Are you tired of trying diet after diet with little success? A new book takes a different approach that can help you lose weight and keep it off. Therapists Sally Baker and Liz Hogon have written a practical guide, called “Seven Simple Steps to Stop Emotional Eating: Targeting Your Body by Changing Your Mind,” that helps people understand the emotional reasons that cause them to overeat and gives them step-by-step tips to help them overcome these issues. The authors use emotional freedom techniques (EFT) tapping and other techniques to help people lose weight.
In an exclusive interview with atombash.com, Baker explains why this book can help those who are overweight when everything else has failed.
Q: Sally, how is the approach you use different from other strategies people may have tried?
A. Being overweight is never just about food or lack of will power. So we use an approach based on the mind-body connection. When we work with clients, we tend to focus on the signals from their body to reveal and resolve issues that are often subconscious. Carrying excess weight for many people is the outcome of a survival decision they made when they felt powerless to defend or define themselves in any other way.
Q: Can you describe the tools you use to help people change?
A: We work with three main therapy tools. EFT tapping, which has been around now for over 25 years, is an easy-to-learn self-help tool that people can use to alleviate negative emotions. The second core therapy tool is percussive suggestion technique (PSTEC), which involves listening and interacting to an audio click track. The listener taps with the fingers of both hands to a complex sequences of three rhythms to disrupt the connection between negative emotions that are attached to memories or events from the past. The third technique is hypnotherapy or intense guided relaxation that allows the subconscious mind to accept positive suggestions that support change.
Q: How did you arrive at using this combination of therapies?
A: I came to use this combination of therapies with my therapist colleague and co-writer, Liz Hogon. We initially began working with EFT and then hypnotherapy. We were both awarded PSTEC master practitioner status in 2014. After a great deal of trial and error, we think we have found the most powerful and effective tools for successful weight loss.
Q: What are the seven steps people can take to control their weight?
A: We view the 7 steps for people to resolve their emotional eating to be similar to the layers of an onion. We recommend people begin at step one and work through to step 7 without skipping steps or tackling them out of order. In this way, the journey begins with the present, and unfurls the multi-layers leading to letting go, acceptance, and stepping up to a new way of living and loving oneself. The 7 steps are:
– Acknowledging the present
– Comfort and stress eating
– Body image
– Setting and achieving your goals
– Breaking through
– Digging deep
– New day, new dawn
Q: What do you have to say to anyone who thinks this is just another weight-loss fad that won’t work for them?
A: By the time a person seeks help with their weight loss from a professional therapist they usually have already tried every diet from Atkins to the Zone. They already understand that their overeating is not about an insatiable appetite for food but more an attempt to fill a deep void inside of themselves or to quell their often ever-present anxiety. Most prospective clients feel overwhelmed after years of yo-yo dieting with failure inevitably following success. Intellectually they know how to lose weight. But they are tired and frustrated that their occasional weight loss success triggers a range of sabotaging behaviors that puts the weight back on. We help people get unstuck. We begin by acknowledging the present and that includes their fears that this won’t work for them as so many other things haven’t worked. We gently explore their belief system and use the techniques to shift their perspective so that they can begin to embrace and believe that there is a different way.
Q: Can the book help people lose weight?
A: All the techniques we use in our individual therapy practices are explained simply in the book. It becomes a powerful self-help resource for people ready to tackle their reasons for emotional eating and make changes to facilitate successful lose weight once and for all. Readers can also download PDFs, hypnosis mp3s and video demonstrations free of charge at our website www.your7simplesteps.com. The book is available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle formats.
