A Hopefully Inspirational Weight Loss Story

Dropping 30 lbs with limited self-discipline

Despite the fact that I have never been particularly fit, I am not overweight. Since I was in college, I had maintained a weight of 150 pounds. At the time of my wedding, I was 150 years old. The temperature on my thermostat was set at 150 degrees, and although it moved a few pounds in either direction, I would assume that was me.

I was hospitalized when I was 44 years old. The six months that I spent lying around in bed appeared to reset my system, and I surprised myself by gaining 180 pounds in such a short amount of time. This became my new normal, regardless of everything I did to change it. Having recently separated from my partner and moving out on my own, I find myself developing new routines, such as staying up late, nibbling on peanut M&Ms, and keeping my laptop in bed with me, where it was both the last thing I saw and the first thing I saw each day. I was also starting to date.

On one such occasion I met Katie, a woman who was a popular SF yoga instructor, but more than that, she was a practitioner of ayurveda. Up until that time I felt that yoga was glorified stretching, and I had nothing to do with it. Katie, in her charmingly bubbly southern charm, articulated in a way that no one had before how yoga is not a solitary practice but rather a modest physical aspect of an ancient set of lessons about how to live your life. Katie's

explanation was not the first time anyone had ever explained this concept. Ayurvedic medicine was all-encompassing and had been developed in India three thousand years ago as a way to bring together the mind, the body, and the spirit. It made sense to me: I could imagine millennia of trial and error, and suddenly I could identify how the yoga asana practice—those bendy, painful contortions—was simply a physical implementation of a greater philosophy. Practicing yoga without the rest of the system struck me as hollow.

Katie wanted to create a book about ayurveda for women, and I was excited by this new topic and also had some expertise in book publishing, so I offered to help. A couple of things happened at this point that are worth mentioning. I really wanted to go out with Katie, and we were getting along great after a few outings. But volunteering to help her with her book concept seemed to change things. “I really like you,” she told me as we sipped wine in Napa, “but I don’t think we’re romantically inclined. But we'd be terrific together working on this book, right?”

And it was our final date. It began a two-year process of assisting to get her book written and published. At some time she even relocated back East, but it didn’t matter much as we completed our business online and over the phone. “If you’re going to edit the manuscript,” she informed me, “you have to go through the lessons yourself. You have to establish an Ayurvedic practice.”

As Katie was now in Virginia, she requested her friend Chrisandra, another ayurvedic practitioner, to work with me in person: we met every week or two, and she not only performed yoga with me but worked with me on nutrition, sleep, and other lifestyle changes I was making. On day one I made the following changes to my life:

Turning off electronics; getting to bed sooner. It wasn’t so much about the particular time, but I had to put away my computer and phone at 9 pm, and then it didn’t matter how late I stayed up. Inexplicably I noticed I’d fall asleep maybe an hour later if those things were gone. Which also allowed me to sleep longer.

Morning stroll as soon as I was up. No turning on phone or computer either. Just wake up, get dressed, and walk for a half hour. Again, no one was a stickler about the durations as much as the habit.

Daily yoga. Oddly, this was the smallest part of the endeavor. Sometimes I did it.

Sometimes I didn’t. I was told to meditate also, but I wasn’t.

Change my diet. This was crucial for me; my eating habits were horrible. I didn’t eat junk food or prepared goods, but even organic diets can be unhealthy. I traded out my M&Ms for almonds and grapes. Just as pleasant to snack on, but often healthier in moderation. I had instructions regarding when to eat hot items and cold things. And after studying my body type and looking through my cupboard, I ended up cutting out breads and pastas and desserts and having more meats and cheeses and veggies. I had a lot of fruit.

Most of these directives were simple to implement, but I wasn’t sure I could hack the diet. I’m addicted to sweets. I resided in North Beach, San Francisco, Little Italy, where pizza and pasta are neighborhood staples, and life equals sourdough. But I began to envision eating bread the way someone stuffs a turkey—just taking handfuls of puffy filling and stuffing it in, and it began to freak me out. I identified what I was doing as a modified “paleo” approach, but the essential thing to me was that it wasn’t draconian—I wasn’t counting things, and it wasn’t highly regimented, but it was guided to meet the season and my moods.

I weighed 182 lbs when all this began. And I decided to record my morning body weight every day and put it in a graph, along with other notes regarding activity and diet. What happened astonished me: every day I shed weight. Because the bodily response was quick, it became positively reinforcing. Which made it easier to do. I didn’t just lose weight; I lost weight consistently and deliberately. This is my chart from the first 6 months:

Once I reached 150, I reduced some of the food limits—not altogether, but just handled less severely. I’d eat some dessert, but just periodically, and not as much. And bread on special occasions, if it was excellent bread. I maintained my munching on almonds and grapes and had a weekly habit of baking Brussels sprouts, which also were delightful to chew. And I kept up my morning walks (which I did with a camera in hand to feel moderately accomplished), although I tapered off on the yoga practice. And with remarkable ease, I maintained my original weight of 150 for the subsequent years. That is, until COVID-19.

For approximately 8 years this was my life. But the shelter-in-place moved me back to sitting up late with my computer, plenty of noshing, and very little activity, and in only a few months I watched my weight creep back up, and when it hit 170, I freaked out.