My body and I have had a turbulent relationship.

Some of my earliest memories are of racing through the fragrant pine forest behind my house, crawling through the underbrush to scout the best site for the girls’ tree fort. We played tomboy games of escape in the summer twilight. I reveled in movement. I enjoyed my body with the enthusiasm of discovery and the pride of ownership. But somewhere along the line that early joy was squelched. A dissonance grew between what I saw as the realities of my female physical body, the changing emotional needs of my heart, and the thoughts and beliefs of my teenage mind.

I was in an early wave of the generation that Mary Pipher, PhD, describes so well in her book Reviving Ophelia. Girls who experienced a disconnect from themselves as they came of age. As I grew through adolescence I lost track of those things I loved, including my passions for physicality, art, and nature. I focused instead on being what others (my classmates, boys, and the evermore ubiquitous media) seemed to want and expect me to be. I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s watching media images of beauty grow super thin, culminating in Twiggy and heroin chic. Oh, the titillating shock of extreme thinness! And I liked it. And I could do it. Almost. The only problem was that a full social life required eating, and lots of it. So many thin girls seemed to be able to eat cheeseburgers, fries, Cokes, and never gain weight. It just didn’t add up.

I remember my freshman biology teacher introducing the idea of women who vomited after gorging on junk food. The women who did this were presented as selfish, crazy, and bad Christians, but a seed was sewn in my mind. Though it was "bad," here was an easy solution to an impossible problem. So I began to experiment. And it worked. At first, purging was an occasional way to deal with high-calorie social situations. But it kept expanding. It made me feel more in control, even though a world of deceit and secrecy was wrapped around it and I often felt physically lousy because of it. It became a larger and larger part of my life. By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I had a full-blown eating disorder. While I eventually got the guidance and support I needed to end the destructive cycle, disordered eating and its emotional paradigm haunt me to this day. Certainly the consumer culture and media obsession with super-thinness haven’t changed. The unhealthy trends that promote eating more and faster and doing more in less time haven’t changed. But who I am and how I care for myself have.

My passion for food and the body was fed as I studied nutrition at Cornell and Boston University, cooking my way through school in restaurants as varied as the health food co-op to the five-star white linen bistro. I reveled in the sensuality of the dining experience. And I struggled with weight and eating. I wrote about food. I developed healthy and delicious recipes for books and websites. And I struggled with weight and eating. I worked as a clinician, encountering people who suffer the chronic health consequences of lifetimes of overabundance, or the deprivation of body-wasting diseases. And I struggled with weight and eating.

Through my work I noticed that even those whose lives depend upon making dietary changes often cannot do it. Living a healthy lifestyle is much more than knowing what to eat. By the time most of us hit 40, our dietary patterns and our bodies reflect years of emotional and physical life. I have counseled women trapped in a diet-binge cycle. They have come to me with a hatred for their bodies that set the stage for compulsive eating and unhappy lives. I know others who have starved themselves for years and are fashionably thin but have malnourished bodies and sad, deprived spirits. I know many men and women who have struck a dynamic balance between enjoying food and maintaining their weight; each of them has written their own equation for how that balance works. How and what we eat reflect how we feel about ourselves on the deepest of levels. And eating is one of life’s greatest sensual experiences. But finding and keeping the balance of eating well, sustaining health through times of stress, and enjoying food without compulsion is, for many, one of modern life’s great struggles. And it simply doesn’t have to be.

When I was 32, I ended a difficult 10-year relationship. There is a saying in yoga, "When the student is ready the teacher appears." Yoga came to me at a time of personal transition and seeking. I was single and on my own for the first time in my adult life. Thanks to yoga, for perhaps the first time since childhood, I loved my entire body and didn’t care if it was picture perfect. I found focus, balance, and strength, and remembered who I was under all that need I had to be beautiful and successful. That’s when my own reality project—experiencing judgment-free glimpses of who I am and how to tend myself—began.

As I traveled inward, science marched on. A revolution in the science of nutrition was underway, and the body of research around weight management was growing. New behavioral approaches to weight loss deemphasizing dieting and supporting the adoption of long-term habits were gaining popularity and legitimacy. I found that looking at the new science through the paradigm of yoga worked, and I began to introduce it into my nutrition practice. My patients responded with relief and enthusiasm. They began to care for themselves compassionately, reconnecting with themselves and their passions rather than continuing to bury their emotions under eating and deprivation as they tried to be someone they were not. And they responded by achieving their realistic nutritional goals more easily—getting healthier and getting happier. You will hear their thoughts and stories reflected in the fictional characters I’ve created to help illustrate the Every Bite Is Divine process.

Yoga is much more than physical exercise, though it is certainly that. It can help you to slow down enough to appreciate the sweetness of the present moment and everything in it. Even, and especially, you. It fosters something that so many of us don’t have nearly enough of in our bustling, striving lives: contentment (santosa*).

A central part of yoga is its ethical framework—its guidelines for living. Yogic principles include truth (satya*), non-violence (ahimsa*), purity and simplification (saucha*). We all sense that these are good, if abstract, principles to live by. Variations echo through many religious and spiritual practices. Contemplating these tenets while exploring the physical interplay of strength, will, flexibility, and surrender in our own body provides a context that makes them personal and meaningful. And those who struggle with body weight and a healthy body image can explore these issues through yoga within a highly personal, relevant, and compassionate paradigm. Conscious eating is yoga at the table—we can explore the same issues by simply paying attention to and enjoying the process of nourishment. At the end of the day, yoga is about remembering the reality of who you are and finding both wonder and contentment in that.

There is a growing body of Western science investigating how yoga works. We will explore the fascinating science that reveals the interplay of respiration (breathing) and emotion, and the science behind the power of the mind to heal. The ancient Indian spiritual practice of yoga may be the missing piece in the puzzle of how to take care of yourself cohesively. After years of disunion, you can reintroduce your physical, emotional, and spiritual selves to one another through the practice of yoga.

This book is a culmination of a lifetime of personal experience and professional training. Considering diet and weight through the compassionate context of yoga worked for me in a way that other diets and strategies did not. It was a tool for rediscovering, and then reconnecting with, an authentic self and with authentic movement—how to be in my body. From that understanding, the re-learning of basic self-care founded on real physical and emotional needs could evolve. Expanding yoga’s gifts to diet and self-care can be an antidote to our culture’s unhealthy media bombardment that is in large part aimed at women but sprays us all. It can be an antidote to the unhealthy diet and weight loss industry, and to the fashion media who feed the need for thinness. As you remember and deepen your reality project through the practice of yoga and eating awareness, you may begin to develop immunity to the unrealistic messages that surround you. You will begin to recognize that consumerism is not going to feed or complete you. These compulsive messages simply will no longer apply to you.

I also wrote this book to add my voice to the healthy weight fray. Indeed, I’m hoping that my voice adds to the sanity rather than the chaos of the weight loss industry. Over and over in my professional life I have seen individuals working in earnest to improve their lives by improving their health. And more often than not, people’s positive motivation to improve their health is subverted. There is so much misinformation that sounds so true! Some self-proclaimed experts misinform for financial or ego expansion; some out of naïveté. I have spent much of my life working to be a balanced voice of reason, simplicity, and sanity.

Every Bite Is Divine is more than just another diet book. It’s a compassionate framework through which to view not only what you eat, but also how you feel and who you are. It’s a whole lifestyle book. No lists of denied foods or needless sacrifices. Just conscious choices and a process for making them. For those of us with weight and eating issues, learning to care for our bodies with love and compassion and without compulsion is part of our lifelong spiritual path. I hope to grow a community of support for all of us who share that path.

Every Bite Is Divine aims for the root of the problem of weight—the underlying issues that are causing you to overeat and preventing you from moving. Then, rather than forcing you into a diet that works for others, it provides personal, gradual, doable suggestions for making lasting and permanent changes that work for you. Every Bite Is Divine is based on the latest nutrition, behavioral, and movement science and acknowledges from day one that change is not easy, but it is something you can do for yourself in order to live your fullest life.

Every Bite Is Divine is a tool to help you achieve a healthy weight for your age, body frame size, and lifestyle. This book can’t lose weight for you. But it will help you understand the internal and external environments that make you gain weight. It can’t make you into someone you are not and were never meant to be. But it can be a key to help you unlock the beauty and perfection of your truest self.

Perhaps Every Bite Is Divine will touch you with a means of coming home to your heart and to your truth. Buddhists say that life is essentially suffering through self-inflicted illusions. But to me (and to them), there is also boundless happiness and joy. You can face the inevitable drawbacks and suffering of life with grace and an open heart. That open heart can access the transcendent joy that is right in front of you, and right inside of you.

That is what I wish for you.

Namaste -- ("The divinity within me bows to the divinity within you.")

© Copyright 2007 Annie B. Kay

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