Here it is! New years again. A time for reckless abandon where we swear we will do things differently in the coming year so that we can eat whatever we want now.

What a perfect recipe for low self esteem. Waking up onJanuary 1st and saying to ourselves “I should not have done that”. “I really shouldn’t have eaten like that”. I’m going to humbly suggest that we look at this new year’s differently.

Let’s ask ourselves a question. What do we really want out of the new year’s holiday? Do we want to celebrate with friends? With family? Do we want to feel less alone in the world? Do we want to feel more alive? Do we want to skip it this year and go to bed early?

All of these are really legitimate ideas. There is probably a way for you to move towards any of these goals. Make dinner plans – go to a candlelight yoga class – go to church or temple – take a hot tub – invite someone over and watch a movie – go to the movies by ourselves – take a hike – you get the idea.

What we don’t need to do to move towards our goal is binge eat. It doesn’t take us anywhere. It doesn’t solve our problems, or connect us to the world around us. Wherever we are this new year’s eve, let us allow it to be pleasant. Whether that’s going out all night because it’s fun, curling up with a movie because it’s relaxing, or anything in between. We can eat what want but let’s not do that eating as celebration leading to despair thing this year.

That’s my plan—join me!

As always comments and intentions are welcomed. Share on our facebook page, or email me back!

May we all be held and happy this new year’s and in the coming year.
Brandt

As the holidays approach we often find ourselves in anticipation mode. We ponder the difficult terrain ahead: holiday parties, food based gifts, new year’s, with sugar, flour, and alcohol everywhere. We can’t even go to the grocery store without a free sample of that creamy, cheesy, sugary thing being thrown in our face (by our own hand). It’s a free for all!

Since the holiday landscape consists so much of this, we look ahead — right past the holidays to the  a world of healthy eating, weight loss, and a less difficult environment. It’s called “a new year’s resolution”. This anticipation would be fine except our minds tend to take this as an opportunity to store up for the impending fast. We become bears eating as much as possible before the long winter ahead. Sound familiar? The problem is that we are not bears. We aren’t going to starve for the next 3 months. We are going to gain a few pounds and then go back to the regularly scheduled program.

So what to do? How about really looking at the holidays instead of avoiding them? How about seeing where and how we can practice during the month and being ok if and when we can’t. How about moving out of anticipation, fear, and agitation and into a place of looking forward to those 1 or 2 or 3 meals that allow us to enjoy what this season has to offer. If we do this our mind is happy to pass on the crummy office cookies. We are in the present knowing that we will not miss out on anything with no pending doom. We can remember that the new year is simply an opportunity to continue our work of evolving ourselves into the person we wish to be.

May we all be present this holiday season.
Brandt

That’s a really good question—glad you asked. It’s probably the most important question we can ask ourselves in the Peaceful Weight Loss process. In the past, most of us have moved forward with “a program” whatever it was: a diet or an exercise system. At some point we hadn’t achieved our goals so we stopped. The real failure in this approach is the failure to ask ourselves the question is this working? The reason this might be a hard question to pose to ourselves is that we don’t have the metrics to assess if it’s true. What’s working? How would I know? How do I assess today, or this week, or this month if what I’m doing is a good idea?

In our approach we have some goals for our practice that aren’t directly tied to weight loss. Feeling more centered, calm, energized, clear, aware. These are some of the reasons we practice. We know our yoga practice is useful if it helps us experience these states more frequently. If we aren’t experiencing some shifts from our practice, we modify so that we do. A different yoga practice or switching/adding meditation, maybe a few days walking outside. We change our practice if it’s not working and then when it does we regularly check in to make sure it keeps working.

When our practice is going well in these ways, “working”, we can then make food choices that will move us toward the weight we need to be. In this, we are engaged in our own evolution. Always moving toward our goal of an ideal weight and a peaceful mind.

May we all find our practice today,
Brandt