Who: Tamal Dodge, owner and founder of the Tamal Yoga School
Dodge was born and raised on his family’s yoga ashram in Hawaii and has been teaching and practicing yoga since he was a child. Tamal co-founded The Yoga Collective in Santa Monica and tours the country conducting yoga workshops and training instructors. He also films a yoga DVD series, including “Element: Yoga for Energy & Relaxation.”
Diet: I’m a vegan. I eat a plant-based yoga diet. Raised on an ashram, I’ve never eaten meat, fish or eggs. In my late teens I went completely vegan.
Health resolution: I’m always trying to find more time and to also do less. That’s a big weakness of mine; I tend to do too much. I need to consciously make time to restore myself with quiet time and take mini-vacations from myself. You can’t go hard, hard, hard all the time. That’s why there’s always savasana at the end of every yoga class.
Most surprising thing in your fridge: I eat extremely healthy. You’ll find more green things than non-green things in my fridge. It looks like a garden exploded. I’ll have four to five kinds of sprouts, spinach, kale, spirulina, Sun Warrior raw sprouted brown rice protein powder. My 4-year-old son has green drinks with me.
General thoughts on weight loss and healthy living: Whatever you do, make sure it’s a commitment you can follow. Don’t over-commit. Then, when you’re ready, make a slight upgrade. You’ll see better results that way. In my experience, drastic changes don’t work.
Fitness regimen: I practice yoga every day, but I make sure it’s a balance. If I do a hard vinyasa flow practice one day, I’ll go more restorative the next. I’ll do something every day. I ride my bike, I surf and swim. Whatever I’m doing, I try to do something that I enjoy. That gives me the motivation to stick with it.
Guilty pleasure: I don’t have any. My wife says I’m the extremist. She has the guilty pleasures. For my birthday, I may get a veggie burger or an agave-sweetened soda [while eating] out.