Self talk is key. You can stop the struggle by ending the self talk that supports the struggle. You’ve heard it before–what you focus on is what you receive. Nowhere 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 if you asked them they wouldn’t say it’s a struggle. “What do you mean,” they’d ask? Struggle? Nah, I’m just doing what I want,” 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, 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.
To learn EFT specifically for weight loss, get The Daily Bites (see resource box below).
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 people 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.
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 want to 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, get a box of toothpicks, matchsticks, marbles, small rocks or twigs from the yard. Something small enough you can carry it with you. Whenever you catch yourself starting to say anything negative, “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.
Kathryn Martyn Smith, Master NLP Practitioner, EFT counselor, author of Changing Beliefs, Your First Step to Permanent Weight Loss, and owner of OneMoreBite-Weightloss.com
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