Weight loss group and EFT

The approach I take with any addiction is to ignore the symptoms and deal with the problem generating the symptom.

With the new weight loss group last month, I asked them the standard questions of how long each had been trying to loose weight and what was preventing them from doing so. I ask them to focus on the feeling just before they eat the forbidden fruits and the feeling immediately upon having done the deed. We then tie up the feelings to past events and the group gets to tap away the old patterns.

Jan who was a member of this group told me that she loved to eat butter with almost everything. Like a ritual she would put a TABLESPOON of butter on her porridge every morning. Then butter would be liberally spread on her toast making it soggy and difficult to pick up. At dinner time butter would be put on all the vegetables in great big slabs. Even a slice of roast meat would be buttered.

Happily, Jan was pretty aware of her emotional affair with butter. Her parents had been well-off when Jan was young and then quite drastically they were without an income and things really changed in their household. All of a sudden the family switched from eating butter to margarine instead of butter! Jan told us that she hated the dreaded white, tasteless and insipid ‘margy’. Butter reminded her of happy and ‘rich’ times when her parents were happy and so was she. Butter was beautiful, golden and delicious.

Now marriages later and a few failed relationships, Jan has been having that love affair with butter because it gave her the gratification she longed for. It took her back to a time when life was good. She felt special and comforted when she ate butter and of course, what a way to start the day but with a dollop of butter in porridge!

I got Jan to tap on the ‘change-over’ event from butter to margarine. She made up a long list of events that were negative and tied into the ‘margy’.

Jan tapped on her feeling related to butter:

Even though butter makes me feel rich and loved, it’s not good for my body now
Even though the taste of butter comforts me and reminds me of my grandmother, I can give it up for my health.

The next approach I got Jan to try was tapping alternatively on butter and margarine:

I hate margarine….because it tastes terrible and reminds me of loss

I love butter….because it tastes wonderful and reminds me of being special and lovable.

This worked well for Jan because after having tapped several times using the shortcut protocol, the rating for both butter and margarine were down to 0.

The proof is in the butter so to say, because Jan had a pound/kilo of butter with her when we met at the Weight Group and she felt no desire to cut a slice of butter and munch into it.

The following week she reported that she had NO DESIRE to put butter on her porridge. So she tested it further by putting a half TEASPOON into her porridge and did not get the same satisfaction as before. In fact Jan has not put butter on anything else either! Jan has freed her emotional attachment with butter and on her way to loosing her excess weight.