Getting Back into Shape―Mindfully

Like many people, I put on some extra weight during the pandemic – not quite a “Covid 19,” but close to it. I’m quite fortunate to be healthy (a blessing I don’t take for granted after the past year). But still, I wouldn’t mind giving back those extra pounds.

Now, a word at the outset. To put it mildly, our culture has some complicated (some would say toxic) relationships with food, dieting, body image, body shaming, gender, ableism, and how we define ‘health.’ I definitely don’t want to make any of those worse -- quite the contrary. So, please take whatever I say with a grain of salt (ha!) and know that this is just one person’s experience.

Having said that, here's how mindfulness and self-compassion have helped me through this process.

First, for the last six weeks, I’ve been doing “intermittent fasting,” which involves abstaining from food for a stretch of time each day – in my case, around 9pm until 11am the next day. That method (and its many variations, debates, and rationales) isn’t important here. The point is -- I feel hungry. And feeling hungry is often unpleasant. After all, we’re evolutionarily wired to want to eat, right?

Fortunately, having meditated for around twenty years now, I know how to be with unpleasant sensations, from trivial ones like knee pain and annoying sounds to serious ones like family trauma and self-judgment. In fact, the process for all of these, serious and silly alike, is strikingly similar: notice the feeling, accept it with some self-compassion, and just allow it to exist without doing anything about it.

This process sounds simple, but it’s highly counterintuitive. All animals, humans included, want more good stuff and less bad stuff. Knee pain and crippling self-doubt are bad stuff. So, we’ll do just about anything to avoid them: shift position, get drunk, think of something else, pretend nothing is wrong, whatever. Some of these strategies are healthy, some not so healthy. But they’re all intended to make the bad stuff go away.

The basic instruction of mindfulness is the opposite of that. Just let it be. Sensations arise, you notice them and let them go. If they arise again, you notice them again, hopefully with some patience, self-compassion, and even humor. Here’s that script about how unworthy I am again! Here’s my inner critic! Hello, critic!

Of course, that’s not the end of the story. There are good reasons to work on our psychological “stuff” in therapy or some other context. But mindfulness complements those methods by helping us to see what’s really happening, and relate to it with some acceptance, wisdom, and compassion.

So, as I’ve felt hungry at 10pm or 10am lately, it’s just like all these other sensations. Okay, here’s a physical sensation (pressure, space, appetite). It’s not terrible, but it’s not pleasant either. I can accept it and let it go. I don’t need to make it disappear, either by eating or rationalizing or attacking or judging. It’s just here, and, so far at least, eventually it passes.

This simple movement of mind has kept me on track for six weeks now. I’ve lost some weight, and I’ve cut out unhealthy snacking that wasn’t doing me much good anyway. 

Which leads me to my second point, which has to do with self-compassion.

Holy Macaroni, will my mind spin tales about food, bodies, aging, self-image, self-worth, gender, sex, meditation, sugar… you name it, really, and all from a few bodily sensations and a physical appetite. And I can assure you, most of those stories are not kind-hearted. I’ve judged myself for gaining weight, judged myself for judging myself, judged myself for my eating habits, judged myself for internalizing toxic messages from our culture.

Ouch. This isn’t just mental proliferation (Papancha, it’s called in Sanskrit and Pali); it’s also pretty painful. It’s the “inner critic,” and it’s rough.

When mindfulness is strong, though, it’s also silly. All these thoughts, quite self-contradictory yet quite sure of their importance, parading through my mind like it’s St. Patrick’s Day. And to be honest, I’ve seen my inner critic do worse.

So, when these stories begin -- again, many internalized from our toxic culture -- I try to just notice them, accept them with self-compassion, and let them pass. Sound familiar? 

Maybe I’ll take just a moment to reground: to take a nice little breath, which feels great, and on the exhale, I calm the body a bit. Ahh, that feels better. The critic is quieter, presence is reestablished, right now, it’s like this, everything is pretty much okay.

Here’s my final point. Many people often search for help on a problem-by-problem basis. If I’m stressed out, look for a stress expert. Struggling with food, a dietician. Which makes sense, and we’re happy to help as best we can.

But we have a little secret. Mindfulness complements any approach you take and what issue you’re addressing. Whether it’s anxiety or eating or job stress or love, the advice is similar: to be with a sensation rather than grab it or push it away. To cultivate some self-compassion. To witness whatever’s happening, awake, aware, and engaged. 

How that plays out will depend on you -- your situation, your life, your body, your mind. But the wisdom of mindfulness is remarkably consistent.