Healing Emotional Eating Without Shame

If food has become comfort, control, distraction, or exhaustion for you, this Lent is not about willpower or shame - it’s about healing what your body and heart have been carrying.

| A Lenten Journey with St. Hildegard

You don’t have a willpower problem. You have an appetite that’s been asked to do too much.

This work is about healing emotional eating without shame, restriction, or food obsession, using the wisdom of Hildegard of Bingen, modern functional health science, and a deeply Catholic understanding of the human person.

We will not fight hunger. We will learn to listen to it. We will recognize that appetite is not a flaw but information. And when appetite is understood, order returns. When order returns, peace follows.

When eating is about more than food, control will never be the answer. Emotional eating is not a failure of discipline but a sign of fatigue in the body, the nervous system, and the soul. Drawing from Hildegard’s vision of viriditas (the greening power of life - vitality) and modern research on stress, appetite, and regulation, this work restores harmony at the table not through rules, but through truth. No diets. No moralizing food. No shame disguised as “discipline.” Just clarity, warmth, and right order so eating becomes nourishment again, not anesthesia.

This Lent is for you if:

• You’re tired of swinging between control and exhaustion

• You eat “well” but don’t feel at peace with food

• You snack when stressed, lonely, overwhelmed, or depleted

• You fast every Lent… but it never really heals anything

• You feel disconnected from your body

• You want healing without shame, pressure, or extremes

• You want something spiritual, embodied, and gentle

You are not broken. Your body has been trying to protect you.

Battle for vitality

We’ll dive into the real battle between virtue and vice, renewal and decay, divine order and chaos.

• Eucharistic Adoration - You will be invited to practice weekly Holy Hour an enter into the silence of the Suffering Servant, Jesus

• Naming the pattern - You will recognize what emotional eating really is, how it connects to wounds (unforgiveness, grief, self‑hatred, lack of trust)

• Triggers, trauma, and “false comfort” - You will see how pain, stress, and isolation drive the “binge- restrict” or “pain–binge–restrict” loop.

• Fasting rightly - You will dive deeper into the Catholic teaching on fasting and abstinence, and why those with disordered eating history may need alternative Lenten practices (prayer, almsgiving, acts of love) instead of food restriction.

• Working with emotions in Christ - You will be encouraged to bring anger, grief, loneliness, and shame to Jesus instead of to food; emotional regulation skills framed as cooperation with grace

• Confession, forgiveness, and freedom - You will understand how unforgiveness (of self and others) fuels emotional eating and self‑loathing; Confession and reconciliation as part of healing.

If you suffer from a debilitating chronic disease, contact me to see if and what kind of fast is good for you.

What you get:

• Three LIVE online sessions with topic introduction, Q and A and PRAYER on Tuesdays at 4pm PST - 5:30pm PST (7 - 8:30 pm EST)(sessions will be recorded):

  • Feb. 17: Hunger, Cravings and Glucose Regulation in Healing of the Whole Person - Understand Your Body’s Signals - Starting 5 Day Sugar Detox leading to Hildegard’s Fast (fasting is discerned individually)

  • March 3: Emotional Regulation and Attachment - Understand the Roots of Emotional Eating, Releasing the Burdens of Past Experiences

  • March 17: Virtue of Prudence, Benedictine principle of Order leading to Peace - St. Hildegard’s Approach to Healing with Bitters

• 5 Daily emails for Sugar Detox and then Weekly email on Monday

• What’sApp Community group for daily support, prayer intentions, Q and A

• Instant access to 18 hours of video teachings and instructions

  • Discover Hildegard course - 4 videos

  • Hildegard’s Fast course - 2 videos

  • Heart Healing - Emotional and Mental Healing - 2 videos

  • Neuroscience to the Rescue of Your Soul - 1 video

  • Fasting Theology and Practice in the Church video - 1 video

  • Lectio Divina course - 4 videos

  • Liturgy of the Hours course - 1 video

• Listen and pray with audio-visual meditations with Hildegard’s vision on Trinity and vision on Crucifixion and the Church - Eucharistic Healing from her first visionary book Scivias - Know the Ways

• Use Metanoia booklet as an invitation to prayer and meditation for the mindset shift for the Kingdom and eternal life with Mind to Body and Body to Mind practices for the healing and renewal of your mind, brain and nervous system. Releasing emotional build up and effects of trauma, grief, loss, sinful addictions will follow your honest self-examination. Applying ancient wisdom of the Desert Fathers will lead to the desert where the lack turns into fruitiful relationship with the Lord.

• Use Stations of the Cross (first time in English) prayed daily by Dr. Hertzka, medical doctor who translated all Hildegard’s works, re-discovered, and brought Hildegard’s lifestyle and remedies with success into his practice, training many other doctors and practitioners in 20th century

• Apply Recipes from 50 pages digital booklet with fasting rules, recipes and remedies

• Adapt Fasting Journal to your daily needs tracking your progress

• Use Lectio Divina Journal for daily Scripture meditation that leads to encounters with the Living Word of God

• Try praying Seven Sorrows and Joys of St. Joseph - Use as Lectio Divina for Novena before St. Joseph’s fest on March 19

Instructor: Iwona Bednarz-Major

Guided by a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner and a certified Specialist in St. Hildegard’s Sciences, this journey integrates medieval wisdom, modern science, and Catholic spirituality without fear or superstition.

In June 2025 I passed an exam in St. Hildegard’s von Bingen Studium. Academic Theological Course and became “Third Degree Specialist in the St. Hildegard’s Sciences” issued by the Papal Faculty of Theology in Wroclaw and St. Hildegard Center Dr. Alfreda Walkowska. ]

Value and price:

Value: $499

Price: $159 per person (15% off for SOTH, FLOW, Hildegard Workshop alumni; 25% off for former registered Hildegard Fast participants)

THIS IS EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION ONLY AND IT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE, DIAGNOSIS, TREATMENT, OR PREVENTION, OR FOR A PROFESSIONAL THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP. ALWAYS SEEK PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE IF YOU WANT TO EMBARK ON A FAST.