| Fit From Within The Edge Interview with Victoria Moran by Elizabeth Cutting Statistically, heroin addicts have better odds for kicking their habit than Haagen Dazs addicts have for overcoming theirs. With more than 50 percent of Americans overweight, it's clear that the secret to ending the struggle with food, weight and body image isn't in the latest diet or whatever they're selling on the infomercial channel. Victoria Moran is one who overcame the odds. After growing up in a weight-conscious household (her father was a diet doctor; her mother worked in a "reducing salon"), she lost weight for the last time 18 years ago. Through it all, she has learned that maintaining a 60-pound weight loss is largely a spiritual exercise, concerned more with honesty and courage than with carbs and crunches. In her new book, Fit From Within: 101 Simple Secrets to Change Your Body and Your Life (Contemporary Books/McGraw-Hill), she reveals how those with weighty concerns can stop battling food and the state of their thighs and, instead, start embracing life. Moran, a Kansas City native, is a two-time "Oprah" guest and the author of nine books. Her academic background is in comparative religions and she has explored the spirituality of daily life as far afield as India and Tibet. She will speak at Unity Temple on the Plaza in Kansas City as part of The Cornerstone Foundation National Speakers Series on May 30. She talked with The EDGE from Bern, Switzerland. First, what you are doing in Switzerland. Victoria Moran: My husband works in Europe, so we connect with each other every month or so wherever he is. And because some of my books have been translated for publication in other countries, this also gives me a chance to meet with my foreign publishers. It's really a wonderful life. I know you're passionate about helping your readers live wonderful lives, too. I'm thinking in particular of your book Creating a Charmed Life. But Fit from Within is different. How does it feel to be a spirituality writer who's about to have a book in the diet section of the bookstores? Moran: It's like old home week actually. I wrote a book called Love Yourself Thin, which is still in print, about five years after I lost weight. And long before that -- when I was still struggling with overeating and gaining and losing weight all the time -- I wrote health articles for magazines. I figured that if I learned about nutrition and exercise, I could educate myself out of my problem. It didn't work. I learned a lot, but because my deficit was more spiritual than intellectual, I wasn't able to get the information I'd collected out of my head and into my life. I hear what you're saying, but anyone looking at you today would have hard time believing you ever had a weight problem. Moran: Whenever people say, "You could never have been fat," I think of a line in the Old Testament, the Book of Joel, that I really love. It goes, "I will give you the years the locust has eaten." That's what happened to me when I stopped using food to deal with life. Part of it was giving up the desire to be thin. I experienced a moment of willingness -- probably the first in my life -- when I only wanted to be free. Free and healthy. For that moment, I was willing to give up the whole thing, get out of the diet business, and let my body be the way God (and you can use any word you like there) wanted it to be. All I know is, I just didn't want to be haunted by frozen yogurt and sandwich cookies anymore. Amazingly, I did lose weight, and because I have small bones, I turned out to be a small person -- thin even. But not because I "work at" being thin. If there's work involved in this at all, it's working to stay focused on my spiritual life and treat myself well. Besides, "thin" isn't the point. It's being healthy and feeling good about yourself at the place where your body is supposed to be. You said you got out of the diet business. What was it like growing up with parents who really were in the weight-loss business? Moran: It was painful a lot of the time. My parents loved me, but I knew I was a fat kid and that was bad for business. I spent years believing I had a beautiful mind and soul imprisoned in an unfortunate body. It took time and lots of spiritual work to grow past that. It's not just a matter of losing weight. That's a trap people fall into, thinking that if they change the way they look, they'll change the way they feel about themselves. That may be true to a degree, but self-image is such a deep and private thing, it's going to take more than losing weight to have a permanent effect there. And, like freedom, it requires constant vigilance: not so much about eating -- that awful diet mentality -- but vigilance about remembering who you are, remembering your divine origins. And it's not just for weight issues. I'm entering that stage of life where women in our culture are devalued and seen as undesirable. So now, 18 years after losing weight, I'm doing some of the same inner work I did then to appreciate myself now. In a nutshell, what's the message of Fit from Within? Moran: It's that making peace with food and weight is a spiritual process that includes practical action. If someone wants to lose a few pounds or eat better or get some exercise but has no interest in bringing her mind and soul along, she may as well pick up a bucket of Colonel Sanders and take up permanent residence on the couch. Outer changes can't last if they're made on their own, because there's nothing to support them. People go on diets and make these valiant New Year's resolutions and join gyms, but when their resolutions bite the dust, they feel guilty and miserable. This is so sad, because even though solving the problem is the individual's responsibility, having the problem is not her fault. The approach we've been presented with by conventional wisdom, the media and even most doctors is guaranteed to fail because it's incomplete. They say "diet and exercise," or even "diet, exercise and stress management," but it still leaves out the soul. (Besides, dieting doesn't work -- and exercise, unless you figure out a way to love it, can be pretty wretched, too.) This book has lots of short chapters. Why did you write it that way? Moran: When I was putting together the initial outline for the book, I realized there were dozens of things -- it turned out to be 101 -- that I know and that I did (and many I still do) to come to peace with something I thought I'd never have peace with. And there was something else, too: I like these short chapter books, because they give people the opportunity to open them at random and find just what they need at that moment. Once you're committed to a spiritual way of life, you can certainly count on things like opening a book to the right page. Give us your best tip. Moran: There's going to be a different "best" for each reader. One is "Accept Yourself Today" -- today, just the way you are. Lots of people are afraid to do that, because they think if they accept themselves they've closed the door on being able to change. It's just the opposite: Only by accepting yourself as you are do you become free to make changes. And a really down-to-earth suggestion that I like is "Eschew Fast Food" -- in other words, avoid it like the plague but maybe not for the reasons you think. Sure, it's loaded with fat and calories, but that's not the main reason to stay away. It's because fast food, with a few exceptions like Subway maybe, simply isn't of the quality that an expression of the Divine deserves. Besides, low-quality food can't create high quality cells -- cells that will make up the kind of physical body that will help draw to you the life you were born to live. So we won't be finding you at McDonald's. What do you eat then? Moran: I'm happy to tell you, but I want to be clear that anyone can do what I've done without eating what I eat. This process has to be customized. You're the expert on yourself, what you like and what you need. As for me, I do the best I can to eat whole food, food that's recognizable as something agricultural instead of manufactured. I personally am a vegetarian, because reverence for life is key to my understanding of the spiritual path. Other people see it differently, and I honor their right to do that. For me, though, eating -- and living -- in a way that causes the least suffering to my fellow beings is an easy way to do a little good in the world. I know that when you speak in Kansas City you won't just be talking about food and weight. You're going to speak about the physical body and the spiritual life. Can you tell us about that. Moran: Sure. Back in the '70s, there was talk in New Age circles about "star people," people whose souls weren't native to Earth. I related to that concept, because most of my troubles had to do with "Earth stuff": food, money, keeping my apartment clean when it kept getting dirty again. And yet, many spiritual teachings -- yoga as a case in point -- have offered centuries of wisdom on how to be a spiritual being having a physical experience. We know now through the mind-body movement that tending to the soul can heal the body -- and caring for the body can impact the soul. For example, regular meditation can lower your blood pressure and improve your immune functioning, and eating a natural diet can enhance and elevate the experience you have when you meditate. Seeing the connections and working with them fascinates me. It's an adventure that never ends. What do you want for readers of Fit from Within? Moran: I want them to be content in their own skins. I want them to be able to enjoy life and food and walking and wearing clothes that express their personalities. I want them to feel so comfortable with themselves and their choices that no one can make them feel wrong or unworthy. You know that line in the Lord's Prayer "...On Earth as it is in heaven"? I think that's what this is all about, living our lives on Earth as if this were paradise. And by doing that, we help create little outposts of heaven on Earth. Victoria Moran will be the featured speaker at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, May 30, at the Cornerstone Foundation National Speakers Series, Unity Temple on the Plaza, 710 W. 47th St., Kansas City. For ticket information, call (816) 561-4466 or go to www.cornerstone.com. Elizabeth Cutting is a writer, astrologer and seminar producer. She may be contacted at 816-532-4727 or eacutting@aol.com. Copyright (c) 2002 Elizabeth Cutting |
||
|
|
|
