Can you believe I’ve now completed my 12-week emotional eating experiment with Shrink Yourself? I can’t! It seems like it was just yesterday that I started this experiment on myself.

UPDATE 2015: Hi, as you can see by the date on this article, I wrote this a LONG time ago, May 2008 which was over 7 years ago. At that time in 2008 I was not a professional, certified coach and professional certified Master NLP Pracitioner. I had not yet founded The Inner Self Dietâ„¢ which is my proven, proprietary, step-by-step personal coaching program for permanent weight loss. That’s right! I personally coach my clients to the end of their emotional eating, binge eating, self-sabotage, food obsessions, food addictions, low self-esteem and much more. Click here to read coaching client testimonials from my coaching client, click here to listen to audio testimonials, and watch videos of graduates of The Inner Self Dietâ„¢ in the sidebar of this page you’re on now.

Back in 2008 I did this Shrink Yourself Program and it was nice and all, but it didn’t heal the root of the problem like the binge eating coaching and emotional eating coaching I do with my clients does. I wish  you your Best Life…IN Your Ideal Body! ~ JoLynn Braley, Permanent Weight Loss Coach, Founder of The Inner Self Dietâ„¢

Well for any of you emotional eaters (and especially if you also struggle with food addiction) who think “there’s no way I’m going to spend 12 weeks changing my ways, I want it NOW!”, I’ve gotta tell ya that the 12 weeks fly right on by. (If this is your first time reading about my emotional eating experiment with Shrink Yourself, please go back to the beginning of this series for more information and a complete list of all 12 weeks of my updates.)

A Lifetime of Emotional Eating

The thing is this – 12 weeks is nothing when you consider how long you’ve been using food as a crutch and a coping mechanism throughout life. Heck, if you’re like me you’ve been emotionally eating a LOT longer than 12 weeks, that’s for darn sure.

So the Shrink Yourself program is 12 weeks long, which you already know if you’ve been following along with my series since the beginning. I’ve been experimenting on myself for the past 12 weeks and I must say that I’ve been very successful – and that’s without losing a whole bunch of weight. Yep, in the first few months of my experiment I focused on learning about my motivations to emotionally eat and then I started losing weight.

I’m Not Perfect

Now today I cannot tell you that I’m a totally perfect human specimen (don’t know that I will ever be perfect! 😉 ) after completing my 12 weeks with Shrink Yourself but what I can tell you is that I have the tools that I need to avoid emotional eating. I’m still in the process of losing weight and since last week I didn’t lose (I maintained) but I did have some great realizations of old emotional eating patterns. My parents came to visit and I could see some old patterns that I have from childhood, which is a good thing – I can’t change anything if I’m not aware of it!

Now you might remember me mentioning in my emotional eating experiment with Shrink Yourself over the past 12 weeks that it does not tell you that all of your problems will be solved once you complete the program but you know what else Shrink Yourself teaches you? You don’t have to be problem free to end your emotional eating and lose weight – isn’t that the best?

Life Contains Challenges

While you won’t be problem free at the end of 12 weeks, you will have the tools you need to end your emotional eating. And actually, you’ll never be challenge free in life so Shrink Yourself will help you learn how to cope in life without using food while helping you uncover those parts of yourself that sabotage your weight loss.

When you think about it, if you didn’t have any inner struggles with weight loss then as long as you followed a healthy diet and exercise program you wouldn’t have any issue losing weight. Problem is that many of us who are overweight are emotional eaters and in order to lose the weight and keep it off, we’ve got to learn some new ways of living and let that emotional eating habit go.

What’s Week 12 About?

Week twelve’s guided session of the Shrink Yourself program goes back over the habits you listed in week one’s guided session and asks you if you’re finding it easier to practice that habit. If you are that’s great and if you’re not the session helps you understand which parts of your 3 personal weight loss secrets (given to you in previous sessions) you haven’t fully absorbed.

If you’re still using food to handle your self-doubts or to satisfy your emotional hunger then there are some pieces of Shrink Yourself that you haven’t integrated into your consciousness and daily habits and you’ll need to go back over those parts of the program. What’s neat though, is that the online program gives you a super easy way to print out all of the work that you’ve already done and suggests that you make a workbook out of it for future reference.

Will You Succeed With Shrink Yourself?

Yes, you can absolutely succeed and replace your emotional eating with healthy lifestyle habits so you can end the emotional eating and lose weight (remember, there’s no diet or exercise information in Shrink Yourself) but here’s the catch – you’ve got to be ready and willing to do this. If you’re not completely ready to regain your personal power and live an empowered life free of emotional eating and using food to cope, then I do not suggest you do the program.

You’ve really got to be ready to make a change and if you’re not, then I think it’s better that you sit with your resistance to change. This does not mean you’ll never be ready – you can always choose different thoughts and make up your mind to change your life. Change really is just a thought away.