I have quite a few versions of ‘If I only had a dollar for every time a client told me x, I’d be a very rich woman.‘ One of the biggies is ‘If I only had a dollar for every time I’ve had a client tell me “I don’t know why, but whenever I get to this [weight/clothing size/whatever measure they’re using to assess their progress], I start to self-sabotage. I don’t know why, and it’s driving me crazy!'”
It’s enormously frustrating to have made such progress on changing your eating habits, getting into an exercise routine, and working on your relationship with food, only to watch all your gains slip away as you fall back into old patterns of overeating, eating unhealthy foods and being sedentary. Why would any sane person stop doing what was clearly working for them and go back to habits that harm them?
The answer frequently arises when you ask yourself one of my favourite questions for getting to the bottom of self-sabotage:
“What happened the last time you lost weight?”
In a previous post, I shared the story of ‘Bianca’, who was branded a slut by a family member when she lost weight, and started receiving admiring looks from men. This is an absolutely archetypal instance of self-sabotaging to keep safe: after this hurtful incident, being slim and attractive didn’t feel safe to Bianca on an unconscious level, so she regained the weight she’d lost, and then held onto it for dear life in order to protect herself from attack.
For ‘Deanne’, who had lost over 50 kg and, with another 15-20 kg to go, had hit a plateau and stayed stuck there for months, the source of the self-sabotage was quite different. “The last time I was this weight,” she told me, “I got pregnant!” Deanne was contemplating leaving her loveless marriage, and the last thing she needed was another tie to bind her to her husband. Her fear that losing any more weight would increase her fertility and derail her ‘5 year plan’ to exit her marriage, stopped her weight loss dead in its tracks.
Even when a negative life event simply coincides with weight loss, rather than being caused by it, our brains – which remember facts by forming associations between various types of input – often link the two events together, metaphorically placing a big red “DANGER!” sign on being at a certain weight, size or level of fitness.
This happened to ‘Marlene’, who father had suffered a massive heart attack and died just after she reached her goal weight. When we worked on this incident with Matrix Reimprinting, she realised that the message she’d taken from this event was that “I can’t be the size I want to be because other people suffer when I do.”
Thankfully, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) – and especially Matrix Reimprinting, a form of EFT in which we work with the limiting beliefs we formed during significant life events – allow us to identify the negative associations we’ve made with weight loss, and ‘rewire our brains’ so we feel safe and can focus on all the positives of being slimmer: better health now and in the future, more energy, feeling good about ourselves, receiving admiring looks from our partner, setting a good example for our children, being able to shop in the ‘regular’ section of clothing stores, feeling comfortable around food rather than compulsive or anxious, and the myriad other benefits of living in a body you feel comfortable in.
(If this topic interests you, you might be interested in my post on the science behind how consciously working on our distressing memories around weight loss literally changes the way we remember those distressing events, freeing us up to make positive changes that stick.)
My intensive program for overcoming emotional eating, food addiction and poor body image, The LEAN Program, incorporates tapping on these and many other weight loss and body image related issues.
The LEAN Program is a completely new approach to weight loss – instead of counting kilojoules and restricting portion size, you will discover:
- How to choose foods that reduce cravings;
- How to tell when you’re truly hungry and when you’ve had enough to eat – and easily stop eating at that point; and
- How to transform your relationship with your body and with food, so that healthy eating just comes naturally to you, with no sense of deprivation.
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