Telling yourself you have to “struggle with this
weight issue for the rest of my life,” is as good
as telling yourself there’s no point in trying.
“Why bother? I’ll just gain it right back. It’s no
use. I might as well eat more cake. Poor me. Life
is hard. You know the drill. Life’s a beach.
Stop the struggle by stopping the self talk that
supports the struggle. You’ve heard it before –
what you focus on is what you receive. No where is
that more true than in believing it is a struggle
to stay healthy. Who would want to be healthy if
it’s such a horrible struggle? Yet, you’ve
probably seen people who are fit, healthy and
happy? You might even know a few. They seem to
bounce when they walk. They’re animated, and
excited about life, and no, if you asked them,
they wouldn’t say it’s a struggle. “What do you
mean,” they’d ask? Struggle? Nah, I like it this
way,” and they’d mean it.
Forget the notion that you have to struggle and
eat celery sticks for dinner. It’s not true.
Despite the fact that you’ve lost the weight
before and gained it right back too, despite your
belief that you can’t even look at food without
gaining weight. All of those thoughts are just
more beliefs that are keeping you stuck. What you
focus on becomes your reality.
What if You Never Got Hungry?
I’m a prime example. I don’t struggle. Some days I
eat a lot. Some days not so much. Some days very
little. Yesterday I ate my usual breakfast and
then, strangely, I just didn’t feel hungry all
day. I felt different somehow. Not ill, but I just
didn’t want to eat. “What’s up with this?,” I
thought to myself, but I decided to just ride it
out and see what happened. Well, I’m here to tell
you that nothing happened. I lived to tell another
story, see another day. Nothing fell from the sky
and the world didn’t stop spinning because I
didn’t eat much yesterday. It was just another
day.
Today I ate a few handfuls of malted milk balls.
No big deal to me, but I know many of you are
thinking, “I’d never be able to eat just some, I’d
have to eat them all,” and that is my point.
Telling yourself you can’t eat “some,” or as many
as you want, but that you believe you’d be
compelled to eat them all, no matter how many
there were is a belief that is keeping you stuck.
I don’t believe that to be true, and so, for me it
is not true.
Changing a Fundamental Belief with EFT
How do you change a fundamental belief? You start
with basic EFT using it for everything that comes
up, even though it may not seem related. Every
worry, fear, doubt, struggle. Use it on
everything, and those issues that do make a
difference in your eating will start dissolving
away. Try it – what have you got to lose but some
weight?
What’s EFT? It’s Emotional Freedom Training and
it’s taking the world by storm as an easy, self
administered practice to help reduce or eliminate
the emotional issues that keep us stuck. Free
information available at EmoFree.com. I added EFT
to my toolkit as soon as I learned it because it’s
easy to learn, easy to use, and it’s effective.
Remember those healthy folks I mentioned earlier?
They don’t view how they eat or how much they
exercise as a struggle at all. They are active
because they want to be active, and they eat foods
that make them feel great. They probably eat a lot
of the same things you eat too – I’m talking about
everyday folks who have learned to feel good about
themselves. None of them are perfect – despite the
common belief that there is some “perfect” body,
it’s just not true. Everyone has a wrinkle here,
extra skin there. Every single one of us is flawed
in some way or another. It’s what makes us unique.
Choose to focus on the benefits, rather than the
sacrifice
Everything worthwhile takes effort – having a baby
comes to mind. All mothers will likely agree that
childbirth has its down side, but the ultimate
reward makes it all worth it (yes, some women feel
great while pregnant, but I wasn’t one of them).
Otherwise, everyone would be a single child. 😉
Think about it.
Becoming a professional musician or baseball
player comes to many who played Little League and
started practicing the piano when they were very
small. Tiger Woods was only 3 or 4-years old when
his father first taught him to hold a golf club.
He also showed him videos of professional golfers
when he sat in his high chair eating his dinner
(his dad was a little odd, I’d say). Woods started
playing golf at such a young age that he literally
grew up playing the game. He wanted to play. His
father undoubtedly drove him to work harder at it
than most children would, but he had to have a
strong drive of his own or he never would have
made it. But what if he’d hit 6-year’s old and
suddenly said to himself, “I don’t want to
practice. I hate golf. I wanna play with my
friends. I’ll never be any good at his stupid
game.”
Maybe things would have turned out differently.
The bottom line though is he did what he did
because he wanted to (his parents obviously had a
lot to do with it too), and the reward? Today he’s
considered the most gifted golfer of all time, and
to what does he attribute his success? The
practice and discipline of his mind. He learned
from one of his primary coaches to harness the
power of his mind – using NLP and hypnosis
techniques (and likely he’s since started to use
EFT as well). Learn to use your mind to focus on
the results you want – or conversely focus on
avoiding what you do not want, and you’ll win your
prize, loving the process, instead of dreading it.
How to Get Started
Starting from right now, go get a box of
toothpicks or something similar. Match sticks
would work too, or marbles, or pencils, small
rocks or twigs from the yard. Something small
enough you can carry it with you. Whenever you
catch yourself starting to say something negative
like, “I don’t want to …, or, “I hate …,” or
“I’m gonna strangle …” Anything negative you
catch yourself saying or beginning to say, whether
towards yourself or someone else doesn’t matter.
Start noticing how often you’re feeding yourself
negative energy. Then, apply the STOP technique as
soon as you realize you are doing it, you yell (to
yourself) STOP, and immediately replace what you
were saying with something else. Here’s what I
mean:
“I hate having to wash the … STOP … it’s nice
getting a chance to stretch and bend while the car
gets cleaned.”
Yes, it’s stiff and forced, at first. Anytime you
attempt to change a behavior it will feel forced.
Just allow yourself to learn to change your self
talk, and that early discomfort with the process
will pass. It will start to be fun to “catch”
yourself. As soon as you start doing it, you’ll
realize how often you’re been feeding yourself
negativity, and you’ll also see how easily you can
change that habit.
Positive people tend to be happier people. I’m not
suggesting you get a personality change, but I am
suggesting, if you ultimately want to drop some
weight and never see it again that you change your
thinking from how much you’ll have to struggle to
how much better you’re going to feel.
