Learn The Difference Between Physical Hunger and Emotional Hunger
Lose Weight Tips With EFT and NLP-Derived Wisdom
By
Suzanne Zacharia
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Moving forward with your goal of weight loss requires total agreement between your conscious and subconscious mind. Otherwise change is not possible or does not last.
Let me give you a little background. Your conscious mind is all about your wants, while your subconscious mind is about your protection, your beliefs, and your safety. If your conscious mind wants one thing but your subconscious mind wants another, then you are heading for disappointment. So what can you do when your conscious and subconscious mind are in disagreement? And how can you even tell if they are? Well, you need a better tool for managing your emotions than food, because food is the problem you are trying to overcome. There are many methods out there, and you can find one that works for you. I personally like using EFT to release emotional blocks and release misunderstandings between the conscious and subconscious mind. Once you have found an emotional management tool that works for you, your conscious and subconscious mind can reach a state of alignment or congruence for your successful weight loss.
Now, if you try to force a diet on your body and subconscious mind, chances are that they will rebel and fight you back. They will resist a dietary restriction of food, because they act to protect you in time of danger, and they see going on a diet as a threat to your well-being. But how can you control your mind and body to do what you want? Surely you have to use willpower to control your hunger? Well, no, not really.
Let me explain. The fact is that naturally-slim people do not have to fight hunger all the time or use willpower. They do not feel hungry all the time, and – this is the interesting part - when they do begin to feel the effects of a physically empty stomach, they recognize the feeling as a genuine physical hunger. But, most people who have been on a weight-loss journey have lost this ability, or maybe the way they were fed as children has meant that they have never been helped to develop this ability. It is like any natural ability, like walking. If when you were little, you were strapped to a chair at all times, you would not have developed the ability to walk.
The fact is, that for most dieters:
- Emotional emptiness is totally confused with physical hunger.
- There is an effect of starvation by dieting, whereby the dieter learns to ignore the body´s hunger signals. Like the walking analogy above, if an adult is strapped to a chair for long enough, they also lose the ability to walk.
This can totally confuse your natural ability to tell when you are hungry or full. But you can re-train yourself to know when you are really hungry or not with this simple EFT tapping. When you think you are hungry, tap as follows.
¨Even though I don´t know if I am physically hungry or emotionally hungry, I allow my body and subconscious mind to guide me¨
Tap this whole sentence on each point. Tap it very slowly. Say the words and do the physical tapping as slow as you can. We do it slowly because slow EFT, first discovered by Silvia Hartmann, is a great guidance and revelation kind of EFT. Keep tapping the whole sentence slowly on all the points you normally use, over and over again, for at least 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, as yourself if your stomach is genuinely empty or if you are looking for comfort, safety, or protection. You can repeat slow EFT with the following statement.
¨Is my stomach genuinely empty or am I looking for comfort, safety, or protection? I safely and calmly allow my body and subconscious mind to guide me¨
Try doing this for 5 minutes at least, and then re-evaluate how you feel. If you feel genuinely physically hungry, have something to eat. Try to sit down and eat it consciously and slowly. Relax into the new experience of eating for your body and mind. On the other hand, if you think you are emotionally hungry, ask yourself how bad you would feel if you did not have the food, where 10 is really bad and 0 is neutral. If anything above a zero, tap for it as you normally do, until you have peace with food at that moment in time.
I hope this has given you guidance on your path to successful weight loss. Enjoy your journey and enjoy your results.
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Author's Bio:
© Suzanne Zacharia 2010. My name is Suzanne Zacharia and I am committed to spreading the word about health options. I believe that the more and better options one has, the more choice there is. And of course, you are advised to consult with your medical practitioner before embarking on any course of alternative, complementary, or beauty therapy. Want to use this article? You can, as long as you credit me with it and invite your readers to get my FREE "EFT How-to for You" and regular free EFT Tapping script samples in my newsletter at http://www.EFT-Scripts.com - New to EFT? No worries, just get your own copy of "EFT How-to for You" and start EFTing with ease very soon!
2 Comments
Virginia
Posted March 11, 2011 10:45 AM
Very nice, Suzanne. The more strategies we have, the better. Anything we can do to slow down our unwanted emotional response to food is an improvement. I love the idea of slow EFT (also see Steve Wells material, a technique he has borrowed from elsewhere also). We want everything so fast in our society, I love training myself to slow down especially when the reward system of EFT can be used.
Suzanne
Posted March 11, 2011 01:00 PM
Hi Virginia,
EFT as a reward system makes sense. Of course, when we tap, we get pleasure and are rewarded. How very interesting looking at it from that angle!
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