How I Lost 30 Pounds Through Yoga

This post is by Claudia Azula Altucher of Claudiayoga.com.

Early in 2008 I set off for a trip to India. When I returned I was 30 pounds lighter and the weight never came back.

A friend who knew me “before” and “after” asked me how this happened, and as I tried to recall, I realized that it was not just because of the yoga, or the trip, or the food, or because I starved myself, and certainly not because I was mean or deprecating to myself in an attempt to discipline my food choices.

None of that had anything to do with it.

Releasing weight can be a drama or not; it can be hard or not; it depends on so many factors that I do not believe one single method can ever work for everyone, but these steps worked for me.

1. Love yourself

There’s no way around it: no matter who says that there is an epidemic of whatever, or that I, or you, may need a diet or blah, blah, blah, it’s all nonsense if we don’t start at the beginning.

Loving and respecting myself enough to sit down and look at what was important in life was the very first step in losing weight.

In yoga this has to do with stopping the leaks where our energy is being wasted. Self-hate (possibly just as much as gossip) is the biggest energy drainer for all of us.

It may sound silly, but I followed that exercise of looking at myself in the mirror and saying “I love you” to my own image. At first it felt silly. You know why? Because I didn’t believe it. But a few weeks into it I did start to believe that I was worthy of my own respect, and it helped me get grounded in acting as if I loved myself. Eventually, I fully believed in it.

2. Daily yoga-asana practice

I find that the release of the weight for me had to do with a “momentum” rather than a “get thin quick” mentality. By the time I took my trip to India, I had been practicing daily yoga-asana for a year (six times a week, one and a half hours each day), and it had taken me three years to build up to such a strong and committed practice.

When it comes to releasing weight, I find that it does not so much matter what kind of yoga one practices, but that one does. The simple act of getting on the mat every day sends the body the message that one cares.

3. Verbal messages

I find that people dismiss this quickly, so much so that I began to suspect it is a very well-kept secret.

When somebody wants to manifest something positive, keeping the vocabulary clean (no curse words, no negativity), is key. It surprises me to no end to see, even in yoga circles, a tremendous denial of the power of the word. There is a reason why I call it “weight release” (except perhaps in the title of this post), and that is because phrasing it that way is more powerful, since when we “lose” something, we usually try to find it again.

4. Cleansings

Weight release can also be thought of as “cleansing”. What is necessary is to take a look at what is coming into our bodies, and how fast it is coming out. If we are not going to the bathroom daily, there’s a problem.

5. Drink water

When you’re hungry, drink water first. A yoga teacher once told me that. Most of us get the signal of hunger when in reality we are not sensitive enough to notice that it is thirst speaking. I know I confuse them.

6. Cook

While in India I felt a little scared about eating in restaurants because the quality of the water is very dangerous for westerners so, for example, eating salads (or anything raw) outside of the house was not an option.

This forced me to start cooking, and I prepared lots of stews and soups with boiled vegetables and olive oil which I served with brown rice. I also learned how to make lentil dal, and kicheri—nutritious and easy meals that are tasty and nutritious.

7. Vacation

Take that overdue vacation, and make it a real one—regardless of how long it is. Taking time for ourselves seems impossible, but it is not. When a body is overweighted, it’s out of balance. When a body is out of balance it needs time for itself, to heal, to have an opportunity to assess what exactly is happening and what can be done to help it.

As long as the time we give to ourselves is dedicated, focused time, it is useful. Otherwise we are not nurturing our soul, and an un-nurtured soul produces an unbalance that usually manifests in us reaching for the ice cream.

I have noticed that people who say that there is absolutely no way they can take time for themselves are actually saying that their priorities do not involve taking time off. Their focus is not on their own wellbeing, but rather on other things.

8. Trust your instincts

Train yourself to trust your own instincts. Before every meal ask: “What is the most nutritious thing I can eat right now”? Trust the answer, and let your body have it. Remember moderation, of course, but do go ahead. It may be decadent chocolate mud pie today; it might be baby spinach salad with fresh olive oil sprinkled with raw almonds tomorrow.

Be with yourself, forget what others think, let it be your own intelligence that guides you, because it wants to.

9. Choose the middle path

Trying to eat only spinach or only drink water with lemon for days, or going completely raw overnight, or any other extreme is not only unrealistic, it is also dangerous. It’s almost guaranteed not to work because we are fighting against a very powerful force of nature: our own natural psychological tendencies. And these inclinations have been ingrained into us over a period of, well, think about your age—that long!

Change does not happen overnight, it happens one day at the time.

10. Attend a 12-step meeting

There is a cathartic effect in admitting our vulnerability to other people, as for instance when someone confesses to a group of people that he or she ate two pints of ice-cream the night before, or when someone says: “I am powerless over this”.

12-step meetings work because they are simple steps that demand enormous courage, of the type that can only be navigated with help from others who also happen to find themselves in a similar setting.

The benefit of 12 steps is that they open people up, and reconcile people with their own humanity. Through them we find that what we think is “crazy” in us is just as normal as it is in any other person. We all share a common humanity, we are all one, and I have yet to see a form of therapy that is more effective than people being brutally honest in a group, under very specific regulations for sharing, with proper boundaries and respect.

11. Practice patience

Recovering a healthy body may take time, but every day things speed up, there is a momentum that is generated by slowly adding more and more healthy habits and releasing the old ones that don’t serve us anymore.

So what if it takes six months, or a year, or three? I have seen with my own eyes fellow yogis practice for five years and then all of a sudden release an enormous amount of weight. In the end, the recovery of the original, healthy body also happens by grace; we put all the healthy and nurturing elements in place, and then surrender to divine intervention, Gita style.

12. Surrender

Our bodies are determined by our genes and ancestors. It is important to respect nature. Yoga and these principles can restore our body to our original blue-print, to what our bodies would be like if completely healthy, but they will not transform us into super models.

The real miracle in weight release happens when we shift perception, when we can accept our body as it is and treat it well, with respect, providing good nutrition for it, so that it can function at its peak—which also means “at its ideal weight.”

Have you used any of these principles to help release weight? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments.

Claudia Azula Altucher has studied yoga for over a decade and all over the world including the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India, and at Centered Yoga in Thailand. She writes daily at Claudiayoga.com.