Rachel had always fought to keep her weight under control. After years of yo-yo dieting her frustration level was higher than ever when she finally sought help from a therapist. Asked what she saw as her biggest challenge, she responded Anything Chocolate! She felt that her craving for chocolate was a 10 on a scale of 1-10.
As part of a hypnotherapy guided weight management program, she learned and experienced EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique or tapping) to eliminate her craving for chocolate. After one session she found that chocolate no longer held any special allure for her. With her chocolate craving eliminated, she began shedding unwanted weight and reached her healthy weight goal several months later.
Compared to a normal, non-specific feeling of hunger (‘I need to eat something soon’), a food craving is usually defined as a strong, immediate urge to eat a specific food (‘I need my chocolate bar now’).
Your craving may come to mind seemingly out of the blue or it may be triggered by a variety of physical or mental/emotional factors. Emotions are one of the biggest contributing factors to specific food cravings.
If a specific craving is making it difficult for you to achieve and maintain your healthy weight goal, your craving may be mainly triggered by negative emotional factors such as
chronic stress
anxiety
frustration
anger
sadness
When a craving arises you have a few basic responses you might choose from:
Indulge in the craving (eat your favorite chocolate bar that you always carry with you or stock in the pantry at home)
Eat a healthy snack ‘instead’ (and wait for the craving to pass)
Distract yourself with some other non-eating physical or mental activities and let the craving dissipate (but no guarantees on when and how often it will come back)
Cravings are usually ‘satisfied’, one way or the other, in 10 to 20 minutes. However, research tells us that
Regularly choosing the indulge response can have negative short term and long term consequences for your heath and weight goals
The healthy snack and distraction responses both require constant disciplined effort to follow and can be frustrating and exhausting in themselves
Wouldn’t it be exciting if you could learn a way to seriously reduce the intensity and how often a craving comes up and even prevent it from arising in the first place?
You can!
If you want to reduce or prevent cravings for specific unhealthy foods, a trained EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) practitioner can help you with that goal.
What is EFT?
EFT is a proven, evidence based therapy technique that involves concurrently
tapping on certain meridians, or energy pathways of the body
acknowledging and accepting the craving
affirming your self-acceptance and self-worth
EFT can be used for changing habits, weight loss, sports performance, eliminating fears, and changing negative thought patterns.
When I teach this technique to my clients, I tap along with them. We say together the issue we are trying to change or correct while tapping at specific points on the face and upper body.
Used in conjunction with a hypnotherapy guided weight management program, I find EFT very effective in helping clients to control their cravings and reach their healthy weight management goals.
If this is something of interest to you, please give me a call (818-929-4944) or join us any Wednesday on my Hypnotherapy Q & A. Register here:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYkd--rrz4oGdUY2gJJ5gp07WDIkkz3sz6g
Sincerely,
Cinda
HYPNONEWS and RESOSURCES
For an in depth review of the uses and effectiveness of EFT please see the following article:
Clinical EFT as an Evidence-Based Practice for the Treatment of Psychological and Physiological Conditions
https://www.scirp.org/html/35751.html
For a good overview of methods to help you manage food cravings in general, please see the following:
How do you manage food cravings?