Power Body by Yvettebam

The First Element of Self-Discipline is Hunger

I’ve seen the above photo floating around social media periodically.

An ensuing wave of protests often follows that image, with angry individuals accusing the image’s statement of promoting disordered eating.

In recent years, it feels like a buffer has been placed into American society. Like a large energetic buoy, for lack of a better word, has been inserted between the world and the American public.

Individuals in America are so seemingly protected in their procured walls, so righteously minded, and *so* into sanitizing their environment in sake of further protection (this has nothing to do with the dreaded 2020 C-word). It feels like people can’t take the heat anymore.

Everyone gets offended over everything. We have built a culture of highly-bubbled people that are so KEEN on penetration from something that isn’t highly-bubbled that they JUMP at the first opportunity to be #triggered.

These are the people that spend hours replying to comments online, desperate to FEEL SOMETHING other than the soft curation of their whimsical fantasy-land. Does this trigger you, reader? It is with purpose. Call me an annoying a*****e, you are self-righteous in your world.

We jump at the first opportunity to have something penetrate the bubble (if only we would realize that artistic living involves purposely penetrating our own bubbles!).

But the worst dichotomy our little bubbled lifestyle offers is that it is only through the #privilege of living in a curated society that we can even afford to BE triggered.

When I first read the statement of the “first element of self-discipline being hunger” I was captivated. A resonance of truth struck me. The thought of disordered eating didn’t register. It wasn't until I scrolled through the comments that I realized how vastly different my interpretation was… and just how weird our 3+ large meals pLUS SnAcKieS society has grown. We buffer ourselves with food, and are convinced it’s healthy because corporate food giants invest in studies that tell us to eat more, and then they slap heart-healthy labels on insulin-spiking refined-grains.

To date: my longest water fast, in which I consumed nothing but water, has been 40 days.

To date: My longest dry fast, in which I did not consume any food OR water, has been 7 days.

To date: the driving force of both of these examples was Discipline.

When I speak about my experiences, I get peppered with projections. It came to the point where it shut down my voice for a couple years. I LOVE the world of fasting, I LOVE the world of the body, I’m still in school at the age of 32 learning MORE about the body. I will never stop learning about the body. In car rides, I forfeit music for audio books. At home, I am plagued by books in every corner… plagued because they are all screaming at me, simultaneously, “Read me! Read me!” On the computer, I have 1000s of hours logged reading medical journals.

I love the body, and it was my experiences with FASTING that unfurled my relationship to the body.

For a long time, I struggled to coherently express my experiences with fasting.

I lamely replied with casual variations of... "Well, it really opened me up emotionally!" before placing the subject further down on my list of "Things Not to Speak to Normal People About". I felt as if I couldn't, for the life of me, transmit my fasting experiences accurately.

In particular, I had a horrid experience in Jerusalem while on a pilgrimage with 40 other people. A dozen of us sat around a campfire, talking story at the end of the day.

Inevitably, it came to a discussion of “what do you do…” and a Polish-speaking man heavily focused on me, in front of the group. I replied with my usual variations of, “oh, I do so much that it would take too long to explain!”

He pressed me. He told me not to be embarrassed if I was out of a job.

I was flustered. My Polish language capabilities are 50% less than my English, especially for topics that are out of my “zone”. I tried describing more of my work. Inevitably it turned into a discussion about the body (my line of work!) and he, seeking the FIRST POSSIBLE CHANCE TO INSERT HIS GORGEOUS OPINION, told me that I was a beautiful woman, but that I definitely needed to lose some pounds.

Sigh. He completely ignored my statements of my current project, Secrets of Loose Skin, in which I regained weight to lose it on camera, and instead told me a way to make myself more attractive for him.

Lose weight, Fattie.

So I get it. Guys, I get it.

I say a lot about this buffered culture of #triggered people because the truth is that it IS a lot. And the truth is… if we pull the sticks out of our own asses and simply don’t pay attention to energy vultures who like to purposely state inappropriate comments, then the cycle of energetic consumption ends.

The bubbled-#trigger movement in this society is a massive contraction for me BECAUSE of the cycle of energetic consumption that gets fed from it.

But I get why people are so sensitive about their body. They’ve had a lot of situations with Polish a******s, for example, commenting unsolicitedly about the gorgeous body they have.

As if our goal in life, as women, is to make sure the a******s peckers get hard when they turn their eyes onto us in viewing pleasure…

Not only was I insecure in relying my experiences (the ongoing lesson of learning how to use my voice is... well... still ongoing...) but I also didn't quite know how to formulate the "proper" wording for it. In the one year since that conversation I thankfully have grown 100-fold in being able to state what it is I do, exactly, and being able to handle a******s.

My life’s work with the body is far broader than fasting, but fasting began it all. Fasting was the tiny snowball at the top of the hill, right before it begins to roll down and gain momentum.

I began my fascination with fasting because I wanted to lose 150 pounds without loose skin, over 7 years ago now. After I lost 150 pounds without loose skin, I wanted to put out a lot of information about this miracle healing agent… only to realize that many people cannot fast for as long as I have.

I decided to regain some of the weight and lose it again, but this time using absolutely NO long-term fasting. I needed to find a way to lose a lot of weight WITHOUT loose skin and WITHOUT long-term fasting.

I knew that loose skin was a byproduct of dysregulation… and I knew fasting was so healing for the body DUE TO REGULATORY PATHWAYS… so I began with:

How do I balance my body in regulation while losing weight and NOT incorporating intense fasting protocols? What are the regulatory pathways fasting uses, and how can I best mimic them in normal day-to-day functioning?

That’s how “Secrets of Loose Skin” was born: a 6-month program in which the viewer JOURNEYS with me as I lose the weight, in real time, in a SUBSTANTIAL AND APPROACHABLE WAY while working with hormones, nutrition, fascia, lymph, and musculature.

But in real life, every time I tried to describe my experiences, it fell flat. It felt as if a congruence factor was off, as if the receiving party was interpreting the color blue when I was trying to speak green. This feeling would shut me down.

I was unwilling to dive into a subject that I already felt was misunderstood from the intro. It was much easier, in every single possible scenario, to simply let it drop and pretend I didn’t have much to talk about. I spent years of isolation during which I, quite literally, spent 90% of my time alone in the middle of a rainforest.

And I stopped talking about fasting.

To someone who still believes a human would die after about a week of not eating, hearing information about a 40-day water fast is bound to bring up a hell of a lot of disbelief... and immediate judgement. It goes against our social patterns. It goes against nearly everything that we have been conventionally taught about food and the body. It goes against recommendations of mainstream Western (and petroleum-based, profit-generating, big-pharma) medicine.

Thankfully, the tides are turning now… with Reddit forums about fasting being prevalent, and more people that have experimented and reached levels beyond 40 days sharing their healing experiences. (Psssst: I know a man who has dry-fasted, no food or water, for 20 days!). The edges of what is possible are definitely expanding as more people choose to turn against pill-popping medical disciplines.

Nonetheless, when you fast… you simply "go against” the general tide.

There is a lot of societal sigma with fasting. It draws attention. Usually in a bad way... but that's the general process of going against a tide. People notice you. They finger-point and shake their heads and secretly await the moment that a current pulls you under so that they can hear your redemption story of “I was lost but now I am found!” And proudly congratulate you on returning back to the safety of nurturing the metabolism like a two-year-old child who needs to eat every few hours.

I have had more side-eye looks, worried expressions, and baseless variations of speeches about how incredibly "bad" water-fasting is than I can count. My favorite one came from a distant relative of mine... who, with an escalating voice, told me all about how terribly fasting would effect my health (oh the ABSOLUTE horror I was bestowing upon my body!) while her fingers were greased from a meal that beckoned artery clogs *aaaand* right before she drank herself silly for the third weekend in a row.

But I admit, all of these energetic contusions shut me up for a few years. I was exhausted with trying to share. You cast your pearls before swine for long enough, metaphorically speaking, and yeah… you stop wanting to share.

I wanted to talk about the vast spiritual and emotional whirlpools that extended fasting fostered! I wanted to talk about the parts of Self that I slowly became acquainted with, about how fasting plants seeds that flourish into consciousness! I wanted to talk about the patterns I became able to recognize, the lull of the reptilian brain, the numbing effects of binge-eating and disassociation, which I used to have problems with… the silliness of being ordained to believe that constant near around-the-clock consumption was normal, the food-like chemical substances we’re brain-hijacked to ingest… the ones that are specifically engineered so that your taste buds CAN'T have just one... and so much more.

Instead, I fell into a pattern of energetically shunting people. I gave up on trying to be understood.

As time progressed, fasting became more popular in the form of intermittent fasting. When I initially started water fasting the information available online was nearly non-existent. Back then, I resorted to reading translations of Russian medical journals. With the recent popularity surge of intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets, I’ve found people to be far more accepting of my fasting practices. OR... perhaps I'm beginning to actually surround myself with like-minded individuals... either way, it has been a beautiful relief.

Something else began to happen in my years of isolation. I didn’t have any friends, it was hard for me to relate to anyone, but I began to solidify in my selfhood. I studied so much that I began to be able to see the faulty energetic threads in other people’s arguments, and contest them without being rude. I began to see deeper into the layers of society, and how insanely warped it gets with topics like weight-loss surgery, ozempic, and liposuction for lymphedema. I began to grow extremely sad with how deeply the body has come to be misunderstood. The body needs loving regulation, not another artificial hormonal drug cocktail.

I share the above story so that you, reader, can understand where I am coming from.

Our culture has been taken over by a virus within people that feeds off of the consumption of being offended about nearly everything. Our society has been taken over by a conviction that the body is something to defeat, that the body needs to be assisted with a perpetual drug cocktail, that we need to CUT into the body in order to regulate it (or make it look #hot).

While at the same time… wanting to lose weight is akin to a near-sin from the vantage point of the fat-acceptance movement. Quotes, such as the hunger and discipline one, are being immediately taken as accusatory (how dare you suggest that I should starve myself!) instead of evoking deeper discussions (what is the difference between starvation and fasting?).

While we’re here: let’s clarify something… an eating disorder and fasting are vastly different worlds. The difference is prevalent on a physical, mental, and emotional level.

An eating disorder can be based in control, or in shame, in guilt, in constant mental noise purring about your lack of worth, in dictation of "bad" versus "good", in numbing, in emotional wounding that needs to be addressed but has been stuffed into the subconscious for holding... and onward.

I don't care if you lose 100 pounds. If you haven't addressed the underlying emotional warfare that caused your body to have that extra 100 pounds in the first place then say hello to a new vice, even if it gives rise to a vice that is “accepted” by society… like a work-out obsession. The body, once again, needs loving regulation… not a sentence rooted in shame or control.

Fasting is…

Fasting is a conscious choice of orientation, of reorientation, of further reorientation, and some more reorientation, of emotional propagation, of spiritual alignment, of working on the mental body, on the emotional body, on the spiritual body, of cultivating mindset... of becoming a conscious captain of your ship, of sitting within your silence and somehow not screaming from all of its noise, of intense physical healing, of determination and willpower, of opportunity towards alignment, of greeting the parts of yourself that have been hidden… of regulation, if we choose to stay conscious during the fast, if we choose to stay WITH ourselves and not propagate ourselves in a mentality of control.

The deeper energetic aspect of my work in Secrets of Loose Skin is one of regulation, of learning how to re-write the body from the top-down mental control hierarchy to listening TO the body. A fit body is a byproduct of a regulated body, yet we often don’t realize this and use control to attempt to be fit.

A 40-day water fast isn't easy. A 7-day water fast isn't easy. A 1-day water fast isn't easy! Hell, persistent intermittent fasting isn't easy! Not when you have been conditioned, throughout your entire life, to be either constantly eating, thinking about eating, or worried about your body. Three meals a day! Five small meals a day! Three meals and two snacks to keep your metabolism up! BUY MY PROTEIN SHAKE! I HAVE AN AFFILIATE CODE!

Discipline takes cultivation!

We are infused in a culture of three-dimensions. Spiritual aspects, once a large part of society, have been displaced. Materialism and physical perceptions run rampant. Therefore, judgements about appearances are all too easy to associate with inherent worth. Especially when a large part of our indoctrination includes images of surgically altered women waving a buttocks full of silicone, associations of power and wallet size, and teachings of smiles coming alongside acceptance.

It's a culture that produces shame, lack of worth, individuals who subconsciously strive to "prove" their worth on account of being indoctrinated with the belief that they are simply Not Enough in their current forms.

There is always something to prune, pick, alter, advance, portray in a different light, justify, trim, or suck-in. There is always more to be done. There is a certificate you can gain and wave around the face of potential employers to justify your worth. There is a number on a scale you can proudly smile at to justify your worth. There is a red sports car you can slide into to justify your worth. There are endless deviations of ways the external world can give you a thumbs-up... but they will always be fruitless if your internal nature does not sing the song of your heart, and if your abdomen does not radiate it outward to encompass your environment.

When oriented in this type of consumeristic, material, machine-like reality, there’s a lot of natural shame surrounding food and body size simply because food has turned into a profiting machine of its own accord. Variations of refined grains and corn syrups now make up like 50% of local grocery stores, yet not one public education curriculum is teaching about how refined grains cause immense hormonal disruption due to insulin spikes.

America the Great is here to make a profit out of you. And if you can’t stay away from the chemically engineered concoctions of taste-bud glory then shame on you, fatty, but we have surgical enhancements you can save for instead.

In fact, we’ll convince you that there is something wrong with your body and that you can’t lose weight naturally because your body is basically working against you. Actually, here’s a condition that we have now labeled as having no cure (lymphedema) but that can be helped with SURGERY. Let us CONVINCE YOU all about how its natural to have loose-skin after weight loss… and did you hear about our tummy tuck special this month? Education would cut this s**t in half. Spiritual encompassment would decrease it by another 25%. Yet, instead, we have consumers. Consumers that get triggered by “the first element of self-discipline is hunger” but somehow nod their heads agreeably when told that “the body needs pharmaceuticals, or needs surgery, to be able to function normally and look hot again”.

The Western Culture has successfully churned out customers that are concerned about eating too much, about eating too little, about having a piece of cake, about our mom's making commentary regarding our appearance, about attracting a partner using the particular curvature of our butt... becoming convinced that our deeply-seated feelings of inherent lack would be fixed if we purchase a particular diet plan, allow our body to be infiltrated with silicone, obtain the perfect hair highlights that gives off an appearance of a greek goddess... all while reinforcing the need for More.

It never stops. More. The next product is out! You can be EVEN better! This one will work like a charm! More! 32 red-notifications on that selfie? But the last one had 65! More! I reached my goal-weight! Still not quite happy here though, might need a little MORE! Don't like the shape of my body now, I need to alter this!

More! More! More!

It’s a consumption machine - both energetically and monetarily, specifically designed to never end. These external manifestations of acceptance and desire are simple illusions. They only have face-value. That is the reason beyond why they never end. They have no substance. The machine of it is eating you alive, by it is only a head. It has no body. It’s perpetually hungry.

But YOU are a Being of substance. You, in your core, are unable to accept illusions. You will strive toward them, because that is what this world propagates... that’s the system in place, a perpetual hamster wheel that will keep you spinning and spinning and spinning... until you decide to get off.

You have been taught to strive toward consumption. This is not your fault. But until you heal the cries that are reverberating within you, the wounds that cut and never quite healed... you will always want More.

The body is weaponized in Western Culture because it is (1) ridiculously easy to do… if you install people with the belief that They Are Not Enough it’ll drive the cog machine with We The People’s energy, (2) makes a lot of other people money, (3) disconnects us from ourselves and ensures we are perpetual material-density-obsessed consumers.

When we are disconnect from the body in this way, when we view it as something that must be conditioned... when it is seen as a near-evil, or a near-glorified trophy, we become a tool for spiritual hijacking. We are living in the heavy density of the third-dimension... our inner world is beckoning, on a far threshold, waiting to be explored... but our eyes roaming for the next hit of More, for the next reassurance that we are NOT ENOUGH, because it drives the cog machine for achieving MORE, and for the emotional storms that we attempt, time and time again, to rectify through the numbing of More.

I’ll leave you with this:

Become conscious toward all that arises for you, no matter what it is. Fasting was a tool that I used to learn this differentiation: WHAT IS MINE, and WHAT IS WORKING THROUGH ME?

Discipline goes far beyond hunger, but hunger is a primal force that is deeply weaved into our body and working with ABSTAINING is the true power in fasting. Abstaining from around-the-clock consumption. When you abstain, you begin to cultivate a different set of eyes: a vision field away from consumption, and toward your foundation.

Thank you!

Join Secrets of Loose Skin Here:

https://www.yvettebam.com/secrets-of-loose-skinSecrets of Loose Skin is a 6-month program in which I loose a heck of a lot of weight on camera, while teaching you everything I know about bodily regulation, skin, and the preventing of loose-skin. We dive into fascia, lymph, musculature, nutrition, and SO! MUCH! MORE! And no, we don’t use extended fasting…