fbpx
Menu

Posts tagged with “health”

Freedom from Food – This Time for Good!

“Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe.” ~Eckhart Tolle

I cannot say that I didn’t struggle in my life. But there’s one area in which I have overcome the challenges I was facing with hardly an effort: letting go of the eating disorder I was suffering from, getting rid of the extra weight I was carrying, and maintaining the results easily for twenty-eight years.

How Did I Do That?

In a minute I’ll tell you exactly how I did that and how you can do it too. But first let me take a moment to explain …

I Got Fired for Struggling with Depression, and It’s Not Okay

About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all.” ~Rita Mae Brown

The stigma associated with mental illness has improved in recent years, but there is still work to be done.

I am a certified life coach and a certified personal trainer. As an employee of a major global fitness studio chain, I was once discriminated against for my mental health issues.

I have always been an athlete, and I love …

What Happened When I Stopped Drinking Alcohol Every Night

“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

I love Sophia Loren. There’s a picture of her in my home looking eternally youthful and refreshed. From what I’ve been told it’s due to her nine to ten hours of sleep each night.

When I look at this picture, I see someone who relishes in the delights of life. Food, laughter, sex, work, motherhood, and self-care. Not long ago I stared at that picture thinking, “How could I admire someone so much and live my life in such a different …

How to Be Successfully Content with Your Life

By

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” ~Maya Angelou

Color within the lines. Math, physics and chemistry—there’s absolutely no point in taking drama. A main meal of straight A’s and a side order of volunteer work. A four-year degree with a “safe” major from a reputable college. Then comes the corner cubicle career at a listed company. What about the four-bedroom house and the annual holidays abroad? We can’t possibly forget about those things

All through life, from infancy to adulthood, we are told what it means to be successful. We are …

How Resentment Affects Your Health and How to Forgive

“If one by one we counted people out for the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long to get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.” ~Robert Frost 

There are two things that may come to mind when you think about forgiveness.

The many spiritual healers and gurus that talk about its importance, including but not limited to Buddha quotes.

And the person you think you will never forgive.

Forgiveness has a largely religious or spiritual connotation.

In Buddhist teachings, grudges are likened to holding onto hot coal, …

How I Stopped Obsessing About the Wrong Things to Stay Healthy

“To change your life, you need to change your priorities.” ~Mark Twain

Every year, come December, I used to obsess about air pollution. This was the time when my husband and I would take our young daughter to Poland, the country of my birth, to spend Christmas with the extended family. There my anxieties would hit the roof.

Once the heating season kicks off, and the coal starts to burn in home furnaces, Polish air becomes unbreathable. The particle pollution may exceed norms by as much as 3000%. Some days you can actually feel the air burning the back of …

The Most Important Lessons We Can Take from This Pandemic

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.” ~Kitty O’Meara

While this pandemic is turning out to be a very confusing and difficult time for many people, it is undoubtedly giving humanity an incredibly rare opportunity to learn some …

How to Tame a Worrying Mind During Difficult Times

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

“Mental health is just as important as physical health.” ~Unknown

Our main focus during this challenging time is quite rightly on our physical well-being. But we shouldn’t forget about our mental health considering these are stressful times for all of us.

Will we get sick?

Will our loved ones die?

Will we have enough food to feed the family?

How will we pay the bills?

Will things ever get back to normal?

So many questions, so many worries.

Worrying used to …

Stressed and Anxious? Here’s How to Stay Emotionally Healthy

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

“Health is not just about what you’re eating. It’s also about what you’re thinking and saying.”

A virus is spreading across the globe. Schools are shut down. People are out of work. Grocery stores are empty.

Weddings, graduations, vacations, a day in court—canceled.

This is the ultimate test in emotional resilience.

Uncertainty is one of the main reasons we stress, along with a lack of control, and right now we’ve got it in truckloads. I’ve spent the last decade building my …

How to Take Good Care of Yourself During the Coronavirus Pandemic

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

“Self-care is how you take your power back.” ~Lalah Delia

For more than a week now, I’ve been immersed in how to handle the pandemic that is unfolding all around us. By now, one thing is clear to me. We are either our greatest allies or our own worst enemies at such times. How we react makes all the difference.

One friend brought home a three-inch tome all about pandemics, determined to read her way through it. Another began advising everyone …

The Truth About Body-Positive Activists on Social Media

“The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.” ~Pema Chodron

I’m on my phone, posting a photo of myself on Instagram. It’s a vulnerable shot—I’m holding my bare belly.

I type in the caption “Accepting my body isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.”

I mean this, but I also have voices in my head telling me to delete the picture because I’m gross, not good enough, and a phony.

I get half a dozen comments supporting me, mostly emoji hearts. One comment reads, “I wish I had your confidence.” I feel weird …

Why I’m at Peace with My Weight Gain

“Resistance keeps you stuck. Surrender immediately opens you to the greater intelligence that is vaster than the human mind, and it can then express itself through you. So through surrender often you find circumstances changing.” ~Eckhart Tolle

I took a deep breath, feeling the recent change in my belly. I pinched at my belly rolls. They were familiar, I’d had them before, but recently I had gone through a period of over a year where I was in a smaller body. Now I was gaining weight again.

I refuse to step on the scale, so I don’t actually know …

How to Listen to Your Body and Give It What It Needs

“And I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.’” ~Nayyirah Waheed

For more than half my life, I took care of my body “by the numbers.” Every day, I walked a certain number of steps, no matter how sore, sick, or tired I was. I worked a certain number of hours, often going without sleep in order to finish my work and check off all the numbered items on my to-do list, no matter how my body begged for rest.

For …

How I Lost 30 Pounds by Meditating (and All the Things I Gained)

“Clear your mind. Your heart is trying to tell you something.” ~Unknown

I recently lost thirty-plus pounds without trying or intending to. I remember excitedly sharing this news on social media one day, after stepping on a scale in my hotel room and being shocked. I don’t own a scale, so between the time when I had last weighed myself and this day, I’d lost over thirty pounds without being conscious of it.

After my public announcement, people from all directions contacted me asking me questions. Everyone wanted to know how I did it and what could they do to …

How a Creative Hobby Can Boost Your Mental Health

“The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” ~Neil Gaiman

A few years ago I wrote an article about my personal experience with bulimia. The piece was published by several different media channels, and some time afterward I was interviewed by CNN.

It was the first time I had publicly, and explicitly, spoken about that particular part of my journey. But the desire to acknowledge and address the emotional effects of my experience had been present for some time.

Prior to writing the article, I hadn’t felt ready to lay myself bare in …

5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Trying to Lose Weight

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

I struggled to maintain a healthy weight for a large part of my life.

Had I known these five things before my weight-loss journey, I would have had a much easier time shedding the pounds and would have realized that weight loss isn’t a magic fix-all solution to my issues.

If you’re trying to lose weight, perhaps some of my lessons will be helpful to you.

Here we go…

1. This has to be for you, not someone else.

Growing up as a closeted …

Health Doesn’t Always Come from Medicine

5 Signs You Don’t Know What Your Body Needs

“The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its color and its temperature, the flush of recognition, the glow of love, the ash of pain, the heat of arousal, the coldness of nonconviction. It speaks through its constant tiny dance, sometimes swaying, sometimes a-jitter, sometimes trembling. It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirit, the pit at the center, and rising hope.” ~Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

We read about all these things we “should” be doing for self-care, so we add them to our to-do list and rarely, if …

6 Powerful Steps to Stop Binge Eating for Good

By

“As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter how ill or how despairing you may be feeling in a given moment.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Binge eating is hard. For me, winter time has always been hardest.

The winter of 2011 was particularly bad. It was then that I sat, hands clasped around my knees, thinking about how best to kill myself.

Hopeless only scratches the surface of what I was feeling—that same feeling I’d had on-and-off for fifteen years. I was twenty-three. I’d spent half my life in darkness.

I …

Embracing Impermanence: Lessons from Living with a Chronic Illness

“Nothing is permanent in this world, not even our troubles.” ~Charlie Chaplin

At thirteen, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. At first, I patiently waited for my doctor to give me medicine. When he didn’t, I patiently waited (for several years) for someone to find the cure.

As the years went on I wasn’t getting any better. Though I went to more doctors than I could count, none had any new advice for me, and the medical community wasn’t any closer to figuring out how to heal this illness.

Life was unpredictable. I didn’t know what I’d be able …