My weightloss story is not a story about losing weight. In fact, the 10kg weight loss that I've maintained for well over a year, is simply a side effect of incorporating Aparigraha into my life. The real transformation happened in my brain, my habits and my relationship with food. Like almost every woman in the Western world, I struggled with my weight and my self-image for years.

In my early teenage years I felt distressed about how my body was changing, and started spending more and more of my free time engrossed in ‘teenage’ magazines.

SIDE NOTE:
Did you know that Seventeen magazine has a recommended age limit of 18 years+!? 😂

The Diet Paradigm 🥀

All of the garbage that I learned from those magazines is part of what I consider to be ‘the diet paradigm’. It’s a way of thinking that is about denial, restriction and constant struggle. This paradigm creates lack in the subconscious mind, which is why everyone has experienced failure on a diet. If you are telling yourself that you’re fat and need to lose weight, you will remain in that cycle of ‘battling the bulge’ until you shift your mindset (or paradigm).

Source: Unsplash

Those teenage magazines I was reading firmly implanted this paradigm into my mind, and lead to a really unhealthy relationship with food and years of strict dieting. I got very skinny, lost my period, and then gained lots of weight as my obsession with my diet morphed into binge eating. For me, the answer to this exhausting cycle of restriction and binging was veganism. It expanded my mind to the point where dieting lost its hold over me. I didn’t lose much weight going vegan, only a few kilos, but my relationship with food quickly became more holistic and healthy (literally). How do I know that it lost its hold over me? I reached one of my heaviest weight ever, and didn’t really care!

I made this video a while ago, and originally uploaded it to YouTube. I'm uploading it here because I feel that it encapsulates that abundance I feel when it comes to vegan food.

---

▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS

The Detox Paradigm 🌷

Let me first preface by saying I mean detox in the sense of getting rid of everything that doesn’t serve you. I’m not talking about going on a juice fast. I’m talking about actively removing toxic people, food and habits etc.

Aparigraha is a Sanskrit word which can be understood as ‘non-greediness’ or ‘non-grasping’. It’s also a yogic principle or yama. Graha means to seize, Pari means on all sides, and A is a negation of those concepts. Essentially, we shouldn’t take more than we need. It's easy to understand, but REALLY hard to put into practice when we have addictions and years of social conditioning around the need for more.

Source: Unsplash

For me personally, I went through a trauma that rendered me incapable of eating more than one or two small meals a day. I felt physically sick with grief and anxiety and quickly lost 10kgs in a few months. Let me be the first to say it - this is not a recommendation! It was the worst time of my life, and I sincerely hope that you are not inspired by the restriction, but by what came from it.

In healing from this trauma, life gave me a beautiful gift. I recalibrated my mind to be in sync with my body’s actual appetite. I learned to focus on the whole experience of eating, rather the food itself. This means that I now cared more about how hungry I actually was, how I felt during eating it and, importantly I stopped caring if I didn’t finish everything on my plate. I stopped taking (eating) more than I needed.
My weight fluctuates naturally with my body's state but always remains about the same. This tells me that the weight loss during that time was a release, and enabled me to find my state of balance.

The principle of Aparigraha is powerful because it will not only help to release you from the grip of overeating and food addiction, but it will also help you to become more aware of the other physical, emotional and spiritual baggage that you are carrying. Think of any excess weight as, essentially a hoarding of calories that have not been required by your body. Aparigraha is about releasing attachment and that means (amongst many other things) not being fixated on your weight. In practising Aparigraha you will naturally release what no longer serves you and find balance.

Food should be one of the most pleasurable and natural aspects of our daily lives. After enjoying a meal, our bodies should feel satiated and our minds, content. The body is satisfied when it receives all the nutrients and substance it needs to support its tissues. The mind, on the other hand, feels satisfied by our meal’s colours, presentation and on a subconscious level, the love it was prepared with.

Source: Unsplash

Aparigraha extends to every area of our lives. But it's primary lesson for me has been to examine the WHY behind our diets and detoxes. It's got me to ask myself, "Are you coming from a place of self-love and simply aiming to be a better, happier and healthier version of yourself; or are you coming from an unhealthy place of self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy?"

Only you know the answer to that!