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Weight Loss

Following up on a 30 pound weight loss

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

Hi Everyone,

Dr. Carol Look is a specialist in both weight loss and addictions (they have similar core issues). In this article, Carol describes the progress of "Mary" as she successfully loses 30 pounds. Not only does Carol emphasize the use of client homework but she also goes for the emotional drivers behind Mary's overweight condition. At one point she says.....

"She had not just worked on symptom reduction, but had obviously made changes on a very deep level."

You should find this example instructive.

Hugs, Gary

P.S. You may also wish to review Carol's weight loss series on our web site.


By Carol Look

"Mary" contacted me before the recent Energy Psychology conference to tell me she had lost over 30 pounds since taking my EFT weight loss class at the previous year's conference. She agreed to be "interviewed" for a post to this email list to share her success.

She attended my weight loss class because she had seen her weight creep up over the last decade or so, and was struggling with severely depleted energy. While vanity was a factor, she was much more interested in improving her health and increasing her vitality.

She volunteered in class to use EFT to reduce her addictive urges to eat foods that triggered compulsive overeating or were simply considered unhealthy. Her weakness was Lay's potato chips. Fortunately, I had brought a bag of them to the class as a prop for this demonstration. Along with the other volunteers, Mary tapped for....

"Even though I have this terrible craving to eat my favorite food, I deeply and completely accept myself..."

"Even though I can't resist my chips, I deeply..."

We covered a few rounds until the actual craving was reduced to the point where she didn't even like the smell of the chips anymore. "They smelled too greasy now", she said, whereas formerly the smell had been intoxicating to her. The chips used to have "power" over her (her words) so she felt surprised and delighted to be free of the obsession and craving during the demonstration.

I then pursued underlying feelings and emotional themes, the culprits driving addictive urges. Mary was afraid that if she stopped eating foods that she craved and loved, she would feel deprived. We tapped for the whole class as follows...

"Even though I fear feeling deprived, and don't want to give anything up, I deeply and completely accept myself."

Many other people in the audience reported feelings of severe loss that surfaced while we were tapping when they thought of giving up their addictive substance, so we tapped rounds for those feelings...

"Even though I feel grief when I think of losing weight, and giving up my favorite foods..."

Mary was given the choice to keep the chips or to return them. She was thoroughly surprised by her easy decision to give the chips back to me.

She told me that she had been a purely emotional eater, and that she used food to numb out her feelings of anxiety, stress, loneliness and grief. In addition, she revealed that she also overate when she felt joyful or in a celebration mood. "I ate to stuff any emotion I didn't want to feel."

Then another volunteer identified the following belief/ emotional state in front of the class, "Both my sister and I are huge and we're never going to be enough for my mother." Mary resonated with this sentiment and tapped to reduce the related emotions as well as for her suspicion that she was using her extra weight as protection....

"Even though I don't feel safe without the extra pounds, I deeply and completely accept myself..."

"Even though I'll never be enough, there was never enough, and there probably won't be enough...I choose to feel satisfied anyway."

Mary returned home after the conference feeling motivated and back in control. She started a new eating program and an exercise program and tapped EVERY DAY as I had recommended. She tapped at home, in the car, on her job etc. and realized she didn't have to eat anymore to tranquilize her emotional states throughout the day. She no longer stopped while driving to pick up snacks and junk food. She said "instead, I would stop and acknowledge the emotion I was experiencing, and then tap for it."

By the end of September (4 months) she had lost 30 pounds. I asked her what happened between September and this recent May conference. She told me of three extremely stressful events that interrupted her progress and caused a plateau. Her mother was assaulted, which was of course upsetting and frightening, and then her father died in October after a long stressful illness. In addition, Mary, was feeling threatened by deep turbulence and insecurity in her workplace.

Even though she completely stopped tapping between October and March, she did not return to obsessive thoughts or compulsive behavior regarding food and was able to maintain her 30 pound weight loss. This was critical information for her about how much she had changed. She had not just worked on symptom reduction, but had obviously made changes on a very deep level. In March, after 5 months of acknowledging and dealing with her grief, she began tapping again and lost an additional 8 pounds before returning to the aforementioned May Energy Conference.

But Mary's biggest change, other than the obvious difference in her size, was a dramatic improvement in her energy. She was enjoying her vitality, feeling fit, and looking much better too. I asked her about her feelings of "control" around food. She said she could choose to eat "just one" chip---something that was unheard of for her before EFT. She said "it felt like a miracle" for her to lose so much weight and feel so much better. "I learned what real hunger feels like. EFT allowed me to clear away unresourceful emotions...and helped me return to my spiritual tools."

Thank you, Mary, for your persistence and for this story.

Dr. Carol Look

More articles on Addictions and Substance Abuse

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