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• “Lose 10 pounds in seven days through the detox diet!”
• “Slim Your Way Down to a Size 2 with a Holistic Yoga Practice.”
• “Meditate your way to perfect health!”

Oh man, when did holistic health advertising get taken over by former car salesmen? Puulease. I’m here to break the news that you will still have issues after starting to pay attention to that which you may have been avoiding (and at first, those problems may suddenly seem ten-fold).

They do not magically disappear. And you will never, EVER reach perfect health. Because guess what? It’s an enigma.

I’m trying to save you a lot of pain and heartache here, because I long believed there was some pie in the sky that I would eventually obtain by living to the supposed holistic-T, and instead I got smacked around with a little reality.

The Truth About Detox

As for the claims above, let me go ahead and let you in on a secret–if you plan to “detox” for weight loss, then you are embarking on a diet just the same as all others, and you will lose weight quickly and gain it back even more quickly once you start eating the way you did before the detox. And it messes with your metabolism, making it harder to lose weight in the future, just like every other diet.

And detoxing for too long can do some long-term damage to your system. I’m not saying that detoxing is bad–in fact, I think most of us could use it once or twice a year due not only to the food we eat, but also because of the environmental toxins we encounter on a daily basis.

But jumping from eating burgers, drinking 5 cups of coffee a day, and lovin’ on some chips and donuts to sipping beet and carrot juice 3 times a day is quite a shock to the system.

It is much better to ease into a detoxifying cleanse after you have already cleaned up your diet for a considerable amount of time and really built your body back up to good working condition. And even then, unless battling a grave disease, keep any low-calorie cleanse to four days, before your body starts breaking down your muscles and tissues for nutrients.

Yoga Is Perfection…Um, No

As for yoga, it is an amazing practice, just as Pilates is for some people, and the treadmill is for others. But will it give you the perfect Jennifer Aniston body? NO (who decided she has the perfect body anyway?). Unless you plan to do it six days a week, completely change your diet, and reconfigure your genetic profile while you’re at it.

Yes, as with any exercise practice that people take up, especially if you haven’t been exercising (or have been doing a very different form of exercise), you will probably lose at least a few pounds in the beginning. And you will become stronger. But yoga will not create the perfect life (perfect body=attracting the perfect mate=buying the perfect house and having the perfect baby=perfectly happy forever), nor does it guarantee a size 2 frame (c’mon now! How many people’s [aka women] bodies are supposed to be a size 2???).

Actually, you will probably be hard pressed to find the third claim concerning meditation. That’s because no one can sell meditation, other than guided visualization CDs and a few books on what the process looks like*.

Holistic Reality

But what holistic health will do is help you to start making a connection between different aspects of your life.

Photo: ƒe

My yoga teacher recently said something in class about recognizing the moments where we need to push ourselves a bit further to get past the point that we’ve been, but also to be aware when we need to take a break in child’s pose, and how long we–not anyone else–need to stay in that resting position, struck me as so true for my writing process.

In other words, I can learn a lesson in a physical practice, such as yoga, and use it for a mental/emotional practice, writing. To take it further, the same lesson can be used for meditation, knowing that sometimes I need to spend more time sitting in silence, and other times, five minutes is all I can give. So we slowly come to realize that everything really is connected, and this whole life process is just a cycle.

Maybe start to look at your diet not primarily for weight loss purposes (though don’t blame yourself if that is still part of the equation–I’ve been working on this for years, and in completely being truthful with myself, my weight still takes up a slice of the pie, no pun intended), but rather as a move toward feeling better, lighter, and having more energy to do all the things you want to do in your life without having to have six shots of espresso in your latte at 4pm (yes, I was in a cafe the other day where a woman ordered this insane drink).

Maybe start to look at your diet not primarily for weight loss purposes, but rather as a move toward feeling better, lighter, and having more energy to do all the things you want to do in your life.

And there is no ultimate end point with shifting the way you eat (though you will hear otherwise) vs. a diet, so take your time making the changes so that you actually incorporate them deep into your system. Finding the type of movement–whatever it may be, not what is deemed in our “go hard or go home” culture as worthy enough exercise–that you resonate with, that feels good at the soul level (we all have something) can give you much more on every other level of your being than doing yoga if you hate it. Don’t let anyone tell you that yoga (or pilates, or kickboxing, etc., etc.) is good for everyone.

As for meditating, I know kids–it ain’t easy. But try to not try so hard. And most importantly, don’t let the media push you around.