By K. Beeders
Recently, I worked with a client, “David,” a middle-aged businessman. During his session, we discussed the issues that were coming up from his stress.
As a former athlete, he prided himself in staying in shape, but had recently noticed that in the last two months had put on 18 pounds.
David said he was assigned to a special project at work, so he would often stay at work late at night and get home about 9:30 p.m. His wife would leave a plate of warm food for him to eat when he got home. As a result, 3 or 4 nights a week, he was eating a complete dinner at 10:00 p.m., which included several helpings of homemade dessert.
It was easy to understand why he was suddenly gaining weight so quickly.
David said he was always regretted eating this large meal every night. He wanted to be able to change his eating habits so he ate earlier in the day and thus avoid eating the very large meal at night.
We used the set up statement:
Even though I’m eating a hot dinner every night before going to sleep, I deeply and completely accept myself
Reminder phrase:
Eating dinner every night.
I find it often helps when a client isn’t sure about the issue that we need to start out tapping using more of a general statement and the tapping often opens the person’s mind so we can find out what the real issues are and get very specific to get the best results.
This reduced his initial SUD Level of intensity number from an 8 to 6 out of 10, but also brought up a few beliefs which we needed to tap on and revise what we were focusing on.
The first belief was that his dinner at night was his reward for working so hard during the day. Eating dinner at night was his time to shut out the world and do something special for himself.
The new set up phrase was:
Even though I eat dinner late at night to reward myself, I deeply and completely accept myself.
Reminder phrase:
Dinner is my reward.
His new focus worked wonderfully and after several rounds, we got him to a SUD Level of zero on this specific issue.
The second belief that came up during tapping was an important childhood belief.
David grew up in the Midwest and as a child, his mother had taught him the importance of eating “3 balanced meals” every day. It was based on the pyramid food charts that schools often had.
Also, growing up, snacking wasn’t allowed, as it would interfere with eating his meals. Therefore, it made sense that David would want his dinner every night, no matter what time he ate it. That belief had been one of the household rules established by his mother growing up. While tapping, David realized that even though he was in his 40’s he didn’t want to break his mother’s rules.
In EFT we often refer to different aspects that pop up as chopping down the trees in the forest, so, we now proceeded to chop down the tree of this core belief.
Our new set up phrase was:
Even though I don’t want to break my mother’s rules by not eating dinner every night, I deeply and completely accept myself
Reminder phrase:
My mother’s rule’s.
We tapped several rounds until David reached a SUD level of intensity number of 0.
I heard from him the next week, and he told me he had starting bringing snacks to work and was eating a bigger lunch during the day and wasn’t eating dinner late at night. Several weeks later, he told me he had lost 10 pounds, was eating healthier and earlier during the day.
Now, when he gets home at late at night, he enjoys the summer weather by going for a long walk with his wife. This had become his new healthy habit to shut out the world when he gets home and do something special for himself.
