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| WHY WE OVER/UNDER EAT OR TRY TO CONTROL OUR FOOD |
We often eat for emotional reasons such as feeling deprived or insatiable or lonely or
anxious or bored. Basically, we aren’t comfortable sitting with our feelings. This is
understandable because sometimes they are pretty ugly. Food soothes our raw feelings.
We doubt that we can cope without our food crutch. It helps us to feel secure in a
sometimes scary world.
Food helps us to feel safe, and our need to survive will always win out against our vanity
need to look attractive. So until one deals with the issue of safety, weight and food will
remain an issue. That is why weight loss can be so confusing. We consciously want to
lose weight, but our more powerful subconscious wants to remain safe.
Subconscious drivers to keep me overweight
Weight loss is not safe because my identity may change (who will I be if I lose
weight?)
It’s not safe because others may see me differently (will they be mad at me and
resent my success? Will I lose my friends?)
It’s not safe because it helps me to cope (how will I get through daily anxiety and
worries without my food crutch?)
Possible behaviors surrounding my relationship with food/body image
Maintaining strict control over what is eaten due to fear of gaining weight or
getting fat
Distorted body image
Binging on excessive amounts of food when not hungry
Eating for emotional reasons
Binging and purging (bulimia)
Anorexia (food restriction)
Feelings of deprivation, loss, anger, abandonment and/or panic when denied
certain food or large portions
Hiding food intake
Shame/guilt about eating certain foods
Shame/guilt about throwing away food
The below EFT phrases often start with negative emotions, but they often switch to
positive, choice statements. By doing choice statements, it’s like we are accepting
ourselves with two different feelings. It’s as if our conscious and subconscious minds are
debating and integrating.
People very often struggle with their weight and food issues because they have internal
objections in their mind (often unbeknownst to them) that keep them from achieving their
desires. They have beliefs that keep them stuck. It is important to be able to identify
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these beliefs so that we can move past them. If we aren’t aware of them, we cannot
change them.
How did these beliefs originate? What specific events formed these beliefs? We can
think of sayings that our parents drilled into us, such as “Money doesn’t grow on trees,”
or “Clean your plate so that you’ll grow up to be a strong boy!” What we are doing here
is identifying the writing on our walls, those experiences that formed who we currently
are. Some of this writing serves us, and some of it is outdated and no longer serves us.
Then we tap on those specific events.
NOTE: After some of the “even though” phrases below, you will see … This is an
indicator to say “I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”
