By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
Eat for the body you want, not for the body you have!
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
Psychology Today reports that “15% of women and 11% of men said they would give up five years of their life to be slim – and still people cannot lose weight! And, a whopping 36% of Americans vow to lose weight every New Year – but most never succeed!”
Weight loss is one of the most complex problems in our society. Working with clients who want to lose weight has been easy in recent years because I was only dealing with the physical and nutritional reasons for their weight gain.
I’ve been very successful at helping c lients lose the weight and achieve their goals but they have not been very successful at keeping the weight off – there’s a disconnect – whether it’s the coaching they get working with me during the weight loss process, or they like the challenge and measurable goals of the weight loss, when they have achieved the target weight they seem to lose interest in maintenance. It’s not as glamorous to maintain as to lose. They also don’t get as much positive support maintaining as when they did while losing the weight. They know what to eat, when to eat it and how much of it to eat, that’s part of what I teach them……but, something was missing.
I was working with Andrea (not her real name) for several years. She came to see me regularly for tune-ups. In the past we had put together weight loss plans that worked initially but she always seemed to “fall off the wagon.” This was followed by feeling bad, beating herself up and feeling guilty. She eventually came full circle and wanted to lose weight again. Each time around her belief that she could pull it off was weaker but her intension and optimism was stronger.
It was in the Fall when her urge to lose became strong again. This time I added a new element to her program, PowerTapping. She had already experienced using PowerTapping for pain so it was not completely foreign to her. She was surprised to learn it could be used to help her be more healthy and to lose weight. We went through all the usual steps around food choices, supplements, water intake and an exercise plan. On her next appointment she came in with her first week food diary and that’s where we started.
We were going through the diary and as I questioned her about why she ate what she ate and why she ate it, it was by identifying when she ate it she began to notice she ate for no reason (other than boredom.) Without saying anything she told me why she gained the weight back and it wasn’t because she ate too many fatty foods.
She listed three things that cause her to gain weight. She ate too much at each meal, she ate too late in the evening (big dinners after 8PM) and snacked on chocolate too often.
Now we had something to start with! I went to work on the overeating problem because it would make the biggest and fastest impact with what she’s learned about her eating habits to help her start losing weight again. As we were tapping she stopped and said, “I don’t have to over eat. I just don’t think about what I’m doing. I’m on autopilot and I lose my focus.” So we tapped on her inability to stay focused on her goal. She rated that high on the frustration scale and within a few minutes it was a non- issue, but what came up for her was her anger at sabotaging her efforts and feeling discouraged because she had to start all over from the beginning.
Her two issues were anger and the inability to forgive herself, and then also the feeling that she had to start all over again from the beginning. We tapped to overcome her anger at herself which quickly turned into not being able to forgive herself for failing, and not looking or feeling like she wanted when she knows she’s capable of it. That took several rounds and we found several other issues around a lack of self-forgiveness.
We often have unreal expectations of our selves. I’ve found that having unreal expectations is one of the most prevalent issues for yoyo dieters as well as anyone trying to quit mindlessly doing something over and over again. This went on for a while so I gave her a homework assignment where she tapped twice a day with self-forgiveness and overeating in her intension statements.
She called three days later and told me that she had lost 2 pounds without doing anything! On her next visit she said she noticed she was eating less and was not as hungry at dinner lately so she went with it but felt as though she needed to eat dinner. We tapped to eliminate the belief she needs to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner but instead she should pay attention to her body and mind and eat a snack size meal when she feels the need to eat without being too hungry. The combination of good nutrition, better eating behavior and tapping to eliminate self-sabotaging beliefs works almost every time. Andrea made a curious statement to me one day – she said that her husband noticed that she was far less frustrated with herself and had more patients overall.
Often when someone is making changes they only see the conspicuous changes, others though will notice all the other changes that happen as a result of the work they have done.
Andrea had a number in mind as to how many pounds she wanted to lose. So we set up a goal and continued to work on it. At the 5 week mark she said to me in response to my question as to how things were going that she had lost some momentum and had stopped losing weight. She was not gaining any back but she had plateaued.
We talked for a while and I felt it was time to see if there was anything from her past that was getting in her way of success. Sure enough as is often the case, there was. As a child she had issues with her mother. Her sister was a favorite – cute and social – you know the type. Her mom always compared the two sisters and Andrea felt inferior to her sister. There was a lot of resentment towards both of them with a dose of anger towards her mom and jealousy towards her sister. We focused on a specific incident that brought back many of these issues at once. I had her visualize the whole episode and whenever strong emotions came to the surface I had her stop and tap them out. Needless to say we stopped several times in the beginning to tap on very strong emotions. I could clearly see the correlations to her present plateau.
This technique is something I recommend for everyone as a way to access how you are feeling and is particularly good when you can’t access your feelings about a subject.
When we were through she took a big breath and sighed. She said she never put it together like that before but it all made sense now. She then remembered there was this girl at school, which triggered another round of questioning and exploration and a visual tapping sequence.
This girl was another influence in her life that made her self-esteem suffer by feeling less than pretty and less than popular. As we went through this it was clear to her that it was all the same, just a different aspect of the problem. By the end of the session she felt relieved and emotionally settled. Again she was on her way and this time it was even easier than before.
One thing that’s important is to be persistent and continue doing the work even when you don’t want or feel you need to.
There’s an old saying, “If you stop on the road to Kamakura (a city in Japan) on the 11th day you’ll never be able to see the cherry blossoms on the 12th. So, if you stop short of your goal you’ll never know the delight that awaited you.
It was the 11th day for Andrea with just a few weeks left until her target date and only 5 pounds to go. The holidays were fast approaching and work was stressing her out but she was determined to remain steadfast – she now had an invincible mindset and would not allow her inner saboteur to win. We made some minor adjustments in her program and had her focus on amplifying her desire of achieving her goal. Remember persistence and consistency is the key to long-term success and happiness.
Simply put –
PowerTapping is the master tool that enables you to change old self sabotaging beliefs and create new habits that allow you to accomplish you goals.
Remember the famous Babe Ruth Quote –
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
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