How To Release Blocks to Weight Loss

In my practice I work with women to release both nutritional and emotional blocks to losing weight. In this work I have found there are several areas where people can get blocked or have internal resistance to taking off weight.

In EFT we often call this psychological reversal. In psychological circles I believe this would be referred to as self- sabotage. I often see what people call "self-sabotage" in a very different way. How can we sabotage ourselves when deep down every single action we take is truly in our best interest, but often that best interest is out of our conscious awareness.

In my experience all of our actions make sense once we understand where it came from or why we are doing it. Even behaviors we really wish we could stop like addictive habits or over-eating. There is always a reason.

For this reason I prefer to talk about blocks as a form of resistance or psychological reversal. The best way to describe what this feels like is to think of a car driving down the road with both the gas and the brake on at the same time. How does this work? One simple example can be when we are significantly overwhelmed or stressed and though we may want to lose weight, the compulsion to over-eat is stronger and overrides our desire at times.

I have broken the most significant blocks (or places where internal resistance can show up) to weight loss that I see into 3 categories:

1. Negative beliefs or thoughts about food, weight and our bodies
2. Emotional stress, both current and past
3. Dietary, nutritional and physiological stress (all of which are effected by the above two as well but I work with separately at times.)

Addressing Negative Beliefs

In this article I will give you some tools for clearing the fist category of blocks- negative beliefs. The negative beliefs we have both conscious and subconscious, can contribute significant resistance to taking action toward our goals.

Exercise one:
First, write down your weight loss goal at the top of a piece of paper.
How positive do you feel that you can achieve it right now? Do you have any negative thoughts or feelings that come up as soon as you write it, or state it?

These often come in the form of “yes but” statements or have a “because” after them. I'll never be able to lose that much weight because...

Some common examples might be:

“yeah, but I won't be able to maintain my weight loss, or all I have to do to get there...”
“I can't picture being at my goal weight, I have so far to go”
“It will take too much work”
“I haven't been able to do it before, so why now”
“I'll feel deprived and like I have to eat foods I don't want to eat..”etc.
“Even if I lose the weight I still won't be happy, so maybe it doesn't matter anyway”
“I don't want to have to give up... (you name the food or habit)”
“If I lose weight, others will be jealous or try to sabotage me”
“I don't want to eat differently than (my spouse, my colleagues, my friends, my family, etc)”

Rate the negative beliefs by giving them a number from 1-10. 10 feeling the most true or causing the most intensity right now for you, 1 the least.

Tap on each belief that is over a rating of 7 first.

Exercise two:
What do you say to your body when you look in the mirror or get dressed? How do you really feel? When was the first time you recall feeling that way? Keep asking yourself this last question until you feel you've gotten to the origins of a negative body belief or image.

Some possible examples:

1. Decisions we made about our bodies and size in our pre-teen years based on friends and family or community around us. Be sure to get very specific when the first incident happened that you can recall. Often there really is a first one and starting there goes a long way in healing this issue.

2. Constant self critical dialog about parts of our bodies or all of it, but again, get specific. "I can't stand how my arms feel and look in that shirt..."

Rate negative self talk or incident.

Tap on each negative thought or belief individually taking those rated at 7 first.

I have seen just tapping on negative beliefs in this way release weight for people many times. I am always fascinated by how much resistance is created by these earlier incidents and current negative beliefs that are usually when many women begin dieting or restricting then over-eating. Several of my clients were able to stop the constant need to diet or food restrict after clearing a pre-teen incident where body hatred began. It is these incident and negative beliefs about ourselves that educate (whether we are aware of it or not) our present behaviors with food. Truly, love heals all. Cliche as it sounds, it is true I think. We must go back and heal the wounds and bring love to our bodies, all sizes, all shapes and all colors. God made us different and unique and we must celebrate that.

Blessings fellow Goddesses,

Sandy

Sandy Zeldes
San Francisco, California, US
www.EatLikeAGoddess.com

From the EFTfree Archives, which are now a part of EFT International .
Originally published on September 8, 2012.