I don’t know how big I was when I weighed more because I couldn’t bear to see the numbers keep going up on the scale. My clothes were all size LARGE (or larger) and I only bought skirts with an elastic waist. When I stopped weighing myself, I was 160 pounds (11 stone 6, and I’m short), and I knew I was still going up because my clothes, even with the elastic waistbands, kept fitting. You may have experiences similar to what I’ve had: looking in a store window, seeing my bulky reflection incredibly superimposed on those slender mannequins. I remember how horrible it was to get dressed in the morning and groom myself every day: it was impossible to pretend that I wasn’t fat, and my pale bumps filled me with disgust and self-loathing. And trying to diet!

Well, okay, I told myself, so today I’ll have the whole bag of Doritos so it’s not in the house anymore and I’ll start tomorrow. And since I’m going to start all this regulation tomorrow, I might as well clean out the freezer of that ice cream… and so on. It wasn’t like he enjoyed all that food either. My food bills were high, and when I overeat, I would pretend I wasn’t eating: ‘Wow! How did I get to the bottom of that bag? – or just hate myself for every bite, while I eat it. The compulsion to eat combined with that self-loathing was horrible, and yet I did it to myself every day, over and over, day after day, for years.

When I first went to Weight Watchers as a teenager, someone got up and introduced me. I squirmed in my seat in embarrassment and jealousy before she started to speak. She was tall, skinny, and blonde, everything I wasn’t. She was so skinny, skinnier than I could ever hope to be (I told myself at the time), with a figure that seemed like one of those people who were born to be skinny. And then she showed an old photo of herself, when she was, as she put it, ‘fat’: she had lost 88 pounds (6.4)! And then he said something that has stayed with me ever since: “Actually, I didn’t lose 88 pounds. I lost a pound, then another pound, then another pound, then another pound, then another pound, then another pound, until I got to weight.” what i have now

The point is, I didn’t lose 88 pounds in one go. It was quite a lifestyle change. And sometimes it was tedious, and it sure started off hard. And at first, people didn’t even notice that I was losing weight. Even after 20 pounds, people still asked me if I had cut my hair, that’s how fat I was. Tough word, ‘fat’, right? Well, I’m telling you, only when I was okay with being fat could I start to lose a pound, then another pound, then another pound, then another pound.” I thought I was brilliantly wise for the first part and crazy for the last part, about being ok being fat. I was deep in the negative self-talk: ‘I hate this fat! I hate my body! The rolls in my stomach when I sit, my thighs soft and fluid – ugh I hate myself for keeping all this weight How could it be okay to be so disgusting?

Have you ever had these conversations with yourself? Tell yourself these horrible things, that if it came from a partner or a boss or a colleague, would it be clearly abusive? And is it okay for us to treat each other like this? I’m jumping a head off myself…

Well, I managed to diet down to a size 12, but I didn’t keep all that weight off, over 4 stone, all that time. After leaving my first husband, who was even more abusive to me than I was, I gained weight back, not like before, but I definitely needed a bigger wardrobe again. It wasn’t until I was in the UK, and did some emotional healing, that I was able to lose all the weight I had gained back, give or take a stone. I didn’t even realize that I had actually lost weight.

It wasn’t until I had my first daughter and lost my baby weight, and went shopping with a friend with experience selling clothes, she told me I was wearing a size too big, which was actually a size 10! Good news, in part, and also some pretty sad news, sad because I was still so detached from my body that I just couldn’t see myself. So there was still more work to be done, and just in time, as you’ll see in a minute.

I had just found a new stress release technique that allowed me to dig through the layers, and I really mean deeper, of pain, that I had been tying myself to these major issues for all these years. The sexual abuse that I thought had been healed to pebbles was still mountains, the anger that I thought I had let go of was an ocean – I had a whole landscape to deal with! And I did, with this technique, called the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). It is an easy and gentle way to stimulate acupressure points while holding particular thoughts or speaking out loud. I used EFT almost every day for 6 months. And finally, I came out the other side. I was so much happier, so much more grounded, and so much more stable with myself in every way. I had no idea what was waiting for me to test me.

Just over a year later, finally at a stable size 10, my son died. I started eating chocolate every day, a lot, at least a lot for me (one bar of Divine or Green & Blacks a week). Even with the unspeakable challenge of my son’s death, I was finally healthy enough on the inside not to turn to food for that simultaneous comfort/punishment that I had suffered in previous years. I began to realize that I was missing out on chocolate if I hadn’t had it for the day, that I was planning on eating chocolate – the signs of addiction. It was only a few months in, and I couldn’t cope. My son had died and no one was going to take my chocolate away from me too!

I eventually accepted the obvious, that eating chocolate would not bring it back, so I started tapping again for food. It wasn’t that I had gained weight, I hadn’t, my overindulgence was on a completely different level than it had been before, thanks to the tapping. It’s just that I really believe in EFT’s middle name – Freedom. So even with all the pressures of life that I’ve had from a young age, the utter misery of my teenage years, and the added burdens and traumas of that extra stone that I carried around for a while; the death of my precious son – even though I have had all those life experiences, I no longer use food to express my inner conflicts. Now I can deal with them in a loving way, thanks to EFT.

EFT has worked so well for me and my clients in my private practice that I am passionate about sharing it with others through training. I want to reach more people with this easy-to-learn method of dealing with our darkest places and issues. And I am passionate about sharing with others that Freedom is possible, complete Emotional Freedom, and this is the best way I know to get there. It’s hard not to be interested in exploring this further, isn’t it? That’s the way I felt when I first heard about it, and here I am, years later, passing it on. And the words of the woman that she presented at my first Weight Watchers meeting also stuck with me, and how she knew she was in everything she said, well, I want to pass that on too. You’ll let me give you this, okay?