Take a big deep breath. Easy, nothing forced, and breathe out slowly. You’ve come so far, and we want you to reflect on the courage it has taken and remind you how proud you should be of yourself.
When you’ve been stuck for a long time, or been in the thrall of uncomfortable emotions that have ruled your life, it can feel very strange when those influences are no longer in control. Emotional eating has, in the past, taken the place of you speaking out or having your needs met. Having worked so hard to release and resolve your triggers to emotional eating, you may be wondering: what now?
Well, there is a part of you – a very powerful, wonderful part of you – that you have underused while you were swallowing down your emotions with food. This incredible part of you always works to promote your best interests and is your greatest advocate.
Are you intrigued as to what this part of you might be? Well, it is your intuition – your gut reaction. For some of you this will be tantamount to a formal introduction as this is not a part of you that you have ever acknowledged or even known existed.
Your intuition was drowned out with emotional eating and somehow got turned down and muffled under plates of food. Now, though, you are clear of all those emotional triggers, and it’s time to meet your own very best friend.
Learning to hear your intuitive voice will take some practice. You will need to ask yourself questions, such as ‘How do I feel about …’ whatever is bothering you, and wait for your intuition to answer. You may hear it or feel it. For most people, intuition is a feeling in their guts. When you are in touch with your intuition you recognise in real-time what it is telling you about anything that is happening to you, and the more you trust and value yourself, the more clearly you can hear your intuition respond, and then you can act accordingly.
Learn to say, ‘I’ll get back to you,’ when people ask things of you. Even if everyone has been used to your being endlessly available in the past, from now on give yourself the opportunity of checking in with your intuition, and make a decision on how it feels for you.
You may have to take time to properly acquaint yourself with your intuition at the beginning. Think of it as a little like a muscle. You will need to familiarise yourself with it, use it often, and train it on different challenges, to get it up to full strength.
You can use EFT to help with this, and use a set-up similar to this to introduce yourself to your own intuition. Here is an illustrative suggestion as a set-up phrase:
‘Even though I’ve never listened to my intuition in the past, and I’m not sure I know how to, I’m telling the universe now I’m listening, and I completely and fully love, and accept myself.’
Say the set-up phrase three times.
Now, tap around all the EFT points. As you do so, alternate
‘I don’t know how to listen to my intuition’ with
‘I am open to hearing my intuition.’
Send the message that you are ready to hear, and gradually your intuition, instincts and insights will become clearer to you, guiding you towards what is best for your higher self.
Gratitude is one of the most profound emotions we can experience in our lives and yet we can so easily lose touch with things in our own lives that we feel true gratitude for.
Focusing on gratitude is also a powerful way for us to reinforce our desire to feel differently about ourselves and how we live our lives.
Our gratitude protocol asks you to write out 25 aspects of your life that you feel true gratitude for. Once you have your list, read through them and tap as you do. It is most powerful if you can do this last thing at night and first thing in the morning for at least seven days.
Below are 10 gratitude statements for you to begin with. Use the next worksheet (page 175, http://your7simplesteps.com/book16) to copy these statements and add to them to record what else in your life you are grateful for:
‘I am grateful for my desire to be slim and healthy.’
‘I am grateful I am ready to forgive myself.’
‘I am grateful for the love I have in my life.’
‘I am grateful for surviving my past.’
‘I am grateful that I can think of today with joy.’
‘I am grateful for everyone I love.’
‘I am grateful for the glorious sunshine today.’
‘I am grateful I have embraced good health and wellbeing.’
‘I am grateful I am taking better care of myself.’
‘I am grateful for the good quality food I have in my fridge.’
Remember your own words are more powerful than anyone else’s. The aim is to generate a minimum of 25 grateful statements
To download the A4 printer-friendly PDF version of the ‘Gratitude list’ worksheet, go to www.your7simplesteps.com and click on the Worksheets tab.
There is a well-documented response that sometimes happens with clients when they have truly resolved and released painful emotions around issues that had previously kept them stuck. It’s called the ‘apex phenomenon’, which is a fancy way of saying what clients once thought was a big deal afterwards feels like a non-event when the therapist goes back and reminds them of their original presenting issues.
It is not unusual for a client to say, ‘Oh yeah — my old flying thing’, when actually they had originally come into therapy because they couldn’t get on an aeroplane at all unless doped up to the eyeballs or in a state of profound anxiety. There was the woman who we asked, ‘So, how are you about leaving food on your plate these days?’ only to be met with a blank stare and a moment of confusion before she replied, ‘Oh, yeah — I can do that now.’ This is the very same woman who could never leave food on her plate as it had been drummed into her during her childhood that it was a sign of how wasteful and selfish she was in a world beset with poverty and starvation.
Anecdotes like this abound when working with clients with EFT and PSTEC. Through those techniques, the uncomfortable emotions are resolved and released, not buried or trained out of you. And, when those emotions are comprehensively released, then there is no residue left. Hence, the apex phenomenon.
So, take the time now to go back through your worksheets and note book and check the notes you made as you worked through your issues. Notice your starting numbers and your finishing numbers. See how far you have come! Take the time to acknowledge your journey, and take pride in the profound shifts in your thinking and beliefs that allow you now to feel calm around food, to eat for nourishment and to stop emotional eating.
Your Seven Simple Steps programme is enhanced by marking your progress on the logs, checklist and food and mood diary we have specially designed for you to use while on the programme. You can download these for free at the web address below. Embrace your inner girl-guide or boy-scout, and get logging. You will record all that you’ve achieved and it will help spur you on to greater success.
Interestingly, doing this also highlights the parts of the programme you are finding challenging. You can then become aware of areas that could benefit from being further explored using EFT and PSTEC.
Logs available are:
Food and mood diary – Charting what you ate, when you ate and how you were feeling at the time can be very illuminating in the first week or so of your programme. It’s not something you need to do forever, but we believe it’s beneficial at the beginning. The food diary also asks you to assess how hungry you were when you wanted to eat, so this is an aid to unpicking what else may be going on for you. Emotionally that can get confused with a desire to eat.
Programme checklist – This is a chart format for you to tick your way along during your first 30 days to acknowledge everything you are achieving and the changes you are making in your life.
Attract weight release – This uses the powerful Laws of Attraction so that you can release those excess pounds effortlessly and easily. You are encouraged to adopt various practices, and embed habits that if undertaken consistently can result in an improved relationship with food as well as a positive effect on your weight. It’s easy – just accumulate ticks in the right-hand columns to acknowledge completing specific daily actions and record your inevitable, steady weight loss in the left-hand columns. This format also works really well for ongoing successful weight maintenance.
To download the A4 printer-friendly pdf of the ‘Chart your success’ worksheet, go to www.your7simplesteps.com and click on the Worksheets tab.