Peggy occasionally brings home a pastry.
This is not Peggy’s problem.
I can walk past it knowing I don’t want to be eating that way. I know how I prefer to eat. I know how much better I generally feel when I eat that way.
So I take a bite.
Just one.
Later I walk through the kitchen again.
The pastry has not learned its lesson.
Another bite…
I’ve done versions of this most of my life. It’s just tonight. I’m out with friends. I’ve been good all week. I’ll start tomorrow. One bite won’t matter.
One bite probably doesn’t.
Life is made of individual days. Maybe it didn’t happen Tuesday. Maybe Tuesday happened 2,000 times.
That’s the part we’re good at not noticing. We know something isn’t helping and we do it anyway. Then we build a reasonable story for why this time doesn’t count.
I’ve avoided saying the next part in public for a long time.
Peggy and I have taught thousands of classes. Stereotypes fall apart in the room.
I have watched thin people fight a simple get-up off the floor. I have watched people carrying a lot of extra body fat work harder than anybody in the row, stay longer, come back after the injury, and still move better than the person who looks the part.
Thin does not mean healthy. Extra weight does not mean lazy.
We got so afraid of judging people by weight that we stopped saying the other true thing.
Carrying a substantial amount of extra body fat is not good for us.
Kindness does not require pretending otherwise.
In our rooms, some of the people carrying a lot of extra weight are the ones whose knees, tendons, and backs keep lighting up. They work. They listen. They still have a harder time getting past it. I cannot tell you the weight caused the bad knee. I cannot tell you fifty pounds off would magically heal it. Bodies are not that neat.
I also will not stand in front of a class and pretend thirty or fifty extra pounds are irrelevant to a body we ask to carry us all day. Heart, blood sugar, blood pressure, worn joints. That is not a culture war. Fat is not just padding. It is active tissue. The load is real. So is the chemistry.
Imagine I meet you at the studio door with a fifty-pound vest.
Put it on. You do not take it off after class. Stairs. Grocery store. Down to the floor and back up. The beach.
Tomorrow morning, still on. Next year, still on.
You would look at me like I had lost my mind.
Fifty pounds of body fat is not the same as a vest. I am not running a trial in Astoria. Your body still has to move the mass. Every stand. Every step. Every staircase. Every day.
This is what that load is for.
One woman started with us because she wanted her life back on a 16-hand horse. She can jump on from the ground now.
Another came in sitting on the bed to get her pants and socks on. A couple of years later she could do it standing if a wall was nearby for the wobble. Five years in she can dress in the middle of the room. She still sits to tie her tennis shoes. She is not Peggy.
Somebody else wrote that the point was not a number. It was picking something up off the floor.
That is the job. Not a thinner photograph.
Knowing the load is real is not the same as doing something about it.
I know that from my own kitchen.
Peggy and I eat animal-based. Whole food. Lower carb. Meat, eggs, cheese, butter. I often do not eat until noon or later. Sugar is not a mystery in my body. I can see what it does.
That is not a tribe. That is how I stay usable for the life we actually live. Teaching. Driving. Getting on the floor. Saying yes when Sunday opens up.
The pastry still comes home.
A few nights I still wander into the other familiar stuff. A piece of chocolate. Peggy’s Boulder potato chips. I am not a saint who closed the kitchen and became a lesson.
I can tell myself one bite does not count. Somebody else can say they do not eat that much. Somebody else can point to how many classes they take. We can all find evidence for the defense.
People in our world have changed the load anyway.
One woman came in trying not to pick up the Covid fifteen. She dropped twenty and got more flexible than she had been in years.
Another said she finally had control over food choices that were actually hers. Inches. Pounds. A better frame of mind. Those are their reports. Not a promise I can print on a flyer.
If you are carrying a substantial amount of extra weight, I think it is worth doing something about it.
Not so you look different. Not because thin people are better. Not because you should be embarrassed at the mirror. Not because you should hate your body until it changes.
I am not asking you to hate your body. I am asking you to help it.
I want the horse. The middle of the room. The thing on the floor. The hill. The trip. The garden. The grandkids. The beach. The plane. The stairs. I want you able to say yes when somebody asks if you want to go.
Decline is not an assignment. The body still has to be able to take the long way.
Food is not only fuel. Dinner can be friendship. Wine can be ritual. A restaurant you have gone to for twenty years can be part of a marriage. There is memory in it. Pleasure. Life.
Health is supposed to serve that life, not replace it. I have no interest in a thinner person with a worse week.
So the question in this room is not the internet’s question.
How do you keep the life and lose some of the weight.
I am not going to sell you a plan with a fancy name on the box. You did not pay to be put on a challenge.
Here is what Peggy and I actually do when the story starts.
We keep the meal that is the life. Sunday breakfast after we have been out. Time with people that would be stupid to turn into a punishment. The six nights that are not the highlight are where the leak usually is. The food we do not even care about and eat anyway. The bite I take because I walked through the kitchen, not because I was hungry.
Exercise is not the fine you pay for the pastry. I hate that idea. We move because the body has to stay useful enough for the horse, the floor, the shoes in the middle of the room.
If you want something from this room this week, take one leak you already know. Not a new identity. The thing you were going to eat later today. The pastry. The chips. The meal the clock called and your body did not.
Walk past it once.
Then notice what story showed up. I’ve been good. It’s the weekend. One won’t matter. I’ll start tomorrow.
That's the thing I'm more interested in than the recipe.
A week from now I do not want a before-and-after. I want to know what you kept because it is your life, and what you dropped because it was never the life. Where you got stuck. If you already eat in a way that leaves you able to say yes, say that too. Somebody in here is still looking for proof it is possible.