enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer
Jessica Berger Gross
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 1602396396
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Meet your new best yoga-and-healthy-eating friend in this smart, accessible, and funny memoir of dieting and discovery.
For years, Jessica struggled with fluctuating weight and bouts of unhappiness. Like many of us, she found comfort in food and craved cigarettes and self-confidence. Then one day Jessica took her first yoga class in Katmandu. She lost 40 pounds and changed her life forever.
In enLIGHTened, Jessica shares the core principles of yoga philosophy—not the poses and postures, but the ancient system of ideas that lies behind them, drawn from a 2000-year-old text called the Yoga Sutras. The inspiration for this memoir-driven diet and health book is studied by devout yoga students and teachers, and offers answers to eating smartly, living right, and losing weight.
Jessica goes beyond yoga's merge into mainstream—beyond trendy diets, unsustainable exercise routines, and the quest for the perfect figure. Using spiritual philosophy, and personal stories everyone can relate to, she sets the reader on a journey to self-acceptance, personal peace, and long-term health.
American Survival Guide (September 2014)
Ten—yes, ten!—pounds, going from 112 to 122 in seven days. That’s a whole lot of Cheerios. I’d try to eat my super-healthy staples, but I’d throw up before the meal was half done. My been-theredone-that, skinny-again mommy friends told me not to worry and offered me an array of what I hoped weren’t just excuses: I had fertility drugs in my system; I was thin to start out with and needed to gain more than the average amount of weight. They promised me that I’d return to normal a few months after.
Seemed to be a way out of my bubbly misery! Over the next few months, the book became my bible. I ate carrot sticks and rice cakes and watched my portions. And I lost a lot of weight—about twenty pounds. My mother, delighted and proud of the new pretty me, took me shopping for new clothes. Adorned in my fitted black stirrup pants, I came out of my shell at school and made more friends. Although I loved, loved, loved being thin, I didn’t manage to stay that way for long. My Sweet Dreams diet was.
Drive by the center on my way to teach yoga class at the ritzier, though more antiseptic, Canyon Ranch and daydream about attending my first Kripalu retreat. Just the thought of Kripalu was (and is) enough to lower my blood pressure by ten points and leave me with the urge to give away my worldly possessions and spend my days wearing comfy yoga pants and Indian blouses and sipping tea while having calm, quiet conversations about spiritual uplift. FEATURED POSE: Standing Forward Bend.
Heart palpitations and chest pain and was diagnosed with high blood pressure, a heart condition, and type 2 diabetes. That summer I ate my way through the pain and grief and fear of losing her. I left for college at the end of the summer, thirty pounds overweight. At Vassar, I made friends with the cool New York City private school girls. I wasn’t sure why they included me in their group—I always felt like the frumpy fat friend. (And then there was my financial aid package and work-study.
You hit me,” I said. “I was just a kid.” “You were a selfish brat,” he said. “The first time you hit her,” my mother said, “she was two and a half. She was still in diapers.” I loved my mother for saying so but hated her more for staying married to him. “Why didn’t you leave?” I asked. “Maybe I should have,” she said. “I made some mistakes,” my father said. He was crying. “And I’m sorry I hurt you. But you were a difficult child.” His eyes turned steely. “I’ve worked too hard to spend the.