Winning the ‘food war’ with love

Many of the clients I see feel as if they are at war with food and with their bodies. Every day, their ‘logical brains’ are locked in mortal combat with their ’emotional brains’, the former telling them they should be making healthy food choices, while the latter constantly screams out for unhealthy ‘comfort foods’.

If you’ve ever been engaged in this war, you’ve probably tried to win it with will-power – telling yourself you just have to be stronger, work harder, be more self-disciplined, motivate yourself to eat better by learning more about nutrition, and so on. But these approaches are rarely successful for long.

What really works – and not just for a week, but for a life-time – is shifting out of the perspective that you have to control and punish yourself into changing, and into a stance of love and acceptance of yourself. It’s what I call ‘loving yourself slim’, and it’s the philosophy behind my healthy weight loss intensive, The LEAN Program.

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is the perfect tool to accomplish this shift in perspective, because the acceptance of ourselves as we are right now is literally embedded into the technique, with the words that we repeat while tapping acupuncture points:

“Even though I have this [fill in the blank with your problem or issue], I deeply and completely accept myself.”

I’d like to share with you, with the permission of Amy, who agreed to be my demonstration subject in a presentation I did on EFT for food cravings, how profoundly and powerfully this shift from fighting ourselves to loving and accepting ourselves facilitates healthy lifestyle change.

The issue that Amy wanted to work on, was that although she knew that she should be eating salad every day, she just couldn’t face it. When I asked her what words and feelings came up when she thought about salad, she didn’t hesitate at all: salad, to her, was unsatisfying, unappealing, cold, boring, gross, and so on and so forth! We did some tapping on these words and the way they made her feel.

Then I asked her what she pictured in her mind when she thought of salad, and immediately the image of the boring, plain, unappetising salad she was made to eat as a child came up. Again, we tapped for a while on what she saw, smelt and tasted in her imagination: ‘fungusy-smelling’ and ‘dull-looking’ mushrooms and ‘stringy’ alfalfa sprouts that got caught in her throat!

After a few minutes of tapping on these recollections of childhood salads, I asked her again how she felt about salad, and she replied, to her own amazement, that whereas at the beginning she had felt repulsed by the idea of eating salad, now it seemed quite neutral to her – just another kind of food, with the possibility of making it much more interesting and appealing by putting her own ‘stamp’ on it.

3 days later, she emailed to update me on her progress. Here is what she wrote:

Hi Robyn,

Thanks again for Saturday’s talk, it was fantastic and I got so much out of it! Would you believe I just finished a huge salad for lunch and it was very satisfying! Normally I would force myself to eat one and then look for something else to eat, but I really enjoyed it! I think the EFT made a big difference.

 

The next update had more good news:

I have been amazed with the progress I have made since we did the EFT on Saturday! I am actually craving salad more which never ever happens!

I have made a big salad for lunch each day since Saturday and I have noticed increased energy each day which is great! In the past I had the idea that a big fresh salad would never fill or satisfy me but it really does, and I know it’s because of the Emotional Freedom Technique.

I can’t believe how well it works, and it was great to look deeper into why I was so unappetized by salad.

I would love to book a consultation with you to address another issue by using EFT.

Thanks Robyn!!

Amy

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.

If you’re tired of battling your body and mind, and want to try loving yourself into healthy behaviour instead, The LEAN Program is for you!

The LEAN Program is a completely new approach to weight loss – instead of counting kilojoules and restricting portion size, you will discover:

1. How to choose foods that reduce cravings;
2. How to tell when you’re truly hungry and when you’ve had enough to eat – and easily stop eating at that point; and
3. 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.

Click here for all the details.