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The common wisdom about losing weight is that you must consume fewer calories than you burn.
Most experts will go on to tell you that just cutting back food is not enough, that our
body's natural defenses go into survival mode, slow our metabolism and hold onto our fat
"reserves." Therefore exercise is a critical component of any weight-loss program to
increase metabolism and retrain muscle fitness.
However, anyone who has tried the popular fad diets - be it Atkins, South Beach,
Grapefruit, or Hollywood - can tell you there's more to it than that. Any diet where
you rely on will power to deprive yourself of the things you crave is bound to fail.
To change the way you look on the outside, you need to do more than change what and
how much you eat. You also have to change who you are and how you see yourself on a mental
and emotional level. The process works from the inside out.
Fat Loss
To correct my terminology, I am not really talking about weight loss, but rather fat loss.
You can lose weight in unhealthy ways, by losing protein from your muscles or calcium from
your bones. You can lose water weight with diuretics, or clear the weight of fecal matter
with laxatives. Likewise you can maintain or gain weight healthfully by building muscle
through exercise, and still lose inches across your mid-section. You will look and feel
better, but may not weigh less. As far as I am concerned, body weight is irrelevant.
What is important is your percentage of body fat. A good target is 15-25% body fat for
women and 12-20% for men.
Fat as Protection from Toxins
Before discussing mental and emotional barriers to fat loss, I'd like to address some rarely
discussed physical barriers to fat loss: heavy metals, toxins, body pH, candida, and food
allergies. The terms are linked to articles I have written on the subjects. First on the
list, although the order is more or less random in importance, is heavy metals. Heavy metals
are a problem in western Pennsylvania, for example, because of the emissions of two
particularly dirty power plants. Fillings and vaccinations are suspect as well. The body's
way of dealing with heavy metals is to isolate them in the fatty tissues and dilute
them with water. It then tries to dump them into the intestines or push them out through
the skin. (When a supplement aids the body's detox mechanism a temporary rash can occur,
which is sometimes mistaken for an allergic reaction to the supplement.)
Other toxins include dioxins - new car smell and the chemicals that exude from plastic
heated in the microwave - and xenoestrogens - the harmful byproducts of drugs that have
gotten into our water supply causing weight gain and breast development in men. In similar
ways, the body tries to defend against these toxins by storing them in fatty tissues and
diluting them. Likewise, if the body pH is too acidic, the body will retain water in an
attempt to dilute the acids.
The fact is, until you remove toxins,
the body will do whatever it takes to hold onto your
fat to protect you.
The issue with candida is three-fold. Candida feeds off the carbohydrates you ingest.
It particularly likes sugar, breads, pizza and beer. If you don't give it enough carbs,
it will cause you to crave them. Second, as part of its metabolic process, candida
releases waste that your body treats as toxins. Third, candida punches holes in your
intestinal walls that allow toxins in the intestines to leak out and disrupt other
parts of the body. (See Candida article for symptoms.)
Food allergies are more common and insidious than most people realize. Food allergies
may be the undetected cause of symptoms such as feeling sluggish, not sleeping well,
sinus infection, or diarrhea. Often the foods that you unnaturally crave are the ones
you are allergic to: sweets, chocolate, fried foods, breads, milk, popcorn, wheat,
artificial sweeteners, etc. Typically, the foods to which you are allergic cause a
response in the body that disrupts the system, either by introducing toxins or by
simply storing fat.
Therefore any fat-loss program needs to include a full-body detox component that
includes the liver, intestines, skin, and kidneys. You need to remove the heavy metals and
bring the candida in your body into balance. And you need to remove foods that you are
allergic to.
Fat as Mental and Emotional Protection
As daunting as the physical barriers are to fat-loss, they are insignificant when compared
to the power of your mind. Each of us has a self-image and we will do what it takes to
maintain that self-image. Whatever you do to change that image, whether you try to gain or
lose weight, your body naturally comes back to the form you imagine. Or worse, you try too
hard to lose weight and you end up a little heavier as your body seeks to balance out that
heavy disapproval.
According to muscle testing, the fact is that most overweight people do not want to
lose weight - even if they are constantly dieting and exercising. In the practice of EFT,
this phenomenon is known as psychological reversal. What is happening is that the overweight
person receives a secondary benefit from being heavy. That is, being heavy fulfills a need
for them. Here are some of the secondary gains a person may need to fulfill:
- The world is a harsh place and being heavy protects them.
- A woman may not like intimacy or may have been sexually abused and being heavy means not attracting men.
- Food may be associated with nurturing.
- Food may be associated with security.
- Being heavy means being substantial.
- Being heavy is a sign of abundance.
- Having food means not being deprived.
- Food is comforting.
- Eating relieves boredom.
- Eating relieves guilt.
- Some people feel guilty if they are smaller than their mother/father.
- Some people are afraid they will look wrinkled if they lose weight.
- Eating relieves stress and anxiety.
- People were called skinny when they were a child.
- Eating relieves shame and they are ashamed of their body.
- Eating is a reward.
- A trauma happened while they were eating or were at their perfect weight.
- Some people hate their body and their body takes the shape of that hate.
There are many more.
EFT for Resolving Emotions
What this means is that on an emotional level two things must be addressed, possibly a
third. First, you must address your emotional cravings for food. EFT is effective at
eliminating these cravings. Note that in some cases a food may have different aspects.
For instance, when addressing potato chips, you may have to remove the craving for the
grease, the craving for the salt, and the craving for the crunch.
Secondly, you must address the emotional payoff for being overweight. When using EFT
this can involve many layers. For instance, a woman may be ashamed of her body. When the
shame is lifted, it may be revealed that she doesn't like her husband's sexual advances.
This may have been the result of her grandfather making suggestive remarks when she was
young that made her feel dirty. In essence, she gained weight to avoid suggestive remarks,
which make her feel dirty. However, getting to the core issue may take working through a
few layers.
The third issue that may arise is a resistance to exercise. I doubt that anyone
reading this article would argue that they don't need exercise. But we allow ourselves
to place more importance on our excuses than we do on our health. We do this despite
knowing that without our health, most everything else in our lives would be meaningless.
Still, we feel we must sacrifice or put off our health for more immediate needs. If it
were our car, we would have it checked as soon as the oil light came on. However, if
our body gives us an oil light, we put some duct tape over the light and run our body
until it breaks down. EFT can help work through the fears, self-image problems, and
procrastination that the thought of exercise embodies.
A person who wishes to lose weight can be helped quite a bit with EFT. I would recommend
you plan to devote 3 sessions to the process (by phone or in person). In addition, there
will be "homework" to do on your own to speed up the process. With the right mind-set,
you are now capable of making dietary changes and working an exercise routine into your
schedule.
© 2006 Chip Engelmann
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