The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence (13 page)

Like Holly, most of us don’t recognize the impact events have had on us until years, even decades, later, when we begin unraveling the areas of our lives where we feel dissatisfied. Through tapping, we can break down internal barriers and clear the damaging residue of the events that continue to affect us and our relationship with our weight and body. Holly started by giving her eight-year-old self an opportunity to say out loud how she really felt as she tapped. With tears streaming down her face, she felt an incredible release, and she was amazed that afterward she could recall the same memory without feeling overwhelmed by sadness. She felt a newfound compassion for herself and the little girl who simply sought much-needed comfort in food. This led to a new relationship with herself and with food. Having become more aware of her own stress, she now uses tapping to relieve it and no longer feels controlled by the urge to overindulge in food that doesn’t nourish her or make her feel good.

To see how events may have impacted your relationship with yourself and your weight, in this chapter we’ll be exploring three possible triggering events: events that lead to weight gain, that distort the weight loss experience, and that you can’t pinpoint. All of these can have major effects on your ability to lose weight.

Events That Lead to Weight Gain

It was through daily tapping on what was happening when she first began gaining weight that Beverly lost her first 30 pounds. Without focusing on weight loss or ever feeling deprived, she saw the pounds just seem to fall off. For her, the weight gain had begun during what she once called “stepfamily hell,” a ten-year span of time that started soon after marrying her husband, who was then living with his two teenage children from a prior marriage.

The challenges Beverly faced during that time seemed endless. While her teenage stepson sold drugs from their front porch, Beverly struggled to find a positive, nurturing place in her stepchildren’s troubled lives. Her husband retreated further into denial about what was happening in their house, and she felt alone and unsupported, unsure how to have a healthy marriage under the circumstances. Also afraid that she was failing as a stepmother, she abandoned her dream of having her own children and went to great lengths to hide her pain from friends and family. Her only source of comfort during that time was food; and year after year, the pounds continued to pile on.

When Beverly used tapping to clear the emotional charge of her memories, her body and her eating effortlessly began to transform. Because she had cleared the negative emotional residue from those memories, the name “stepfamily hell” no longer felt right. It had been a challenging time, but she had also learned many important lessons from it.

Listening to Beverly’s story, I was struck by how she had named her memories of that time. Although being specific tends to be the best approach with tapping, fortunately it’s not always necessary to dissect each layer of a memory one by one. Instead, we can do tapping on how those memories make us feel by giving them a title and in so doing, clear the emotional charge behind them.

By naming memories in a way that sums up how the experience felt, as Beverly did when she chose the name “stepfamily hell,” you can often clear the emotional charge behind a collection of connected memories more quickly. It was because Beverly had cleared the negative emotional charge from her memories that she was able to rename that period of time “the decade of the steps” instead. The key to her success was that she could recall that time in her life and not feel physical stress in the present moment.

THE POWER OF EVENTS BIG AND (SEEMINGLY) SMALL

Clients and students are often surprised to discover how deeply they have been affected by seemingly minor events in their lives. That was true for Victoria, who realized while tapping that six short words said to her nearly 30 years ago had sparked her own struggle with weight.

“You don’t deserve to live here,” her first post-college landlord had said to her nearly three decades ago. It was at that moment when Victoria began turning toward food for comfort, afraid that she was unworthy of the good things in her life as her landlord had suggested. Remembering his words while she tapped, tears flowed down her cheeks. She sobbed through the sadness and anger she had long been holding inside.

Once she had tapped through those emotions, she could recall his insult without feeling upset. “I feel like a switch has flipped in my brain,” she shared. If there is an event that resulted in the belief that you don’t deserve good things in your life, you will sabotage yourself every time you feel something good beginning to happen. By tapping on the moment, Victoria found that she no longer resisted her own progress. Practically overnight she found herself looking forward to exercising each day, and she began making herself healthy meals that tasted great and made her body feel good. Losing weight had suddenly become so much easier and more enjoyable because she now felt that she deserved good things in her life.

The events that spark or reignite our struggle with weight often span a wide range. Some clients can link the start of their weight struggle to a major event such as the loss of a job, relationship troubles, or a diagnosis. Other clients, like Victoria, can pinpoint a specific moment in time when they began turning to food for comfort. Whether it’s a hurtful comment, an unwanted sexual advance, or some other long-ago experience, we sometimes find that what once seemed like a small and fleeting moment has impacted us on a very deep level.

Tapping on these events can help you move past the emotions and beliefs they have instilled in you. There are a number of different techniques that can be used to tap on such an event: Direct tapping, Tell the Story tapping, and Movie tapping. You can try all of these and see which works best for you.

Direct Tapping Technique:
When you want to tap directly on a past event, simply give the event a title that helps you access the feelings you had at the time: “getting that look,” “the hellish divorce,” “losing the job,” and so on.

When you think about this event, what is your strongest emotion? You may have a variety of emotions, which is fine, but for now focus on the one that grabs most of your attention.

When you think of the event, how intense is that emotion on a scale of 0 to 10? Begin tapping by filling in the blanks with the title and emotion.

Even though _____________ made me feel _______________, I love and accept myself.

Even though _____________ made me feel _______________, I love and accept myself.

Even though _____________ made me feel _______________, I love and accept myself.

Continue tapping while saying the title, what happened, and how it made you feel until you can think of the event without experiencing emotional intensity. Be patient with yourself, as events often have multiple layers you may need to tap on.

Tell the Story Technique:
If you call your friend to complain about something that happened to you, you are telling the story. For this technique, pretend you’re sharing a story with a friend and talk about what happened while you tap through the points.

Bonus:
Once you feel calm and can tell the story without feeling an emotional charge, ask yourself,
If there was a positive lesson from this experience, what would it be?

Movie Technique:
The Movie Technique was developed by Gary Craig, the founder of EFT, as a way to address specific events rather than global issues. To do it, you run a movie of what took place in your mind. Creating a movie of an event pretty much guarantees that you are dealing with just one specific event. A movie has a beginning and an end. There are central characters who do and say specific things, and there is a usually a “crescendo” or peak moment in the movie.

The following questions will help you to set the stage for your short movie:

• Could you make a short movie of this event?
  One great thing about this technique is that at no point in this movie is it necessary for you to tell or say the details out loud. The critical part is the effects those details and any people involved have on the five senses. Focus on the sights, sounds, emotions, and physical feelings the characters are experiencing and what they are thinking and even smelling or tasting. One thing I do with clients when a movie feels too intense is have them imagine it in black and white and picture themselves sitting in the back row of the movie theater. Once they feel more comfortable with the black-and-white movie, they can add in color and lessen the distance between themselves and the movie screen.
  
• How long would the movie last?
  You want to make sure it is a short movie, three minutes or less. Often the key traumatic event in the movie is only seconds long. If there are several traumatic moments in the movie, break the movie down into as many small pieces as necessary to address each specific upsetting event.
  
• What would the title be?
  Create a name that is specific to that movie segment.
  

Now let’s turn your specific event into a short movie with a title:

• Run the movie in your mind and evaluate the intensity you are having
  now
  (as you imagine it) on a scale of 0 to 10. You can also
  guess
  what your intensity would be if you vividly imagined it.
  
• Next, do several rounds of tapping on “
  this ______ movie.”
  Check back on the intensity; typically it will have come down by several points.
  
• Now run the movie in your mind again, starting from a point that has no intensity or very low intensity, and make sure to
  stop whenever you feel any intensity
  . This is very important! Most of us have lived with traumas from the past for so long that we don’t even notice that we push ourselves through the story regardless of how we feel. Not anymore! With EFT, when we recognize these moments of intensity, we can use them as opportunities for tapping.
  
• Run through the movie in your mind again, beginning to end, stopping to tap on any intense aspects as they come up. Keep tapping until you can play the entire movie without any change in it.
  
• Finally, run the movie again, this time exaggerating the sights, sounds, and colors. Really try to get upset about it. If you find some intensity coming back up, stop and tap again!
  

Note:
It can be helpful to describe the movie out loud. Be sure to stop at any point that is upsetting—even just a little bit—and tap again until you are at 0. Then continue your movie narration.

As we explore more deeply how past events may be shaping your relationship with your weight, let’s look next at the flip side of your weight loss journey—what may have happened as a result of prior weight loss.

Events That Distort the Weight Loss Experience

Abby was in the best shape of her life, exercising often and eating healthfully. When she received a cancer diagnosis, it was the last thing she expected. Overwhelmed by the shock of her illness, she abandoned her healthy lifestyle, and the pounds soon began to pile on. Although years have passed since the traumatic diagnosis and her logical mind knows that her healthy lifestyle didn’t lead to cancer, she finds herself resisting weight loss and healthy habits, afraid on some level that those habits will backfire as they seemed to last time.

So often, the lasting emotional impacts events have on us don’t mesh with what our logical minds know to be true—that weight loss and healthy habits work for us, not against us. What happens is that we attribute meanings to events that happen simultaneously, like Abby’s cancer diagnosis and her healthy lifestyle. That was also the case for Suzie, whose relationship with her weight was thrown off by a girlfriend’s negative feedback. The last time she lost the weight, her friend accused her of thinking she was better than everyone else. Feeling alone and unsupported, Suzie quickly began regaining the weight, figuring that it was better to fit in by being overweight than to be thin and alone.

Take a moment now to ask yourself,
What happened the last time I lost weight and/or felt healthy?
Feel free to write down what you discover and then use it as your tapping target.

If nothing comes to mind, there’s no need to worry. Simply continue reading.

If an event does come to mind, you can tap on it using the techniques we just learned. This tapping script may help you get started. Rate the emotional intensity of the event before you begin tapping.

Karate Chop:
Even though something bad happened the last time I lost weight, I love and accept myself and I am safe. (
Repeat three times.
)
Eyebrow:
This bad thing that happened …

Side of Eye:
I was feeling so good …

Under Eye:
And it backfired.

Under Nose:
This resistance to losing weight again …

Chin:
Part of me wants to …

Collarbone:
Part of me doesn’t.

Under Arm:
I don’t want to repeat what happened.

Top of Head:
It doesn’t feel safe to lose weight.

When the intensity of your initial tapping target is 5 or lower, you can move on to the positive.

Eyebrow:
Maybe this time can be different …

Side of Eye:
Maybe it was never about the weight …

Under Eye:
It’s always been about me.

Under Nose:
I have learned so much from the past experience.

Chin:
I take the lessons …

Collarbone:
And release the pain.

Under Arm:
This time will be different.

Top of Head:
I feel safe and confident within my power.

Take a deep breath and check in with how you feel. Measure the intensity again and continue tapping until you experience relief.

Events You Can’t Pinpoint

Sometimes weight slowly becomes a problem as the stress in our lives builds. When that’s the case, there is no need to remember a specific event or period of time to get results. These questions are just a way to start getting clear on what may be holding you back. If you don’t have a specific event, you can still experience a major shift by tapping on beliefs, which we’ll begin doing in the next chapter.