How to Channel Your Will Power For Your Best Body Ever
I was speaking with a client recently about my own relationship with weight loss. I’ve lost and gained hundreds of pounds throughout my life, and am currently 50 pounds lower than my highest weight.
(I hesitate to say that I’ve lost 50 pounds, because I didn’t lose them; I turned some of them into muscle, some of them into sweat, some of them into breathe. My weight fluctuates 5 pounds in a day, so the concept of losing a finite amount of weight is a moot point).
More impressive to me is that, by learning how to communicate effectively with my body, I fell madly in love with it, and it became easier to make decisions to support that relationship.
In the perfect words of Dolly Parton, “I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I ate the book.”
I cycled through Atkins and Paleo and Keto.
I played with pilates and boot camps and 10k races.
I took measurements and weighed myself every day.
I tracked calories, macros, and micros.
I read Geneen Roth and gave intuitive eating a try.
Finally, I stopped trying.
I realized I was spending so much energy on what I didn’t want, that I didn’t have any will power left to choose what I truly need.
See, that’s the interesting thing about will power: it is associated with the kidney!
In term of yoga, discipline resides within manipura, the third chakra right around the sacral area (it’s yellow, like the golden setting sun).
Like all energy, we only get so much of it before it’s gone.
It makes sense why we often fall prey to snack cravings when we are tired - we’ve used up our will power, our kidney energy, our kidney qi!
The goods news is, will power gets renewed when we sleep.
The better news is, we have all sorts of tricks to ensure that we always have discipline in stock.
When I was ready to really love my body, I realized I needed to set my intentions, not in terms of what I wasn’t going to eat (sugar, carbs, animals, whatever), and more on what I was excited to eat.
I focused less on what I felt I had to do (HIIT, 20+ mile runs, hours of yoga every day) and allowed myself to do what I wanted to do (sometimes those things, sometimes a day of rest and reading).
I trained my thoughts to think less about all the things my body wasn’t (thin) and focused on what my body can do (so much!).
It’s when I gave up trying to make my body feel and be a certain way that it found its way to exist in its perfect, and ever-changing, homeostasis.
In yoga class, when teaching a difficult pose, I remind students that thinking will not help them accomplish their goals.
Only doing accomplishes goals, and I do NOT mean doing it perfectly. Where’s the growth in that?!
Allowing the process of the practice, and what’s more, loving the means as much as the ends, is the ultimate goal, not hitting a perfect crow pose every time, and certainly not beating ourselves up for falling or failing.
Thoughts exist in the realm of the ego, and the ego serves a distinct purpose - it is a part of our identity - but it is not useful when it comes to living in love.
I realized, I needed to learn how to love myself, just as I am, Bridget Jones-style, or else I wasn’t going to love myself 5 or 50 or 100 pounds from now in either direction.
I needed to learn how to love the self whose belly was so big it was difficult to put shoes on just as much as the self whose belly is so strong that it can help me balance on my hands.
So I set my life up in a way that operates from a place of expansion, of growth, of YES, rather than a place of contraction, stagnation, of NO.
I eliminate as many decisions as I can.
I have a very limited wardrobe and often wear the same thing for days on end, Steve Jobs-style, just because I want to use that willpower for another purpose.
(One of my friends recently texted me that she was wearing a Morgan outfit - leggings and a giant sweater, hah! I like to be cozy, what can I say?)
Same with my diet: I eat a plant-based diet, and rather than focus on all the foods I don’t eat (animals), I focus on all the delicious things I love to eat (so much fruit! So many vegetables! CURRY!).
I eat the same thing for breakfast depending on the season (fruit bowl, toast, oatmeal) and lunch (avocado toast, tacos, soup) nearly every day, and usually some sort of sautéed bowl of vegetables for dinner if I’m still hungry.
Not having to make a decision about what I’m going to eat or what I’m going to wear frees up my willpower to accomplish my goals.