shedding the weight

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By: AJ wolbrum
Globetrotter at heart, AJ has just moved back home to NYC. On her travels AJ became a published writer, yoga instructor and mostly a more grounded open minded individual. "if I could have one wish ...
Edited date: November 10, 2022Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

a 30 day challenge to cut fat and find inner peace

Let’s get real here.

You’ve wanted to lose a couple of pounds for as long as you can remember.

They say eat right and exercise but it feels like you do that without seeing results. Well, you’re right, unfortunately there’s only one way to truly lose weight and keep it off. But it happens to be much harder than diet and exercise (sorry, and not sorry). If you want to lose weight, if you want to be lighter and feel amazing in your clothes then you’re going to have to let go.

Let go of the pressure to save the world. Let go of the struggle for a “normal” relationship with your mother, sister, or best friend who may only need you in a crisis. They will continue their life with or without the constant stress, frustration and irritation caused.

Review how you view your 15-year-old self (insert name here) who was slightly awkward and never seemed to fit in. Shed the belief that you’re not good enough because you failed math in 4th grade.

Let go of that toxic relationship that does not serve you. Let go of expectations. The ones you place on yourself and the ones you place on others.

And then after all that fun work, sit in forgiveness. Forgive yourself for that cheesecake, or the time you drunkenly called your ex and for using your father as the reason why ‘you can’t find a stable relationship.’

Forgive your terrible spending habits and your spreading hips. If you want to lose weight you have to own the (mind) stuff you’re carrying around. The stuff that plays on repeatedly in the space between your ears. Because whatever is in the mind is certainly living in the body and literally (not figuratively) weighing you down.

A few years back I was defeated, depressed and utterly lost. I was sobbing in my mother’s lap outside of a starbucks in the middle of winter but I couldn’t feel the cold, I couldn’t really feel anything. I felt stuck, nothing in my life seemed to be working; my relationship, my friendships my academics and mostly my ever expanding waist. 

The aloneness inside of me was swallowing me whole and if one more wave of sadness came, I might never get up.

After feeling like a victim for the majority of my life I realized in those precious moments outside that starbucks with my mom that I was pushing everyone out of my life. And that I had been doing it for years. It seemed up until that point a totally rational thing for me to cut somebody out of my life. It was normal for me to feel betrayed, to feel self-riotous.

All of this preventing me from receiving love. This realization was the first moment in my entire life where I took responsibility for my own happiness, where I accepted that I was in the driver’s seat of my life and I was the one driving it off a cliff.

I began the process of self-actualization, learning how to heal from the inside out; finding the strength to forgive myself and accepting that I might have to clean up some messes I caused along the way. I did not know where this road would lead me but I certainly did not expect it to make me 30 pounds lighter in 3 months.

It just fell off my body. Every day that I looked more within and settled in my new perspective, I found that my body lighted the load with me. My body was holding onto those extra pounds like armor ready to protect me in battle. Once I accepted that the battle was in my head alone, my body de-robed and I was set free.

Once the layers start peeling away, the body will respond organically by feeding it whole foods and lubricating it with exercise.

Don’t believe me? Give it a try. Try a 30 day challenge because we know how much we love quantifiable improvement. Each day for 30 days write down one thing that’s been bothering you lately. It could be a word, sentence or story. Write it down, read it 5 times and then rip it up.

Then take one piece of that ripped paper and write one word you are feeling. By the end of the 30 days you should have 30 words and a smaller waste size. Skeptical? It’s 30 days of your life what are you willing to lose?

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