An Attempt at Weight Loss That Should Be Hopefully Inspiring

Despite the fact that I have never been especially 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 while it moved a few pounds in either direction, I would assume that was me.

Until I was hospitalized at 44. The six months that I spent lying about in bed seemed 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 just split 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. In addition to that, I had begun dating.

On one such occasion I met Katie, a lady who was a prominent SF yoga teacher, but more than that, she was a practitioner of ayurveda. Up until that time I believed that yoga was glorified stretching, and I had nothing to do with it. Katie, in her charmingly effervescent southern charm, articulated in a manner that no one had before how yoga isn’t an isolated activity but a modest physical aspect of an old set of lessons about how to live your life. Ayurvedic treatment was comprehensive and had been developed 3000 years ago in India as a unity of mind, body, and 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 empty.

Katie wanted to create a book on ayurveda for women, and I was excited by this new subject and also had some expertise in book publishing, so I volunteered to assist. A few things occurred at this time that are worth noting. I really wanted to go out with Katie, and we were getting along great after a few outings. But volunteering to assist her with her book concept appeared to alter things. “I really like you,” she told me as we drank 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 started 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 since 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 choices I was making. On day one I made the following adjustments to my life:

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

Morning stroll as soon as I was awake. 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 portion 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 consume junk food or prepared goods, but even organic diets may be harmful. I traded out my M&Ms for almonds and grapes. Just as pleasant to munch on, but often healthier in moderation. I had instructions regarding when to consume hot items and cold things. And after studying my body type and looking through my cupboard, I ended up taking out breads and pastas and sweets and eating more meats and cheeses and greens. I had a lot of fruit.

Most of these directions were straightforward to follow, but I wasn’t sure I could hack the diet. I’m hooked on sweets. I resided in North Beach, San Francisco, Little Italy, where pizza and pasta are neighborhood staples, and life equals sourdough. But I started to envision eating bread the way someone stuffs a turkey—simply grabbing handfuls of fluffy 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 directed to meet the season and my emotions.

I weighed 182 pounds when all this started. And I decided to record my morning body weight every day and put it on a graph, along with other notes regarding exercise and food. What occurred astonished me: every day I lost weight. Because the bodily reaction was quick, it became positively reinforcing. Which made it easy to accomplish. I didn’t simply lose weight; I dropped weight regularly and deliberately. This is my chart from the first 6 months:

Once I hit 150, I reduced some of the food limits—not altogether, but simply 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 kept munching on almonds and grapes and had a weekly habit of roasting 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), but I tapered off on the yoga practice. And with relative ease, I maintained my original weight of 150 for the ensuing 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 movement, and in only a few months I saw my weight creep back up and when it reached 170 I freaked out.

This summer I decided to try again, and I went back on the exact same diet and fitness plan. And I brought back out my spreadsheet to monitor progress. It’s been three months, and evidently the identical behaviors yield the exact same consequences; here’s my 2020 graph placed against the 2012 graph:

And Katie’s book became a New York Times best seller.