'I used to weigh 200 pounds'

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Soon after I walked into my very first teaching job, 18 years ago, a student shouted, "You look like a walking garbage can!"  And then, he and a few friends erupted into laughter.  I wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear, but I just stood there, pretending I hadn't heard.  At 5'7" and 190 pounds, I was so embarrassed by how I looked.

It wasn't the first time my weight was the subject of horrific taunts.  At grade school, for example, kids said my rear looked like gelatin.  I learned to cope by laughing along with everyone else.

By college, I had tried every weight-loss gimmick imaginable: pills, fasts, liquid diets.  I would even lay on the vibrating roller machines that promised to jiggle my fat away.   By age 27, I had ballooned to nearly 200 pounds.  I felt so hopeless.   Then my back began to hurt.  "Because of your weight, you have the back of a 50-year-old," my doctor said.  "You have two choices:  Lose weight or have surgery to repair the disk your weight is aggravating."

I was eating myself sick, requiring surgery and who knows what next.  I had to, somehow, lose the weight.  And I had to find something other than another stupid, unhealthy diet. 

I went to the library to see what was really known about weight loss.  I kept going back until, one day, in a physiology book, I read a sentence that would change my thinking about weight loss forever:  Fat oxidizes into carbon dioxide.  If this was true, I reasoned, then taking in more oxygen would enable me to release more carbon dioxide.  And that would help me burn off the fat.

I just had to figure out what breathing exercises to do.  This led to much research at breathing clinics and reading books about breathing.  I even found an ancient Chinese treatise that discussed breathing and weight loss. Within a year, using what I'd read and with the help of breathing coaches, I'd developed a simple deep-breathing routine and, to my amazement, I lost 45 pounds in 6 months without giving up the foods I loved but by merely increasing my oxygen intake.

I had never lost so much weight, or felt so healthy in my life.  I kept doing my exercises until I reached my goal of 125 pounds.  I went from a size 16 to a size 6; today, 13 years later, I've kept the weight off. 

I never imagined it could be so simple, so natural, to lose weight.  Today, I'm trying to pass along my knowledge by teaching people how to lose weight as I did.   All it takes is breathing the air around us.  Now, who can't do that?

---JILL JOHNSON
AS TOLD TO KAREN BRODY

Speed Up Fat Loss Simply By Changing the Way You Breathe
It's natural, simple and free.  Losing weight could be as easy as devoting a few minutes to a daily breathing routine.  While it may sound too good to be true, Jill Johnson's weight loss doesn't surprise Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., author of Conscious Breathing.  "People who need to lose weight don't take in enough oxygen," says Dr. Hendricks.  "Someone with a weight problem also has a breathing problem."  He adds, "I have seen hundreds of people start a daily breathing routine and lose weight."

How It Works
"It takes a lot of oxygen to burn up fat," says Pam Grout, breathing coach and author of Jumpstart Your Metabolism: How to Lose Weight by Changing the Way You Breathe."  And if your body isn't getting enough oxygen, it forms fat cells because the body's trying to conserve the oxygen that's there."

While there have been no medical studies on the relationship between deep breathing and weight loss, there are countless ones on the benefits of exercise in losing weight.   Researchers have found the main reason exercise burns fat is because it increases the amount of oxygen sent to the body's cells.  Likewise, Robert W. Rigg, M.D., says, "The body's normal physiological response to a deep-breathing program will be to increase the metabolism of fat.  There may not be a study yet on the connection between breathing and weight loss because the simple and obvious is often discovered last."

Are You Breathing Correctly?
Most of us take in only about one-fifth of the oxygen our lungs can hold.  Find out if you're getting the air you need. 

To really get the full benefits of oxygen, we should breathe the way a baby does--its belly rises and falls effortlessly with each breath.  Unfortunately, that doesn't  usually happen, says Tom Goode, Ph.D., director of the International Breath Institute in Boulder, Colorado.  As a result of breathing shallowly from tense bellies and not allowing the diaphragm to move freely with each breath, most of us get only about 20-25 percent of the oxygen that our lungs were designed to hold, Dr. Goode explains.

Take Our Test
To find out how well you're breathing, take this quick quiz.

• Do you sigh often?
• Do you tire easily or wake up tired?
• Do you feel breathless fairly often?
• Do you breathe more than 8 times a minute?  (4-7 times per minute is optimal; 8-14 times per minute is the range where most people are.)
• Is your breathing shallow?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, you could benefit from breathing exercises.

How To Do It?
This 4-step technique helped Jill Johnson lose weight.

Once you're getting enough oxygen, your body can begin to burn its fat reserves, says Jill Johnson, who developed Oxycise to help her lose 65 pounds.  Plan to spend 10-15 minutes a day doing the following simple exercise techniques:

   Step 1 - Inhale   
Breathe quickly and through your nostrils.  Really inhale through your nostrils as you pull the corners of your mouth back into a big smile.  Relax your abdomen so you can take in as much air as possible.

    Step 2 - Lift    
After you've taken in all the oxygen you possibly can, pull in and lift your lower abdomen (go ahead; it's okay to use your hands to help.)

  Step 3 - Tilt and Squeeze    
Tilt your pelvic area in and up.  (Your shoulders should be slightly rounded.)   Squeeze and lift your buttocks ever so lightly.

    Step 4 - Exhale       
Pretend you're blowing through a straw.  Exhale with a lot of resistance.   Feel your muscles right under your ribs.  They should be taut.  Keep your head up and shoulders relaxed.  Force all air completely out.