By Carol Look, EFT Master
"Mary" contacted me before the recent Energy Psychology
conference to tell me she had lost over 30 pounds since
taking my EFT weight loss class at the previous year's
conference. She agreed to be "interviewed" for a post to
this email list to share her success.
She attended my weight loss class because she had seen
her weight creep up over the last decade or so, and was
struggling with severely depleted energy. While vanity was
a factor, she was much more interested in improving her
health and increasing her vitality.
She volunteered in class to use EFT to reduce her
addictive urges to eat foods that triggered compulsive
overeating or were simply considered unhealthy. Her
weakness was Lay's potato chips. Fortunately, I had
brought a bag of them to the class as a prop for this
demonstration. Along with the other volunteers, Mary
tapped for....
"Even though I have this terrible craving to eat my
favorite food, I deeply and completely accept myself..."
"Even though I can't resist my chips, I deeply..."
We covered a few rounds until the actual craving was
reduced to the point where she didn't even like the smell
of the chips anymore. "They smelled too greasy now",
she said, whereas formerly the smell had
been intoxicating to her. The chips used to have "power"
over her (her words) so she felt surprised and delighted
to be free of the obsession and craving during the
demonstration.
I then pursued underlying feelings and emotional
themes, the culprits driving addictive urges. Mary was
afraid that if she stopped eating foods that she craved
and loved, she would feel deprived. We tapped for the
whole class as follows...
"Even though I fear feeling deprived, and don't
want to give anything up, I deeply and completely accept
myself."
Many other people in the audience reported feelings of
severe loss that surfaced while we were tapping when they
thought of giving up their addictive substance, so we
tapped rounds for those feelings...
"Even though I feel grief when I think of losing
weight, and giving up my favorite foods..."
Mary was given the choice to keep the chips or to
return them. She was thoroughly surprised by her easy
decision to give the chips back to me.
She told me that she had been a purely emotional eater,
and that she used food to numb out her feelings of
anxiety, stress, loneliness and grief. In addition, she
revealed that she also overate when she felt joyful or in
a celebration mood. "I ate to stuff any emotion I
didn't want to feel."
Then another volunteer identified the following belief/
emotional state in front of the class, "Both my sister
and I are huge and we're never going to be enough for my
mother." Mary resonated with this sentiment and
tapped to reduce the related emotions as well as for her
suspicion that she was using her extra weight as
protection....
"Even though I don't feel safe without the extra
pounds, I deeply and completely accept myself..."
"Even though I'll never be enough, there was never
enough, and there probably won't be enough...I choose to
feel satisfied anyway."
Mary returned home after the conference feeling
motivated and back in control. She started a new eating
program and an exercise program and tapped EVERY DAY as I
had recommended. She tapped at home, in the car, on her
job etc. and realized she didn't have to eat anymore to
tranquilize her emotional states throughout the day. She
no longer stopped while driving to pick up snacks and junk
food. She said "instead, I would stop and acknowledge
the emotion I was experiencing, and then tap for it."
By the end of September (4 months) she had lost 30
pounds. I asked her what happened between September and
this recent May conference. She told me of three extremely
stressful events that interrupted her progress and caused
a plateau. Her mother was assaulted, which was of course
upsetting and frightening, and then her father died in
October after a long stressful illness. In addition, Mary,
was feeling threatened by deep turbulence and insecurity
in her workplace.
Even though she completely stopped tapping between
October and March, she did not return to obsessive
thoughts or compulsive behavior regarding food and was
able to maintain her 30 pound weight loss. This was
critical information for her about how much she had
changed. She had not just worked on symptom reduction, but
had obviously made changes on a very deep level. In March,
after 5 months of acknowledging and dealing with her
grief, she began tapping again and lost an additional 8
pounds before returning to the aforementioned May Energy
Conference.
But Mary's biggest change, other than the obvious
difference in her size, was a dramatic improvement in her
energy. She was enjoying her vitality, feeling fit, and
looking much better too. I asked her about her feelings of
"control" around food. She said she could choose to eat
"just one" chip---something that was unheard of for her
before EFT. She said "it felt like a miracle" for
her to lose so much weight and feel so much better. "I
learned what real hunger feels like. EFT allowed me to
clear away unresourceful emotions...and helped me return
to my spiritual tools."
Thank you, Mary, for your persistence and for this
story.
