Elements For A Healthier Life Magazine Issue 08 | December 2016 | Page 25

about herself. I would ask her to make lists of what she liked about herself, the ways in which she appreciated her body, what her friends and family say about her, and what she knew that is true about herself from her spiritual learning.

~ After a few sessions Lucy started seeing that her issues were not about weight or about eating, those were just manifestations of all of the deep grief she has felt since childhood. By acknowledging and seeing the pain in her heart she was able to focus on feeling and healing it. She continued to use her spiritual practice as a healing journey and learned that

learning to be loving, which was so important to her, had to include herself too.

~ Lucy’s food choices were very unhealthy. She lived alone and didn’t want to cook for herself. She ate out a lot and would get unhealthy fast food. Her house was full of comfort snacks that were high in sugar, salt and fat. She felt bad about her food choices, but was resistant to give them up. My approach is NOT to try and stop eating the unhealthy foods you’re eating but instead to START eating the healthiest and most life affirming foods, and as you make more and more healthy choices, they will ‘crowd out’ the unhealthy ones. We started with vegetables, the food group that was most missing from Lucy’s diet and the most important one. Lucy started small, having a side salad with all of her meals. She progressed to adding sliced veggies such as peppers and cucumbers as a snack, she learned to make fruit smoothies with a little spinach, increasing the amount gradually and she would try one new vegetable every week. One week she called me because she so excited that she ate cauliflower, a vegetable she thought she hated and actually loved! This was the most transformative step for Lucy, she discovered the wonderful world of vegetables, learned how to prepare them in different ways and started cooking a little, and then a lot.

~ Lucy started seeing taking care of herself as spiritual work. She accepted that she was a divine creation and as such, neglecting herself

would be neglecting a child of God. As her love for herself continued to grow, she saw that she was worth the time and effort to take care of herself.

Lucy and I have become friends and I see her often. She is such a beacon of light in my life and in the lives of her family and friends. She laughs often, she has become a lot more social, and she yes, she has lost weight, but that was just a side effect of living her life with joy and learning to love herself.

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