Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much (5 page)

While we're at it, what emotions and thoughts do you hold on to when you hear bad news, like the precariousness of the global financial markets or the 7 billion people on the planet competing for limited resources? How do those emotions and thoughts affect your body?

It's hard to feel confident and to believe you, personally, will be okay when everyone else is telling you that the economy is going to collapse, that you'd better have a basement full of supplies to survive the disaster that's looming. When you're constantly exposed to fearful beliefs—“The whole world is going to pot and we'll be fighting each other over clean drinking water!”—is it possible that your body is responding by storing calories as fat, “just in case”?

Of course, we have some control over our beliefs and, consequently, over our emotions. Let's say we become aware of our fears, and our fear-driven beliefs, and we
consciously
release them (which you'll learn how to do using techniques in this book). When we change our emotions, we change our field of energy and then others who come in contact with that energy entrain themselves to our higher vibration. Have you ever been in a group and felt the fear and contraction other people were experiencing, or, conversely, felt a collective sense of hope and joy? When that happens, you're tuning in to the vibrations of people around you and you are changing your energy field in response to theirs (which is easier than affecting theirs, as you're outnumbered and collective vibration is very strong).

MIRROR NEURONS: I SEE MYSELF IN YOU

About twenty years ago, neuroscientists made a discovery that helped us understand why we experience empathy—why we're able to actually experience someone else's emotions. For example, if I got stung by a bee and yell, “Ouch!” you cringe and actually have a fear reaction—a raising of your own cortisol levels. If you smile, I smile back without even realizing it, and that creates endorphins in my body in response to suddenly feeling your joy as my own. This happens because our brains have something called
mirror neurons
that allow us to imagine ourselves in someone else's shoes.

If I don't have enough mirror neurons, I'll see you smiling but I may not smile in return, unless I stop and think, “Oh, he's smiling. I should probably smile back so he thinks I'm a nice person.” I wouldn't actually
experience
your happiness. And when I got stung by that bee, you would know to be polite and express sympathy, but you wouldn't tense up as if you'd been stung yourself. Mirror neurons are believed to be associated not just with empathy but also with our ability to pick up on others' intentions, our sense of self, and our ability to learn language. They probably played an important role in our development of social groups, too. If we didn't feel each other's pain and joy, we might not have become so committed to helping each other, even at risk to ourselves—something necessary for humans to survive in difficult times.

What if those of us who feel too much have more mirror neurons than most people or if our mirror neurons are somehow more sensitive? Maybe people who feel too much have brains that are better able to experience what others are experiencing emotionally. If so, we are taking in more, processing more, and being more sensitive to subtle changes in people's energy fields that are intertwined with ours.

METABOLISM: BEYOND THE SIMPLE EQUATION

Aside from being influenced by what's going on in “the bond,” our cells, and our brains, we also experience the effects of something called our
metabolism
, which is our body's process of using the calories we take in. Metabolism is a fairly simple concept: our bodies burn calories, or units of energy, at a particular rate. We burn more calories when we're engaged in activity; and when we have good muscle tone, we're getting enough quality sleep, and we're managing emotional stress well. That's when our metabolism is fairly high. When we're not doing all those things, our metabolism slows down and our bodies use fewer calories to do the same activities it always has, from thinking to moving to digesting. The extra calories are stored as fat, so as we use fewer units of energy, we get fatter.

All of us have a predetermined set point for metabolism, meaning that there are limits to just how much we can speed up our rate of burning calories. For that matter, we also are programmed to have a particular body shape. If we come from ancestors who are short and stocky, there's little we can do to change that basic body shape. Additionally, we're programmed to have our metabolism slow down as we age. It's harder to lose weight as we get older.

However, let's look again at the list of things we can do to affect our metabolism for the better. Two of them are moving more and getting more sleep, which I do want you to do as you move through this program and you've begun to work on managing your empathy. The third is to reduce stress. Is taking on the weight of the world just a teeny bit stressful? And does stress make it hard to get a good night's sleep? Are you seeing some of the threads in the tapestry? By not taking control of your porous boundaries, you're actually lowering your metabolism and using fewer calories. That's going to change as a result of this program.

SO WHY DOESN'T MY DOCTOR KNOW THAT MY FEAR AND FRUSTRATION ARE MAKING ME FAT?

Physicians and scientists all acknowledge a mind-body connection, that our thoughts and feelings affect our immune systems, our hormones, our digestive systems, and so on. Every day, there are new discoveries about the relationships between thoughts, feelings, and physical reality. Even so, many people underestimate just how much thoughts and feelings affect their bodies; they might get to this point in the book and say, “What a bunch of woo-woo nonsense.” I get it. But let me explain why the medical community, the media, and most people are just a bit behind on all the evidence for this connection—and why I'm not crazy!

Science has its own rules, and I respect them. We've all benefited greatly from scientific discoveries that came about by following those rules. However, science is a tool for understanding that's also influenced by human weaknesses, like greed, fear, and discomfort with anything that's new and unfamiliar. One of the rules of science is, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” That is, what you and I know through experience isn't enough to satisfy a researcher. It takes many research studies, all showing the same results, for scientists to agree that the findings are reliable.

Some of you are old enough to remember how, years ago, many male gynecologists told their female patients, “There's no such thing as PMS. It's all in your head.” That was easy for them to say—they hadn't experienced it themselves. And why pay attention to a bunch of women's complaints? Yes, sexism was quite a big factor in preventing research into women's health. Female patients managed not to leap out of their chairs and throttle their doctors for being so obtuse; and eventually, enough people figured out there might be something to this PMS stuff, that it might make sense to research it. Surprise, surprise—women weren't nuts after all, and there
were
physiological reasons for brain fog, mood swings, and cramps. Lesson learned:
just because YOU haven't experienced something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

So, if you were to say to a doctor, “Boy, your last patient was really upset before leaving this exam room; I can feel it,” your physician might look at you funny, but if enough people made these kinds of observations, scientists might decide that sensing the emotional energy that remains in a room after a person has gone is worth studying. But then scientists would have to find someone willing to invest money in research that would provide the evidence that we're not crazy when we say that emotional energy remains in a physical space after someone has become angry or scared, and that energy can be sensed by highly empathetic people. Why invest money in this research? What's the payoff? Where's the potential for a profitable pharmaceutical drug or procedure that would come out of it? Much of our scientific research is driven by the need for a financial payoff down the road, so there's a lot we don't study simply because there's no money to be made from the potential findings.

These days, when research uncovers new discoveries, it may make the news or be posted on social media and websites, and it get around much more quickly than years ago. Even so, it takes, on average,
seventeen years
for research to make its way into mainstream clinical practice. If your doctor tells you today about some health treatment that has lots of scientific evidence to back it up, chances are that the treatment was discovered back when DVDs were the latest thing.

So, while you may not have heard about neuropeptides, or the findings of the Intention Experiment, or Dr. Bruce Lipton's groundbreaking work on cell function, these will be common knowledge to the next generation. Meanwhile, it's nice to know that there's some scientific evidence that our experiences as people who feel too much are real!

Knowing that we actually are taking in more energy than others are helps us to recognize why we feel overwhelmed so often. The trick is to learn how to have control over our porous boundaries so that we can benefit from them without feeling that we need to curl up in a ball in a dark room with a nice box of chocolates. The Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much program has the tools you need to address your empathy overload, so let's get started!

PART TWO

Ready to Go

3

The Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much Program (“Now, That's a Simple Plan I Can Follow!”)

You've probably heard of the KISS rule: Keep It Simple, Stupid. I have my own KISS rule for the program—four simple ideas that make up a simple plan for managing your porous boundaries:

•
K
indness.
Be kind to yourself and practice self-compassion.

•
I
N-Vizion Exercises.
Use these special exercises for helping you to manage your difficult emotions.

•
S
alt.
Incorporate the healing power of Himalayan salt into your daily life.

•
S
implicity.
Engage in simple eating and simple movement, and maintain a simple energy field (which includes reducing stimulation from the media and from communications technology).

Why is simplicity important? As people who feel too much, we often overcomplicate matters. It's difficult for us to experience emotions without drama, embellishment, agitation, and a sense that we no longer know where we end and others begin. Whenever a strong, upsetting emotion arises, we tend to begin an internal dialogue that keeps that feeling alive:
Of course, I'm angry. I have a right to be! I'm always getting mixed up with people who disrespect me, and this one—well, it's my fault, I should have known better. What was she thinking when she did that? Well, I'll bet I know. I'll bet she was feeling
.… Building up the fire of anxiety or anger by throwing gasoline on it is such an ingrained habit that we vacillate between histrionics and withdrawal. We're either in a maelstrom of emotions or we avoid “going there” and looking at our emotions unless we absolutely have to.

And we're not just dealing with our own emotions and inadvertently turning them into wildfires. We're taking on the emotions of everyone else, from the people in line at the bank, to our aunt's stepdaughter who just put an upsetting post on the social media, to our dog who is moping about ever since that encounter with a skunk the day before. We're like a big old sponge that needs wringing out. Rather than confront all that powerful emotion, we take the nearest exit around the scene of our agitation. I'll go into some of our common detours in the last part of this book, but for now, the main one to be aware of is
free eating
.

For people who feel too much, eating should always be contained. It needs to have a beginning, middle, and end. Otherwise, we graze to ground ourselves and eat more than we need to—and most of those extra calories come from foods we should be limiting, in the first place. We like to make sure we've got stashes of food so that wherever we are, we can instantly satisfy our need
to feel present in our bodies
.

Maybe you nibble on this and that to keep your mood stable throughout the morning, then when lunchtime comes around, you're not really hungry so you skip the meal and feel proud of your willpower until about 4:00, when that craving for sweets, fats, salts, and processed carbohydrates hits hard. Then you end up plowing through four servings of the nearest packaged treat. Instead of using food for nourishment, and meals as a time to focus on your body's needs,
you're using food for mood management
.

Another common detour for people who feel too much is overcomplicating our eating habits and goals. Because our emotions are swirling about like the objects outside of Dorothy Gale's window in
The Wizard of Oz
, we try to take control of everyone and everything, especially our eating and our weight. We get enslaved by calorie counts and scales, or we try to justify overeating by gorging on “healthy” cookies and chips and fool ourselves into thinking that if we obsess over what we consume, we'll be just fine. We use dieting itself as a detour, we don't manage our emotions, we binge out of a feeling of desperation, then we beat ourselves up. The mad back and forth between free eating and obsession over eating has to stop, and this program will show you how.

KINDNESS

Remember earlier when I was talking about how I am not a drill sergeant, and I don't want you to “battle” your weight? Many people who feel too much were taught from earliest childhood that if they want to get something done, they have to be tough, and even brutal, as they push forward. As it turns out, research shows that this is
not
the best way to approach weight loss. Showing kindness toward yourself, having self-compassion, is more effective than willpower when it comes to sticking to your eating goals. In fact, willpower can be depleted quickly; exercising willpower uses glucose (sugar), which might explain why, when you're feeling stressed by dieting, you start to crave sugar. And I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that social stress makes it harder to exercise willpower. However, getting enough quality sleep and being in a good mood boost willpower, as do eating well and getting movement. In short, research shows that well-being makes it easier to resist temptation.

So, no more battling, no more self-loathing, no more beating yourself up over what you ate: all of that is standing in the way of your getting to the root of your weight problem and your disordered eating.

One of the key ways to be kind to yourself is by affirming your worth and your love for yourself. A fantastic means of doing this is through the Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, which you will be doing daily throughout the program. I discovered this technique many years ago, when I saw a friend of mine tapping on the side of her hand and her collarbone. She was doing this while quietly saying an affirmation, and I asked her, What are you doing? She told me she was doing a technique she learned that was a form of “emotional acupuncture”—a tapping exercise accompanied by specific verbal affirmations. I was interested, so I asked her to show me. (I had had a particularly difficult day and had argued with a family member, and was feeling overwhelmed.) I did what she told me, and within minutes I began to feel an obvious relief!

Yet, like many of the techniques I explored that were practiced by the alternative healing arts community, I was more of a tourist in some exotic foreign land; I didn't stick around long enough to really learn the lay of the land. I was curious, and I continued to do the EFT, but I didn't put the puzzle pieces together. I hadn't realized how EFT could help with weight release until I discovered a book called
EFT for Weight Loss, w
ritten by one of the pioneers of EFT, Gary Craig. So, I decided to see if it would work for me. When I added EFT to my repertoire of weight-loss techniques, I was amazed how my craving for sugar just went bye-bye after a month of using EFT. Then I decided to add a version of EFT to my classes for the Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much program, and some of the participants said the technique helped calm their anxiety.

Although still considered in its experimental phase, Emotional Freedom Technique is being practiced by personal-development coaches and energy-medicine specialists worldwide. The documentary film on EFT,
The Tapping Solution,
features endorsements by many reputable experts in the medical community, from psychologists and biologists to neurologists, as well as leading authors in the personal-development field, such as Jack Canfield and Cheryl Richardson. If you experiment with EFT yourself, you may very well find it a fun and easy way to calm down the emotional overwhelm that plagues people who feel too much.

In doing EFT, you work with acupuncture meridians, stimulating them in order to loosen any blocks in the flow of vital energy (also known as
chi
). Blocks in the flow of energy can cause emotional symptoms, such as feeling ashamed, unmotivated, or resentful, or physical symptoms, such as a disturbance in your blood circulation, a tightness in your muscles, or a hormone imbalance. When your energy is running freely and smoothly, as it's meant to do, your emotions and your physical systems respond by running freely and smoothly as well.

Simply put, for EFT, use your index and middle finger to tap lightly on particular spots on your body as you speak affirmations, such as “No matter that I've chosen to eat foods that are not the best for me, I deeply love and respect myself,” and “No matter that I'm imperfect and I devoured two cupcakes, I deeply and completely love and respect myself.” The tapping slows the heart rate by increasing your body's production of the calming biochemicals GABA (an amino acid), serotonin (a neurotransmitter), and opioids, and awakens your body's ability to both calm the area of the brain that experiences anxiety and help you to reabsorb cortisol, the stress hormone. It may even alter gene expression and boost immunity.

The affirmation works similarly to cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, in that you're both acknowledging your problem and putting it into perspective. In the first half of the affirmation, you admit to the behavior, thought, or quality that you'd prefer not to think about. This draws your attention to the problem and the block you want to dissolve. In the second half of the affirmation, you acknowledge your deep, unconditional love and respect for yourself.

For the EFT tapping, use your index and middle finger to tap gently on your body at these acupuncture points:

• the middle of your forehead

• the spot on your brow ridge just above your nose and slightly to the right

• the spot on your brow ridge just above your nose and slightly to the left

• your right cheekbone

• your left cheekbone

• the space between your nose and your upper lip

• the middle of your chin

• your heart

• your collarbone, a few inches to the right of your heart

• your collarbone, a few inches to the left of your heart

• under your right arm, halfway down your ribcage

• under your left arm, halfway down your rib cage

• on the fleshy part of your right hand's outer ridge (the Karate Chop Point [KC] where you would do a karate chop)

• on the fleshy part of your left hand's outer ridge

Say your affirmations while you do the entire tapping sequence. Each time you recite the affirmation, tap repeatedly on the acupuncture point. Work through all the EFT points, using the same affirmation or several different affirmations. All your affirmations should follow the format I described earlier: acknowledge the problem and affirm your deep love and respect for yourself.

Pay attention to how you feel when you're tapping. Do any emotions arise? You can do a tapping sequence to acknowledge that feeling. And you may find other layers beneath the ones you begin with. After you've finished tapping, you will probably feel calmer, and you'll sense that you've released some emotions. At first, you may need to do two or three rounds of tapping on the same topic to feel a difference, but as you tap more, you will loosen your emotions more quickly.

With some practice, EFT can take only a minute or two. Instead of checking your social media, go into a bathroom stall or off to an empty room and do your EFT. I do mine at my desk if or when something triggers me. Granted, it does look a little weird in public; but if I need to do a tapping round when I'm out, I only use the KC point on the side of my left hand. Tap-tap-tap becomes second nature to you as you shift your mood and stay in the moment.

Doing EFT is one way of many introduced in this program to be kind to yourself and to commit to a new way of managing your emotional energy. Another, most important way, is to speak your truth, which is the focus of Step One, discussed in Chapter 4. The safest place to speak your truth is in a journal, so many journaling exercises have been included in the program. Most important, as you will learn later, you should have not one, but two journals. One is for what I refer to as the “Dumping Grounds”; the other is for “Solutions and Insights.” Starting with Step Two, discussed in Chapter 5, these journals will be used to reinforce your positive feelings and thoughts about yourself, and to help you separate out the passages that are laden with painful feelings you want to release. Later on in the program, you'll learn about venting to your journal and then performing a ritual I call “sorting through and dumping the garbage.” When you do this, you'll free yourself of the weight imposed by those strong emotions connected to your “garbage.”

Every day of the program, you'll do a little bit of journal writing in the morning and evening, answering just a few questions. During the active weeks, you'll be answering two to three other questions as part of the “daily journal writing” exercise. In addition, you'll journal about your responses to the exercises you do—and any time you feel you need to speak your truth.

Throughout the program, every morning, you'll write down your answers to these questions:

What is my intention?

What do I want to experience today?

Every night just before bed, you'll journal your answer to these questions:

How did I do? (Did you have an off-day and if so, why? What happened?)

What is one thing I did that I can be happy about and proud of?

What is one thing I'm grateful for?

Even on your worst days, you will find something you did right, even if it was to follow through on your commitment to write in your journal. As for naming one thing you're grateful for, I'm not making an idle request. According to research by Robert A. Emmons, of the University of California at Davis, and Michael E. McCullough, of the University of Miami, regularly acknowledging what you're grateful for will make you happier, healthier, and more optimistic.

In addition to your morning and evening journaling, you'll have daily journal questions to answer during each active week of the program. The daily questions and many of the exercises in this program will stir up emotions, so be sure to set aside a time when you'll feel comfortable accessing those feelings. Devote at least 20 minutes a day to your journal writing, and be sure not to skip the morning and bedtime daily writing, either. It's really important to set your intention for each day, and to end the day by affirming something positive you've accomplished.