Eat & Be Happy: Make Peace with Food, Love Your Body, and Find True Happiness

By Teddey Hicks

Eat & Be Happy is an uplifting collection of affirmations and advice to help you finally end your struggle with food and body image. You will return to this book again and again for a daily dose of encouragement and inspiration. Gain clarity about your life, establish self-respect, and form a peaceful relationship with food using this positive, easy-to-read resource.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Dec 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504393386

Teddey Hicks

Teddey Hicks is a Personal Coach who specializes in helping women end their struggle with food and body image. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and uses the principles of the Law of Attraction to help women find self-confidence, joy, and peace with food. Teddey has been on her own journey of healing from disordered eating, low self-esteem, and despair, and uses her personal experience to provide encouragement and insight to others. Teddey lives in Maryland with her husband and 3 incredible children. Learn more about Teddey at teddeyhicks.com.

Book preview

Introduction

Can we make peace with food and learn to love our bodies?

Imagine a scenario where you are happy with the way you look and feel confident, and you eat according to your body’s needs and don’t obsess about food. Does that seem like a distant fantasy? What would need to happen in your heart and mind to get to that place? More importantly, what have you let food and your body distract you from in your life?

It is time to get out of the cycle of body hatred and start living your life. You are too wonderful, incredible, creative, and capable to be wasting your time. You’ve got things to do, goals to accomplish, happiness to create!

We didn’t get here by accident – we’re all in this together, in this world that tells us we aren’t worthy unless we are thin. Having a body that doesn’t fit the societal standard of beauty is the last safe vestige of discrimination; after all, you could fix it if you really wanted to, right?

Rather than resisting the expectations for how we should look and insisting on fair treatment and celebrating the diversity of all bodies, we played the game. Rather than insisting that we are smart and capable and worthy of respect regardless of our appearance, we dieted, we complained, we hated ourselves.

This cycle is ending. Women are tired of wasting their lives hating themselves. Women are ready for real fulfillment and real success and real respect. The body positivity movement is gaining momentum and the tide is turning.

What about you, though? Are you ready for change? Are you ready to reclaim your self-confidence and live your best life? Do you have dreams and desires that have nothing to do with your jean size?

Real change comes from a mindset shift, and that shift is made possible by deliberately changing your thoughts and energy. This book is a guide for daily encouragement, inspiration, and understanding. Use these stories and affirmations to start your journey, and help change the way you think about yourself, your body, and your life.

When you have self-acceptance, you have everything.

What Happened to Me

I am so incredibly happy. My life is exactly the way I want it. I live each day with enormous gratitude for all the exciting serendipitous events that bring what I want into my life. Everything feels clear and easy and fun. I am blessed in a million different ways and love being alive!

But as you’ve probably guessed, my life wasn’t always so amazing.

I used to be depressed and broke. My body and my soul were hurting. I had no purpose and each day was a struggle.

All my life, I’ve felt insecure, uncertain, and confused. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, and everything felt incredibly difficult and overwhelming. I felt like I had to work hard and struggle to be successful, and never made any progress. I had no real vision for my life, and felt completely lost. The things I wanted to do seemed too hard, and the things that were easy left me feeling unfulfilled.

There were a series of events in my younger years that undermined my confidence. My family life was a bit tumultuous, with divorce, substance abuse, and difficult step-parents. My family had a pattern of treating superficial problems and leaving the real ones untouched, so we all thought and talked a lot about being overweight and dieting -- that’s how we distracted ourselves from the big stuff.

I grew up feeling insecure and very much like I didn’t fit in. I had a weird family, and I am left-handed, and my name is Teddey (spelled with an E-Y, thank you very much). I always had this strong feeling of being different -- sometimes in a good way, but most of the time in a not-quite-sure-if-I-have-any-friends type of way.

I didn’t do what I really wanted to do, because it was too scary. So I played it safe, and did things that were easy. I went to work for my parents, never feeling confident enough for job interviews. Consequently my career ended up being really unsatisfying and not at all in line with what I was really interested in.

I desperately sought meaning from my marriage and growing a family, but it wasn’t working. Financial success brought me little comfort, and I quickly blew through any extra money trying to find some semblance of joy in my life.

I struggled for years in a miserable marriage, unhealthy body, and restless mind. As a young woman, I always had passions and dreams, but I grew up and let my insecurities and past traumas derail me. I was barely able to make it through each day.

In fact, sometimes I didn’t make it through the day. Sometimes my back hurt so badly that I had to stay in bed, and beg my mother to come take care of my children. I remember crawling around on the