EFT for Weight Loss Chapter 6
Eliminating Resistance
In any new project there are several ways in which we can interfere with our own progress. By becoming familiar with these ways, you can recognize them when they appear and then use EFT tapping to remove them.
By far the easiest way to reach a goal is with the cooperation of your subconscious mind. If there is agreement or congruence between what your conscious mind wants and what your subconscious mind has been programmed to accept as possible, everything is likely to flow smoothly toward the goal. But if there’s disagreement or incongruence, the conscious mind doesn’t have a chance. In that situation, the subconscious mind always wins. Somehow circumstances will conspire to prevent you from reaching your goal, and the conscious mind will probably never understand what happened or why. It will simply forget about the project or attribute your failure to bad luck or circumstances. It won’t know that you yourself went out of your way to prevent your own success. If you have ever made a New Year’s resolution regarding your weight or physical fitness, you understand this syndrome all too well. Your conscious mind really wants to get your body into shape, and you may even start your new diet and exercise program with enthusiasm. But a week later, you’re back on the sofa watching TV and eating potato chips.
Resistance to improving your life can show up in several forms. We have already discussed Psychological Reversal and tail-enders, both of which tend to operate behind the scenes and can be difficult to see. In this chapter, we’ll look at more obvious, conscious forms of resistance and some easy ways to address them.
EFT can be effective even if you don’t believe it will work and even if part of you doesn’t want it to. Irene Mitchell, who learned EFT while recovering from a car accident, discovered this two years ago. She explains:
In March, my daughter invited me to go on a cruise with her. She said that I had to lose at least ten pounds, though, as one gains a lot of weight on a week-long cruise. I had never practiced EFT for weight loss before, but I decided to try it. I kept at it and tapped every time I wanted to eat things I shouldn’t. Sometimes I had to tap for the desire to tap.
Even though I don’t want to tap about this weight problem because I really want to eat whatever I want…
After two months of tapping all the time and following a balanced diet, I dropped twenty-five pounds!! I have never had such a dramatic weight loss, ever!! Aside from the weight loss, there were unexpected benefits. Naturally, I could get around better. I had less pain in my injured leg (which makes sense when you are lugging around less weight) and navigating in the shower was a lot easier. The best, though, was the fact that my sugar readings went so low that I had to go from twenty-five units of insulin each night to only five! My doctor is thrilled! So am I!
Go to the health section of any major book store and you will find several books pointing the finger at sugar as the villain behind many of our physical ailments. Like tobacco and alcohol, sugar saps away our mental and physical functioning in insidious ways. Also like tobacco and alcohol, sugar can be an addictive substance. This contributes, of course, to a downward spiral wherein we crave more and more of that which is soaking up our vitality.
Helen Powell has faced a lifetime of sugar consumption and addiction, and she recently used tapping to clear herself of the problem. Please note the emphatic way in which she applied the process one evening. She says, “I said it vehemently, I yelled it out, I listened to every word, I felt my resistance…” This approach is often effective for stubborn issues. Here is Helen’s story.
Emphatic Tapping for a Sugar Addiction
by Helen Powell
I too have a story to add to the countless amazing stories that abound in the world of EFT. Last November I realized I simply had to give up the huge quantities of chocolate and ice cream that I was eating several times a week and sometimes daily. About ten years ago I began to notice a decline in my mental functioning and eyesight. I’ve read enough to know that it could be the sugar that was addling my mind but I just felt powerless before these strong cravings. Since then I began to experience more and more confusion, high levels of stress, difficulty in making decisions, mental fatigue, and more fears. Thank goodness, I don’t have diabetes.
I took my first tapping course about four years ago. Since then I have used EFT with my clients and know how marvelously effective it can be. Even so, I wondered if tapping on this problem would really help me. The bottom line in truth was that I didn’t want to tap away my fix. However, last summer and fall I did something so bizarre that I got scared. In October I did two brief tappings on “I eat too much sugar” but nothing happened, probably because my heart was not really in it. But maybe even that minimal tapping helped prepare the way because one November night, in desperation, I faced my strong reluctance to give up this bad behavior.
I started with the Karate Chop point, tapping on: I don’t want to stop eating all the ice cream and chocolate I eat, I just don’t want to give it up, and I accept and forgive myself anyway.
I said it vehemently, I yelled it out, I listened to every word, I felt my resistance and accepted that this is just the way it is for now. I became fully engaged in the process. I did several rounds without bothering to measure my intensity on the 0-to-10 scale and then went to bed.
That was five months ago. Since that night, I have refused all desserts. What is interesting to me is when I look at all those “goodies” (are they really “good”?) something in me just holds back and refuses even though I can almost taste them. I have never felt deprived, not even for a moment. I’ve been to a couple of birthday parties where I surprisingly ate a piece of birthday cake without thinking, but I haven’t accepted any other dessert without thinking as I was wont to do in the past. Maybe it was okay for me to do that because cake has never been my sweet of choice. I never felt guilty or frightened by these two isolated acts.
In January, I tested myself after looking longingly at a small package of jelly beans (no chocolate). I did buy it, and they did taste good, but I didn’t really enjoy them. I don’t consider any of those events lapses. And I am very happy to say I no longer feel as if I am losing my mind. The persistent haze that clouded my eyesight has disappeared as well. I feel much more confident and again really positive about myself and my future. Let me also add that I am seventy-seven years old looking back at a lifetime of chocolate and ice cream abuse.
Here’s a useful perspective by Angela Treat Lyon which points to emotional aspects that could underlie the stubbornness of some weight issues.
A Unique Perspective on Weight Loss
by Angela Treat Lyon
I’ve been working with an acupuncturist who uses Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs to help me drain the edema I have experienced since I was a young teenager. For years I had simply thought, “I’m fat. I’m overweight.”
I had tried every last thing on the planet to resolve this weight imbalance and was at my last wit’s end. I had dropped about thirty pounds already with what I thought was better eating and exercise. I had used EFT to overcome a chocolate/white sugar addiction—which worked like a dream the very first time, and I haven’t even wanted chocolate since—and this is from someone who was practically weaned on chocolate. No more candy. What a relief!
Still, I needed to drop another twenty pounds before feeling close to my “natural” weight, where I’d feel light and strong and have energy without strain on my heart or muscles. I’d been carrying around the extra weight for so long that I had to buy bigger shoes, and I had been wearing men’s extra-large shirts just to cover my large bottom. This all even after the great strides I had made since learning about EFT!
The acupuncturist told me that some of what I had been doing only exacerbated the problem. She said I was to avoid cold foods (no yogurt? no protein shakes?) because their damp condition made my whole body swell up. I love cold food. I was bummed. And she told me that my heart was weakened and very tired and that I needed to tone down my workouts to reduce my heart rate. I like to work out hard.
Feels good. I was bummed again. And scared—my heart is weak? And tired?
I did a mini-rebellion and took the herbs she prescribed—but I ate the cold things anyway. And worked out just as hard.
And felt more tired, and more groggy, and more mentally inept and foggy. After a few days of this, I had to really ask myself, What am I doing? I’m paying to see her, yet I’m not doing what she recommends.
So I asked myself why I would rebel against someone to whom I had gone for help. It was like saying, “No, no, don’t help me down the ladder when my house is burning!” Duh!
So I tapped on:
Even though I hate it that she programmed me to think of my heart as weak and tired, I deeply and completely accept myself.
Even though I hate it that I have to cook more…
Even though I hate it that I can’t eat my favorite foods and I hate it that someone is telling me what to do…
Even though she programmed me…
Even though it’s all her fault…
Even though I think I have to cook more and it takes too much time…
Even though I have to eat food I really don’t want… Even though I have to do what she says…
…I deeply and completely love and accept myself, and I forgive myself and anyone else for my having gotten here in the first place.
I looked deeper. Thinking that my more-than-forty -year-old problem was her fault was absurd to the extreme— she wasn’t even born when it started! I felt as if no matter what I did, it was wrong: that I broke out or got sleepy or became anxious or had some kind of unpleasant symptom no matter what I ate, and I’d rather not eat than go through all this. I’d rather die than hassle all this. I wondered—was I psychologically reversed to living?
So I tapped:
Even though it’s not my fault…
Even though I want to blame someone else—anyone else—for my problems…
Even though I’d rather die than have to go through all this…
Even though I want to die, I don’t want to be here…
Even though I’ll never get it right…
Even though this is too much trouble… Even though all food is bad for me…
Even though I can’t eat anything or have any satisfaction…
…I deeply and completely love and accept myself.
I can’t have any satisfaction? Whew! That hit deep. I looked at how I had made a career out of being creative and resourceful, and how I flew from one project to the next without giving myself room for congratulations or celebrating what I had just accomplished.
Why on earth not?
So I tapped on:
Even though I am never satisfied…
Even though I have no real idea what that would feel like…
Even though I don’t give myself the credit I deserve…
…I deeply and completely love and accept myself and everything I do or accomplish, and I choose to stop and congratulate myself and celebrate from now on, even if it’s for only a moment, and I’ll grow it more and more each time, because I deserve it.
I have been tapping on all those thing for four or five days.
Today I noticed a pronounced difference in my body. My pants are slipping off my hips (!!!) and I feel not just slimmer but more compact somehow. I can see it in the mirror, too.
I am now even more firmly convinced that it’s not only food that goes in and out of our bodies, and it’s not only what kind of or how much exercise we get. We also need to manage the energy in our body-mind system.
When all else fails, persistence with EFT is usually the answer. Virginia Sabedra and her sister created a personal “EFT marathon” for weight loss while driving for an hour and a half in a car. The tapping led them from tail-ender to tail-ender on a journey that revealed many “behind the scenes” issues. Being overweight is rarely the problem in and of itself. Rather, it is often a symptom of other issues, many of them hidden. Personal EFT marathons may be a great way to bring them out.
Personal EFT Marathon
by Virginia Sabedra
Thought I’d share an experience I had a few weeks ago with EFT and my sister. My sister came to town to visit me. Since I had planned on taking a “fun” class in Oakland (which is ninety-eight miles from Sacramento, where I live), I asked my sister if she’d like to take the class as well. She jumped at the chance and on Saturday morning, we got up early, got in the car, and headed for Oakland.
As soon as we were on the freeway, I told my sister that I was concerned about some weight I was gaining and asked if she would like to work on this with me. She said she’d love to because this is an area she would like to work on as well.
She was a little familiar with EFT from my visit to her home a year ago. When I arrived at her house back then, she couldn’t move her arm without pain. The first thing I asked her was, “What is it that you are shouldering?”
She laughed and then I guided her through EFT for about twenty minutes as her pain and stiffness melted away.
Anyway, back to the car and driving to Oakland. The drive is about one and a half hours long. We began EFT with the first thought about weight that popped into our minds, then that brought up another and another. Thoughts, beliefs, feeling, and ideas about weight and food abounded.
This belief that food is bad…
This belief that all I have to do is walk past a bakery and I gain weight…
This belief that the older we get the wider we get… This fear that I’ll never be slim and trim…
Tail-ender after tail-ender. We discovered that even the tail-enders have tail-enders.
After ninety minutes of tapping, laughter, sadness, surprises, and revelations, we arrived in Oakland and headed for our class. We wondered what the people in other cars passing us by had thought about us, two women in a car tapping their faces and upper bodies while mouthing words. We concluded that pretty soon tapping in cars will be a familiar sight. By the way, I was driving very carefully.
After our most excellent class we headed for San Francisco to have dinner. Then we headed home for another hour and a half of EFT and weight. You will not believe the “stuff” that came up with us both working on the same issue. When one of us came up with a super-meaningful tail-ender, we’d encourage one another with “Ahhh, that’s a good one,” or “Oooooh, that hits home for me,” and so on as we just continued on and on, tapping, releasing and releasing and tapping, both of us throwing things into the pot, all the gunk about weight, food, women, traditions, holding on, getting your money’s worth, etc. It was an amazing, eye-opening, revelation-inducing process about all the stuff we had stuffed ourselves with, as well as all the stuff that we allowed to be stuffed into us.
The next day, both my sister and I commented on how our San Francisco dinner had been different somehow. We thoroughly enjoyed our food, yet it was different. There was a freedom or lack of any thought about fat, fear, calories, and so on. Yet, we were observant of the food. It had a presence to it.
We loved the food and how it was prepared. We ate differently in mind and body. I can’t explain it well except to say that a shift of some sort had taken place.
The next day my sister’s visit ended and she left. About four days later, I called my sister and asked if she had noticed anything about going to the bathroom. She stated that now that I had mentioned it, yes. She hasn’t been constipated. I reported the same thing. Since our marathon, I have been regular. I mean nice and regular. I had always had a problem with this. My sister has always had a problem also.
Yet, we both reported a cessation of constipation since our EFT marathon. Was it weight-related? In this case, I’d say so.
My sister and I are planning a second marathon on the same subject to see what else comes up and what results we will get, or where it will lead. We realize we have years upon years, and generations upon generations, of worn out, old, outdated beliefs, ideas, feelings, and notions to release.
I would say that during our marathon, we released months, perhaps years, worth of work on the subject of falseness, illusions, and negativity around weight and food, and other related subjects that automatically came up. In fact, I’m still processing to this day. I have stopped gaining weight. Constipation-wise, I am “nice and easy” now. I spontaneously bless the food I eat. I ask and expect my body to process the food I eat and to let go of all that I don’t need in a healthy way, and I am learning to appreciate myself in many ways.
I know that I am not “done” yet with my work. And, this is okay because as we work we continue to seek, explore, savor, experience, learn, appreciate, heal, and live. This experience gave me the idea to conduct EFT marathons on various subjects. I conducted an EFT marathon on the subject of money in my office with a small group and it went very well. The collective consciousness of two or more people working and tapping on the same problem or subject has proven to be powerful.
