Tired of dieting? Going from one diet to another? Maybe you lose a few pounds, then end up putting it back on? Do you really feel this is healthy and helping you? Are you ready to be healed from Food Addiction? Our guests this morning, authors Lisa Natoli and Mariella School have written the book, “It Totally Matters: Healing Food Addiction with a course in Miracles” and are going to share something they and show you a program entailing 40 days of passion and purpose.
 

Retracing my healing, remembering the seductive nature of this addiction, the words that come to me are “it was not easy.” Yet I see now how every step into myself was heavily supported by the universe, and in that sense, miraculous. My “way” was to take tiny little steps, learning to listen to myself, to trust, and to abandon my fear. Needless to say, it took me a while.

I feel very relieved now to be in a space of complete openness ... to feel so relaxed about myself and to know my life is really blessed. Life now is full of joy, and I do all the fun things that I want to!

I am no longer able to stay in negative situations or emotions for very long at all.

It is such a privilege to share this transformation with you because I know if I can be healed of food addiction, anybody can!

The key is that you are free. I can look at you in a light, one that you have perhaps forgotten, that will bring you great joy. It is my honor to help you to see yourself anew, to remember who you really are.

All you need is the commitment to get to know yourself, and to hold yourself like I did.

I have so much joy now just being myself because I dropped the compulsion to be perfect. I feel like all the separate parts in me are showing up, presenting themselves to me, unafraid to be “seen” now. In that, I am healed.

I can see now that in my life I always was surrounded with beautiful and helpful people and that the only thing that was missing was ME. It was super exciting to develop a relationship with that girl... with me!

Over the course of my healing, I turned from an old looking 20-year old to a young looking 40-year old. I found out that I am very playful and that I have a great ability to have fun and to enjoy little things. I literally received myself and I learned to be consistent in this; to open to my own embrace. I learned to stay connected with my own flow. I learned a willingness to support myself in everything.

That blessed time came for me in which I knew I would never again would fall back into the food addiction anymore. I had become completely freed from the obsession that hunted and haunted me for such a big part of my life. It felt almost “suddenly”! I had come to recognize myself in a new light. Yet, in reviewing and remembering, the story seems to have been one of challenge, determination, and victory – culminating in a resurrection of sorts.

It is hard to imagine it now. Yet here, following, I share a short summary of it with you.

Basically I abandoned myself from a very young age.

I felt like I was not “right” - the way I was - and that I needed to be different. I started to observe other people to see what was required from me and how I should behave and “be”. This became an all consuming habit.

I was very hard on myself and I remember that I criticized even the way I peeled peanuts when I was 7 years old. I felt very insecure. At school, I imitated and copied the other children. It was almost like I was just an observer. Still I was also a very playful child, and that literally saved me.

When I was at home I disappeared into beautiful secret worlds. In there, I was a fairy or a circus acrobat, and I was happy and free.

Often, too, I was found drawing and painting. Art made me very happy. Everything was good in my own made up world. I also intensely enjoyed family gatherings and the change of seasons. I remember embracing the cold air, walking to school, taking my time. And I remember enjoying quiet moments in the school yards before the other kids arrived.

I loved animals and nature. I loved just running around and climbing trees. I felt so happy as a child, just “being”. But in relationship with other people – as with my classmates - I felt like I was nothing.

It was like I could not really be, in any real sense, happy with myself. I was completely insecure about “me”; but in my own world I was queen of the castle.

I started to have friendships with younger children who adored my world. And I lost touch with me in the world. And then, when I turned 12, a particularly difficult time came.

I did not want to grow up, and I felt especially insecure about my changing body. At school, the boys teased me and I felt so ugly and ashamed with myself and my looks. I was very shy. I felt not wanted.

Food became the answer to my run from myself, and the suppression of any natural impulse. I needed it to numb my feelings of hopelessness and my intense fear of rejection. I felt a constant shame about myself and I could not stand the intensity of my loneliness.

There were times where I withheld treats from myself, and I would collect all the candy that I received in a big jar. Then I would fantasize about giving a party and sharing it with my school mates.

But suddenly I ate the whole jar of candy in one single serving. I was shocked and felt sick. I decided I was not to be trusted at any time.

I never realized that I shared my life with others. Even though I had a sister and both parents living with me, I mostly felt completely isolated. I never talked about my problems with food and life in general or my depression and my fears.

Through the years I had one friend that served as my role model and my savior. I copied her, and yet I tried to avoid her most of the time, to be alone in my food obsession.

Physically, when my teens came, I developed very quickly into a woman. I felt so much shame about it, and retreated more. Food helped me through my day.

I felt fat all the time and I tried to diet. It mostly did not work. I turned 18 and I moved out from my parents’ house to a different city to study. Again I developed one friendship. But she was away during the weekends to be with her boyfriend, and I felt completely alone in the big student complex where I lived.

I started to have uncontrollable binges. I would literally eat everything I had, including food of my flat mates and the old bread that was meant for a pet rabbit. I was often so sick that I could not eat for three or four days.

One day my friend mentioned something about my “big cheeks”, and I was completely shattered. I made a vow to eat as little as possible and to lose weight. And finally it worked.

I hardly had to eat anymore. And I was happy. This was my new purpose.

I decided to continue that way so that when I needed to eat a lot it would be okay. And I would not get fat. Continuing this way, I lost weight, and lots of it. I could not stop it anymore. I wanted to see all of my ribs, and I was so grateful not to have to face any fat anymore. From now on I was free from it. I did not need food anymore like other people. I felt purified and strong.

But the victory soon changed into fear when I recognized that I could not really eat any more. I was too afraid. Whenever I ate, I now had to walk or cycle long distances to make sure I would not get fat. My teeth got really bad, I was constantly cold, and I could not sleep very much anymore.

But still I felt content that I no longer had to get fat, and the little food that I still could eat meant the world to me. I felt really stuck, because I felt the contradiction all the time. I did not want to deal with a body anymore. It felt great to me to be so light and unattached. But at the same time I was always hungry and restless and depressed.

I ended up in a clinic to work on myself and to gain weight. I kept on struggling because I lived simply to be liked and loved by my psychiatrist, and I had no idea how to have a life of my own.

As soon as I left the clinic I lost all the weight that I gained there and I ended up all alone in a little apartment in a big city. I was 21 years old. I was weak and had developed a liver disease. I knew that I was killing myself, and that I had to make a commitment to life.

So I did. And after a year of isolation I moved to another city, and I started a performing arts school. But with that I started to lose my control over food again. It brought me straight back into the feelings of despair and loneliness that I experienced before I started my rigorous diet. I recognized that I had no control over food. I started to gain weight.

This brought me into a new aspect of my disease: purging. It was very addictive. At first I was so excited about it. I could get rid of the food, and I did not have to get fat! What a solution! But soon it became a nightmare. I would eat and throw up several times a day. It was impossible to break the cycle. The need to throw up became overwhelming. Afterwards my face would swell up, my throat would hurt, and I would feel completely weak. I would be dizzy and tremble, but I could not stop it. I kept it completely secret.

At this stage I asked for help again.

Finally I met people that had the same problems. I connected with God, and for the first time in my life, I did not feel alone. I found others that struggled with food. I felt, at last, that I could stop blaming myself for my behavior.

Somehow I received the strength to stop purging. It made me gain weight very quickly and in three months I gained 70 pounds. It was shocking. I felt like a complete failure.

It took me another ten years to find out that this did not change my food addiction. I still felt fat, while simultaneously fighting against the desire to purge, as well as to be “clean” of the addiction. I could not touch the real me, the one that I had rejected so early in life.

During that time I went to a seminar with a woman who was running a clinic for people with anorexia in Canada. That was a revelation. Basically she showed me that all I needed to do was to give myself all the space I needed to be nourished, to respect myself, and to receive myself like a baby, in a whole new way. I needed to focus on me and my life.

Oh, did that seem impossible! But the seed was planted, although it needed a moment to sink in.

I still was very hard on myself and I tried so hard to fit in, “to give” what was asked from me, and to be truly helpful. I tried to be a “good girl”, and to be an inspiration.

But I wasn't. I could not get myself out of the cycle of obsession with food. I was terrified to be myself. And I could not let myself be the most important thing in my life. It was completely alien not to focus on others anymore. I had to fall yet even more deeply. Into myself. I felt like a complete fool. Here I was all spiritual and gifted with so many tools to be happy. I had a great boyfriend, a nice apartment in Amsterdam, friends.

Yet I was so hungry inside, still just looking for an answer outside and a way to reject myself... a way to be someone else, and simultaneously, a new me.

Then I found A Course in Miracles. It totally shocked me. What was that!? It really touched me to the bone. I decided to learn more about it. I moved to the United States to attend a school that completely dedicated itself to this course.

It blew me away. I thought that I could just burn my bridges and leave myself behind. This was not true. This was not what forgiveness was and I did not see it.

So I still suffered a lot from lack of self-acceptance. I needed to understand the magic words, “Love myself, know myself, communicate with myself.” But I had no idea how to do this.

It was a miracle that gave me my life back, honestly. I don't know how it started. It just appeared. Like a new era. Slowly, it just happened. I started a relationship with myself.

It was painful in the beginning. But I felt so happy with every little thing that I did for myself, that I realized that this was the key. It wasn’t the focus on food or health or doing it right. It wasn’t spiritual exercises, but simply the practice of learning to listen to myself.

Little steps. Little changes.

And soon the obsession with food fell away and I did not even think about it anymore. My body transformed into a whole new, beautiful shape. It all happened just as a by-product of my willingness to change my mind and to trust myself again. I found the ways to love myself and to learn to speak a new language with myself. The food continued to take care of itself. I became my own counselor, my own source of strength. I found out that there is no god outside of me, no relationship outside myself, nothing outside myself at all.

And that is where Lisa showed up in my life again; right there in the beginning of this new change. She helped me enormously to develop a friendship based on freedom, mutual respect and fun. She never saved me. She trusted my own saviorship. And she was there for me. I did not have to compete with her, or to make her feel good. I could be myself from the very start.

I adored her and it was kind of like summer even in the midst of winter, because there she was, all available and laughing and light-hearted. I completely flourished in that light. I felt that I found my purpose. I was in the beginning of my life and it was not graceful or elegant, but it was OK! Often it felt very uncomfortable and I felt lost. Yet somehow I had the willingness to get in there where I had never wanted to go before. I discovered right where there existed the true instruction for my personal journey.

There was no way around it, nor a more “civil” way to learn this.

At that point Lisa started to ask me about my healing with my food addiction and I shared it with her. She wanted a way to be reminded in those moments of forgetting. So we started to tape the story of healing, what I did, and how it happened. Lisa asked a lot of questions which I answered, and which filled a whole notebook. We decided to put the notes into a 40-day Program to help others.


In the 40-Day Program, Lisa shares the direct healing experiences she had with the exercises contained in each of the 40 topics. She wrote 40 blog articles based on conversations we had with each other. These articles reveal a simple way out of food addiction. She also shares the beauty, principles and practical ideas of A Course in Miracles.

This is really the source of my realization and subsequent healing: that I cannot be anything else than blessed and free in my Innocence.

This information is the 40-Day Program to heal food addiction.

I am so grateful for you showing up in my life, that you may receive your healing, as well... that you may recognize your Innocence, Beauty, and inner Joy.

It is all I ever wanted. I feel continuous healing from this 40-day course and I am with you in it. I would like this 40-day Program to be the support for you that you always wanted, and it is my desire as well to be available for you when you need more guidance, or just a place to laugh or cry or to be you.

For I know you as the amazing Light that you are. And I would like to celebrate it with you always.
 

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