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I almost regret making up this poster with the before and after photos.
This post isn't about appearance but health (the photo on the left happens to be M's favourite), about more discipline in our eating, what do I care whatIi look like, I live in the countryside and practice alone rather than in a shala. |
When I first started practicing yoga I was 94 kilo, I'd been living in Japan for six years, drinking too much beer and living on convenience food, the weight came on gradually and because I had some fancy suits at the time I never really noticed I'd put on as much weight as I had, thought I was looking pretty sharp actually and hadn't really considered how unhealthy my lifestyle had become. I started practicing yoga with a book from a library, it just happened to be Ashtanga and for that first year I panted and sweated through practice each morning on a bath towel in my underwear. I would sweat around two kilo's a practice, there was the suggestion at the time that the Ashtanga practice room needed to be hot (it doesn't). Because I was bending and twisting so much each morning I really didn't want to eat that heavy a meal in the evening. I dropped down to 78 kilo in those first two years and put it down to my dynamic, sweaty, Ashtanga practice although I had also switched to a vegetarian diet a couple of years into my practice..
It was partly the practice of course that accounts for that dramatic weight loss but no doubt just as much to do with eating less. Practicing twice a day I just got into the habit of eating less between practices, smaller portions, plus Ashtanga is great for building discipline and saying no to a beer or a tub of ice cream.
Still, in my mind, at the time, it was that dynamic, sweaty Ashtanga practice that I credited with losing weight.
I should add that I didn't start yoga, Ashtanga, to lose weight, I'd been burgled, had seven vintage saxophones stollen, I was annoyed about it and wanted to do something about the anger. I decided to get back into Sitting and the yoga was because I'd read that it could make the sitting more comfortable.Jump forward a few years.
Two and a half years ago I got ready to move back to Japan. Ashtangi's we love our routines, we love stability, our mat in the same place, practicing at the same time each morning, are we all a little OCD? The disruption caused by that move to Japan threw my discipline out somewhat, those yama/niyama's slipped and the outward manifestation of that was a gradual increase in weight. Also, I had been practicing more slowly, less dynamically and because I associated sweating through practice with the kidney stones I'd had in the past I avoided sweating during practice as much as possible.
When I noticed my weight was up to 84 kilo at the end of last year I realised I needed to do something about it.
My practiced had slowed down in the last few years. Following Krishnamacharya's early Mysore instruction, as found in Yoga Makaranda (Mysore 1934) and Yogasanagalu (Mysore 1941), I was breathing "...slow like the pouring of oil", staying in postures for longer, ten breaths, ten minutes even. To accommodate this slower practice I let go of more and more asana. By the end of last year I was mostly only practicing the first half of Primary and even then with many of the asana dropped, this approach, a 'mudra like' approach to practice is outlined on my Proficient Primary page.
Because I associated the dramatic weight lost of the past to my hot, sweaty, dynamic Ashtanaga practice, the temptation was to switch from my slower more modest practice back to a fast paced full series practice once more, I mean it had worked in the past.
The temptation was great.
Thankfully I was stubborn enough and determined NOT to change my practice, not to speed it up, not to practice more asana, not to practice in a warmer/hotter room but decided instead to 'merely' change my eating habits.
It sounds obvious doesn't it. Of course it's not the practice, it was never the practice, all the practice did really was to provide the discipline to eat more circumspectly. And yet I suspect I'm not alone, I'm sure there are many who associate their physical condition with the practice itself, with how they practice rather than the relationship between how they eat and the practice they have.
I stopped drinking alcohol. From drinking only a little watered down wine in the past I'd started drinking wine that wasn't watered down, from one to two glasses with meals, three glasses even, beer through the summer, a whiskey in the evening, or two, through the long holiday season of Christmas and new year.
I cut out bread, we had discovered we had a great bakers here in our village by the lake.
Quit drinking milk
No more pasta but instead 100% Soba
I cut out rice altogether at first and then allowed a little brown rice once or twice a week.
I stopped eating chocolate, biscuits/cookies, cake any kind of snack other than nuts.
I stopped eating most sugary fruit too.
These days I mostly I tend to eat salad, vegetables, Soba ( including crepes made from Soba flour), strawberries, Sashimi..... nuts.
I went from 84 kilo in November to 73 kilo this morning my practice just slow as slow, just as modest. It was nice however to see the wrist binds come comfortably back if and when I included Marichiiyasana D, Pasasana.
Note: BMI for my height within the recommended range of 18.5 to 24.9
Simon Borg-Olivier talks a lot about diet. He talks and writes about the connection between how we breathe and what we eat. Simply put, If we breathe less we tend to be happy with salad, breathe more and we crave something heavier and perhaps more of it. I'll include his fb post on diet yesterday in the appendix.
See perhaps this earlier post on breathing less
I make M. lemon drizzle cake, I buy her chocolate occasionally but have no interest in them myself, I'm quite content with a handful of nuts as a snack, you get used to it very quickly. Simon stresses that he eats what ever he wants, as much as he wants but that all he fancies is, fruit and vegetable, I feel pretty much the same.
It's not our practice, Ashtanga was never about losing weight.
We CAN practice our Ashtanga as if we are in a Cross-fit gym, or a Bikram studio or we can practice calmly, steadily, in a moderately, comfortably, warm room, our breathing slow and steady, our asana modest.
What Ashtanga, what any regular practice gives us, or can give us, is discipline, or a least it can act as a support for our practice of the yama/niyamas (of our or any other culture) that we choose to follow.
If we choose to switch from a faster paced practice to a slower more modest practice we 'merely' have to adjust our fuel and how much we consume accordingly. I say merely but it can be tough, the practice though can support us in this through the discipline it gives us, the yama/niyama, the asana, they support each other, go hand in hand.
from Krishnamacharya's Yoga Makaranda (Mysore 1934)
"3.3 Dietary Restrictions for the YogabhyasiFood must be eaten in measured quantities. It must be very pure. The food should not be overly hot, it should not have cooled down too much (very cold food should be avoided). Savouring the taste, fill the stomach with such food until it is half full. After this, leave a quarter of the stomach for water and leave the rest empty to allow for movement of air. For example, one who normally has the capacity to eat 1/4 measure of food, should eat 1/8 measure of food and leave the rest of the stomach as mentioned above.
For whom there is neither excess nor less of sleep, food and activityFor him alone it is possibleto attain the state of yoga"p34
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Appendix 1
One of my favourite memories Of Simon from when we hung out together at the Rainbow festival a few years back was his huge bowl of salad.
Simon is back at the rainbow festival this year in fact.
Simon Borg-Olivier with Anita Reilly.My Diet: I eat what ever I like whenever I like, However much I want. But because of how i regulate my posture, movement and breathing my main food and all i really like is fruit, salad and vegetables.
In my 3 hour Sydney Nutrition Seminar on Saturday 27th May 2017 I will explain in simple terms:
*** How what you eat directly affects the way you breathe
*** That learning how to comfortably breathe less than normal (pranayama) eventually allows you to comfortably eat less than normal
*** That the only diet that has been scientifically proven to increase lifespan is the ‘calorie reduction’ or ‘eat less’ diet
*** That eating less can mean eating less volume of food or less concentration of food
*** Eating less is only viable if it is completely without negative physical or emotional side effects, and how to achieve this with simple yogic techniques
*** How balancing your diet with your breathing can improve circulation, increase mobility, increase energy, help calm your nerves, reduce asthma, reduce arthritis, improve your concentration and help you think more clearly
*** The dangers of eating many common foods and the benefits of eating many relatively unknown foods along with some forgotten methods of food preparation
*** That by making your diet more alkaline (e.g. by eating more fruit and vegetables) you can improve your breathing (i.e. comfortably learn how breathe less, like an experienced athlete) and exercise, relax and meditate more easily
I am about to give my annual seminar in Sydney - "Eat Less To Live Longer: Yogic Diet & Nutrition" - Saturday 27 May, 2017.
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*** Here are some of my nutrition tips:
*** First drink enough healthy liquids to satiate your appetite before resorting to solid food to satiate your appetite.
*** Wait till you are hungry before you eat your breakfast, even if your breakfast is at 6 pm at night.
*** Make your diet includes enough fibre to ensure at least one good daily bowel movement.
*** Include ‘superfoods’ in your diet such as organic wheatgrass, algae, goji berries, and acai berries
*** Include some seaweed in your diet for its high iodine levels that can counter radiation.
*** Breathe mostly into your abdomen and move your spine in everyday life and when you exercise, in order to enhance the digestion and absorption of food.
*** Eat less calories in order to live longer.
*** Breathe less in order to be happy to eat less.
*** Keep foods simple and limit yourself to only one or two steps to make a meal.
*** Make a fresh raw sauce of blended avocado, tomato, herbs and rock salt to pour over steamed vegetables.
*** Soak then sprout nuts, seeds, pulses and grains in order to enhance their digestibility and actually increase the nutrients available from them.
*** Include some healthy fermented foods in your such as sauerkraut, kim chi, kefir and tempeh.
*** Avoid all processed foods or at least avoid foods you know are not good for you.
*** Eat some fresh ripe (and ideal local and organic) fruit every day as it is filled with health giving vitamins, minerals and enzymes, as well as good fibre for your bowels to keep moving.
*** Bring salad out of the fridge some time before eating it and in winter even let your salad sit in warm to hot water for a few minutes in order to bring the food to your body temperature so that it can be more easily digested and does not make you cold.
*** Drink a fresh vegetable juice every day as it is loaded with health giving nutrients and it is very hydrating.
*** Make your own fresh nut milk (almonds are great) to use for coffee, tea or cereal by soaking nuts overnight in water then, rinse them, add some fresh water, blend with a hand blender and strain out the milk.
*** Use stevia as a sweeter over any processed sweeteners such as sugar, and never use aspartame.
*** Make green smoothies with fresh assorted green leafy vegetables to easily energise you and make you feel younger.
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What you will learn in my seminar:
This 3 hour seminar literally turns upside down many common myths and misconceptions about nutrition, diet and exercise.
I will explain the yogic art of how to be content to eat less than normal, and how to reduce your craving for all the heavy and 'naughty' foods, while enhancing health and longevity.
I highly recommend this seminar for all yoga teachers and practitioners, and anyone interested in living a longer and healthier life.
This special seminar is actually a public part of my ten day course on the applied anatomy and physiology of yoga that you can read about more at
www.yogasynergy.com+++++++++
Thanks to Anita Reilly for this photo of me making salad in my house.
Appendix 2
The post below is an old post in response to a New York Times article about the possible dangers of yoga or rather postural practice ( not a bad topic but clumsily promoted). The post mentions that my body was pretty wreaked before I started yoga and that I lost 20 kg, got fit and generally much healthier. I had put a lot of that weight lost down to the practice and recently, on moving back to japan when i put
http://grimmly2007.blogspot.jp/p/h-hey-nyt-my-body-was-wrecked-before.html
Hey NYT, my body was pretty much wrecked BEFORE I took up yoga—life can do that!
On the first day of my first real job, all keen to arrive early, I twisted my knee getting dressed. By the time I arrived at work, my knee was the size of a football and needed to be drained. Two years later, in Aikido class, I did the same thing. It seems I had weak knees and was now susceptible to little non-cancerous tumors growing on them that needed cutting out every once in a while. It may have been hereditary—I remember my grandfather, a keen cricketer in his youth, clinically obese and hardly able to walk for the last thirty years of his life on account of his knees.
In my twenties, I dropped out, and with a one way ticket across the English Channel and a Pound in my pocket, I set off for France. My friend and I hitched and walked half way round the world, picking up laboring jobs wherever we could—I built walls and roofs, houses, laid roads, and dug ditches. While working as a pizza chef carrying ten trays of dough, my back went, and what with the knees going too with more regularity, after five years, that was the end of my traveling and laboring.
I worked myself through University as a cook, developing a taste for neat whiskey that I’d only played at while traveling, and making a mess of my liver in the process. After throwing away a promising academic career—I think I had anger issues—I left for Japan to become an English teacher.
There cannot be that many who end up unhealthier by the time they leave than when they arrived in Japan—I managed to pull that off. I worked as a teacher trainer trying to knock the dogma out of the ex-school teachers who got off the plane only to replace it with my company’s own. I worked too many hours teaching and designing courses, suffered from stress and fatigue, and got fat on fast food and beer.
So my knees were shot, as was my back, and probably my liver. I was overweight and suffered from stress. I felt bloated after every meal, developed kidney stones and had to have my gall bladder removed—my body was wrecked, just living your life can do that!
The curious thing was that I had not really noticed that I had got so out of shape, so unhealthy; and find it quite shocking looking back at the old photos now…how could I not know? There were signs—the kidney stones, the gall bladder operation—when they took my gall bladder out, they were supposedly shocked by the amount of cholesterol (this was in Japan).
I was wearing smart designer suits back then, I thought I looked pretty sharp.
That is the scary thing. I am guessing the majority of overweight and unhealthy middle-aged men think they are pretty much OK—could do with losing a few pounds perhaps, but on the whole they think they are fine and do not realize how much they have let their health slip, or how much work it will take to turn it around, or that it will get a little harder each year—they need to start now, today, not wait for the next New Year’s Resolution.I got into yoga almost by accident, but it became a passion.
I came back to the UK to become a woodwind instrument repairer, having taken to playing the saxophone in Japan.
My flat was burgled in February 2007, and seven vintage saxophones stolen—including one I had made a special trip to New York to buy. I was angry about the whole affair, and was annoyed with myself for being so angry about it. I decided to get back into meditation—I had practiced a little Zen years ago. I came across the ZenCast podcasts with Gil Fronsdal, and began to practice Vipassana meditation. Reading around the practice I found that a lot of meditators were also doing yoga; so I picked up a book from the library, which turned out to be Total Astanga: The Step-by-Step Guide to Power Yoga at Home for Everybody, by Tara Fraser. It had looked the most well laid out and the least embarrassing to take up to the Library counter. Outside London, middle-aged guys did not tend to take up Yoga—they would go to a gym and lift weights perhaps but not Yoga.
I practiced with that book for about a month, practicing in the mornings before work on a bath towel in my underwear while my pet chinchilla looked on. If I remember correctly, I got as far as the Standing sequence, which would take me about half an hour to forty minutes, stopping every now and again to turn the page or check the book. I used blocks, or rather books as blocks, for Utthita Trikonasana as I couldn’t reach my hands to the ground. I was 44, weighed 94 kilograms and had not done any exercise for about four years. I had a bit of a belly and was feeling generally unhealthy.I remember really enjoying getting up in the mornings to practice alone in the dark. I loved Suryanamaskara A , Suryanamaskara B exhausted me. I was frustrated that I could not straighten my legs in forward bends, had to hold on to the wall in Utthita hastasana, etc. Virabhadrasana A and B were agony, as was Utkatasana, I couldn’t imagine being able to do Ardha baddha padmottanasana. I would ache all over for most of the day but it was a good ache and practice became the highlight of my day. Sometimes it felt like the day was over as soon as I finished my practice and I could not wait for the following morning to come around.
As is the case so often with yoga, I changed other areas of my life to fit in with the practice, ate less so I would not feel heavy and bloated the following morning. I pretty much cut out drinking—I might have a little wine topped up with sparkling water, the occasional martini or a little pot of sake on the weekends. I wanted to be able to wake up early and feel fresh. After a year, I even became vegetarian. I was not particularly trying to be fit or healthy, I just wanted to practice yoga more comfortably. There is no six-pack in the second picture, no bulging biceps either, but I think I look healthier.
I feel more fit, and despite all the advanced pretzel postures I explore these days, I have had no problems with my knees. I am no longer feeling bloated after every meal and recently, while writing my yoga book on the mac, formatting hundreds of photos and links, I noticed I had not screamed or sworn at the computer for not doing what I had asked it to, not once. That was something I used to do a lot back when I was designing training courses. I am calmer. I am in good health.
Hey NYT, my body was wrecked BEFORE I started yoga, now ….not so much!
I see guys on the street my age, perhaps younger than me—I am not talking about the clinically obese, but regular guys who I used to probably believe as being no less healthy than the next guy. I am sure they think they should cut back on the drinking a little, eat a little better, or walk the dog more often; but that is probably not going to do it.
There needs to be a government campaign—one of those awareness-raising ads—that says, “Hang on a minute, you do not just need to lose the odd couple of pounds, you need to rethink how you are living your life”, and it is important because people are dying from this.
For me it was yoga, for them it might be something else—but it needs to be something and it needs to be encouraged and supported.
That is the article I’d like to have seen from the New York Times magazine.
Anthony Grim Hall started practicing Ashtanga in March 2007. He had been burgled, felt angry about it and angry that he was feeling angry. He picked up a couple of meditation books from the library and later some on yoga to deal with the anger. He was overweight (94 kilograms), unfit and certainly not flexible. In the first four years, he only went to two Ashtanga Mysore self practice classes. He learnt from books and videos, and from comments on his blog. He is now 78 kilograms, and feels more fit, stronger and pretty flexible. In 2008, he started a blog—Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga at Home—beginning this blog dealt with his obsession with achieving the “Jump back” (and later drop backs, kapotasana, karandavasana, advanced series, etc). In June 2009, he came across Srivatsa Ramaswami (one of Krishnamacharya’s longest-serving students) and his ‘The Complete book of Vinyasa Yoga’—he spent the next year working out how best to combine it with his Ashtanga practice. He attended Ramaswami’s 200 hour Vinyasa Krama teacher training course in July/August 2010 and practiced an Ashtanga influenced Vinyasa Krama. He has just published a Vinyasa Yoga at Home Practice Book through Kindle that lays out Ramaswami’s sequences and subroutines along with practice notes including hint, tips and suggestions for each subroutine.
This article was prepared by Assistant Yoga Editor, Soumyajeet Chattaraj.
