How to use EFT Tapping for cravings?
EFT Tapping For Cravings
In this article, you will learn about how to use EFT tapping for cravings.
Does the whiff of freshly-baked bread, the sight of salty chips or popping corn kernels, the thought of gooey chocolate desserts, or the aroma and the sizzling sound of spicy deep-fries make you salivate?
Do you remember days when you were anxious, angry, or stressed and then binging on a packet of chips or a bar of chocolate just soothed your senses? And, then you are guilt-ridden as you just can’t give up on these sweet or salt cravings.
Do you crave to curb your cravings and wished for a magic wand that could help you? If your answer is yes to all these, then read on about how to use Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Tapping for cravings?
EFT Tapping For Cravings
Half the solution to every problem lies in finding the root cause. You might have a sugar craving or a salt craving or perhaps, chocolates or chips cravings. Beneath every craving there can be an emotional root cause. Finding this cause plays an important role in eliminating cravings. As EFT is an effective therapy for emotional freedom, EFT tapping for cravings is one of the best solutions to combat cravings.
What Are Cravings?
Craving for a food item is an intense desire to eat the item. The person finds it uncontrollable and feels satisfied and soothed only after eating the food item.
What are the possible reasons for cravings?
As mentioned earlier, every craving might have an associated emotional root cause. The possible reasons could be loneliness, tiredness, boredom, sadness, depression, and even deeper aspects like abandonment, guilt, and hurt. When you do not process these emotions, you might use food, alcohol, smoking, or drugs to shove down or supress the emotions. This suppression through food or other items gives you temporary solace. So, every time something triggers this emotion, there’s an intense desire to consume that item.
What are the effects of cravings?
Supressing unprocessed emotions repeatedly through food or other items can be very destructive to the body. For example, if you had anxiety, your craving for chips and eating them narcotises anxiety, in other words, you kill the awareness of being anxious. Food is being used as a drug to calm anxiety and other emotions. This method of sedating emotions results in adding additional pounds to your body weight plus increased emotional baggage. As a result, cravings can be destructive for your body.
How can you eliminate cravings by lifestyle changes?
Before exploring therapies such as EFT tapping for cravings, you must understand that what you give your mind and body plays a crucial role in your life. Also, awareness to many simple day-to-day aspects can enhance the possibilities of your goal to eliminate cravings. Some of them include:
- Consuming healthy and wholesome food - Ensure that you eat nutrient-loaded food items, which include proteins, fibre-rich food, and healthy fats. These items may reduce your appetite and prevent overeating. Including sugar-rich items and refined carbohydrates can raise the blood sugar levels and force you into a whirlpool, craving for unhealthy food items.
- Planning your meals – Plan your meals and eat only when you are hungry to prevent overeating. If you avoid getting very hungry, you can eliminate craving for food.
- Hydrating yourself – Drink plenty of water to flush out toxins from your body. Many times, thirst is mistaken for hunger and you end up eating when you are thirsty. Try drinking water when you are craving for food because it could after all be thirst and not hunger.
- Following a healthy exercise schedule for your mind and body – Adequate sleep, good exercise, meditation, and mindful eating might help you in combating cravings.
New to EFT? Learn how Emotional Freedom Technique Tapping heals, including Anxiety.
Emotional Freedom Techniques (tapping) is clinically proven to lower stress, tension, anxiety, past-trauma to enable health, happiness and vitality.
How does EFT Tapping for cravings help?
Curbing your cravings temporarily might be possible through the above mentioned techniques, but the secret of eliminating craving is to free yourself from the emotion triggering it.
Releasing the emotion that activates your desire can help you handle the craving and also weight management. When it comes to emotional freedom, EFT tapping is an effective, easy-to-use, simple, and inexpensive technique. EFT tapping for cravings can work wonders in freeing you from emotional baggage and eliminating your cravings.
3 Steps EFT Tapping Techniques for Craving Elimination
The process of EFT tapping for cravings elimination involves 3 steps and is taught during the EFT Practitioner Training The three steps are:
1.
Identification
Identify the following to initiate EFT tapping for cravings:
- Item that you are craving for and observe the sight, smell, or the feel of the item.
- How badly you want it on a scale of 1 to 10?
- What is it that you love about the item?
- How does consuming it make you feel?
2.
Uncovering Emotions
- Tap and clear the surface requirements for the item by using the answers to the above mentioned questions.
- Uncover the deeper emotions
- Clear the charge in the emotions through EFT tapping for cravings
3.
Uncovering Memories
Identify root memories and come to peace with the root memories associated with deeper emotions through EFT tapping for cravings.
Learn how EFT Tapping eliminates cravings
An article about EFT tapping for cravings and anxiety by Duke Integrative medicine has given a wonderful analogy about past trauma being a malware program and EFT tapping being a program to uninstall the malware. It also mentions that EFT tapping for cravings and other scenarios is the secret ingredient to release distressing emotions.
The article quotes:
“When a negative experience occurs, it is as if a program you don’t want is installed in your acupuncture meridian system. It gets uploaded into the limbic system of your brain that controls the physiological emotional responses in your body. There is a file for every bad thing that ever happened to you with a program, pictures and a story in each one. With EFT you intentionally open the file and run the program by repeating a short phrase that reminds you of the event while tapping.”
Tapping on the acupuncture points is like hitting the delete key, so you can uninstall the program. Once the program is gone and you resave the file, the memory will be altered forever. The next time you open the file the pictures and story will still be there, but the program will be gone. Then your body will not respond in a negative way, so you will have emotional freedom. Tapping clients sometimes report that they forget that they used to crave sugary treats after removing some of the triggering programs! (3)
New to EFT? Learn how Emotional Freedom Technique Tapping heals, including Anxiety.
Emotional Freedom Techniques (tapping) is clinically proven to lower stress, tension, anxiety, past-trauma to enable health, happiness and vitality.
Now that you have a fair idea about how EFT tapping for cravings work, let’s look at a simple example and the probable statements that you can use in the example scenario. If you wish to learn EFT tapping for cravings and also use it for emotional freedom, contact a certified trainer and learn EFT tapping (link discovery call).
Although it feels great to work on yourself using tapping statements, it is advisable to:
- Receive an EFT tapping for cravings session from a trained practitioner.
- Use customized statements that are in line with your emotions and memories as they work more effectively than generalized statements.
Let’s assume that someone has a craving for chocolates. The steps in the table below list the sample EFT tapping for cravings process:
Step 1
Place a chocolate on a plate or tissue, look, smell, and feel it.
Identify the following:
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how badly do you want it.
Example: 10 - What is it that you love about chocolates ?
Example: Yummy chocolatey taste.
Example: Happy.
Step 2
a) Tap on the Karate chop and repeat the following setup statement thrice:
"Even though I have this craving for chocolates and it’s at a number 10, and what I love about it is it’s yummy chocolatey taste, and when I take it, it makes me feel happy, I love and accept myself."
b) Tap on the facial, body, and hand points saying the reminder phrases aloud.
Reminder phrases in this example are:
- Chocolates
- 10
- Yummy and chocolatey taste
- Happy
Close the sequence by using the setup statement given above once.
Take a gentle breath and sip water.
Step 3
a) Look, smell, feel the chocolate again, and see how badly you want it.
b) If the desire is intense, tap again and clear using steps 1 and 2 and then go to step 4.
c) If it’s not intense, you can close the tapping session with positive statements, as given in step 9.
Step 4
a) Bring into your awareness how does consuming the chocolate makes you feel?
Example: Feeling happy
b) Ask yourself, when have you not felt happy in your life?
Example: Note all the ages when you haven’t felt happy and the reasons or short descriptions of the memories that comes up.
Note: If there are multiple memories, start with the memory that has an intense charge first.
Step 5
a) Use EFT tapping for cravings by tapping on the Karate chop and repeat the following setup statement thrice:
"Even though I had no friends (whatever is the memory) and it made me sad and it’s at a number 8, I love and accept myself."
b) Tap on the facial, body, and hand points saying the reminder phrases aloud. Reminder phrases in this example are:
- I had no friends
- Sad
- 8
c) Close the sequence by using the setup statement given above once.
d) Take a gentle breath and sip water.
Step 6
a) Retell the story aloud.
b) Focus on the emotion happy that you did not feel earlier, but felt when you consume chocolate.
c) Test the intensity of the memory.
d) If the intensity is still higher and not better than before, use EFT tapping for cravings step 5 until the number comes down.
Step 7
a) Repeat steps 5 and 6 for all the memories.
b) Repeat until you are able to retell all the past memories without feeling the associated intense emotions.
Step 8
a) Test by looking, smelling, and feeling the chocolate again.
b) If your craving has come down by EFT tapping for cravings to 3 or below, then go to step 9.
Step 9
a) Close your eyes and bring into your heart the positive feeling that you feel when you consume chocolates.
b) Tap on the side of the hand (karate chop), “Even though I feel happy when I take chocolates, I am open to the possibility to feeling it now anyway.”
c) Use EFT tapping for cravings with positive phrases by tapping on the head, facial, body, and hand points using the word happy, as follows:
- Top of the head: I choose to feel happy
- Eyebrow point: I love feeling happy
- Side of the Eye/Temple: I enjoy feeling happy
- Under the Eye: I am so excited to be feeling happy
- Under the Nose: I am happy to be feeling happy
- Chin: I choose to feel happy
- Collarbone: I love feeling happy
- Thumb: I enjoy feeling happy
- Index finger: I choose to feel happy
- Middle finger: I love feeling happy
- Little finger: I am so happy to be feeling happy
Continue Steps 9 until the craving has come down below 3 or the desire to have chocolates has gone.
Does EFT Really Help to Eliminate Cravings?
Studies indicate that EFT Tapping for cravings is an effective technique. Some classic examples include:
- In a seminar, a lady came forward with a craving for spicy crisps and as she used EFT tapping for cravings process, she uncovered a deep-rooted issue where the surface craving was being driven by a requirement for adventure and a lack of intimacy with her husband.
- In Emma's case, she attended training the first year and cleared her cravings for biscuits and the next year to chocolate. To learn more you can read her blog post.
There has been clinical evidence of the use of EFT Tapping for Cravings, for instance:
Clinical Study
- Primarily women (96%) aged between 41 and 60 years were randomly assigned to one of the following groups:
a) An eight-week online EFT intervention group
b) Waitlist control group
- 65% consumed their craved foods daily and had an average Body Mass Index(BMI) in the obese range (33.3).
- Their assessment outcome measures included food cravings, dietary restraint, subjective power of food, weight, somatic (body sensation), anxiety, and depressive symptoms. (1)
Result
- Post-intervention analyses revealed significant reductions on all measures for participants in the EFT condition (n = 314) with Cohen’s effect size values suggesting moderate to high practical significance for the online intervention.
- No significant differences for participants in the waitlist control group (n = 137). (1)
Conclusion
Findings constitute preliminary support for the utility of online EFT as an accessible tool to assist the management of food cravings and body weight. (1)
Clinical Benefits of Emotional Freedom Techniques on Food Cravings at 12-Months Follow-Up: A Randomized Controlled Trial (2)
Clinical Study
- Primarily these women (96%) aged between 41 and 60 years had a crossover trial test to see after using EFT Tapping for cravings whether they maintained reduced food cravings after 12-months and updates previously reported 6-month findings. (2)
Result
- Significant improvements occurred in weight, body mass index, food cravings, subjective power of food, craving restraint, and psychological coping for EFT participants from pretest to 12 months (p < .05). (2)
Conclusion
EFT can result in participants maintaining reduced cravings over time and affect weight and BMI in overweight and obese individuals.(2)
While the cravings protocol may be very light hearted on the surface there can be a deeper root cause. EFT tapping for cravings creates a sense of calm, lightness, and peace.
In summary, cravings are always associated with underlying issues like insecurity, depression, and anxiety. People seek comfort in their foods. EFT Tapping for cravings is highly effective in eliminating those intense and deep food desires. Do you want to eliminate food cravings?
Why wait, just talk, tap away your craving story, shed your emotional baggage, and those extra pounds.
Love
Dr Rangana Rupavi Choudhari (PhD)
P.S. Want to discover if EFT is right for you? Book a Complimentary Discovery Call
HOW TO SELF HEAL & BECOME AN EFT PRACTITIONER
Discover how EFT can help you to self heal or to become professionally qualified as a Certified EFT Practitioner. Emotional Freedom Techniques (tapping) is clinically proven to lower stress, tension, anxiety, past-trauma to enable health, happiness and vitality.
References
- Stapleton P, Roos T, Mackintosh G, Sparenburg E, Sabot D, Carter B. Online Delivery of Emotional Freedom Techniques in the Treatment of Food Cravings and Weight Management: A Randomised Controlled Trial. OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine 2019;4(4):31; doi:10.21926/obm.icm.1904065 - https://www.lidsen.com/journals/icm/icm-04-04-065
- https://energypsychologyjournal.org/stapleton/
- https://dukeintegrativemedicine.org/DHWBlog/tapping-health-emotional-freedom-techniques-eft-anxiety-food-cravings/
- https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/11-ways-to-stop-food-cravings
- https://thechalkboardmag.com/tapping-for-cravings-jennie-miremadi
- https://vitalitylivingcollege.info/emma-voss-gives-up-her-chocolate-cravings-after-eft/
Disclaimer: The information on this website is purely for educational purposes and does not in any way replace the requirement for medical and psychological diagnosis and treatment. Please do seek professional medical and psychological diagnosis and advice for all medical and mental health conditions. It is advised to always book any consultations with qualified professionals.