The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence (7 page)
Read The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence Online
Authors: Jessica Ortner
Tags: #Health & Fitness, #Diet & Nutrition, #General, #Women's Health
I SERIOUSLY LOVE TWIZZLERS! I have loved them since I was a little girl. My high school boyfriends would “woo” me with pound-sized bags of them. Yesterday afternoon, my son was asleep on the couch. Next to him on the table was a giant sack o’ piñata candy from a party last week … I found myself peering into the sack, looking for my beloved Twizzlers. None in there. :(But! I remembered there might be a bag way up on the refrigerator. My mouth literally began to salivate. All I could think of was ripping open that bag, smelling that wonderful Twizzler smell, and eating one after another. I made a beeline for the kitchen. But! As I got to the fridge, I diverted to the living room, where I sat on the couch and tapped about HOW BAD I WANTED TO SNARF TWIZZLERS!! Suddenly, I did not want those Twizzlers. I was almost in shock! I actually TRIED to want the Twizzlers, but by that point, I couldn’t have cared less about them. Amazing!
When symptom tapping doesn’t get the job done, however, that usually means you need to go further down the Tapping Tree to identify a deeper target that will provide the relief you’re looking for. A good next step is to look at your emotional state.
EMOTIONS (BRANCHES)
If you tap on a chocolate craving and the craving persists, you can ask yourself,
What was I feeling when I began craving chocolate?
If, for example, you were angry about something your husband said to you, you can tap on that emotion until it has been cleared. Sometimes you may realize you’re feeling several emotions. Different aspects of the target may appear, so what starts as anger might move into hurt and sadness, then into grief and loneliness. If you know that you’re experiencing intense emotions, you can begin your tapping with what you’re feeling rather than with the symptom or side effect.
Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck on the emotions we’re most familiar with. For example, many of us end up tapping on feelings of anger and sadness, which are easy to recognize. But accessing a broader range of emotions can help bring more specificity to tapping. Here are some key emotions many of us experience. You can use this list to further connect with what’s going on for you.
Alienation
Ambivalence
Anger
Anxiety
Bitterness
Boredom
Contempt
Depression
Despair
Disgust
Distress
Doubt
Dread
Embarrassment
Envy
Fear
Frustration
Fury
Grief
Grouchiness
Guilt
Hatred
Homesickness
Hope
Hostility
Humiliation
Hunger
Hysteria
Insecurity
Loathing
Loneliness
Paranoia
Pity
Rage
Regret
Remorse
Resentment
Shame
Suffering
Worry
PAST EVENTS (TRUNK)
Another common category of tapping target is past events. There are two kinds: those that happen and are easy to move beyond, and those that affect us and stay with us. The difference between the two kinds of events is whether or not we have processed them emotionally, energetically, and/or physically.
One person can think back to something that happened in grade school—being scolded by a teacher—and be able to say, “Yeah, I remember feeling embarrassed that she singled me out like that, but it doesn’t bother me anymore.” The memory is there but it doesn’t have the emotional charge it once did. The next person thinks about being scolded in grade school and has a totally different experience. She feels it in her gut; when she recalls that moment, intense feelings of embarrassment, anger, and hurt come up. This is an experience that hasn’t been processed. Addressing that past event with tapping will help her let go of the pain and move on.
LIMITING BELIEFS (ROOTS)
Limiting beliefs are misleading conclusions we make about ourselves and the world based on events or experiences. For example, someone might have a limiting belief about her ability to lose weight and keep it off because her weight has fluctuated so much for so many years. As a result, she anticipates that the same pattern will repeat itself in the future, and that belief limits her expectations of what’s possible.
It can be hard to see our own limiting beliefs because, to us, they just seem like “the truth.” For example, you may believe you’ll never lose the baby weight after you have a child because your mom and your sisters never did. As a result of that belief, you may stop exercising because you think,
It’s hopeless so what’s the point?
Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.
—
JOEL OSTEEN
Most of us begin unintentionally collecting limiting beliefs during childhood and then keep adding more as we get older. Parents, teachers, and peers often pass them on to us in our early years and from there they color how we see ourselves, our lives, and others. The belief that “I’ll never lose the weight” has profound implications for what and how we eat, whether or not we exercise, even how much effort we make in our relationships and career. That single limiting belief changes how we behave.
Tapping on childhood or past events will often clear limiting beliefs, but when you’re aware of a limiting belief, you can also tap directly on that belief.
Creating Your Own Tapping Tree
The Tapping Tree is a great visual tool for figuring out what’s going on in your life and systematically working through various challenges. It also makes it easier to see how a symptom might be connected to an emotion, event, or belief—how the “leaf” relates to the “branch,” “trunk,” or “roots.” These connections and insights are vital for you to get the best results with tapping. As I’ll continue to remind you, it’s crucial that you get specific when you tap so you can really focus on what’s happening, and the best way to do that is to dig deeper.
As you go through the process laid out in this book, you may want to return to the Tapping Tree and create your own as you discover new tapping targets. You can print out a blank copy of the Tapping Tree drawing by visiting
www.TheTappingSolution.com/chapter2
. Or you can simply sketch it on a piece of paper. It doesn’t have to be pretty; just be sure to leave plenty of space.
Is Tapping Too Negative?
Clients sometimes mention their concern that tapping focuses too much on negative thoughts and emotions such as fear, anger, blame, and shame. While I understand their concern, the fact is that we all experience negative emotions. By trying to ignore negative feelings or judge ourselves for having them, we simply give them permission to control us and our behavior unconsciously. If we’re angry, for instance, we can’t just decide to stop feeling anger by ignoring that feeling. We need to directly address the anger, to somehow “blow off steam,” before we can relax and calm down. Tapping gives us an incredibly fast and effective way to address our negative thoughts and emotions so we can once again relax and feel good. The best way to experience less negativity is to tap on the negative aspects of your life—your stress about your weight, your frustration with your boss, your finances, your relationship, and so on. As you tap and clear those negative thoughts and emotions, you’ll be able to do tapping using positive statements, which will further lower your stress and improve your ability to lose weight.
Ready to Lower Your Stress and Start Losing Weight?
Clients often tell me how much they end up enjoying the time they spend tapping each day. Although it feels a bit strange when they’re first learning how to tap, they find that they’re more relaxed and in a better mood after they spend some time tapping.
The best way to get started with your weight loss journey is to take 15 minutes to begin tapping right now on whatever is causing you stress or anxiety, whether or not it seems related to your weight. Just imagine waking up in the not-so-distant future and feeling great in your body. What would that be like?
Every moment you spend tapping counts, so take the time now to learn the tapping points and practice the process for long enough to feel a shift.
Trust me—if I can lose weight with tapping, and my clients can lose weight with tapping, you can, too!
N
ow that we’ve learned how stress negatively impacts the weight loss and body confidence journey and how tapping helps us overcome the damaging impacts of stress on weight and the body, we need to address the most common roadblock women encounter when they’re beginning this journey: panic. Feeling panicked about the need to lose weight and feel good can take many forms and be triggered by a variety of circumstances.
The Pattern of Panic
“I feel like I need to lose 50 to 80 pounds in the next three weeks,” Analisa wrote. In a few weeks’ time she would be seeing a friend she hadn’t seen since she’d gained the weight. She was sure her friend would see her as nothing more than “fat,” and she couldn’t stop playing an imaginary movie in her head—her friend calling their mutual friends to tell them how fat she’d become. Overwhelmed by fear and anxiety, she wanted nothing more than to fend off the silent ridicule she was sure her friend would pile on her.
Analisa was in a panic. For me, the panic to lose weight and feel good in my body began when I was 14, always while facing my then archenemy, the mirror, which never failed to display my body’s so-called flaws. By my early 20s, the slightest glance at my reflection was enough to turn me into a drill sergeant. I would pinch and prod every inch of my body to prove my point—that I wasn’t good enough.
The panic would hit me like a shot of adrenaline, and in a flash I’d be on the latest diet, dragging myself to the gym to try some new class. Nearly every time, I lost the weight—and then gained it all back. It was a pattern I couldn’t seem to stop, but each time, I returned to my brutal but familiar old friend, panic. I worked myself up to playing the part of the drill sergeant, and then tore myself down until I couldn’t help but dissolve into a puddle of desperate tears. I was never skinny enough, which to me meant I wasn’t good enough. I felt like a failure everyone could see.
Years later, I began to understand the role panic had played in my tortured relationship with my weight. When I was in the heat of the moment, panic seemed like the only thing potent enough to get me to deal with the reflection in the mirror. Each time, panic forced me into action, and each time, I ended up right where I started.
On some level I knew I was repeating a tired old pattern of short-lived weight loss, but surely, I told myself, if I worked hard enough, deprived myself often enough, I would arrive at lifelong thinness … wouldn’t I? I just couldn’t quiet that abusive voice in my head that seemed to think so.
Like so many women who struggle with weight, Analisa and I both got stuck in what I call the pattern of panic. However common it may be, it’s a pattern we must break free of to achieve long-term body confidence and weight loss. First, however, we need to take a closer look at what it is and why it happens.
The Two Sides of Panic
Often when clients come to their first session with me, on the surface they seem to be having different experiences. Some seem ashamed that they need help losing weight, others are scared they’ll be disappointed again, and still others seem prepared for some mild form of torture, ready and willing to do “whatever it takes.” Beneath the surface, however, they’re having very similar experiences. They’re all stuck in the pattern of panic, convinced they need to shed the pounds now—
right
now.
We tend to react to the pattern of panic in one of two ways—fight or admit defeat. While these tactics may seem like polar opposites, they’re both reactions to the underlying panic we’re feeling about needing to lose the weight and feel confident in our own skin. Some of us tend toward one reaction while others vacillate between the two reactions over time.
THE “FIGHT” PATTERN OF PANIC
The “fight” reaction to panic around losing weight often comes on very suddenly, triggered by a specific memory or event, like Analisa’s realization that her friend’s visit was only three weeks away. In the fight reaction, we’re overwhelmed by a feeling of desperation to lose the weight now at (almost) any cost. In those moments we’re convinced that weight is the full measure of our value as individuals. Nothing else about who we are, what we have to offer, or what we’ve accomplished can possibly have as much worth as our weight.
That’s what happened to Analisa. Overcome by shame, fear, and anxiety, she couldn’t imagine enjoying her visit with her friend; all she could do was feel threatened by it. The story running through her head was the only outcome she could envision. Every time Analisa thought about meeting her friend, she was preparing herself mentally and emotionally to fend off the backstabbing, judgmental attack that seemed inevitable.
When we’re experiencing this fight reaction, we tell ourselves that we need the panic—no matter how painful it is—because panic is our last hope. If we stop panicking, we are giving up on losing the weight. We believe that we
have
to be hard on ourselves because when we’re not, we gain the weight back. The panic itself becomes a reason to believe that we can still somehow lose the weight.
THE “DEFEAT” PATTERN OF PANIC
Compared to the fight reaction to panic, the “defeat” pattern of panic can seem deceptively calm.
“It’s my badge of failure,” Joni said of her weight. The worst part, she added, was that everyone could see her badge of failure, every single day.
“How much motivation do you feel to take care of your body when you see it as your badge of failure?” I asked.
“None,” she replied.
“I don’t blame you,” I told her. “If I saw my body as a badge of failure, I wouldn’t take care of it, either. Who would want to spend time caring for something they hate?”
At first glance the defeat pattern can seem like the exact opposite of panic. It looks like giving up, like we don’t care about our weight. Junk food, overeating, not exercising—all the ways we abuse ourselves and our bodies seem justified. We have gained the weight and failed to lose it. We have been deeply disappointed by our failure to lose the weight. We have spent so much energy fighting; enough is enough. Finally, we are waving the white flag, admitting defeat. It’s the smart thing to do, we tell ourselves. The weight loss programs and diets that everyone else lost weight on don’t work for us. Being fat is who we are, so why fight what we clearly can’t control?