More than just weight

Well, how is it going? How are the cravings? Are you tapping? Getting any relief? Anything surprising coming up? We have been dealing with surface issues of a physical nature. But there is more to weight than pounds. The pounds we carry can weigh much more on us than they actually do. The emotional weight can be so heavy that it buries us or it can make us so numb that we dont even feel it.

How do we get to the bottom of it? By asking some good questions and then tapping on our answers. If we change from eating chocolate, to drinking soda, or ice cream, or even some other behavior like internet addiction, we have not overcome the craving or addiction, just changed preferences. So what kinds of questions should we ask? This message is going to focus on two things. First how we see ourselves and secondly, our past.

I want you to imagine for just a minute that you are at the successful end of weight loss and have reached your goal weight. How does that feel, look, sound? Do you feel the excitement of a job well done? Can you see yourself in a new outfit or bathing suit looking great? Can you hear the compliments that people are giving you? You can? Great! You can't? It's important that you can. Let's talk a little. First of all, whatever your reasonable goal weight may be, change it by one pound. A reasonable goal might be 150 pounds. But, for some reason, you get stuck and cannot get past a 165 threshold. So, I was given the advice by a fellow EFT practitioner to change it by 1 pound. Either choose 149 or 151. I can hear most of you choosing 149.

More questions. Why cant you see, feel, hear yourself at your goal weight? Think about it. "Well, my butt is the size of manhattan. I hate my thighs. My cellulite is disgusting." (for examples) Start tapping. Even though my butt is the size of Manhattan...even though I hate my thighs...even though I cant stand the cellulite...I love myself anyway without judgement." Now this can go all over the place and may bring up things you werent expecting. Feelings of emptiness, loneliness, or anger or other emotions are common. Emptiness is a big one. Feeling deprived is another. We often try to fill that emptiness by stuffing ourselves with whatever we can...food, friends, in some cases alcohol, drugs, smoking. Each of these feelings needs to be effectively dealt with to lighten the emotional load. Tap until you can get those feelings down to nothing and if you get stuck, let me know.

Lets talk about the past. Go back to a time when you were at your ideal weight and then you gained weight and couldn't lose it. When was that? What was going on in your life at that time? These answers will take us to more interesting questions. Three in particular. 1) What is the cost to you if you lose weight? 2) What do you gain by keeping the weight? 3) What happened the last time I lost weight?

Why are these important? The first question asks you to think about what would be a negative if you lost weight. Consciously you may say, there is no negative and maybe that is true. But, for example, if you have no skinny friends or secretly hate skinny people, or your friends hate skinny people, what happens when you become "skinny?" Hmmm, suddenly we may wonder whether our friends will still love and accept us if we are skinny. This is a real obstacle. We may have to get new friends if they cant deeply and completely accept us as we are. LOL! "Even though my friends may hate me if I am skinny. Even though I dont want to lose my friends and get new ones...Question number two is the flipside of one. What is the benefit to keeping the extra pounds? Maybe you are afraid you will have to give up too much. Maybe you think you will never be able to enjoy food again. Maybe someone in your life likes you with those pounds and therefore you are safe. "Even though my weight means I am safe. Even though I am afraid I will never be able to indulge in what I want. Even though I will have to deprive myself to be who I want. Even though I dont want to give up my sweets."

The last time you were at your ideal weight can tell you a lot. Here is my little personal insight and I have not tapped about it yet. The last time I was at my ideal weight, I actually went rather far below it. On the day I had my gallbladder out, I weighed 134 pounds. I had little fat left on me. My thighs didnt know each other anymore. I had just been through 8 months of hell, because I wanted to preserve my gall bladder. Whether that was intelligent or not is another story (but I sure wish now I could have tapped on it) but suffice it to say that dozens of attempts to cleanse, changes of diet, and many, many painful attacks finally literally brought me to my knees in pain and anguish. Througout the ordeal as the pounds dropped really with incredible ease, I had friends making a really big deal about it in a negative way. I did not want people to notice. One gal in particular actually sneered at me in a joking way and told me she hated me. Another regularly came up to me and grabbed my clothes to puncutate that she was noticing and that I should be doing something about it. Now, I enjoyed the weight loss at first and to a point. But once I kept going down below 145, I began to worry. I knew that I could not continue on this way. So, I eventually had surgery. I really dont remember after surgery how I gained weight the first few months. I am sure I did because I could now eat things I hadn't in months. But when I became pregnant with my 7th child 4 months later, that was all she wrote. I have never been able to drop the excess pounds since. That was almost 4 years ago. I tell the long story to explain that when I asked myself why I could not lose weight, this experience came up. I actually asked what happened the last time I was at an ideal (or less than ideal) weight. And I came to the conclusion, that for me, I am internalizing that weight loss is painful and uncomfortable and gets you noticed and gets you enemies. I dont believe that in my conscious mind, but the sub-conscious matters most. So, start asking questions. You may find that if you dont have a lot of weight to lose, that you feel guilty because someone you love has more to carry around than you do. It should not matter, who has the most to lose. If you want a better you, dont feel guilty about it.

One last thing. The power of postive affirmations cannot be emphasized especially when combined with EFT. I have read many PA books and either some of it just was not true for me, like Zig Ziglar insisting that you get up in the morning and exclaim you feel like a million bucks. Or I started out strong and then it petered out. Here are a couple of suggestions when writing affirmations. Always keep it in the positive. Dont say, I dont want to be negative. That's two negatives. Say, I am a positive person. Which brings me to the second rule. Always state the PAs in the I am form. I have been thinking about the power of those words. We know in scripture, God identifies Himself as I AM. Those words, when uttered by our own mouths, identifies us. How do we want to be identified? I am a bad mother? I am a failure? I am such an idiot? We really should watch what we say. Our words can become our own creation. So, instead, I am 149 pounds and that's what I weigh. I am a joyful person. I am a great wife and mother. I am financially free. (Not I am out of debt--the focus becomes the debt instead of the freedom) See what I mean? If we can begin to imagine the life we want, and believe it, and speak it into creation, it really can be. I hope this information will be helpful for you. I dont know what's next, but I know I'll come up with something.

Blessings, Dawn