You’ve tried the crazy diets, you tried the ‘magic’ pills, you’ve done gym thing, yet here you are: still overweight and not happy about it. Your health may be in danger from diabetes or heart disease. You may have aches and pains related to your weight, and an overall feeling of frustration. No wonder. Did you know that more than 95% of people gain any weight they lose right back? With a little extra? Talk about frustrating! You’re probably one of the 95%.

I used to be one of them too. Several times during my twenties I struggled in vain to lose weight, but I loved food too much and disliked exercise enough to never be more than temporarily successful. I felt utterly frustrated!

This is me right before I got pregnant at 30 with my first son. If I hadn’t had to ride my bike to work for 40 minutes each way 5 days a week, I am sure it would have been worse. A year after my sons birth I was 15 pounds heavier than this. Somehow, no pictures of me have survived that era, although now I wish I’d kept one just for comparison.

Now my oldest son is 8 and the youngest 4. I feel like a different person. I maintain my weight easily. What has made the difference? It wasn’t a miracle. It was a combination of things, but for me an important component was yoga.

What I have learned in doing yoga, teaching yoga and helping others with their weight loss through yoga is that losing weight is not as straightforward as most people (especially those making money in the billion-dollar weight loss industry) make it sound. It’s not a matter of finding the magic diet, buying the magic workout machine or taking the magic pill. If only it was that simple. If only it was just a matter of will power. If that was the case you wouldn’t be in the position you’re in.

What I have learned is that focusing on only the physical aspects of weight loss (diet and exercise) seldom brings more than temporary results. Because as soon as anything upsetting happens in our lives, it all falls apart and we’re back at square one, or even square minus one.

In order to lose weight successfully, I have learned, we must let go of the notion that one solution fits all, because everyone is truly unique. We must be willing to let go of the need for instantaneous results, and accept that slow and steady wins the race. We must be willing to face the issues in our lives that we are trying to solve with food. But most of all, we must tackle the weight loss with a multi-faceted approach. No more one trick solutions!

On a successful weight loss journey you may need to deal with any or all of the following:

• What you eat and when you eat
• How your emotions can interfere with your success
• How to deal with those emotions in a different way
• How to change your thinking about food
• Finding several types of exercise you enjoy
• Optimizing your physical activity for weight loss
• Stopping your own thoughts from sabotaging your efforts
• Keeping the fire of your motivation burning
• Exploring food allergies and other physical impediments to weight loss
• If necessary, detoxing
• Educating yourself about sleep, salt and fiber
• Learning how to plan ahead
• Detaching from results and setting goals you can control
• Breaking the ‘see food = eat food’ connection
• Exploring the past for causes of weight gain
• Learning to let go of the past and to stop fretting about the future
• Building muscle mass
• Learning to appreciate and to take care of your body and yourself
• Increasing body awareness and mental awareness
• Eliminating stress to lose belly fat
• Finding a mulit-faceted, custom apporach that works for YOU

You will not need everything on the list in equal measures, because everyone is unique. We all have our own strengths and challenges and blind spots! That is why it is so important to create a custom approach for you so we can find the keys to your weight loss obstacles and remove them once and for all. As your personal coach I will help you build on your strengths and tackle your challenges and sometimes shine a light on your blind spots. I can help you find out what needs more, and immediate, attention, how to address your challenges and I will help keep you on track in learning how your body works, how your mind works and how you can lose weight. We will establish priorities together and tackle problems in bite-size chunks, so the entire journey will feel entirely doable and won’t overwhelm you at any point.

Yoga’s unique ability to make the body feel better and lift the mind into a clear, relaxed , place makes it an ideal foundation for this health-happiness-fitness approach to improving your weight. But there is so much to it than that! This will engage all parts of your life and improve them to support your weight loss goals.

As an avid football-basketball-weightlifting-bicyclist, inline skater, I’d always used high intensity exercise to help maintain my health and my weight. Being a naturally big guy it was easy for me to look at food and gain weight. Without exercise and it would have been easy for me to weigh 300-325-350 pounds. Unfortunately, as I got into middle age I found that nagging injuries were preventing me from getting my daily exercise. I’d play basketball for a couple of hours and be laid up for a week or more.
 
Then my doctor said, “If you don’t quite playing basketball I’m going to be able to pay my kids tuition to Harvard on your surgeries alone.”  So I started looking for something fun that I could work into my regular daily routine. I tried lots and lots of things: water polo – too hard to find a game, aerobics classes – yuck, body pump light weight weightlifting classes – good but required a lot of equipment, swimming – boring & cold. The I tried yoga. I expected that I’d hate it and boy was I wrong!
 
After attending Marleen’s classes for several weeks I realized that I’d found what I was looking for. Something fun that I could do ever day using a combination of individual and class activities. It wasn’t long before I asked Marlene to be my personal fitness guru.
 
I am very pleased with my results and even more pleased with the way Marleen works with me to set reasonably achievable goals. Since I started working out with Marleen I am stronger, slimmer (down 2 belt notches) and lighter. For the first time in a long time the number on the scale begins with a 2 and not a 3. As in 300+.
 
I expected that Marleen would be able to give me great advice about yoga. What I didn’t expect was that she would be able to provide so much excellent advice about revamping my eating habits. Rather than saying, “You need to lose a lot of weight. Start eating rabbit food and we can get that weight off real fast” she worked out a step-by-step plan. The first step was stabilizing my blood sugar by eating more often. The second step was learning a little more about portion control.
 
With Marleen’s help I made major improvements in my exercise and eating habits. As with any change, there are challenges. And I’ve had a couple of days where I ate until I was stuffed. But I just get back on the plan the next day. Marleen has not pushed me to make dramatic changes as in “Eat all the celery, carrots and oatmeal you want. Spend 2 hours a day on the Stairmaster.” By making a series of small, significant but relatively easy steps Marleen has helped create a program that I believe I can continue for the rest of my life.
 
Thank you Marleen!
 
Myles Knapp

When we start working together we start by meeting at your home or office, or at my place, about once a week, or more frequently, if desired. This is when I get to know you and how your body and mind work. I will design a personal yoga practice for you that will help you to start feeling better immediately, building your strength inside and out. Your personal practice will be just as long as you want it to be, whether it be 10 minutes or 2 hours, so it will always fit in your day and provide you with the maximum benefits for the time invested. You will be looking forward to doing your own personal yoga! Once you are on a roll, we’ll be able to meet less often.

Then we use a variety of nutritional strategies. Some start with portion size. Some start with emotional eating ... but this is the only approach that addresses getting to know your issues and then dealing with them. Everyone else does one or two and promises miracles, but uou and I will gradually address all the issues, help you create new ways of thinking and I promise that you will develop new approaches to life and food that will you will be able to maintain for the rest of your life. Without feeling deprived and without feeling exhausted because you have to run 5 miles a day. And without all the serious injuries from high stress sports.

Thanks for all your help...I am feeling very encouraged.  I had no idea of the amount of time you would put into making an individual plan for me and I finally feel like I have hope in this area...but I really am looking long term to reach my final, ongoing goal.  I look at people around me and see them work double duty for a short period of time, lose a lot of weight and then gain it back when they can't manage to go that hard later on. I want to take it slow and steady and make changes I can achieve and sustain for the rest of my life.  Making progress will keep me going....even if it is just baby steps.

I am telling you all of this because I believe you are really good at what you are doing, and want to encourage you that I am a client who believes you are on the right track.

-C.M.

Our sessions together will sometimes be mostly coaching, discussing appropriate behavior modification techniques, your emotional ties to eating certain foods or fitness strategies, for example. Sometimes we will focus on stress releasing exercises, muscle building and other forms of yoga. One thing I will never do is to flat out forbid you to eat the food you love, because I do not believe that qualifies as a long term solution and what you are after is a life long plan that feels natural and effortless to you. With the multifaceted approach you will finally unlock your built in potential for weight loss.

You can do this!
Call me at 707-246-2331 to schedule your first session.

Marleen