Tap your way to weight loss
Wednesday 08 April 2009
We all know the power of positive thought – our happier friends tend to be healthier, too. But what if your mind is the key ingredient to losing weight as well as boosting your mood?
The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is a form of alternative medicine that has been around for just over a decade. It’s based around the idea that bad physical and emotional experiences damage the body’s energy field, and you can correct them by stimulating the body’s meridian channel.
We know what you’re thinking – the minute we hear phrases like ‘energy field’ and ‘meridian channel’ we switch off and start thinking about chocolate. But there is a lot to be said for leading with your mind rather than your body when it comes to weight loss.
Not least because celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna has made EFT one of his trademarks on his mind-blowing weight loss programme I Can Make You Thin. We’ve seen the results on his show, and they’re more than enough to convert us!
The principle of EFT is that physical problems are linked directly to emotional experiences. After a negative experience, your body is filled with negative thoughts. These negative thoughts can then cause the body to ‘program’ itself incorrectly, for example to have stressed-out responses (headaches, nausea, panic attacks, etc) in what should be stress-free situations.
In the case of weight loss, people may have been motivated to think badly about their body due to problems in childhood or low self esteem. As a result, their actions will reflect emotional eating, lack of exercise, and generally being stuck in a rut.
That all makes sense, so why and how does tapping on different parts of your body correct it? This is where you have to take a leap of faith.
The body is said to have several different energy channels running through it, and you can gain control of them by tapping (just as in acupuncture, you can harness the body’s energy by sticking scary needles in them) while correcting your brain’s negative thoughts.
The technique involves applying light pressure on each different energy channel whilst repeating a statement about your body, or your weight-loss goals. You can do this in your head or out loud. A hypothetical statement would be ‘Even though I hate my stomach, I deserve to lose weight and I will tone up.’
Here’s a list of the tapping points (it’s recommended that you work through these one by one, repeating your statement each time). You may find that certain points work more than others, so focus on whichever ones you feel most comfortable with.
· The top of your head (think the middle of a centre parting)
· Above the eyebrow (on the end nearest your nose)
· The side of the eye (the bone near your temple)
· Under the eye (on your cheekbone, in line with your pupils)
· Under the nose (above your upper lip)
· On the chin (just under the lower lip)
· Collarbones (at the end nearest the neck)
· Under the arm (in line with your bra strap)
· Inside the wrists (just under your palm)
You can go through the tapping points as many times as you want, and with as many different statements as you like.
While this might instantly make you feel better about your body, EFT has faced some criticism due to the fact that there is very little way of proving its results. Some scientists have said that people who have been helped by EFT are suffering from the ‘placebo effect’.
But things like self-esteem and motivation will always be hard to measure. Plus, even if you’re a sceptic, a mantra could work wonders – if you’re repeating ‘I deserve to lose weight’ several times a day, you’re bound to start listening to yourself, if not believing yourself – regardless of what you tap.
As a result, you could be able to boost your confidence in yourself – be it about your ability to eat healthily, drag yourself to the gym or just to appreciate your body.
Converts to EFT have not only beaten their weight-loss demons, they also have increased self-esteem and improved moods - both of which could motivate you to lose pounds!
By Amy Bangs