Ancestral Yo-Yo Dieting & Weight; A Personal EFT Case Study
When I was about 19 years old, I started to consciously struggle with my weight. I gained a total of about 20 pounds in a short time, and then I lost 30 between junior and senior year. Throughout the rest of my 20s, I’d constantly go up and down dress sizes. I’d constantly be reassessing and shifting my diet and trying to go back to what worked in college when I lost so much weight. Then I moved into yet another mold-infested and water-damaged apartment, and it seemed I couldn’t drop the weight, no matter what I did (mold and MCAS can cause weight gain). This just so happened to coincide with turning 30, which my doctor blamed for my inability to lose weight like I used to. But I knew deep down something else must be wrong. After all, most of my friends seemed to be maintaining their weight just fine, despite also turning 30. I ended up gaining quite a bit of weight between 2019 and today. I went up about 4-5 dress sizes and went from wearing an XS to an XL.
I knew that besides the mold, something subconscious was also going on. In college when I gained the added weight, I was very consciously aware of my unhealthy habits that were leading to the weight gain. I felt shame about my perceived unattractiveness, so I wouldn’t eat much in front of others, and then I’d hide in my room and binge on peanut butter m&ms and Milano cookies and even cover them up in my garbage so I didn’t have to feel the shame anymore and so that no one would see them and know what I was doing. I knew I was emotional eating. Through a number of tools, including later EFT, I was able to stop emotional eating. So this second round of major weight gain is not due to emotional eating or consciously trying to push down any emotions with food.
I worked with a number of EFT practitioners and one Access Bars practitioner on my weight, but it’s been one of the few issues I couldn’t seem to budge using EFT.
That all changed today. I put together something my primary care doctor asked me, a field of EFT focused on ancestral trauma and other issues, and experience working with a past client. The past client had a bad habit she wanted to kick of buying and eating Reese’s cups every time she went out or ran errands. We pretty quickly realized this actually came from her mom, who used to hide candy and shame the kids for stealing it, and not from her. After one tapping session, she emailed me back a week later and told me she hadn’t felt the need to buy Reese’s cups at all that week!
When I went to the doctor about my weight gain, he asked what my mom’s weight was like. She, like me, had been very thin growing up, and then sometime in early adulthood, she started to struggle with her weight. She always told me that she was a few pounds overweight. For my entire lifetime, I’ve known her to be a yo-yo dieter with her weight constantly yo-yo - ing a couple of pounds up and down. She expends a lot of mental and and emotional energy trying to figure out how to get back to the times she successfully lost the weight, and even to her childhood slenderness.
While my doctor saw this as a generational genetic pattern; that I’d inherited my mom’s physical patterns; it clicked that this is likely an emotional pattern and possibly behavioral I inherited from her. When I yo-yo diet and my weight yo-yos, I’m actually running on my mom’s energy and not my own. Because while we do have genetic patterns, we actually have a lot more control over them than we realize. Our lifestyle factors can even overcome our genes and turn them on and off.
So I just finished a long tapping session to release my mom’s energy about yo-yo-ing weight and dieting from me. I imagined how she felt, and I imagined the nervousness, shame and embarrassment she feels. The not being able to get it right. I identified the body sensations that went along with it — the shame was like an orange triangle. For some reason, this image gave me the biggest release; I started to bawl my eyes out. The self-guilt felt like black liquid running down my legs.
I remembered when I was a kid, about 6 years old, and I looked in the mirror and asked if I was fat. My mom was appalled and upset and said no, but then told me she was about 10 pounds overweight. I tapped through this memory to release it.
Now normally in tapping sessions, you start with recent events and then go back to past events. But in this tapping session, something different happened. I went to the far past first, and then slightly more recent memories popped up. I had thought that my weight issues hadn’t started until I was in college and didn’t live with my family anymore, but I suddenly remember some of the comments my mom had made to me around the time I turned 16 or 17. While most of my friends at school usually commented on how thin I was, my mom made a couple of disparaging comments about my weight. I made a throwaway comment about wanting to be a model and she immediately responded I’d need to lose weight. One day, out of the blue she suggested that maybe I should start to see a personal trainer. On another, she told me as I was reaching for half an ice cream sandwich in the freezer that I’d lose 5 pounds if I stopped eating dessert every day. I didn’t realize it then, but now I realize she was starting to get concerned about my weight. She was worried about me following in her footsteps of constantly struggling with weight.
I tapped through all of these experiences. Through tapping, I realized my more recent gain has amplified her shame and guilt since she sees it as an extension of her failure. And, like many children, we subconsciously amplify our parents’ issues to help them work through it more.
But the biggest aha that came out of my tapping session was just how thankful I am that I am no longer in a mindset where I am constantly anxiously thinking about my diet and my weight. While that may have partially led to my weight gain, the emotional relief of not having that constantly burdening me is humongous. I am so thankful that Millennials are turning the tables on how we talk and think about weight. I’m also so thankful we are not like the Boomer women I know who have incredible pressure on them to remain thin. So much so that my mom’s energy about it has leeched into her only daughter while her son has been mostly immune to these issues.
I’ll check in again in a week or so and see if anything’s changed with regard to my lifestyle since this tapping session.
Update: November 4
It’s a little over a month later, and I wanted to share an update. Since this tapping session, I’ve started and stuck to an exercise program. I had to make adaptions for the week of my period because endometriosis prevents me from being able to exercise much. I’ve also gotten back on a much healthier diet and have been meal prepping and eating mostly homemade low histamine soups and smoothies (which my nutritionist recommended). My partner even commented that he noticed I’m making more of an effort and that it looks like I’ve lost a bit of weight, and that I look less bloated than I did over the summer (when I was on a lot of medications that mad me bloat).
Conclusion: Tapping works, y’all! And if it’s not working for you, then consider that you may need to tap on ancestral patterns and emotions. It didn’t necessarily start with you, or even your parents.
