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Ditch Diets, Live Light

Dieting.

Interview with Cari Corbet-Owen

1. Cari, congratulations on an inspiring website. Tell us how you became interested in the 'ditch diets, live light' concept.

I spent most of my teenage and younger adult years hating myself because of what I perceived to be my less than perfect body. My other 'successes' were all over-shadowed because of my shocking body image. Of course, the irony is that looking back I can now see what I couldn't back then. I actually had a great body. Nothing, including ridiculous diets and crazy exercise really made any difference to improve my body-esteem. All I achieved was swinging between anorexia and yo-yo dieting. Reaching goal weight provided only temporary respite before I'd start feeling frantic again.

Then I lost five children and those personal tragedies made me realize that I had been living a really shallow existence all based on external standards of success. These losses triggered a spiritual quest - I wanted to live a more meaningful life. It was a start to building self-esteem based on the fact that in the eyes of my Creator I was already perfect. I was already a Sacred Being, deserving of love and respect, and my size or shape actually had nothing to do with it.

My whole relationship with my body changed, I started trusting it to lead me when it came to food and ironically once I'd relaxed into accepting myself, my weight left by itself. It was pretty miraculous - replacing diets with self-respect and self-love achieved what no amount of diet pills or plans ever had.

There's noting that can give me a thrill like walking the Mind over Fatter path with someone and seeing how they start living in a joy-filled body. I'm so grateful for all my body image issues, because without them I'd never had this work that contributes so much passion and purpose to my life.

2. What does being body-wise mean to you?

Being body-wise means living in harmony with my body. It's trusting that I was born with a Sacred biological Order that knows exactly what my body needs when I take the time to listen to it. It means feeding my body when it's hungry and stopping when it's had enough. Being body-wise is about treating my body with love and respect which means I make nutritious food choices, not because some diet is telling me too, but because I now love myself and my body enough to want to give it the best.

Being body wise is also about taking time to rest, play actively and laugh a lot more than I used to. Being body wise is even allowing my body to arrive at a weight and shape that feel naturally right for it instead of some idea my culture spews out as desirable.

3. How does creating a joy-filled life contribute to healthy self-esteem?

Researchers of body image tell us that about two-thirds of our self-esteem comes from our body-esteem. Our body represents who we are in the physical world, it's our 24/7 calling card. When you're living a hate-filled (for yourself) life, you're forever insecure and that's an enormous eroder of happiness.

Living a joy-filled life is about living more lightly and with more gratitude for the small and ordinary, the things that would otherwise pass us by unnoticed, like having legs that can move and dance. It's about realizing that joy-filled living has multiple benefits. It improves your health way beyond any amount of weight you can ever lose does and it's a much better predictor of good relationships (would you rather spend time with someone who is body-obsessed or someone who is joyous?).

4. What would you most like women to know about losing weight?

We've been conned - miracle products and crazy diets aren't sustainable and we aren't weak-willed failures. Diets don't work except to make you fatter in the long term. We've got it all the wrong way around. We think that if only we can get thin, we'll find health, wealth and happiness and then feel worthy. So we put our body through torture which makes us miserable.

We don't need a diet, we need a mental diet - we need to shed the inner critic. We don't need a scale, instead we need to find different ways to weigh our worth. The truth is that when we get happy our health improves, we're more likely to be successful and the weight will come off by itself because food suddenly takes a secondary place to living. Food obsessions and comfort eating disappear on their own.

We've been starting at the wrong end of the equation - it's not a case of:

lettuce + gym = thin = happiness.

It's a case of:

healthy self-esteem + being body-wise = natural weight loss.

5. Please tell us more about your 'Mind over Fatter' program.

It's based on holistic principles aimed at giving people the practical tools to reclaim what they once did naturally as small children, so there are no pills or eating plans:

* loving themselves regardless of their body shape or size

* being passionate about life

* eating in intuitive and body-wise ways

* treating an active lifestyle as fun and play instead of a chore and a bore.

It helps you find out what's eating you, because a large body is just a symptom of not feeling full enough on the inside and then trying to fill that inner hole with food. It's a program that I personally mentor each member through.

6. What are your ideas on how women can make the most of their sexuality?

I think feeling good about living in your own skin would have to come first. It's really difficult to relax into your sexuality when you're worried about someone touching and judging your body. We seem to think we can only be sexy if we have what our culture defines as a sexy body, but we can be sexy from the inside out. Self-confidence is sexy. Exterior things can help as well - like losing weight, choosing clothes we feel 'sexy' wearing, and wearing perfume. But at the end of the day, nothing can replace feeling good about ourselves from the inside out.

7. Is there anything else you would like to share with the women of the world?

Don't ever underestimate what a wondrous fabulous Being you are. You're like a fingerprint, totally unique. Nowhere in this world is there another person like you (not even your identical twin) and that makes you incredibly special. Never forget that you're so much more than your body. You're a rare and irreplaceable gemstone, don't let yourself or anyone tell you you're anything less.

You don't have to strive for love, you ARE love. You don't have to strive for perfection you ARE perfection.

Visit Cari at Ditch Diets, Live Light for support on your living light journey.

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