How EFT can help you lose weight
So you’re probably wondering how the heck tapping on my face and talking to myself helped me lose weight, am I right?
Trying to lose weight used to feel extremely difficult to me. I felt so much shame and discomfort just being in my chubby body as a kid, especially when so many other children around me implied that something was wrong with me.
I wasn’t outright bullied when I was a kid (the serious bullying came when I was 14 and continued until the end of high school); it was more about being left out of groups of much thinner children. It was about not having many friends in school or neighbourhood (thank God I always enjoyed being on my own). It was about being the fattest kid at a summer sports camp. It was about being picked for a sports team in PE as one of the last ones, with eye rolls and groans that they had to have me.
Honestly, do we still do that in PE? Let the team leads, aka the coolest kids, pick out all their favourites for their team? I hope not.
I remember being 8 years old and writing in my first diary while on holiday by the sea: “Tomorrow I’m quitting sugar and bread, and I am gonna start running on the beach. I need to lose weight.”
And I wasn’t even actually fat! I was chubby, okay, but also due to the structure of my body, I had to grow into my bottom-heavy pear shape of wide hips and strong thighs.
But these experiences left me with enough proof that there is something wrong with me and I identified it as being fat is what is wrong with me.
What is the role of the subconscious mind in weight loss?
The way that our subconscious minds work (based on my decades of interest & studying the subject, both research and more woo sources) is that until we are about 7 years old, everything that we experience and learn we take as gospel, absolute truth. We learn that these shaping experiences, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are the way to live in this world, and how we will survive.
So if I learned that I was considered fat, and being fat makes others dislike me, and makes me hate my body, that became my programming, the way I survive in this world. That became my lens (one of MANY) through which I looked at the world.
And us humans, we don’t like to be wrong. So if I believed something, you damn sure can bet that I (unconsciously) looked for proof of it everywhere, and I screened every experience, comment, and look to prove my belief. And of course, I had to stay overweight, because this is who I am: a girl who is always trying to lose weight but failing, a girl who hates her body, a girl who punishes herself for how she looks.
This is what “safety” was for me, so how could I possibly change it? Whenever I tried to do something to change my identity, become a person who works out regularly, doesn’t overeat or indulge too much in treats, a person I’ve never been before, for my brain and the unconscious mind, it was like, “we don’t know this, this is new, we could die, abort, abort, get back to default mode, we must stay safe, we don’t like where we are, but it keeps us alive!”
And boom, here comes weight-loss-sabotaging behaviour.
I’d get stressed, have a binge due to some emotional crisis, or wouldn’t do my workout, then feel shame and be very critical of myself, which made me feel even worse about myself, so I engage in more sabotaging behaviour, and if I already screwed it up (the all-or-nothing thinking), then I may as well give up because I already RUINED all my progress, and because I am destined to be fat.
Until a time when I felt so despicable about my body again that I tried to punish myself with a diet or crazy workout routine again, and then I self-sabotaged again. That vicious circle continued for over 20 years for me.
I know, our subconscious isn’t logical, but the thing is, it’s doing the best it can to keep us alive. The lovely, silly subconscious, eh? Makes you understand why it’s so hard to get out of the comfort zone.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”
Rita Mae Brown
EFT will help you to stop repeating the same unhealthy behaviours and patterns.
But how does EFT help you to lose weight exactly?
Okay, so you may understand a bit better how your subconscious is doing its best to keep you overweight to keep you safe, but still don’t know how it’s EFT that could help you?
EFT helped me to realise that I can’t sustainably look after the body that I hate, but that I can transform the body I love. It allowed me to stop being a bully and become an ally to my body.
Since EFT works with emotions, and it’s the emotional charge that strengthens the beliefs, when you create a safe space to feel and process your emotions, it’s like you’re dissolving the glue that keeps the beliefs fixed and creating space to start consciously shaping what you want to believe to be true about yourself and weight loss.
You get to work through specific memories which hurt you so badly and convinced you that this is who you are ( “the fat girl”, “undeserving love”, “not deserving respect”, “never being chosen”, “healthy food is boring”, “chocolate is my only comfort”, etc.).
Through the process of tapping on these memories, you can process these painful feelings, gain tremendous insight and make peace with your past. This lowers resistance to change and creates space where it’s so much easier to choose new thoughts and behaviours.
EFT can help you to target specific problems such as:
- Painful memories which you keep as proof of why you can’t be fit
- Cravings and emotional eating
- Fear of feeling uncomfortable emotions
- Body shame and self-criticism
- Limiting beliefs about weight and appearance
- Anxiety around exercise
- Guilt after eating
- The “I’ve ruined everything, so I might as well give up” cycle
- Difficulty maintaining supportive habits
What an EFT session might look like
When you start using EFT for weightloss its a very individual process and will look a bit different for each of us. You begin by working with what is bothering you the most.
It may be deep sadness or disgust at what you see in the mirror, or how frustrated you are that any form of exercise leaves you out of breath and feels so damn difficult.
And we lean into that and follow the emotions and the energy.
Which most likely will lead you to these specific memories I mentioned earlier.
We then work through the layers and many different aspects of these memories, so you can finally close these chapters, make peace with what happened and make space for making conscious decisions about your body and habits, and choose better thoughts and beliefs.
As well as working with memories, the key part of EFT’s superpower, you will also learn how to use EFT in present and acute situations such as:
- The feeling of frustration at the lack of quick results (successful and sustainable weight loss isn’t very fast)
- Intense cravings
- Resistance to exercise
- Guilt for when you fall off the wagon
- Stress, anxiety and overwhelm so you can feel better without using food
- Moments when you feel down and unmotivated
What EFT does not do
Just so we are clear, EFT won’t magically burn fat while your physical activity consists of 3500 steps a day, you eating takeout for dinner every night and destroying packs of cookies while watching Netflix.
It doesn’t replace healthy nutrition, movement and good sleep.
EFT will help you to overcome the uncomfortable emotions that anchor you in the present, unable to change.
EFT will help you to discover and change the beliefs that lead to self-sabotaging behaviours.
EFT will help you to clear the resistance and psychological barriers that make healthy changes difficult.
EFT will help you to stop being a bully and become your own ally, learning how to be kinder and more supportive towards yourself and your body.
Are you ready to try the kinder way?