GPOYW: How to Lose 20lbs While Regaining Your Sanity Edition.
Why yes, that is a photo of me in my underwear! I know this might seem a little bit too gratuitous for Wednesday, but I haven’t written anything substantial in a while, and I’d like to connect some dots as to why I’m suddenly talking about yoga all the time, when I used to just talk about paint and dicks and how much I hate Dash Snow.
If I’m being totally honest, the smoldering ember that ignited this wildfire came from being called fat by the opposing party in my world-class breakup last December (which, for those of you who have not had such an experience, was hurtful). But I didn’t make a conscious decision to lose weight as a direct response to that incident - my direct response was spending money like a drunken sailor, giving my apartment an extreme makeover/exorcism, and cramming my days (but mostly nights!) full of adventures with the million friends who were in town for the holidays. That obviously couldn’t last forever, now could it?
I won’t even bother to describe the crippling avalanche of anxiety and depression that blindsided me mid-January, because we’ve all been there (for those of you who haven’t - it’s looming). BUT everything came to a head one afternoon when my housemate and I went to IKEA, in hopes that assimilating into the compartmentalized, carefree world of cheap Scandinavian knockoffs would somehow streamline the jumbled imbroglio that was my mindscape at the time. Instead, I found myself in the midst of my very first panic attack.
I didn’t even believe in panic attacks before that day, and once I recovered I knew I had to find something to make it never happen again. Forgoing the fistful of Xanax offered by my mother, I decided I needed to start running again. I used to love running. I used to be a runner. Why did I ever stop? Come to think of it, in the last year why did I give up blogging, reading, scouring the Internet for music, scouring the Internet in general, being interested in art, or the world, or… The next day I joined a really fancy gym.
As I browsed the roster of classes offered at no extra charge, I noticed that their primary yoga instructor was Mike Z, with whom I’d taken two or three classes the previous summer, just because back then yoga seemed like a fun new thing to try. I remember that it put me in a great headspace, but I stopped going because it was expensive and it was summer and I was in love. But Mike definitely made an impression on me. I’ll describe him here the way I describe him to all of my friends, the only way I know how to describe him: He’s the Bob Ross of yoga teachers. Mellow and dreamy (á la Lilly Taylor, not Gael García Bernal), the space he creates is womblike, and his style of yoga is basically a prescription for every asshole you encounter and every situation that makes you seethe.
I was so concerned with working hard not to be a crazy person that I didn’t really notice my yoga body until my friends and my mom started to. But now that I am aware of it, a little vanity balloon is bobbling along, trailing behind my priority thoughts… “I look good.” I haven’t thought that probably since I was 19. I don’t see anything wrong in thinking it now.
