Fitness Carter: Why one yogi decided to GAIN 40 pounds

If your yoga teacher was fat – if you could see her body jiggle in her spandex – would you still respect her? Would you still take her class?

Trina Hall wanted to find out.

Earlier this year, Hall, 34, who's taught yoga in Dallas for six years, gained 40 pounds. She did it on purpose, as "an experiment in empowering people to love their bodies and not try to fit society's mold," she wrote on her blog ^[1] . "Instead, reality of my latent insecurities came like a football team's kicker being put in as the center. My identity was pummeled."

Hall, who's 5 feet 5 inches, weighed more than 170 pounds at the experiment's peak. She opened up to U.S. News about what she learned and what she hopes to teach others. Her responses have been edited:

What made you decide to embark on this project and intentionally put on weight?

I went about it in the first place because one of my best friends was crying, telling me that she was very upset about where she was in her life. And she said, "I don't want to be known as the fat yoga teacher." I was taken aback by that statement because I don't see her in any way classified as fat. And I wanted to explore why I was so triggered by her comment. And prove to her that it's not about that – it's not about what you look like on the outside. It's more important who you are on the inside. And then I discovered way more than what I had set out to.

[Read: Benefits of Yoga: How Different Types Affect Health ^[2] .]

How did you gain the weight?

I wasn't trying to gain a certain amount of weight – I just let go of any control or dietary restrictions. My style of eating has always been eating for health. And I changed that to eating anything and everything and all amounts of food that I desired or wanted or thought, "Oh, that would be great." I ate a lot more every day – and I ate a lot of Mexican food. Forty pounds just came as a result of that.

Did you feel guilty as you ate foods you had once considered "bad"?

I did feel bad about it, because I had always eaten for health, and your body feels good when you eat that way. You're nourishing your body and giving it fuel. I was turning it into eating for the sake of eating, and I definitely felt like I shouldn't be doing that. You know, it's bad to eat a bar of chocolate every day.

How did you feel as you started to gain weight?

As the pounds were coming on, I was learning that I had fears I wasn't aware of. I was afraid that I would be judged based on what I looked like. And I learned that I was judging myself when I would look in the mirror, and I would create this idea around: No one will love me this way. I always had this idea that, "Oh my gosh, everyone should look more inside because that's what it's all about." But I discovered that I was just as guilty as the next person of being obsessed with my external appearance.