The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence (11 page)
Read The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence Online
Authors: Jessica Ortner
Tags: #Health & Fitness, #Diet & Nutrition, #General, #Women's Health
As we began tapping on the stress she was feeling because of her new boss, she began to see that grabbing a snack had become her way of taking a break. “I have such a hard time taking care of myself,” she shared. “I try to be everything for everyone. I want to be a good mom. I want to be a successful career woman. I want to take care of my husband. There just isn’t time for me. This new boss takes that pressure to a whole new level and it feels unbearable.”
We also tapped on events that triggered her. We began tapping while she imitated all the things her boss said that made her panic. We continued tapping on those words until she could say them without feeling the familiar panic in her stomach. We were then able to bring in affirmations like “I am calm and centered in my body,” “I know exactly what to do,” and “I feel calm and confident.” Then I had Margaret envision a clear bubble around her. While tapping through the points, I had her imagine that she could hear her boss’s words but her boss’s energy couldn’t break the bubble. This process helped cement the idea that we can hear someone’s words without taking on their panicked energy.
Before tapping, Margaret had felt that she needed to feel her boss’s stress in order to be helpful at work. She had also equated being calm with not caring enough about her job. When she tapped, she realized she could hear her boss complain without picking up her boss’s stress. By remaining calm and confident when her boss was stressed, Margaret could be more resourceful and helpful to her boss, not less.
General stress is a very common trigger for emotional eating, but there are also other, less expected triggers.
It was just a few weeks into our work together, and Rebecca was feeling great. She had been tapping frequently and was enjoying eating healthier foods and exercising. Her energy and mood had been positive during our previous session, so I was concerned when she started this phone session with a panicked-sounding whisper.
“Are you okay?” I asked immediately.
“I’m visiting my dad but didn’t want to cancel our session,” she whispered.
She then shared that she had been eating terribly over the past couple of days and was feeling depressed about undoing her earlier progress. She believed it was just her lack of willpower and being around all the Fourth of July treats.
“Did something happen right before you found yourself emotionally eating?” I asked.
She paused and then said, “Oh, I know what it was.”
Upon arriving at her dad’s house, she had told him about the progress she’d been making while working with me. Instead of being excited for her, he had replied, “Oh, good—you could stand to lose some weight.”
The comment had left Rebecca feeling hurt and alone, like she needed to lose weight in order to earn her dad’s love. Like so many of my clients who struggle with weight, Rebecca’s immediate reaction was to rebel against him. If he couldn’t love her for who she was, her unconscious mind reasoned, then she would simply refuse to give in to his desires for her to lose weight. If he wanted to be her father, he would have to learn to love a “fat” Rebecca. Beneath her rebelliousness, however, Rebecca felt deeply wounded and was drowning in her own anger and sadness.
When the world doesn’t live up to our expectations, we rebel against its unfairness by turning to food.
—
JESSICA ORTNER
The urge to rebel against the pressure to lose weight often intersects with the weight loss journey. When the world doesn’t live up to our expectations, we rebel against its unfairness by turning to food. Generally, emotional eating associated with this response comes immediately following an experience that triggers the subconscious belief about unfairness. In that moment, when we eat we feel like we’re giving a middle finger to a society that is pressuring us into trying to live up to expectations that always seem beyond our reach. We give a middle finger to a father, mother, friend, or mentor who commented on our weight and made us feel like we could never be fully loved unless we lost weight and/or embodied the ideal they wanted to impose upon us.
When we’re in rebellion, emotional eating is a way of giving ourselves that misguided self-love we talked about earlier. It’s an immediate response that gives us the love others seem to be denying us. And for a brief time, it feels liberating—like we’re taking back our power, taking charge when so much feels out of control. But in truth we are only waging a war on ourselves.
When you have this in-the-moment desire to eat, it is often sufficient to tap on the emotions the trigger brought up. However, if this doesn’t relieve the desire, you sometimes have to go deeper and tap on the words or the event itself. We’ll discuss just how to do this in the next chapter. For Rebecca this is exactly what happened. We began tapping on the anger behind her rebellion response, and soon she began remembering the many passive-aggressive comments her dad had made over the years about her weight, frequently pointing out thinner women and mentioning how good they looked. Over and over again, without ever blatantly criticizing her weight, he had made her feel less lovable and less worthy because of it. As we continued tapping through her emotions and memories, she was able to clear the enormous hurt and anger she had been keeping buried inside her. She knew that her journey to better health had nothing to do with her dad or social pressures; it was her personal journey to loving herself and seeing her own worth.
It was a huge relief for Rebecca to be able to let go of such a big emotional burden, and for the rest of her stay she was able to feel calm and eat in a manner that was both enjoyable and respectful to her body. What’s even more interesting is that she had a better time with her father and could appreciate that he meant well, even if his actions and words felt hurtful.
For another one of my clients, we were able to stop her emotional eating simply by tapping on a feeling. Kristie, a working mom, realized through tapping that she was most often triggered to reach for food when she was exhausted. She calls it the “mommy munching” syndrome, because for her it began when her daughter was young. Every time she was able to take a break, such as when her daughter was napping, Kristie made food for herself, even when she wasn’t hungry. Her habit of eating to relax became ingrained over time, perpetuating her struggle with weight. Once she was aware of this pattern, she was able to address her exhaustion more directly through tapping, opting for a nap, taking a hot bath, or exercising instead of eating.
The possible triggers for your emotional eating are nearly endless, so now let’s figure out when you’re triggered, and then do some tapping.
WHEN ARE YOU TRIGGERED TO ENGAGE IN EMOTIONAL EATING?
Think about the last time you found yourself emotionally eating. Were you on the couch, standing over the kitchen counter, or in the car? Was it late at night or when you were alone in the house?
Get clear on that emotional eating event and then ask yourself, “Did something happen or did I have a particular feeling right before I began?” That answer gives you a tapping target, whether it’s a feeling of exhaustion and frustration or something someone said or did. You can tap while giving a voice to that feeling.
When Surrendering Emotional Eating Feels Like Self-Punishment
McDonald’s and hot fudge sundaes were Tess’s happy times. Never one to eat when she was upset, she turned to food when she was feeling good, excited to indulge in a pleasurable experience. Emotional eating, which for her was overeating, had been her main source of pleasure, a reward she deserved and didn’t want to give up.
Like Tess, many of us become attached to emotional eating. It’s a safety net, a reward, even a way to connect to the past—perhaps a reminder of the home-cooked meals Mom once so lovingly prepared. While we don’t feel comfortable or happy when we’re carrying excess weight, we resist the idea of giving up overeating because it has been our loyal companion for so long and the thought of giving it up feels unsafe.
Most of us aren’t conscious of our relationship with overeating. It’s important to stop and ask, “What’s the downside of ending this habit?” This “downside” question is something we will visit many times throughout this book. In Tess’s case, food was her way of celebrating her accomplishments, including surviving another day in a work environment that felt out of control. Without food, she wondered, how would she “treat” herself to feeling good?
A couple of weeks into my class, after taking moments throughout the day to tap on her stress, she experienced a drastic change. While riding in the car one day with her husband, just as they were nearing their favorite hot fudge sundae shop, he asked, “Are you going to ask me to pull over?”
Much to her shock (and his), she replied, “No, I don’t really want it,” with a smile.
Without the extra stress, she didn’t need food to celebrate “surviving” another hard day. That same week, she found herself at the grocery store filling her basket with fresh produce and having no desire to walk down the cookie aisle. “It feels like my brain has been rewired,” she said of how tapping has impacted her. Without feeling even a hint of deprivation, Tess is eating healthy food and enjoying it, able to reward herself in new and different ways that feel even more satisfying than sundaes.
Exploring “Secondary Gain”
Throughout the process of digging deeper into the underlying causes of our weight struggles, we’ll be talking a lot about a crucial concept: “secondary gain.” Secondary gain doesn’t necessarily refer to weight; instead, it’s a psychology term that refers to the secondary benefit of various conditions, such as illness, pain, and weight.
Years ago when I first began digging deeper into my own weight challenges, the possibility that I was holding on to weight for some reason kept occurring to me, but every time the thought crossed my mind I quickly found a reason to focus on something else. One day, however, I decided to ask myself two questions related to secondary gain that I’d learned from Carol Look, a tapping expert I’d interviewed for The Tapping Solution movie. The two questions were
“What’s the benefit of holding on to weight?”
and conversely,
“What’s the downside of losing weight?”
My initial answers were clear—
“nothing.”
For years I’d wanted nothing more than to
lose the weight
. Not being thin was
the
issue,
the
obstacle standing between me and happiness, me and success, me and my fabulous future.
As I continued tapping on these two questions, however, I had a major breakthrough. The floodgates opened and a stream of answers poured out of me. I was so stunned by what I’d discovered buried inside myself that I wrote the answers down. Here are some of them:
- If I’m successful at losing weight, I’ll have to be on a restrictive diet.
- If I’m successful at losing weight, I’ll be harshly judged by other women.
- If I’m successful at losing weight, I’ll be giving in to cultural pressures that I resent.
- If I lose the weight and pursue my dream and fail, it will mean something is wrong with me. I won’t be able to blame the weight.
That breakthrough, which could not have happened without tapping, was the beginning of an entirely new relationship between me and my weight. As I continued tapping on all my resistance, I shed pounds faster and more easily than I ever had before and also began to feel lighter, more energetic, happier, and more confident in my own skin.
Like I once did, many of my students initially resist the opportunity to dig deeper into their weight and body stories but then have similarly significant breakthroughs as they look at the secondary gain of their own weight struggles.
While the process of digging deeper into your weight and body story may feel uncomfortable, even unsettling at times, I urge you to continue moving forward with this process. With tapping you don’t need to go deep into the pain to find relief. You do, however, need to have the courage to take personal responsibility and face the parts of yourself and your life that you have been neglecting. You need to be willing to air out the parts of your life that are so desperate for attention that they are showing up as physical weight. With tapping, the process gets easier and is soon accompanied by positive physical and emotional changes.
What’s the Downside of Giving Up Emotional Eating?
Imagine that you couldn’t overindulge in your favorite treat for a full week. Does that scenario create a sense of panic? What is the downside in ending this habit of emotional eating? Does a particular emotion or level of resistance come up? Write down your thoughts on a piece of paper, if you like, and use them as your tapping target. Remember to measure the intensity of your emotions before you begin tapping.
Karate Chop:
Even though I’m unwilling to end this habit, I love and accept myself. (
Repeat three times.
)
Eyebrow:
I don’t want to stop craving this food.
Side of Eye:
I don’t want to deprive myself.
Under Eye:
It’s a way for me to avoid uncomfortable feelings.
Under Nose:
It’s a way to praise myself.
Chin:
It’s a way to experience pleasure.
Collarbone:
I don’t want to give it up.
Under Arm:
I’m sick of this pressure.
Top of Head:
I want to rebel and do what I want.
Keep tapping on all the reasons you don’t want to let go of this habit. When the intensity is 5 or lower, begin incorporating these positive tapping phrases.
Eyebrow:
I
can
do what I want.
Side of Eye:
I can choose to eat whatever I want.
Under Eye:
The calmer I feel …
Under Nose:
The more control I have to choose what I really want.
Chin:
I don’t need the food in order to feel validated; I choose to feel validated now.
Collarbone:
I don’t need the food in order to feel calm; I choose to feel calm now.
Under Arm:
It’s safe for me to acknowledge what I really want.