Cause and Effect: The Correlation Between Negative Emotions and Overeating as well as Weight Gain and Obesity Related Diseases.
By Valerie Grimes, CHt
Clinical Hypnotist
If you or someone close to you is overweight and there is a desire to loose that extra weight, the obvious method for doing so would be to stop eating cookies, ice cream and the like. The reason is that the cause of being overweight is eating too much of the wrong thing.
Even with the history of the lack of results from previous attempts, each year Americans spend $45 to 60 billion on products and services to try and stop the apparent cause (overeating). What if they could focus instead on the desire to change the cause at a deeper level? To look at the brain messaging that leads to a behavior that creates a physical manifestation of unconsciously overeating. Which if left as the effect is weight gain and that becomes the cause of obesity related diseases.
We have a variety of cause and the effects of those causes.
Emotions lead to eating
Eating leads to weight gain
Weight gain leads to possible illness like heart disease or diabetes
So how to we change the cause?
Here is an example how that works with a woman in her 30s working for a shaming boss who unknown to her, is triggering feelings of shame from childhood. As a child when dad was hurtful, mom would soothe those feelings with cookies and ice cream. And now as an adult the woman heads to Baskin Robbins® on the way home after a difficult day at work. Her husband says to stop eating the ice cream and she would loose the weight. But the ice cream isn’t the cause, the cause is the perceived feelings of shame.
This is the logical order of the illogical occurrence. There was an event 1) meeting in her bosses office, 2) she heard the tone of his voice 3) memory of father’s tone triggered a feeling of shame. Another way to view this cause and effect event is:
Thought (I’m no good) + an Emotion (shame) = a behavior (eating sweets). Thought + Feeling = Behavior; Thought and Feeling equal the cause and Behavior is the effect.
So if she could switch the emotional association (or the thought/feeling) then she could easily create a new cause, which can only result in a new effect. Why? That is how Cause and Effect works.
From Neuroscience News article: “Neurons that encode whether a memory is positive or negative can be reprogrammed to switch the emotional association of the experience.
Memories of experiences are encoded in the brain along with contextual and emotional information such as where the experience took place and whether it was positive or negative. This allows for the formation of memory associations that might assist in survival. Scientists have known for decades that neurons that “fire together, wire together’. Neurons in the hippocampus region of the brain can be artificially switched to encode memories as either positive or negative regardless of the original experience.”
In a theta state of mind, the memory and emotion attached to that memory can be changed therefore creating a new Cause easily. This is what I do all the time with my hypnosis clients to get them to change a behavior. A hypnotist understands and is capable of placing their client in a theta state and then using the same Law of Dominate effect that created the older emotional trigger can replace it with one that create a new cause.
If you are wondering why you have that or those pints of ice cream in the freezer you could begin to create a feelings journal….using Present Centered Awareness to notice your true emotions and meditate on the cause of those emotions. Or you can call 072-974-2094 or email us for a complimentary consultation.