The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence (17 page)

Beliefs about Your Body

During our long struggle with our weight, many of us have come to see our own body as the enemy, something that needs to earn our love. Because it doesn’t meet our strict and narrow cultural standard of beauty, it has become a source of constant misery, like a defect we can’t seem to hide or fix. Its appearance is so awful to us that being happy inside our current body seems impossible. We have to lose the weight first, we tell ourselves, and then, once we’re thin, we’ll be able to feel good and enjoy ourselves.

The truth is that we have the process backward. As we’ve begun to see, to experience lasting weight loss—and just as important, to feel body confidence—we need to learn to love ourselves and our bodies first. Let’s begin that process by discussing the negative beliefs you may have about your body.

While there are many different negative beliefs you may have about your body, I’m going to focus on the two most common ones I’ve seen in my clients and students:

• There’s nothing to appreciate about my body.
  
• I can’t be happy and really live my life until I lose weight.
  

Carly had lived with both of these body beliefs for as long as she could remember. Her weight loss attempts had been so frustrating that years ago she had undergone a very expensive gastric bypass surgery. While she initially did lose weight, one year later she was right back to her presurgery weight. Feeling like she was out of options, she eventually joined my class.

As Carly began sharing her story, it was clear that her negative body beliefs had been controlling her. For years she had been sitting on the sidelines, unwilling to participate in her own life, refusing to swim with her own kids even though she had always loved to swim. Since it involved wearing a bathing suit, she’d decided years ago that swimming was out of the question until she lost the weight.

One day, by tapping on her negative belief that there was nothing she could appreciate about her body, Carly experienced a huge and sudden shift. Before even losing a pound, she shared that for the first time in her adult life, she felt real love and gratitude for her body. “It’s done so much for me,” she explained. Soon afterward, Carly bought a bathing suit and went swimming with her children. Before tapping this hadn’t felt like a possibility; even the thought of it terrified her. A few days after she and I had tapped together on these beliefs, she sent me an e-mail. She wrote, “I feel amazing and brave! I cried because of all the joy I feel. Thank you.”

Since changing her belief, she has spent several days at the pool swimming with her children and is excited about living a much more active life. Last I knew, she had signed up for a 5k race with her sister and had cut her hair short, after years of dreaming about it but never daring to do it.

How often do we put our lives on hold because of our own judgments and insecurities? That pool was always there; that joy was always there. It simply came down to Carly believing that she deserved it right now, not just after losing weight. Her decision to experience life now made it easier for her to take other steps forward in her life.

Take a moment now to think about how your body beliefs may be affecting your life. Are they holding you back, not just in your body confidence and weight loss journey but in preventing you from truly living and enjoying your life?

Now that you’ve begun to discover some of the limiting beliefs that have shaped your story, it’s time to begin tapping! The first step is to tap on a belief, and then once you can say that old belief without feeling triggered, you can incorporate powerful affirmations.

How to Tap on a Belief

Begin by saying the belief out loud or in your head. For example, “Losing weight is an uphill battle,” or “There’s nothing to appreciate about my body.”

Ask yourself, on a scale of 0 to 10—with 10 being that your belief feels totally true and 0 being that you barely feel it—
How true does that belief feel?
Give it a number, and then begin tapping as you’re stating the belief. For example:
Karate Chop:
Even though there is nothing to appreciate about my body, I love and accept myself. (
Repeat three times.
)
Eyebrow:
There is nothing to love about my body …

Side of Eye:
Not when it looks like this.

Under Eye:
I notice everything that is wrong.

Under Nose:
I feel like my body is working against me.

Chin:
If only I had been born into a different body …

Collarbone:
This feels so unfair.

Under Arm:
There is nothing to love about my body …

Top of Head:
This story I’ve been telling myself …

When the intensity of your initial tapping target(s) is 5 or lower, you can move on to the positive.

Eyebrow:
My body has been doing so well …

Side of Eye:
Under this harsh internal environment.

Under Eye:
It does so much for me every day without my thanking it.

Under Nose:
My body does everything to survive.

Chin:
Now I give my body the love and support to thrive.

Collarbone:
I create a nurturing internal environment.

Under Arm:
My body is beautiful.

Top of Head:
I’m grateful for my body.

Take a deep breath and check in with how you feel. Measure the intensity again and continue tapping until you experience relief.

The Real Proof that Negative Beliefs Are False

If our negative beliefs and feelings were congruent with who we really are, we would feel satisfied. Instead, the negative beliefs we have about ourselves, our bodies, and our world feel incredibly painful. That’s because they don’t feel
right.
They are jarring to our soul because they go against our truth.

When I first heard this idea presented by Carol Tuttle, author of
Remembering Wholeness
, whom I’ve also interviewed for our annual Tapping World Summit, I was struck by how true it felt.

Think about it. If you really were not good enough, if your weight really was your genes’ fault, and weight loss was biologically impossible, you would be satisfied with those beliefs. You would find peace within those beliefs because they would be congruent with who you are. The fact that you are dissatisfied with your beliefs—and the reason that some of your beliefs cause you pain—is that they are not a reflection of who you really are. So don’t judge or fear those painful feelings; they are simply a signal that you have veered away from your truth.

If and when you take this journey and do the tapping to clear your negative beliefs and emotions, a new story will appear, a story that feels true to who you really are. Within that new story, you will clearly see and feel what you never could before—that you
are
good enough, and you
are
worthy. You will see that you have an incredible amount of power to create the life you have always wanted, and that you don’t have to suffer or deprive yourself to get there. While your weight loss journey will become far easier, what will amaze you even more is how different your entire life looks and feels.

That shift into a new story often happens while tapping, but we frequently don’t realize its significance until much later, at the most unexpected moments. One client of mine noticed the shift one day while shopping with her husband. Having always hated her own reflection, she was surprised to notice herself in a mirror in a new light. “Wow, I look really beautiful,” she said out loud. Her husband smiled, gave her a kiss, and said, “I know, honey. I’ve been telling you that for years.” In all their years together, it was the first time she had really heard him—and the first time she’d actually
felt
beautiful. Her story about herself and what was possible in her life had been rewritten.

That’s what happens when we allow ourselves to create new beliefs that feel authentic to who we really are, and it’s what will happen for you when you do the same.

Chapter 7

The Pain Beneath the Weight

O
ne of the hardest things to understand when we’re struggling with weight is that weight is a symptom; it’s not the actual problem. When I say this to clients, they immediately counter with something like “But I can’t be happy because of my weight” or “I can’t go to my high school reunion because of my weight” or “I can’t get a date or have a relationship because of my weight.”

Seeing weight as the problem is a logical conclusion, a belief that many of us have used to protect ourselves from the true meaning of the weight. When we dig deeper, we discover that it’s the pain beneath the weight that prevents us from losing weight and feeling confident in the body we have. Often, we find that the weight has been protecting us, making us feel safe on some level. When we’re able to process the pain beneath the weight, we can finally release this need for safety through weight. Only then can we wake up to our true potential and begin not just losing weight but living the life of our dreams.

Before you explore the pain beneath the weight, however, you first need to step back and take a look at your relationship with your body.

Even if You Don’t Love Your Body, Your Body Loves You

We’ve all experienced that excruciating moment when a paper cut first appears. What we often don’t realize is how quickly the body goes to work to help us heal from it. Even before we shake our hand in pain, the blood vessels leading to the wound tighten to reduce blood flow to the injured area; platelets quickly gather to form a plug; clotting proteins then join in to stop the bleeding. For weeks afterward, the body works around the clock to complete the injury recovery process.