By Jessica Ortner | The Tapping Solution
Using Tapping for Weight Loss and Body Confidence requires a two part approach:
First and foremost is understanding what underlying, typically unconscious, factors are causing your weight to go up and your body confidence to go down (beyond just having more weight).
Most weight loss exercise programs and diet plans go straight to trying to offer a solution without first understanding what is causing the problem. They offer a bandaid approach that do not work in the long term.
In order to get real results, you need to address the underlying emotions, patterns, beliefs, traumas and more that led to the weight gain. As you’ll see below, research is proving that when you do… you get powerful results.
Secondly, once we know what is causing the weight gain and leading to the lack of body confidence, we can use Tapping to eliminate those causes and finally create lasting results. I’ll show you how. But first…
Let’s start with step #1, understanding the cause…
Roughly 2/3 of women in the United States are overweight, with 1/2 of those women being obese…
That number isn’t entirely surprising to most people. Most know that we have a weight loss epidemic in the Unites States, which has been spreading around the world.
Since 1960, the percentage of obese people has nearly tripled! In 1960 the obesity rate was only 13.4%!
So the question is, with our weight loss industry having topped $20 billion dollars in the United States (85% of which is driven by women ), why are we not getting thinner?
Sadly, what most women are turning to, what I myself always thought was the way to lose weight… simply isn’t working! As I’m sure you already know, trying to find the right solution can be overwhelming…
The challenge is that most women focus only on diet and exercise to lose weight, and it’s unfortunately leaving out a key component…
During the course of an average year, over 108 million Americans attempt to go on a diet, with the average dieter making four or five attempts per year!
Most people go from diet to diet looking for the “magical” solution that will finally work, wondering why they’re struggling each and every time, with total frustration as to why the diets aren’t working for them.
There are reasons though, each and every time, as to why the diets aren’t working…
Let me ask you this…
Have you ever been stressed out because of work, or because of a relationship, or about your weight and how you feel about yourself, or anything else… and reached for some comfort food?
You know… stuff like cookies, pasta, pizza or whatever that is for you. Whatever food you know isn’t a part of the healthy “diet” you want to be on, that you ended up reaching for out of comfort…
Or have you ever skipped exercising, even for weeks or months at a time, because you felt you were too busy, or because you felt unmotivated, or because you just felt too overwhelmed by life to get yourself to exercise?
Yeah! I think we all have!
The truth is that we don’t struggle with a lack of information on what to eat and how to exercise.
What we struggle with is what’s going on internally, deep in our unconscious minds, that’s making it difficult to make good eating and exercising decisions, and is biologically triggering fat gaining hormones in our bodies that prevent us from losing weight.
We know we should make lifestyle changes, eating better and exercising more, but we fall back to poor eating habits and we skip out on exercising, time and again.
What I discovered with Tapping however… was a way to change all of that…
The Two Major Reasons Why Women Struggle To Lose Weight and How Tapping Overcomes These Challenges…
The #1 thing that prevents women from losing weight was very shocking to me when I first learned of it…
Our negative emotions have an enormous impact on what goes on biologically in our bodies.
Things like… the stress, the anxiety, and the overwhelm I was dealing with when I was trying to lose weight. I had no idea about the myriad of hormones coursing through my body because of my emotions that were actually keeping me fat!
Here’s How It Works…
When something stressful happens, or you start thinking about something stressful, within seconds, the part of your brain called the amygdala (the almond-shaped part of your midbrain) tells your body to release specific hormones.
Adrenaline and cortisol (often called “the stress hormone”) flood your body, shutting down the creative problem-solving parts of your brain. And this causes two very big problems for somebody trying to lose weight…
#1 — It slows down your digestion. And anytime you slow down your digestion it makes it harder to… you guessed it… lose weight!
#2 — It constricts your blood vessels along with a few other key biological changes that control how you think, how your body and brain function, how strong your food cravings come on, and how quickly your brain can react to a given situation.
These two things combined mean that when you’re stressed you make worse decisions about what to eat, breaking your eating and exercise habits, and then you struggle to digest quickly, putting on more weight!
Have you ever had it happen that you’re stressed out and all of a sudden you find yourself half way through something like a box of cookies, and you think to yourself… why did I do that? And you feel like you lost mental control of what was going on?
That’s because… you did. The stress took over your body and inhibited your ability to think clearly and make good decisions.
And the foods we crave during these stressful times, during a time in history when we have more addictive, poor quality foods available then ever before, doesn’t help either.
Why do we tend to be attracted to and overeat sugary carbohydrates?
Carbohydrate rich foods increase brain concentrations of an amino acid called tryptophan, which is the building block for serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, which, when released, brings about feelings of calm, happiness, peace, and satisfaction.
We overeat because our brain is looking for pleasure!
Overeating in the moment serves a great purpose: it makes us feel great… until the side effects set in. Shortly after your sugar rush, your insulin levels drop and you feel exhausted, which triggers a craving for more sugary carbohydrates to get you back to the sugar high. It’s a vicious cycle!
No wonder so many people in our modern society struggle with weight loss, right?
Back in 1960, before the three-fold increase in obesity… our ability to disconnect, and be away from work, cell phones, social media and the like… and to reset our central nervous system, came much more easily and much more frequently.
Like any time period, there were of course challenges and stressors, but they key difference between then, or any previous time period, and now is the ability to reset our nervous system, a key component to being able to have balance, make better decisions, and balance the body.
Today most people are stressed on a regular basis and if you put them on a diet where they’re trying to force themselves to lose weight and eliminate comfort foods… forget about it! Stress goes through the roof, leading ultimately to more weight gain…
If you’re like so many people today who are under chronic stress, it’s hard to make the best decisions about what you eat or whether you exercise, and you end up putting on weight year after year.
It gets worse…
Stress also decreases your nutrient absorption, so even if you are eating well you won’t be able to absorb them…
It increases salt retention making you bloated…
It affects your cholesterol levels…
It impacts your immune system, endocrine system, nervous system, everything!
Stress literally creates a hormone that makes you fat and is directly related to abdominal fat!
So if you’re living with regular stress in your life it’s likely preventing you from being able to think clearly, make good decisions and move towards reaching your weight loss goals…
I know what you may be thinking… “How could I possibly reduce my stress?!”
With Tapping you can reduce your stress by both getting at the underlying causes that trigger it and by being able to reset your nervous system more frequently with Tapping to release it and its affects on your body.
Think about your everyday life…
If you could significantly reduce the stress that you’re dealing with, how much better would you feel and how much easier would it be to be able to reach your goals?
Tapping has been scientifically proven to reduce stress, which means that when you use Tapping you lower your stress levels and are therefore able to take back control of your body and brain, so that you can use it for what you WANT to use it (like making healthy food and exercise decisions that feel good and come easily!)… and not have it controlling you!
