FASTING In love

Unfortunately, I was raised under the stigma of the fat body: to be shamed, to be avoided, to be feared, to mock, to criticize. Constantly.

In the nineties, little did they know about a healthy diet, and sugar or carbo were just enemies, as those who consumed them were simply loosers.

And I was a fat kid of a lazy mother who didn’t like to cook. Many lunch breaks for me were made of bread, tuna and ketchup. Which I loved.

I didn’t mind, even though my family and my peers would constantly reminding me that I was not, and that my worth was blobby fat.

This led me to toxic relationships with the first looser who’d find me beautiful - because, let’s face it: I am beautiful. - when I believed I was as ugly as fat.

But is 75 kg on 180 cm: fat?

Curiously enough, I hit the 68 kilos when starving in NYC. Everybody was: “wow you look good, BUT pay attention now, because re-gaining weight is so easy!”

Puffing and trying not to listen, I dared to move from country to country, job to job, man to man trying to fill a void… trying to flee from my family for which I am what I do and how I do it.

When I established myself with my life companion, in Germany, I had not dealt with this body health topic yet, and I thought I was doing good. I had also almost forgotten about the physical abuse and the verbal violence, and I was about to learn how to live fully, daily.

Little did I know that my subconscious was scared AF to see me surrounded by men, and that now, living in the middle of the woods in a country where you can get married in a hoodie, I could release all the pressure of the body shaming.

And I gained 40 kilos.

For the first 20 kilos, I believe it took me less than 6 months. Luckily, I was eating from the farm, therefore my weight was built by honey, oat and fruit. Things that are healthy, and available on a vegetarian diet - which is not for my body type, now I know.

The rest is history, and I learnt how to live with my body, how to teach yoga with it, run and roll of joy with it, wash it, massage it.

But it doesn’t belong to me. And this I realized during my first pregnancy: my body is the resonance of all that happened to humanity, of all the choices of my ancestresses; as it is a vehicle to release victory over sufferance. And my sensitiveness in perceiving it, is the key to open the gate of my-self-body.

My journey has begun on the 22nd of September, the first of 5 days of fasting. Nothing but water, whilst breastfeeding and working, and teaching. And I never felt so good, I mean it: eating had become another stress, I couldn’t fight through food. The only solution would have been to give it up.

In the void of freedom, I found the way I wish for myself to be. In it, I thrive as the golden hours at summer solstice. And I still explore and suffer, but now I know why, for whom, how and “yes”.