The REAL Secret to Sustained Weight Loss Isn’t What You Think

Intuitive eating, mindfulness, weight loss, holistic medicine, integrative medicine, holistic health.

Another lifetime ago, as a 20-something living in Washington, DC, I worked as a self-employed Arabic translator.

I liked my job well enough. Arabic is a magnificent language, and being able to earn a living from translation felt like quite an accomplishment — one involving a Master’s from Georgetown followed by a year-long fellowship in Egypt.

Plus, I could make my own schedule and work from home in pajamas.

It was the perfect set-up in so many ways. And yet, something pivotal was missing.

Thing is, three other developments were unfolding around the same time:

• I began experiencing health problems, the culmination of a decade’s worth of deficient eating and overexercising.
• I discovered yoga and adopted a daily body-mind-spirit practice.
• I started exploring holistic health and healing, hoping it’d help where allopathic medicine had failed.

My work as a translator, though comfortable enough, felt wholly disconnected from these three shifts, along with everything I most longed for. (I should probably add that I was translating dry, depressing news articles — not captivating, poetic literature.)

Sitting there in a very compartmentalized life, I wanted not only to heal my body, but also to integrate that path with how I earned a living and how I showed up for others.

So, I thought, I need to switch careers…and find the quickest, easiest, cheapest route to a job in holistic health.

(I had fairly recently completed 7 years of higher education at rigorous, expensive schools, and a late 20s career change was most definitely not in the plans.)

Thus began a somewhat scattered search for an easy solution. For something that would be the secret of my own healing…and my new, more integrated life.

I dabbled at the surface of a handful of modalities, exploring how it’d be to become a massage therapist, yoga instructor, or Ayurvedic herbalist. After all, I have an abundance of admiration for people in those roles. Why not follow suit? (Ideally, as fast as possible.)

Problem is, those roles were not a good fit for me or for what I truly wanted. As a…