Dana Falsetti, aka nolatrees, promotes body-positive yoga to her thousands of Instagram and Facebook followers.
Falsetti has battled with her weight since she was 10 and felt trapped in her destructive binge-eating cycle.
Falsetti, from New Hope, Pennsylvania, told BuzzFeed News: "I was always very secretive, I wouldn’t binge-eat in front of people. If my parents were home I’d come down in the middle of the night and eat everything."
Often Falsetti would lose the weight she put on, only to gain it back again.
In her junior year of college, she decided to try out a yoga class and absolutely hated it: "It was a lot harder than I anticipated it to be and I brought all my insecurities with me to class. It was challenging."
Falsetti writes on her website:
I walked in having the largest body in the room on top of being the beginner, and yoga was hard. I couldn't hold down dog for 5 breaths, my shoulders were on fire, and all the while other people in the room were popping up into optional headstands like it was no big deal.
But she persevered, kept showing up to class, and eventually turned her new yoga passion into a career by teaching yoga both online and through workshops.
According to Falsetti, yoga isn't about losing weight, it's about discipline and dedication: "Sometimes I just get on my mat and do a couple of sun salutations or just roll my spine round and sit in pigeon for five minutes. It doesn’t always look like an aggressive physical practice but the repetition of doing something for yourself is the best thing, it's a form of self-care."
Falsetti documents her yoga on Instagram to "track progress and to see my alignment and how my shape has changed over time".
However, by publicly showing her yoga she has opened herself up to negative criticism. She's been fat-shamed and accused of "promoting obesity".
