Samantha Skelly - Hungry for happiness : stop emotional eating & start loving yourself

It gives me pleasure to recommend to you Hungry for Happiness, a genuinely useful (and entertaining) book about discovering the weight that feels right for you. Samantha Skelly is the perfect kind of guide for your journey: Shes been there, and she radiates the kind of clarity and compassion you can only get from dealing with weight struggles yourself. Ive been there, too. As readers of my books know, I was an obese child who was taken to numerous medical specialists to find out why I was the fat kid in a family where everybody else was skinny. I was put on various regimens, but nothing really solved the problem until I had an awakening of consciousness when I was 24 years old. I turned my gaze inward, instead of outward toward trying a new diet every few months. What I discovered on my inward journey changed my life profoundly; within a year I lost more than 100 pounds and have kept it off ever since. Samantha went on a similar journey, but from a very different direction. (Hint: I never looked like a bikini model!) No matter what your shape, though, there are words of wisdom for you throughout the book. She discovered, as I did, that handling your weight issues is as much a spiritual practice as it is physical or emotional. It is my hope that Hungry for Happiness will find its way into the hands of millions of people who are suffering from the many difficulties that come from a troubled relationship with food. Wherever you are in this process, I think you will find Samanthas book a source of wisdom and a healing for your heart.
Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., author of The Big Leap and Conscious Luck

A thorough, wise, and loving contribution to the complexities and wonder of our relationship to food, bodies, and self-worth.
Geneen Roth, author of #1 New York Times best-selling Women Food and God and This Messy Magnificent Life

Hungry for Happiness is not just a book, its a movement. A body of work that perfectly explains how to shift inner battles to create the body and life you desire. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever experienced food and body struggles and craves sustainable transformation at a deep level.
John Assaraf, CEO NeuroGym and featured in The Secret

Copyright 2020 by Samantha Skelly

Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com Published in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au Published in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Cover design: Kathleen Lynch

Interior design: Bryn Starr Best

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Skelly, Samantha, author.

Title: Hungry for happiness : stop emotional eating & start loving yourself / Samantha Skelly.

Description: 1st. edition., revised and updated. | Carlsbad, California : Hay House, Inc., 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020026111 | ISBN 9781401957728 (hardback) | ISBN 9781401957742 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Compulsive eating. | Compulsive eaters--United States--Biography.

Classification: LCC RC552.C65 S54 2020 | DDC 616.85/26--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026111

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-5772-8

E-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-5774-2

Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-4019-5773-5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1st edition, September 2020

Printed in the United States of America

* * *

This book is for you:
the brave soul reading these words,
searching for the truth and deeper healing.
Please borrow my belief in you until
you feel it within you.
I see you.

* * *

I knew in my soul the weight on my body was a representation of the physical weight I was holding on to for years. My avoidance to look at the weight through the lens of love and listen to what it needed kept it bonded to my body for years

I knew deep down what the weight was mirroring internally and how it was trying to keep me safe

For years of my life I wore a jacket. That jacket looked like 78 pounds of additional weight. I wore this jacket for comfort, butwhat it really represented was a false sense of security that distanced me from my truth. The pain of my past, the pain of my sons father being in prison, the pain and worry I had for my sons future.

The weigh held me down. I stuffed down the agony of the truth until I was ready to unearth the hurt, love it fiercely, and release it once and for all.

Releasing this weight allowed me to land back on earth. It allowed me to feel deeply into the body I had been at war with for years and remember a felt sense of love for myself that was always there, yet had been muted by the weight.

I started praying for guidance. I said, God, how can I be more responsible and lead in a better way? I felt the spirit whisper to me: Design your body so it lives out your lifes purpose. The message came in so clear.

One day, a good friend asked me, Why dont you address this pain? I thought about the idea and my entire body contracted. If I lie down and cry, I dont think I will ever get up, this pain has been cured deep within me for 20 years.

Trust yourself, he said. And I did; the path began.

My path of releasing my emotional and physical weight was a journey that brought me closer to my soul, my purpose, and my bodythis journey was potent with gifts from the universe that allowed me to experience my truth on a deeper level. This is my deepest wish for you, and for all women.

Hungry for Happiness will destroy and break away the parts of you that are holding you back from your truth and awaken the parts of you that have been forgotten. Samantha will guide you on a journey to find deep peace in the places within yourself youve been resistant to visit.

If you let it, this book will move you to places that feel like home, the places your soul has been begging you to visit. Youll embark on a path back into your body, the infinite seat of love where peace prevails and all else falls away.

Grab a cozy blanket and a cup of tea and devour this piece of work. This is your time.

Lisa Nichols, motivational speaker, CEO, and
New York Times best-selling author

When I was a kid, I went on a 12-day road trip with my family. Yes, 12 days in a car with my disaster-prone family with nothing to do but listen to each other and our meager collection of cassette tapes. By day four, the open Saskatchewan highways remained unchanging for miles and miles. I would fall asleep and wake up hours later to the exact same scene: harvest fields for as far as my eyes could see in both directions, blue skies, and wisps of clouds. The old joke is when your dog runs away, you can watch him go for days in places like that. I believe it.