

Practicing Yoga Mindfully

by Nina

Raindrops and Reflections by Nina Zolotow

Although it’s a rather new concept, approaching yoga poses as a mindfulness practice is a very powerful tool for improving your physical and mental health. Whether you are trying to change your eating habits, reduce your stress, or heal from disease, learning to listen to your body is crucial. In his wonderful book Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn points out what happens if we simply operate in automatic-pilot mode:

"One very important domain of our lives and experience that we tend to miss, ignore, abuse or lose control of as a result of being the automatic-pilot mode is our own body. We may be barely in touch with our body, unaware of how it is feeling most of the time. As a consequence we can be insensitive to how our body is being affected by the environment, by our actions, and even by our own thoughts and emotions. If we are unaware of these connections, we might easily feel that our body is out of control and we will have no idea why."

Kabat-Zinn goes on to say that physical symptoms are the messages your body is giving you that allow you to know how it is doing and what its needs are.

"When we are more in touch with our body as a result of paying attention to it systematically, we will be far more attuned to what it is telling us and better equipped to respond appropriately. Learning to listen to your own body is vital is improving your health and the quality of your life."

And one of the best ways to pay attention to your body systematically is to bring mindfulness into your asana practice. I, myself, have learned to recognize certain physical symptoms that tell me when I’m overstressed (for example, a burning feeling in my chest). When I experience those sensations, I know it’s time for me to scale back temporarily and practice the yoga poses that calm me down. In my interview with Elizabeth (see Meditation and Healthy Eating) about mindfulness and eating, she talked about learning, from both meditation and asana practice, to recognize when she was actually hungry versus thirsty or had low potassium and that has helped her lose and keep off 50 pounds.

So how you make your asana practice a mindfulness practice? Kabat-Zinn writes:

"We practice the yoga with the same attitude that we bring to sitting meditation or body scan. We do it without striving and without forcing. We practice accepting our body as we find it, in the present, from one moment to the next. While stretching or lifting or balancing, we learn to work at our limits, maintaining moment-to-moment awareness. We are patient with ourselves. As we carefully move up to our limits in a stretch, for instance, we practice breathing at that limit, dwelling in the creative space between not challenging the body at all and pushing it to far."

If that’s not enough—or if you have fallen into a rut with your practice that’s putting you in automatic-pilot mode, I have some specific suggestions:

1. Practice yoga at home. Practicing on your own, without the distraction of the teacher telling you what to do you or other people in the room, forces you to pay more attention to your own experience of being in the poses.
2. Pick a single physical sensation to follow throughout your entire practice, whether it is the quality of your breath in every single pose, the even distribution of weight on your feet—the balls as well as the heels—in every pose, or even something more arcane.
3. Change your routine. If you do practice at home and are in stuck in rut, try doing something different. Practice on the left side first instead of the right. How does that feel? Or, do all your twisting poses, even all the standing the poses, without turning your head. Twist from your spine only and leave your head looking down at the floor. Notice how hard that is, and how different your neck feels.
4. Try using props if you never have. See what difference it makes. Or, if you use props regularly, try a different height (lower or higher) or try practicing without props for once and see what a difference that makes.
5. Try holding poses for longer periods of time than you usually do. Notice the resistance that comes up in your body (as well as your mind).

Anyone who has additional suggestions, please chime in!

Yoga for Every Body: An Interview with Janet Wieneke

by Nina

September Photo from the Yoga for the Larger Woman Calendar

“Around the same time, the thought hit me that I had been dragging this body around for all these past 50 years instead of really living in it. It came to me that I had not claimed this body, not moved into this body. I was renting it, but I didn’t live there. I didn’t want to live there—in the “undesirable” section of town.
 
“That began to change though when I realized no amount of wishing, bargaining or promising will change the fact that this is my body and that it benefits me greatly to “step up” and partner with my abilities, instead of wishing that things were different.” — Janet W

I was so moved by this quote from Janet Wieneke from the Yoga for the Larger Woman Calendar that Baxter mentioned in his post Healthy Eating and the Digestive System that I decided I just had to interview her. For I believe it’s so important for everyone to understand that anyone, of any age or body type—small or large, flexible or stiff, strong or weak—can not only do yoga, but will all benefit tremendously from it. Now, let's hear what Janet has to say!

Nina: What was your life like—and your relationship with your body—before you started doing yoga?

Janet: For the first 40 years or so of my life I didn’t think too much about my body. In fact I made an effort to avoid seeing or connecting with it. I had a lot of aches and pains but figured it was my own fault for being so fat for so long. I did get some exercise—I did Volkswalks for a while, did jazzercise for a few years, swam laps at the local pool and even joined a gym a few times. None of it was something I was really enthused about but did it because I knew I needed to keep moving.

My diet then was probably better than people would assume. I usually tried to “shop around the edges” at the supermarket and visit farmers’ markets and avoid heavily processed foods. I had a few food sensitivities at that time (citrus primarily, whole wheat) but nothing to difficult to deal with.

Then, in my early 40’s I started having more GI problems. I tried all sorts of OTC drugs to deal with the pain/gas and nausea but nothing really made it better. I had my gall bladder removed as that was assumed to be the problem. After that things got worse and my diet options narrowed considerably. I spent a couple of years trying to force my body to accept and process what I wanted to eat. My body fought back by upping the intensity and frequency of the gut “attacks.” It was a continual battle. It got to the point that I realized if this was going to be the rest of my life, it didn’t want it.

Nina: How did you get started with yoga, and how did it change you?

Janet: I got started in yoga when I realized I really didn’t have an exercise plan that I wanted to do. There were lots of things I could or should do, and I did, on occasion. I enjoyed taking the occasional class through our local community college, and one day when I was leafing through the booklet I saw “Yoga for the Larger Woman” advertised. I thought, “Wow, I’d have half a chance!” I was in a book group that met at the same time though, so I just shelved the idea away. The next term I looked again to see if perhaps they had changed the time. They hadn’t. I decided to back out of the book group and give yoga a try. I really didn’t think I’d like it that much as I’ve never been very flexible.

The first few times were a struggle. I was so ashamed of bending over in front of others, exposing my extra-large ass to the masses. I cringed inwardly anytime it was suggested.  Then Vilma started doing the “Sellwood salute,” which is basically Downward Dog at the bar, where we would envision “beauuutiful tail feathers” that we would proudly display in a waving motion. It cracked me up every time. Gradually as I quit forming opinions of myself that I could fob off onto other people, I looked around and noticed I didn’t stand out so much in class. Sure most of the women were smaller than me but a few were larger, and—big picture—it really didn’t matter. Within a few months I noticed I was having far less back pain and even my gut “attacks” were less frequent.  I started to really pay attention and noticed other things, like how great a stretch felt from the inside out or which muscles activated when I raised my leg. I started to consider my body and excess flesh with more awareness and less judgment. During this time I was also doing some counseling and the two modalities together brought to light how I was “caring” for myself, and I began to question if what I was doing was actually working for me or if I was just existing on habitual thoughts and habits.

Eventually I realized the more time I spent on my matt, the more attached I felt to this body, in a positive way. I started to care about what I was eating and was more willing to accept the responsibility of my actions. This last year I began seeing a naturopath who put me on a regime of nutritional supplements and I continue to feel better. Today I still struggle with eating what my body needs/tolerates over what I want to eat, but I feel my yoga practice gives me support in making better choices.

Nina: A couple of our readers wanted me to ask if you’d seen any improvements in your balance and flexibility.

Janet: I have noticed a slight improvement in flexibility, nothing dramatic—my nose will never meet my knee cap. But after the first year of yoga though I headed out to do a good spring clean up in the yard and reached down for something and literally smashed my fingers on the ground. I remember how surprised I was as the year before that never would have happened! My balance may be slightly better as well. I’m certainly more confident on my feet but whether that is a balance thing or just general alignment I can’t say for certain.

Nina: Is there anything else you'd like to tell our readers?

Janet: I’ve always been more of a thinking person than a feeling person. Now after having a fairly regular practice for a few years, it’s almost as if a third way of being has come into play. It is more of an intuitive way of being. It’s something I cannot fully explain with words or isolate within my body. It’s almost a middle ground—a balance? When I can operate from this level, my stress level decreases, I make better choices from everything between what I eat to how I show up for others and it is far easier to live in this body. I wish I had “discovered” yoga long ago.

The years I’ve spent wishing I looked different, acted different, was different—all a waste of time but apparently held the lesson/s I needed to learn. I never felt that yoga was available to me, a fat person. Yoga was the domain of the lithe and “enlightened.” While I think that is still the predominant thought, I KNOW yoga is available to anyone willing to let go of their “cerebral” inner voice and listen to the wisdom of their own body. It’s a tough sell, especially if you’re fat, but it is so worth the effort.

Janet Wieneke is a native Portlander, works in health care as a dosimetrist, and is the personal servant to two animals (one cat and one dog). Her favorite pastimes are fused glass, yoga, photography and being out in nature. She studies yoga with Vilma Zaleskaite at The Yoga Project in Portland, Oregon,  and she is “Miss September” in the Yoga for the Woman Calendar, which you can purchase here.

Healthy Eating and Your Digestive System

by Baxter

I recently heard from a colleague of mine in Portland, Vilma Z, who has hosted me at her lovely studio The Yoga Project in the Sellwood neighborhood over the years.  She was very excited and proud to let me know about a new project she had just completed, a calendar featuring the students from her highly popular class “Yoga for Larger Women.” Vilma has been working with larger women in Portland now for several years, and her experiences and the experiences of her students can be found on the website yogaforthelargerwoman.com. Please go there and read for yourself the amazing transformations these students describe.

Janet from the Yoga for Larger Women Calender

And then this past weekend, I once again offered my workshop on Yoga and the Digestive System.  As part of that course, during Savasana, I guide the students through a journey of their digestive system for start to finish. The last time I taught this guided visualization, several students asked if I had it recorded so they could do the journey again on their own. So, this weekend, honoring that request, I recorded the Journey Through Your Digestive System, and it is now available on Bandcamp at yogaforhealthyaging.bandcamp.com, where you can play it at any time or download it in any number of formats.



I’ve decided to share this recording with you today as part of our series exploring Yoga for Healthy Eating. You might ask yourself the question, “What does having a better understanding of my digestive system have to do with helping me foster healthy eating habits?” Well, one of Vilma’s students, Janet Wieneke, has this to say, which I think has great bearing on this question:

“Around the same time, the thought hit me that I had been dragging this body around for all these past 50 years instead of really living in it.   It came to me that I had not claimed this body, not moved into this body. I was renting it, but I didn’t live there. I didn’t want to live there—in the “undesirable” section of town.

That began to change though when I realized no amount of wishing, bargaining or promising will change the fact that this is my body and that it benefits me greatly to “step up” and partner with my abilities, instead of wishing that things were different.”

So the aspect of healthy eating that has to do with understanding your digestive system is learning to really live in and feel your body, noticing how different foods and meal sizes make you feel, and so on, instead of just wishing things were different. The more in tune you become with how your ingestion and digestion of food makes you feel, the more likely you are to make better decisions in the future regarding healthy eating.

And if you want to support Vilma’s work with larger women in Portland, buy a 2013 Calendar here . The photos—and the women—are lovely! And if you want to support our ongoing work here at Yoga For Healthy Aging, consider purchasing your audio track of the digestive journey from Bandcamp. And let us know how you liked the tour!

Meditation and Healthy Eating

by Nina

My friend Elizabeth told me that before I knew her she weighed 205 pounds, but that she was able to lose weight and keep it off by changing her eating habits. From my observations of people close to me who have weight problems and from what I’ve read, I understood how unusual this was. So I asked Elizabeth to share her story with us. Okay, fine, I admit it! I have an agenda. Because I know from our previous conversations that Elizabeth has a regular meditation practice as well as a regular yoga practice, and that she credits both with helping her stay focused on maintaining her healthy eating habits.

Cake and Photo by Brad Gibson (yeah, he bakes, too)

I also happen to be reading The Willpower Instinct by Kelley McGonigal, Ph.D. because I want to learn more about how to help people change their eating habits. That’s because, as I'm sure most of you know by now, maintaining a healthy weight and eating more nourishing foods is vital for healthy aging. And sure enough, in one of the early chapters in Dr. McGonigal’s book she tells us that one of the best ways to strengthen your self control (and don’t we all need that to help us resist the daily food temptations we’re exposed to, I mean, my own daughter is pastry chef!) is to meditate.

Here is what she says:

“Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self awareness. People who meditate regularly aren’t just better at these things. Over time, their brains become finely tuned willpower machines. Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness."

And the good news is that it doesn’t take a lifetime of meditation to change the brain. Here’s another quote from The Willpower Instinct:

"One study found that just three hours of meditation practice led to improved attention and self control. The new meditators had increased neural connections between regions of the brain important for staying focused, ignoring distractions, and controlling impulses. Another study found that eight weeks of daily meditation practice led to increased self-awareness in everyday life, as well as increased gray matter in corresponding areas of the brain.

"It may seem incredible that incredible that our brains can reshape themselves so quickly, but meditation increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, in much the same way that lifting weights increases blood flow to your muscles The brain appears to adapt to exercise in the same way that muscles do, getting both bigger and faster in order to get better at what you ask of it."

I don’t know about you, but I find these results fascinating. Because while self control is important for healthy eating, it’s also helpful for many other ways of fostering of healthy aging, whether it is something you need to stop doing, such as smoking, or something you need to start, like exercising.

But enough about science! Let’s hear what Elizabeth says about putting theory into practice:

Nina: Can you tell us something about why you needed to change your eating habits?

Elizabeth: I was overweight (205 lbs) and unhealthy at 32. I also had Crohn's disease. The change started when I moved to California in 1999. Eventually, I lost 50 lbs and have kept it off for 12 years.

Nina: What changes were you able to make that led to the weight loss and helped you maintain it?

Elizabeth: I started by making small, realistic changes that I knew would be easy to maintain. For dietary changes, I started with milk. I went from regular to 2%, then 1%. If I had fat-I tried to make it a healthy one such as avocado or olive oil. I also created a cookbook of my favorite recipes, and revamped them so they are still flavorful but healthy. I'm a genius at the 30-minute healthy dinner. My favorite is Cuban Black Bean soup. I try to always make time in my day for exercise. If I couldn't go to the gym, I would make a point of taking the stairs or walking on my lunch break. I also changed my perspective by viewing eating healthy and exercising as a way to do something positive for myself, not something to dread. I have a nice variety of yoga and exercise DVDs at home, which is also very convenient.

Nina: What is your meditation practice like and how do you think it helps you maintain healthy eating habits?

Elizabeth: I practice Transcendental Meditation, which is typically done twice daily, for 20 minutes. I meditate in the morning—I feel it's a great start to my day. It helps me to get the rest and focus that I need. It also manages stress and helps me to be checked in with what's going on in my life. I'm more likely to defer my unhealthy snacks once I've checked in with myself.

Nina: What you said about meditation helping you get focus is very interesting. Kelly McGonigal says, “Meditation is not about getting rid of your thoughts; it’s learning not to get so lost in them you forget what your goal is.” So meditation is supposed to help you stay “focused” on your goals.

I know that you also practice yoga asana. Has this helped with you maintain healthy eating habits? If so, how?

Elizabeth: Yoga has been wonderful in many ways. I am more relaxed, have less back pain, and I am more aware of how I'm feeling. For example, for most of the time, when I'm hungry, I'm actually dehydrated or have low potassium. I'll have a glass of water and a banana and I'm fine. Yoga helps me to be quiet through an uncomfortable situation (there are many of those in my practice!). I've learned to just pay attention to my breath and it usually moves me through a situation feeling very safe and grounded.

Nina: What you just said is so important! I think self-awareness is vital for healthy eating. You need to learn, as you said, when you’re just dehydrated rather than hungry, when you’re full and should stop eating, and which foods make feel good rather than just tasting good. And the relationship between stress management and healthy eating is so key that you’ve given me an idea for a future post. Thank you so much, Lizzy!

Yoga for Healthy Eating, Part 2

by Baxter

Today, as I was driving to the Farmers Market in Berkeley to enjoy my weekly ritual of buying local grown and produced fruits, veggies and animal protein, I happened to catch a bit of the show “Your Health and Fitness” on KPFA. The host posited the assertion that “health” bestows on each of us the opportunity to live a full life. I gotta say, I loved the simplicity of this notion, and all that it really implies. Then I got home to read the following comment on my recent post regarding yoga for healthy eating, full of more wisdom born out of personal experience. It came from an old friend and colleague of mine, and with her permission, I share it with you now:

“Hey Baxter,

Kudos on taking on such a complicated subject! I have a few ideas I think are worth adding to the discussion on mindfulness and healthy eating, and when I say "ideas", I really mean personal opinions I've formed along the journey of nurturing my personal health.

The first idea that really drives my weight management is focusing on eating more good food rather less bad food. "Eat less" is very common advice, but when we set out attempting to do this, what happens is, we end up eating meals that are less than we need to feel satisfied, and then, when we are inevitably hungry in an hour or two, we reach for a convenient snack. This snack is rarely nutritious, and does two things; it keeps us from our goal of losing weight and gives us a sense that we are inept in managing our food. This second part is often the killer. When people ask me for advice about weight loss, I always say the same thing; "EAT MORE VEGGIES". If you add a large serving of vegetables to lunch and dinner, you will not be hungry in between meals. And these vegetables are of tremendous value to your long term health. Your body will shift naturally a healthier size. Eat more, not less.

Also, I believe that living in the modern world means being absolutely inundated with information about dieting, and most of this information is not helpful. Find a plan that works for your lifestyle and stick to it. I've used the same food plan through two terms of weight loss (one in my early thirties & one after my daughter was born), and I generally use the same plan for maintenance today. Find a plan that works for your lifestyle and stick to it.

Lastly, I think exercise is vital to weight maintenance, not because it assists in weight loss (I've actually found it to hinder my weight loss), but because it helps with stress reduction and confidence in the long run. Stress is perhaps the most important factor in why we eat and why we fail at weight loss. When we find exercise that we enjoy and we can integrate into our lifestyle, we have a useful tool in managing our long-term health through stress reduction. Secondarily, we gain in the process an enjoyment of our bodies that is necessary to continue on a path of nurturing self -care. Exercise we enjoy makes us feel good. Feeling good helps us to want to continue on the journey.

Hope this is helpful to the greater discussion.

Amelia”

Yes, Amelia, I think this is very helpful to the greater discussion around healthy eating. Implied in Amelia’s approach is, as I see it, the idea that a longer vision goal is being set by each of us as we decide to make healthy changes in our eating habits. It seems prudent, as an example, that if my goal is weight loss for me to sit and consider what my expectations are when my goal is reached: do I expect to feel better physically, emotionally or mentally? Do I expect a present health problem to resolve itself secondary to my weight loss goal being met? Is there an expectation of an underlying happiness that will arise? In all likelihood, quiet contemplation around this goal of “weight loss” will reveal these sorts of underlying hopes and expectations that could ultimately be more important than any number on the scale.

The practices of yoga, starting with pranayama as a beginning method to quiet the normal mental chatter and give the busy portion of the mind a rest, can be quiet helpful in this process of introspection.  From there, dharana and dhyana, one-pointed concentration practice and continual meditation practice, will refine and sharpen the ability to be receptive to these deeper goals. One of the qualities that is always mentioned in either succeeding or failing at these sorts of attempted changes is the presence of “will power.”  And according to Stanford psychologist, author and yoga teacher Kelly McGonigal, scientists now consider will power to be like a muscle, versus something you either have or don’t have. We all have the muscle, and you can strengthen it with practice. And yoga is a discipline that teaches us about practice, or abhyasa, as one of the main tools for succeeding in meeting our highest goals. 

So to recap Amelia’s wisdom:

• Eat enough good food (VEGGIES!) to satisfy your energy needs and satisfy you hunger.
• Find a plan that works for your lifestyle and stick to it, ie practice it everyday!
• Don’t underestimate the value of exercise as a stress reducing and confidence-inspiring tool (a strong asana practice could be part of that I’d think!), as stress is a huge trigger for unhealthy eating.  And exercise makes us feel good, which has a positive feedback on motivation.

Keep those comments coming! We love ‘em!

Caloric Restriction: Comment and Response

by Nina and Brad

Brad’s post on caloric restriction (see Caloric Restriction and Longevity) prompted an interesting comment from Kathleen Summers MD PhD that I thought it worthwhile to share with you. Rather than having Brad respond in the comments section (I'm not sure how many of you actually read the comments), I asked him to reply to her comment at the end of this post. So have a look! This debate is a very good example of how little scientists currently understand about the aging process (a theme we return to periodically) and provides a hint of some of the many issues surrounding the controversy regarding the best diet for healthy aging.

Posted by Kathleen Summers MD PhD to YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING

The biggest lesson here is that an excess of energy intake brings disease, disability, and early death. Restricting intake protects against cancer - and also diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease to some degree, although the numbers in the latest study didn't reach significance for the latter (potentially due to limited sample size). Teasing out just what the optimal amount of intake is takes time and research. And it's complicated - there's nutritional, environmental, mental/emotional health, and genetics among other factors playing a role.

The monkeys in both groups of the Wisconsin study ate more and weighed more than the NIH monkeys. The researchers used different sources for their proteins, fats, and carbs as well as a different approach to vitamin and mineral supplementation.

We have one primate study showing extended life span with calorie restriction and one not showing the same but yet other positive results. Let's not jump to absolute conclusions about what the latter study means.

Response from Brad Gibson PhD

Kathleen,

You make some good points, and I agree that this most recent NIA caloric restriction study needs to be considered within the context of other published work. There are undoubtedly many nuances in experimental design and interpretation that future experiments will need to address. That said, my major point is that the data for CR in primates is weak at best.  Many of my colleagues were very critical of the earlier Wisconsin study on two counts: the fact that they fed the control group a fairly high caloric diet and that they removed animals from their final analysis on the basis that they died from non age-related reasons. The removal of animals in the final statistical analysis was a very dubious call. And, as it was pointed out in the NYT article—and by many critics of the Wisconsin study—if those animals were included there was no difference in longevity between the two primate groups. Combined with other studies on more diverse genetic backgrounds in mice that show very mixed effects of CR, one really has to wonder how much traction the CR models has left in it, at least in mammals. Oddly, the data on other model organisms (flies, worms etc.) remain strong.  But one can only push these conserved evolutionary arguments so far.

While there may be benefits in a CR diet as you indicate (e.g., cancer and heart disease), one needs to make a distinction between a low calorie diet and caloric restriction. Many years ago a very prominent scientist in the field of aging who practiced the CR diet stated at the end of his seminar that "we scientists" needed to make a case to the public about the benefits of CR. I challenged him on this assertion, saying that American's relationship to food is so screwed up as it is, that to send a message that food is your enemy is not good advice. There is no evidence that CR in humans is beneficial. In contrast, there's plenty of evidence that a sound, balanced, healthy, low-to-moderate caloric diet (especially one that limits or avoid meat and dairy) is good for you. I suspect we are in agreement on that point.

I also agree that we are still far from drawing a final conclusion on the benefits of CR on human longevity. I was a bit flippant on this point in my last blog post. Guilty as charged. And there is little doubt that there will be more NIH studies examining CR and longevity in various mammalian and primate models as there is still compelling and interesting evidence that needs to be sorted when all animal models of CR and longevity are considered. However, I for one, will be placing my bets elsewhere.

Caloric Restriction and Longevity

by Nina and Brad

You may have noticed that we’ve been talking about yoga for healthy eating this week (see Yoga for Healthy Eating) without defining what “healthy eating” entails. To be honest, we’ve intentionally been avoiding getting too specific about dietary recommendations because there is so much controversy these days about what a healthy diet is. However, one thing we can now say with confidence is that the best diet for healthy aging does not mean starving yourself. In today’s New York Times, the results of a 25 year study at National Institutes of Health on caloric restriction was announced, disproving the somewhat popular theory that a low-calorie diet will prolong our life span. See Severe Diet Doesn’t Prolong Life, at Least in Monkeys.

Photo from National Institutes of Health

Since we just happen to have a bona fide scientist who studies aging on our staff, we decided to ask him to weigh in. Here’s what Prof. Bradford Gibson (aka Brad) has to say about this news and about caloric restriction in general:

"The data demonstrating that caloric restriction (CR) increasing longevity is impressive, at least for yeast, worms and flies. It was generally thought that this link between CR and longevity was evolutionarily conserved in mammals as well, as evidence from several mouse and rat studies seemed to indicate. (However, even the mouse data has come under scrutiny as the CR effect does not seem to work nearly as well in when these studies are carried out on mice with more diverse genetic backgrounds, you know, like the ones in your attic as opposed to the inbred lab strains.)

"The primate studies, however, have been obviously more problematic to carry out, considering the cost and time required to get the results can be 20 years or more. This, of course, has not discouraged some people, including some very prominent scientist, to adopt this seriously restrictive diet by choice. Personally, I thought they were nuts to do so; but the field of aging research has always attracted extreme positions and is littered with false or exceedingly thin claims and snake oil salesmen, despite the general field of aging research becoming more mainstream. So what have we learned? Hypothesis fail. Experimental designs are flawed. Things are more complicated than we thought. And I can assert that my own small number of encounters of people on the CR diet suggest that they don't look so good, i.e., pale, gaunt, and a bit listless. So enjoy your meal, wine and chocolate, and maybe the field of aging research will move on to a more interesting and scientifically compelling hypothesis to spend our NIH dollars on."

Yoga for Healthy Eating

by Baxter

Nina and I have recently been talking about yoga’s potential benefit on developing healthy eating habits. Healthy eating habits are vitally important because, after all, the modern adage that you are what you eat seems more and more true as time goes on. What you eat can make you feel bad and can make you sick, as exemplified by such conditions as gluten and dairy sensitivities. It may even lead to diseases such as diabetes and heart disease that can shorten your life span.

Sometimes we hear folks claim that it is our relative modern inactivity that is to blame for the trend towards more and more obesity in this country and in the developed world. Often called the Hunter-Gatherer myth, it goes something like this: modern health problems like diabetes and heart disease are a result of our modern way of life being radically different from the hunter-gatherer environments in which our bodies evolved. Intrigued by such claims, Herman Pontzer, an assistant professor of anthropology at Hunter College, and his colleagues, set out to see if they could shed some light on this question (see Hunter-Gatherer Energetics and Human Obesity). They wondered if hunter-gatherer societies, due to their more active lifestyles, burned more calories in the course of their day than their developed counterparts in the big city. That could account for the lower rates of obesity and heart disease and the like.  They turned to the Hazda people of eastern Africa, one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies on the planet. They measured the daily energy expenditure among the Hadza people of Tanzania to see if these people, whose daily life is so similar to that of our distant ancestors, expend more energy than we do in a given day. And guess what? They don’t. In fact, it is about the same amount as the modern couch potato. Even though they did not look at other side of the formula, the daily calorie intake of the Hadza, they came up with the following conclusion:

“All of this means that if we want to end obesity, we need to focus on our diet and reduce the number of calories we eat, particularly the sugars our primate brains have evolved to love. We’re getting fat because we eat too much, not because we’re sedentary. Physical activity is very important for maintaining physical and mental health, but we aren’t going to Jazzercise our way out of the obesity epidemic.”

If we shift focus onto the original question that I am interested in, how can yoga help my student’s develop healthy eating habits, from this study and lots of other evidence out there to support Mr. Ponzer’s assertion, I want yoga to influence how much we are eating. And since more physical activity does not appear to be the key factor here (meaning more asana or more vigorous asana is not necessarily the answer) I return, once again, to the benefit of practicing the quality of mindfulness that is so central to most styles yoga practices that include more than just asana.  So much eating of high calorie, low nutritional value food happens via a mindless habit. Our yoga practice can begin to bring into clearer view the food choices and quantities of food we are taking in. It requires some specific focuses and goals, such as noticing the difference between actual hunger versus emotionally stimulated eating habits.

Ripening Grapes by Nina Zolotow

It might involve the practice of eating slowly and mindfully, so as to not bypass the body’s natural signals from the brain that tell us when we are satisfied by our meal, versus eating fast and stopping when we feel full (or over-full, as is often the case).  And perhaps doing a brief meditation to check in with how the body responds to the ingestion of those sodas and desserts that we crave, but often leave us feeling tired and depleted after the initial sugar high wears off, might start to shed light on their real effects. Once established in this mindful approach to eating and being, students often report making healthy changes in what and how much they eat. And they are able to tell a distinct difference in how they feel.  They feel better, more even in their daily energy needs, less sleepy after lunch, more rested in the morning. So before you start foraging or hunting for you daily sustenance, try the easier route!  Get more mindful about your eating habits!

Got Mindfulness?

by Nina

Yesterday I read an Op-Ed piece by Mark Bittman in the NY Times Got Milk? You Don't Need It and I was very surprised to read the following:

“This in a country where as many as 50 million people are lactose intolerant, including 90 percent of all Asian-Americans and 75 percent of all African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Jews.

Seventy five percent of all Jews are lactose intolerant? Wow! I’m Jewish and I never even heard this before! When I was a kid, I hated drinking milk. But my mother was so convinced that it was imperative for my health that I was not allowed to leave the table until I forced down my entire (totally yucky) serving. When I was old enough to stop drinking milk as a beverage, I did, although I continued to eat dairy products in their many tempting forms (cheese, butter, ice cream, yoghurt, in lattes and on cereal, etc.). Meanwhile, I always had a rather delicate digestive system, but I tended to blame it on other things (soy, garlic, etc.) Then several years ago my digestive problems got worse, and I finally consulted my doctor about it. She suggested that perhaps it was just the aging process and added there was little I could do about that (to her credit, she did ask me if I was lactose intolerant, but I said that I wasn’t).  Hope I’m not boring you with all this, but there’s a point, I promise.

Anyway, I had noticed that when I spent a week or two eating a vegan diet (because my two kids took turns being vegan during different periods) I felt great. But I still wasn’t connecting the dots. It wasn’t until a few years ago when my husband and I decided to experiment by giving up diary products entirely for other reasons (the environment, global warming, a new theory of inflammation, consideration of dairy cows) that I noticed, hey, my digestive problems are gone! And all the plant foods I thought I couldn’t digest well now made me happy and healthy. Because I felt so much better, it became easy for me to pass up the tempting treats I used to indulge in, even to give them up for life (though with the occasional splurge—hey, my daughter is a pastry chef).

Above the Fog Again by Brad Gibson

You see, last week’s interview with Dayna Macy Yoga for Healthy Eating about mindfulness and healthy eating really made me think, especially the following: 

"Most people don't just sit in Lotus, they work to open their hips and one day, maybe, they get there. It's the same with food. You are discovering who you are in your relationship with eating. You don't just wake up one day and say, "ah ha! This is the perfect way to eat! Now I will do this perfectly from now on!" Knowledge is earned and learned, one day at a time. The truth must resonate and live in your body to become real change."

I just realized this morning that I had been practicing exactly what she described, and that mindfulness about my eating led me to healthier eating habits for my particular body, even though I never heard that fact about Jews being lactose intolerant. My long-time yoga practice no doubt helped me tune into how my body was reacting to different foods, and that ultimately brought me to a decision about my diet that is not only going to have the short-term benefit of making me feel better on a daily basis but will also help my health in the long run.

Have any of you used mindfulness about your eating to move yourself toward a healthier diet? We’d love to hear from you.

Yoga for Healthy Eating: An Interview with Dayna Macy

by Nina

Although we haven’t addressed the issue so far on this blog, we’re all aware that maintaining healthy eating habits and a healthy weight as we age is vital for healthy aging. As Dr. Timothy McCall says in Yoga As Medicine: 

“This is a matter of serious concern because there is little doubt that being overweight can have major health consequences, including type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, heart disease, and some forms of cancer. Extra body weight makes back problems more likely, increase the strain on the joints, and can contribute to or worsen injuries to ankles, knees, hips and other vulnerable areas of the body.”

And Brad says that being overweight may contribute to a shorter health span (the years of your life during which you are relatively healthy) as well as a shorter life span. So recently Baxter and I decided that we wanted to learn more about how yoga can help with healthy eating. As a first step, I decided to interview Dayna Macy, who is a long-time yoga practitioner and the author of Ravenous, which describes how her yoga practice helped her lose weight and develop healthier eating habits for life.

Nina: Can you tell us a little about your weight issues and how yoga has helped you with maintaining healthier eating habits?

Dayna: I've overeaten for most of my life. It wasn't until I hit 35 that my habits really started to catch up with me. I put on a lot of weight and that made my yoga practice, and my life, difficult. Extra weight made it difficult to do any kind of flowing asana. And it made standing poses and inversions more difficult as well, because it was hard to hold a pose for any length of time. My extra weight also made it harder to simply move through my day. Hiking, cleaning, walking the dog, the stuff of daily life is made more difficult when you have excess weight. When I reached my mid-forties, I realized that if I didn't really start to get a grip on my issues, I was looking at a less than optimal midlife and old age. 

I think it's always wise to start where you are, and yoga is a fundamental part of my life. I've been practicing for twenty years. Who and what you are shows up on the mat, and I knew that the practice itself could help me see myself more clearly. It helps you "be here now" and that is essential when wrestling with issues of habit and addiction.

Nina: Are there any particular yoga poses or practices that you found especially helpful for healthier eating and that you would recommend to other people? 

Dayna: I have learned to pay deep attention to my feet and how my feet are grounded on the mat. It is essential to learn to literally ground your body when you are working with old samskaras and habits that you want to unwind. I also found slow and attentive sun salutations very useful. It builds tapas and heat, and for people who are carrying extra weight, it is important to slowly burn your inner fire.

Nina: Now that your book has been published, have you heard anything from other people who have also been able to change their eating habits? If so, what about your story do you think has inspired them the most? 

Dayna: What I learned most is that just like yoga is a practice, so is learning to eat in a way that serves your body. Most people don't just sit in Lotus, they work to open their hips and one day, maybe, they get there. It's the same with food. You are discovering who you are in your relationship with eating. You don't just wake up one day and say, "ah ha! This is the perfect way to eat! Now I will do this perfectly from now on!" Knowledge is earned and learned, one day at a time. The truth must resonate and live in your body to become real change.

This sense of slow change is helpful for people. It gives them breathing room to experiment and learn. We hear a lot in yoga about how there is no perfect pose. I would say you could also say that about eating, weight and our bodies. In the course of my journey, I lost about 25 pounds. I'm still a curvy girl. And frankly, even at my thinnest, I was still a curvy girl. What I've learned is that I am so grateful for my body. Today, at 51, I'm healthy, active, and my body works. It's a miracle. I spend less and less time wishing I were something other, and more time grateful for what I am. This is the gift of yoga. 

Photo by Victoria Yee

 Dayna Macy is the communications director and managing editor of international editions for Yoga Journal. Her book, Ravenous: A Food Lover's Journey from Obsession to Freedom, was recently published by Hay House. See www.daynamacy.com for more information about Dayna and her book.