Our bodies bear testament to our lives. Carrying excess weight is a manifestation of a body out of balance. Your work is to bring yourself back into balance so that it is safe to release the excess weight and achieve your natural weight. The goal is to feel at home and safe in yourself – to honour and care for yourself to the best of your ability and to end self-punishing and self-sabotaging behaviour.
It is helpful now to acknowledge how little we are at peace with ourselves by writing down as many of the negative, and positive, judgements you make about your looks and your own body on the next worksheet, http://your7simplesteps.com/book10. By shining a light onto your self-critical, self-assassinating beliefs you can take the first step in taking back your power.
The worksheet is the place to list all the things you like about your body and all the things you dislike. Use the words you, or others, have used to describe you physically. Write down the praise and the admonishments.
As you do this, make a note of any emotions, or memories that surface. As always, take your time with this. We carry the weight of our own self-criticism, and bear the emotional load of harsh words, and the physical trespasses others have made against us.
Here are some examples of like, and dislike, from other clients.
The ‘like’ list
• ‘I like my eyes.’
• ‘My ankles are slim.’
• ‘I have narrow wrists.’
The ‘hate’ list
• ‘My breasts get me too much attention.’
• ‘I am never strong enough to protect myself.’
• ‘I hate my big stomach.’
• ‘Being small means being weak.’
To download the A4 printer-friendly pdf version of the ‘Love and hate’ worksheet, go to www.your7simplesteps.com and click on the Worksheets tab.
‘Even though I hate my body and myself, I completely and fully love and accept these feelings.’
‘Even though I’m disappointed in myself that I haven’t managed my eating better in the past, I completely and fully love and accept myself as I am now.’
‘Even though it’s too late to turn this around and I’m hating myself for being such a failure, I’m willing to learn to completely and fully love and accept myself without judgement.’
First, take three fairly deep and gentle breaths. Breathe in through your nose and softly out through your mouth. Don’t use any force or pressure.
Now focus for a moment on your breathing and assess the degree of your self-loathing. Give this a SUD rating with zero signifying you are completely at peace with your physicality and 10 signifying the highest degree of self-loathing.
| First round of tapping | ||
| EB: | ‘I’m so tired of hating myself.’ | |
| SE: | ‘There’s nothing to love about me.’ | |
| UE: | ‘There’s nothing to love about my body – | |
| N: | ‘it looks disgusting.’ | |
| C: | ‘There’s nothing to love about me or my body.’ | |
| CB: | ‘I’m totally unlovable.’ | |
| RIBS: | ‘It feels too hard to change now.’ | |
| UA: | ‘It’s all too late.’ | |
| W: | ‘I’m so disappointed in myself.’ | |
| TH: | ‘I’m such a failure.’ | |
Pause. Take one easy, deep breath.
‘Even though I still feel like a dismal failure, I completely and fully love and accept myself.’
‘Even though I’m believing that it’s too late to change, I completely and fully love and accept myself as I am now.’
‘Even though I’m struggling to get past this self-loathing, I completely and fully love and accept myself without judgement.’
| Second round of tapping | ||
| EB: | ‘I’m such a failure.’ | |
| SE: | ‘I’ve never been good enough and my body is evidence of this.’ | |
| UE: | ‘It hurts so much to feel these feelings… | |
| N: | ‘…of self loathing.’ | |
| C: | ‘I’m so tired of feeling this way.’ | |
| CB: | ‘I only notice everything that is wrong with me and my body.’ | |
| RIBS: | ‘What if I could start noticing the things that are right, | |
| UA: | ‘and feel grateful for them.’ | |
| W: | ‘There are things that are great about me and my body and I’m starting to notice these.’ | |
| TH: | ‘I’m learning to tell better stories about myself and my body.’ | |
Pause. Take one easy, deep breath. Assess your level of self-loathing and rate it again from zero to 10.
‘Even though I’m still just learning to feel better about myself and my body, I completely and fully love and accept myself.’
‘Even though I am carrying all these stories in my head about myself and my body, I’m willing to start telling better stories and I completely and fully love and accept myself as I am now.’
‘Even though parts of me still struggle to love and accept me just as I am, I’m willing to give my body some love and support as I learn new ways of thinking and behaving.’
| Third round of tapping | ||
| EB: | ‘All these old stories in my head.’ | |
| SE: | ‘I made them all up.’ | |
| UE: | ‘They’re not even true, so I’m choosing to let them go.’ | |
| N: | ‘I’m starting today to make these changes in my thinking.’ | |
| C: | ‘As I let go of all these old beliefs and stories that have been keeping me stuck, | |
| CB: | ‘I’m learning to be grateful for myself and my body.’ | |
| RIBS: | ‘My body takes care of me in so many wonderful ways, and I’m learning to love my body and be grateful for it.’ | |
| UA: | ‘Releasing these old stories now…’ | |
| W: | ‘feeling better and better and better with every new day…’ | |
| TH: | ‘loving myself more and more every day!’ | |
Pause. Take one easy, deep breath.
Assess your level of self-loathing again, giving it a SUD rating from zero to 10.
If the SUD rating is still middling to high repeat the first tapping round if required to further reduce your SUD rating.
So you look into a mirror and see your body. What is your initial reaction? Most times it may be disgust – or revulsion. It’s quite rare that people carrying excess weight can view themselves in the mirror and feel okay about their bodies. The problem with hating our bodies, however, is that when we are feeling so much shame and disgust at how terrible we look it’s almost impossible to shed that excess weight. Such a paradox! PSTEC (see page 39) is really effective for this problem. Think about your body. What is the part that disgusts you the most? Your thighs? Your stomach? Your arms? Give this disgust (or hatred) a number out of 10. Start your work on the part that has the highest intensity. Get that feeling up as high as you possibly can.
Now, use the click track (see page 186) to start clearing this feeling. When the track has finished, check and reassess the intensity of your disgust. This should have started to decrease. Continue repeating the click track until you have reached a zero and when you think about this part of your body there is no emotional intensity at all.
Now move on to the remaining parts of your body that disgust you. Choose the one that produces the highest intensity of disgust and clear that feeling. Continue until you are totally void of any negative feelings as you see yourself in the mirror.
Imagine if your fat could speak; what would it want to say to you? Here is a wonderful and intuitive way to find out. This is a guided meditation, and its effectiveness, and the power of the insights you can receive, are totally dependent on your willingness to just go with the process and play with it imaginatively. The playfulness of the process is to allow feelings, images, colours and sounds to come to your mind. It is a stream-of-consciousness technique so do not impose rules or limitations on your imagination. It is important not to judge your responses or impose real-life logic on them. Give yourself time with this.
The way people perceive and conceptualise information falls into three main categories. They are visual (what you see), aural (what you hear) and kinesthetic (what you feel), so your responses to your exploration may be mainly the sights you can see, or the sounds you can hear or the emotions you feel.
By the time you have reached this stage of the book our hope is that you will have developed a greater understanding of your particular type of emotional eating. The depth of your insight is dependent on your having taken the time, and had the commitment, to apply yourself to the various self-discovery tasks along the way. It is by understanding the triggers to your eating emotionally, and fully resolving and releasing these, that you can stop the problem.
You will have worked for instance on your old limiting self-beliefs to the point where there is now no emotional load attached to memories or events that previously would have triggered you to eat emotionally. If you are still aware of pockets of resistance, then take your time to revisit earlier sections of the book so that you can make sure you have resolved and released any old issues around food. Do not be disappointed if resistance is still showing up or worry you will never resolve your issues. Each time you notice resistance to letting go and making changes is a gift as it shows you where to focus your attention.
Fear of success can be as big a stumbling block to achieving your dreams as fear of failure. What does success mean to you? Now is an opportunity to discover how your fear of success could cause you to self-sabotage the weight loss you desire.
Initially you may think that there can be nothing at all negative about you achieving your weight-loss goal, and that it can only be positive. However, pause and take your time with this. Delve deeply. Allow your mind to drift. Perhaps when you really think of reaching your goal weight you may find you are harbouring some misgivings about actually achieving this goal.
See yourself at your goal weight. Imagine how that feels. Bring all your senses into play so that as you visualise yourself you can powerfully feel how it would be.
Now, see yourself in different places and situations with different people:
How does staying at home feel?
How does going out feel?
How do strangers respond to you?
How do members of the opposite sex respond to you?
Are friends and family the same with you or is their behaviour different?
What does it feel like going to your studies or to work at your ideal weight?
If you have been at this weight before, what was that like? Did anything negative happen?
Who will be happy for you?
Who will feel threatened by your weight loss?
Who will expect more of you?
Is there any inkling of unease? Having tried for so long to achieve the weight loss you desire it may be surprising to discover any negativity around actually achieving the reality of it.
These uncomfortable feelings need to be cleared or they will encourage self-sabotaging behaviour around food, including emotional eating that has got in your way in the past. Use the next worksheet, http://your7simplesteps.com/book11 to explore any misgivings you have. Note them down. Allow yourself to get in touch with any uncomfortable feelings of what you and/or your life might be like for you at your goal weight.
To download the A4 printer-friendly PDF version of the ‘Fear of success’ worksheet, go to www.your7simplesteps.com and click on the Worksheets tab.
‘Even though I’m fearful of my success, I completely and fully love and accept myself.’
‘Even though I’m not deserving of success, I completely and fully love and accept myself as I am now.’
‘Even though success feels really scary to me as I certainly don’t deserve it, I completely and fully love and accept myself anyway without judgement.’
First, take three fairly deep and gentle breaths. Breathe in through your nose and softly out through your mouth. Don’t use any force or pressure.
Now focus for a moment on your fear of success and give it a SUD rating with zero signifying no fear and 10 signifying feeling really fearful.
| First round of tapping | ||
| EB: | ‘I don’t deserve success.’ | |
| SE: | ‘I always sabotage any progress I make.’ | |
| UE: | ‘I’m not worthy of success.’ | |
| N: | ‘I don’t deserve success.’ | |
| C: | ‘I don’t feel safe deserving success.’ | |
| CB: | ‘I never have.’ | |
| RIBS: | ‘I can’t change these patterns.’ | |
| UA: | ‘I’m not worthy of success.’ | |
| W: | ‘I just don’t feel safe being successful.’ | |
| TH: | ‘I can’t change that now.’ | |
Pause. Take one easy, deep breath.
‘Even though I still have this fear of success, I completely and fully love and accept myself.’
‘Even though I’m afraid that success will just create opportunities for me to fail, I completely and fully love and accept myself as I am now.’
‘Even though I would rather sabotage my success than fail one more time, I completely and fully love and accept myself without judgement.’
| Second round of tapping | ||
| EB: | ‘I can’t fail anymore.’ | |
| SE: | ‘Success feels too scary for me.’ | |
| UE: | ‘I can’t stand any more painful failures.’ | |
| N: | ‘I don’t think success is safe for me.’ | |
| C: | ‘I’ve had too many failures in my life.’ | |
| CB: | ‘I wonder if it’s possible to start releasing this fear, | |
| RIBS: | ‘because it’s keeping me so stuck, | |
| UA: | ‘but I worry that I shall just fail again.’ | |
| W: | ‘I’m so stuck in these bad habits, | |
| TH: | ‘but I really want to succeed this time.’ | |
Pause. Take one easy, deep breath.
Assess your fear of success and rate it again from zero to 10.
‘Even though I’m still feeling a little scared of success, I completely and fully love and accept myself.’
‘Even though I am afraid of moving forward, I’m open to letting go of this fear now and I completely and fully love and accept myself as I am now.’
‘Even though I’ve been stuck for so long feeling fearful of success, I now forgive myself and I forgive this fear.’
| Third round of tapping | ||
| EB: | ‘I choose to release this fear now.’ | |
| SE: | ‘I choose to be brave and move forward easily.’ | |
| UE: | ‘I have decided to be courageous.’ | |
| N: | ‘As I release those old limiting fears, | |
| C: | ‘I choose to accept that success is safe for me.’ | |
| CB: | ‘A part of me knows I can do this.’ | |
| RIBS: | ‘I know I can reach my goal.’ | |
| UA: | ‘I won’t give up.’ | |
| W: | ‘I can choose success.’ | |
| TH: | ‘This time I’m choosing success.’ | |
Pause. Take one easy, deep breath.
Assess your level of fear of success and rate it from zero to 10. How close to zero are you?
Repeat the first tapping round if required to further reduce your SUD rating.
Do you have memories from your past – even your childhood – of being judged? Were you the fat kid? Were you too embarrassed to get undressed in the changing-rooms? Did a nurse comment on how you should lose some weight… in front of all the other children? So you went home and emptied the fridge or pantry to try and dampen down the humiliation you felt?
Sit down in a quiet place and let your mind wander back to those times. Make a list of all those experiences that felt so uncomfortable. Keep writing until they’re all down in front of you. Now rate each of those experiences with a SUD rating out of 10, with 10 being the most intense and zero being no negative feelings.
Using the click track (see page 41), start to clear these experiences. Begin with the experience that has the highest score for intensity. Run the click on it ensuring that as you’re listening to the audio you keep the emotional intensity as high as you possibly can. When the track has finished, check to see what number you are scoring now for this experience. The intensity should have started to decrease. Continue repeating the click track until you have reached zero so that when you recall that experience there is no emotional intensity remaining at all.
Now move on to the other experiences. Choose the one with the next highest intensity and clear the emotions associated with that one. Continue with the remaining experiences. You will probably find that after you’ve cleared the really intense ones, the ones lower down will just drop away and have no emotional intensity at all.
Check in your mind and see if you have any more recent experiences that still feel raw. Make sure you clear those as well.
Affirmations (with an ‘i’) only work occasionally because they often cause doubts in our mind. This is because we are often trying to convince our mind of something we may not really believe to be true.
Noah St John developed the concept of afformations (with an ‘o’) based on the theory that rather than telling our mind what we want and then hoping that we can overcome any resistance we experience, we should ask a question so that our mind will automatically begin searching for an answer to the question.
Do make sure that you ask empowering questions – disempowering questions such as ‘Why am I overweight?’ tell us that we can’t do anything right. Because we always manifest what we focus on, if we ask negative questions we get negative results. So you must ensure that your afformations are always positive and the results can be amazing.
After each afformation, repeat the word ‘Yes’ about 10 times.
Use the afformations often during the day and you should start noticing a change within 14 days.
Here are some examples:
‘Why do I find it so easy to follow a healthy, balanced diet?’
‘Why is it so easy to reach my natural target weight?’
‘Why do I treat my body so well?’
‘Why do I let go of these excess pounds so easily?’
‘Why do I not allow negative thoughts to live in my mind?’
‘Why do I see my body perfect just as it is?’
‘Why do I look in the mirror and see I am enough?’
‘Why do I forgive my past mistakes?’
‘Why do I love my healthy lifestyle?’
‘Why do I have the perfect shape for me?’
Remember you can write your own afformations. Your own words are always more powerful than anyone else’s.
Lorraine tells her story of a lifetime’s struggle with food and weight issues and how she found a peaceful resolution as she approached a key crossroads in her own life.
‘I have fought weight problems all my life, coming from a family where borderline eating disorders were the norm and eating, or not eating, was a way of taking control in a rather unhappy household.
‘Despite a happy marriage and having raised two wonderful, now adult, children, my problems reared their ugly head again – big time.
‘I felt I was fat and at 58 years of age, at a crossroads in my life – what was to become of this overweight and therefore unattractive woman now, whose children needed her less?
‘On top of all that, I was also experiencing difficulties in having my widowed mother living nearby in a residential care home, from where she would still exercise an emotional power over both me and my younger sister.
‘I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life at over 16 stone (224+ lb/102+ kg). I had it in my mind that I wanted to travel with my husband to Israel to celebrate my 60th birthday. The reason I wanted to be slimmer for the trip was that I had strong recollections of all the times I had gone there as a single, and more attractive (as I thought), young woman. The last time I had visited had been in June 1985, on my own for work. At that time I had been married for only about 10 months. I now wanted to go back there as that same woman, albeit much older, more experienced, with a husband and grown children, but not looking completely unrecognisable from the outside. I was not expecting to see anyone that I’d known back then, but it was just something I had in my mind. I wanted to feel proud of myself, and losing weight was going to be the tangible proof of that.
I’ve dabbled with different forms of therapy for over the past 25 years, but hadn’t found anything remotely effective for more than 20 years.
By lucky chance I came across this programme on the internet and booked several one-to-one sessions. I have to tell you the location of these sessions was literally miles away from me, right across town, so not the easiest of journeys, but as it turned out, so, so worth the effort! I’ve learnt so much about myself and my triggers to emotional eating. I’ve come to understand and recognise my catastrophic thinking, something I had become very good at with years of diligent practice.
‘My default setting when faced with challenging changes, or what I catastrophically perceived to be challenging changes, was for my subconscious to attempt to pre-occupy me with more benign thoughts, and for me these often centred around food, or sometimes around domestic arrangements or decisions. It’s a sort of side-ways strategy I had unconsciously developed to avoid having to deal with real issues that were bothering me. I could fool myself that I wasn’t feeling anxious at all by focusing on, and over-thinking, the small stuff, and just eat and eat instead.
‘My resistance to letting go of my old coping strategies has been a challenge. The old, old question, “Who would I be if I wasn’t thinking about food?” or, “What would I need to address if my head wasn’t full of all this over-thinking?” kept me stuck for a long time and can still be my knee-jerk response when faced with big, unwelcome changes in my life. Nowadays though, I recognise them for what they are – just old fears and patterns of behaviour. In the past, I would have plummeted into a spiral of binge eating or secret eating and that doesn’t happen now. I recognise when something is out of kilter and I can gently explore what is going on in my life and reassure myself in ways that do not involve soothing myself with food.
‘PSTEC and EFT worked really well for me as methods of collapsing and resolving my emotional drivers to overeating. Both techniques seem really weird but they help – a lot.
‘I gained insights about myself so that when I am triggered by changes in my life and plunged into my default anxiety response of obsessing about food, I can choose other, more productive and certainly less fattening responses instead. I learnt to acknowledge all of the changes I had already faced and dealt with in my life – in fact, just being able to acknowledge to myself that life is perpetually changing and never static, has been strangely comforting.
‘I had never given myself credit for all that I had achieved with my life, and with my family, and although I’m not a natural at patting myself on my back, or even properly listening when people compliment me, I do get it now that I am a very capable, good person, who really does try to do her best. I’m kinder to myself for sure, which feels revolutionary and a huge relief.
‘By the time my 60th birthday rolled around I had, indeed, achieved my weight-loss goal and had lost five stone seven pounds (77 lb/35 kg). I felt absolutely marvellous and it was a truly memorable holiday. Now, some two years later, I can say I even lost a little more weight at one stage and have since put a little back on. My weight loss nowadays is stable at just under the five stone mark (70 lb/32 kg) and has been for a long time. I would like to lose a little more, but it doesn’t have the same urgency that it used to have. All I do know is that I am not going back to those old days of carrying all that extra weight. I feel liberated from the bingeing that had so taken over my life, and I now have the time and the emotional energy to think and do other things with my life.
‘For me, it has not been about a “one-off cure”. It has been about equipping myself with the right tools, together with learning to trust in myself that I am enough and I can deal with anything life throws at me. That doesn’t mean I might like all the changes that happen, or that they don’t feel like challenges, but I feel more able to deal with them nowadays and for that I am very grateful.’