"I didn't diet," says Catherine. "Changing the way I eat changed everything."

Being overweight was the norm in Cat's family. Over time, her own weight increased, peaking at nearly two hundred pounds. "It crept up on me until the day I went shopping for a new pair of jeans. When I realized I'd have to buy a size 20 to accommodate the size of my stomach, that was it. I left the store."

Cat took the money she would have spent on those jeans and bought a gym membership instead—launching what would become a seventy-pound weight loss.

This day of reckoning took place when Cat was twenty-nine. Now thirty-six years old, she's a slender woman who, no matter how many pounds she has lost, has gained as much—or more—in substance.

The secret of Cat's transformation? She exercises in ways that work the large muscles in her body's center, building her core strength. And she has changed her food choices.

Cat's first step was eliminating animal fats, maintaining her intake of the essential fatty acids in fish and other foods. "I quit eating meat and cheese and increased the amount of vegetables I ate."

Cat's continuing research led her to learn that wheat is a common food allergy. "When I quit eating wheat, the last twenty pounds peeled off in a couple of months."

As she became more aware of the foods she was eating, Cat realized she had the opportunity to eat pure food. "I realized that it wasn't just about eating low-fat foods and vegetables. It was also about buying the healthiest food. That's how I started buying food that's grown organically.

Cat gladly budgets for the extra expense of organic food. "I believe the amount of money I'm going to save on health care in the future justifies the few extra dollars I'm spending to buy organic food now."

Cat's interest in organic farming revealed the link between the personal and the political. "When I realized that food grown with pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers could pollute me, I realized that they pollute the world. Those kind of farming practices are bad for everybody, not just me. I believe we need to treat our bodies to the purest food available. Not just for us as individuals but for all the future generations. We need to be as gentle to the earth as we can."

As she educated herself about the environmental impact of conventional agriculture and the ethics of industrial livestock production, Cat anchored her personal food choices in her broader social values. Connecting the personal with the political enabled her to make lasting changes. "Attaching a political or environmental concern to my food choices made it a lot easier for me to stay focused on my commitment to myself."

Cat grins: "You can eat well and save the world at the same time!" More soberly she adds: "Once you're appalled about chickens being de-beaked, you're not going to want to eat chicken that's been raised that way. The changes become permanent."

And the changes reverberate way beyond what's for dinner. "Dropping eight dress sizes made a big difference in my energy level," says Cat. "I've become politically active. My sense of what is important has changed."

"What's important to me is working someplace I feel good about," she continues. Acting on her commitment to protect the Earth, she shifted from a high-paying corporate job to managing a community food co-op featuring locally grown organic produce. She also volunteers her time with several public service and environmental organizations. One of her projects was cleaning up a section of the Swannanoa River: She recruited and led a team of people in hauling away trash, mulching riverside paths, and planting native trees and shrubs.

As Cat has changed her external appearance, she has also worked an internal actualization. Her words define the term "empowerment." She reflects:

I feel really good about who I am. I try to make everything a conscious decision, as opposed to letting other people make my decisions for me and going along with the norm.

It all comes back to knowing that my body is a temple and the world is the temple in which I feed my body.

Cat's example inspires me. She's done something much more profound than "lose weight." She has honed herself to her essence. Her clear and steady gaze, her balanced posture, and her self-assured way of speaking demonstrate that she knows who she is and what she believes, and that she acts in alignment with her values. She demonstrates a quality of being that is eloquent in itself. Her presence calls to mind those often-quoted words of Mahatma Gandhi: "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

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