Rita Black: You say potato, I say patata. You say tomato, I say tomato. Let’s call the whole diet thing off. Did you know that there are words and phrases floating around in your mind right now that you may be using unconsciously? Now, you may think of them as innocent words, but, and you’ve been using them your whole life, but under the surface, they take your power away and could be sabotaging your long-term weight journey. So join me for today’s Thin Thinking podcast episode where we are going to lose your fattening weight struggle words, starting with that word lose, and also celebrate this our 100th anniversary episode. So grab your dictionary and come on in.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist weight loss expert, best-selling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieved long-term weight mastery, I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long-term and live your best life.

Rita Black: Hello, my Thin Thinking friends. Come in and celebrate with me. This is our 100th episode of the Thin Thinking Podcast. Can you believe it? Yippie! We are celebrating and I am celebrating all of you listeners who have made these 100 episodes possible all the way from Canada to Slovenia, from Egypt to China, from Chile to New Zealand, and all over the world. Our Thin Thinking community has grown. And it seems like only yesterday we started with episode one, which was recorded from my closet. Yes, speaking to you all over the world, sitting between my laundry hamper and my pajama bottoms. But that’s, that warm closet sound, right? Technology is so amazing. I now know a lot of people who do make podcasts. And guess what? There are a lot of closet studios. I have now moved out of my closet. But the message of the Thin Thinking Podcast is the same. Creating a powerful mindset that allows you to break free from the old subconscious thought patterns and behaviors that leave us feeling frustrated, struggling with our weight.

Rita Black: So on this 100th episode, I’m asking you to please leave us a review. It helps us get discovered by other Thin Thinkers. And please, if you send me a screenshot of the review, I will send you a free weight loss download from the Shift Store. I’ll give you a a coupon code, you can go pick it out yourself. So please write us a review and send it to me and get your free download.

Rita Black: So now, in order to celebrate, I really wanted to bring an early episode from the archive. One that has been downloaded the most, and this one focuses on the way we speak to ourselves and most specifically the words that we use. You would be surprised how many words you might be using that really actually do take your power away from you. They may seem innocent, but they can be stirring the pot of the weight struggle. So without further ado, let’s just hop in and learn more. And even if you heard this episode two years ago, almost I’m sure you’ll learn again on a different layer. So please enjoy. And speaking of jumpers, jumpers and England, when I lived in England when I was first married, my husband and I moved to England. It was sort of like our adventure. We went and we lived there for almost four years. And I had to learn all the different slang words that the Brits used. And it was fun. But I had, I literally had to use it in order to survive because I was embarrassed so many times socially by not knowing these words. So one word was jumper, which meant sweater.

Rita Black: And I still don’t know why. I mean jumper, like why would a jumper be a sweater? But then of course, why would a sweater be a jumper? I mean, sweater is kind of a weird word too, so, oh, there you go. But another British word that totally cracked me up was the word pissed. You know, I would have a friend who would say, I got so pissed last night. And I was like, oh, really? Why were you mad? And they would laugh and they would go, no, no, no. Piss Is drunk. So, you know, there was a word. I was like, what? Pissed? Drunk? I don’t understand. Or someone would say to me, I like your fringe. And I looked all over. I’m like, am I wearing something that’s got some fringe on it? Like I don’t see any fringe, but what I learned was fringe meant your bangs. Okay. So yeah, like, and that word kind of makes sense. It actually makes a lot more sense than bangs. But zucchini squash was called courgette, and eggplant was aubergine. And they would say, it was spelled the same, but instead of oreganos, oregano. And even with weight, they didn’t say, I’m dieting. They said, I’m reducing. That’s so cute. And then they weighed themselves in stones, and that’s where they totally lost me.

Rita Black: Although I liked the idea of, you know, weighing, because I think stones are 14, correct me if I’m wrong, 14 pounds are in a stone. So I’d like the idea of like weighing, you know, oh, well I’m only you know, 10 stone. I’m only nine stone. I’m only, you know, 15 stone or whatever. It’s like, oh, it’s a lot better than, you know, those higher numbers.

Rita Black: Alright. So obviously words are powerful, and the same word can mean different things to different people. And in my Shift Weight Mastery Process, we look at the subconscious meaning of words and the impact they have on us when we use them. And when we are stuck in the weight struggle, one of the number one biggest challenges is how we communicate with ourselves. And often the way we communicate with ourselves is very broken down. We are always making ourselves wrong, fat shaming ourselves, beating ourselves up, and we would never even dream of speaking to others.

Rita Black: Even our most deepest, darkest enemies, the way that we speak to ourselves, and often the words and language that we use to communicate with ourselves and our weight struggle keep us in the struggle without our consciously even knowing it. So I want you to think of our weight struggle words as bricks, and the language that we create with these word, like bricks are like the walls surrounding us, and they kind of box us into the struggle making us a victim of this mindset.

Rita Black: So today, I wanna just begin to do a bit of a demo job on some of those bricks and give you some tools, not only to keep knocking down those bricks but to begin building the foundation of a new home for your weight mastery. To just start to look at words and the way you lose language, you use language, in a different way. So first we’re gonna look at some weight struggler mindset, words or phrases. And these words sort of give our power away, keep us in the struggle, and then we’re gonna look at the more masterful word that we can start to use. Alright?

Rita Black: So we’re gonna start with the basics. And I am gonna say the first weight struggle word is weight. Lose weight, lose weight. So the challenge with saying I’m losing weight is that, and maybe some of you know this, that if we say I’m losing weight, then on a subconscious level, we feel like we need to find it again. And often we do. So the word that I prefer, the more masterful weight masterful word I prefer to use is release weight. Now, you will still hear me say lose weight, and I, a lot of times will self-correct because I hear the word weight loss.

Rita Black: It’s just like one of those crazy, you know, it’s like speaking French and then speaking English at the same time. I’m flopping between two word worlds of communicating with people who are still in the world of weight struggle, and then in the world of weight mastery. So, but in the world of weight mastery, I really like to use that word weight release or releasing weight because we’re giving it away for the last time. And also obviously inverting that and the word or the phrase weight loss. We like to use weight release. Okay, so now I wanna look at a set of words that are I think one of the biggest challengers to our weight struggle and I’m gonna go through those and then we’ll look at some more powerful words to use.

Rita Black: And that first word I, or the first phrase is I blew it. I blew it. Can I tell you how many times I hear people saying I blew it? I don’t know what happened, Rita. I just blew it. I just blew it. I blew it. I went away and I blew it. I, the holidays came and I just blew it. I blew it. And boy, does that term take your power away from you. Why? Well, it really just says it all. It just says there was no hope for me. I blew it and it was over. I was the victim of a situation. I blew it and it was, it was over for me. Like, it’s Friday night and you’re going out and you plan to order the salad, but you got pizza instead. I blew it. Here comes that inner critic voice reinforcing that you are bad. You cannot be trusted, usually leaving you feeling vulnerable for the next negative words that come along usually, which is, I blew it.

Rita Black: So screw it. I’ll start over tomorrow. Now, so screw it, I start over tomorrow, on one hand it may seem, well, you’re letting yourself off the hook, and you might think, oh, well that’s a good thing. But the problem is, is that starting over tomorrow really usually never means starting over tomorrow. And it usually means a lot more extracurricular eating than just the couple of slices of pizza. Am I right? So instead of saying I blew it, instead, I invite you to start saying, what did I learn? What did I learn? Why would we do that? If we’re in a situation where things didn’t go well for us, right? We planned to do something and it didn’t go as planned, I blew it gives you absolutely no insight and no learning. But when we ask our brain, what did I learn? It opens up your mind and your mind, instead of beating you up, we’ll start to get curious. It will say, oh, well what did I learn from this situation? Because our inner coach, that part of us that is curious, that part of us that wants us to learn and and to improve asks questions. And our brain actually loves questions. And our brain loves to find solutions. It loves to figure things out. So when we start to ask ourselves in those moments, we feel the impulse to say I blew it and said, what did I learn? We step in, we intercept that thought pattern and open up our mind, and we begin to get insight into our behavior and how we can begin to change things to set ourself up for success, either in that moment or in the future. Because a long-term permanent weight mastery journey isn’t about being perfect. It isn’t a straight line down the scale. It’s a journey of self realization, self figuring things out and solving the problems that you haven’t solved.

Rita Black: Because most of us gain weight with the same, in the same places, with the same foods at the same times. It’s not a great mystery, but we’re treating it like a mystery. Like I blew it. Like there’s some mystery, there’s something wrong with me instead of, let’s figure these things out so we can move past them and get some long-term permanent weight mastery. Your long-term permanent weight mastery will come when you start figuring these things out. So why not start asking her the question yourself? The question, what did I learn? So chances are, you know, in this situation, that’s a Friday night pizza. It’s not the first Friday night pizza that went wrong. It’s something that probably happens over and over every time, and you always say, I blew it. Or we always say, I blew it. You lose the lesson that is waiting for you. What I learn, what did I learn? It’s like digging for gold because when you ask a question, your subconscious mind perks up and it gets curious, like I just said. So what did we learn on that Friday night if we start to ask ourselves a question? So maybe we went to dinner without really practicing what we were gonna order in our mind first. You know? Practicing ahead of time helps your mind follow through on what you wanna do. Because often when we’re coming to something that we do over and over again, like Friday night pizza and ordering the pizza, our brain needs a little help because we’re in a habit. And a habit is a pattern that’s driven by dopamine, and that’s a very powerful force.

Rita Black: So practicing what we wanna do ahead of time is a huge leg up into breaking patterns. So maybe that’s something you would learn if you asked, what did I learn? Or maybe you went to dinner and you were too hungry and that made you vulnerable to order the pizza. Maybe you need to make sure that before you go out for that Friday night pizza and you wanna order something different like the salad that you eat a little something so that you’re not so hungry and that you’re not so tempted to go for the pizza. What else did we learn at the Friday night pizza when we really ask, well, maybe we learned that we gave into peer pressure. And all of these things are great to know, because when next Friday night, when you’re heading out, you can start to implement these things that you are learning about yourself. Maybe you will practice ordering ahead of time or you’ll have that snack, or you’ll practice telling your peers go ahead, I’ll have a few bites of your pizza, but I’m just in the mood for a salad.

Rita Black: You know, if you practice that ahead of time, chances are you are going to follow through and say that then if you just hope you’re gonna say that in the moment. So asking yourself and learning. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson is going to open up a whole new door for you. So shift from the phrase I blew it to what did I learn?

Rita Black: And now let’s follow that little phrase that usually goes after I blew it, so screw it, I’ll be good tomorrow. Which gets us even deeper into mental dieting, Do-Do, then I blew it, right? So let’s break this pizza scenario down, shall we? Even more than we already have. So we go out and we wanna order the salad, we wanna be good, and we order the pizza, and we eat a couple of slices, and then internally we say to ourselves, I blew it so we feel bad. So what do we do when we feel bad? Well, we don’t wanna feel bad, so we let ourselves off the hook. We’ll say, so screw it, I’ll start over tomorrow. Immediately, all those bad feelings go away and we feel relief. And this becomes a habit.

Rita Black: And what happens? Do we stop at that two slices of pizza? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, my dear friend. What do we do? We order some more things, right? We finished the pizza, we ordered some oh, where, is there a chocolate tower for dessert? Awesome, let’s get that. And chances are, if it’s the weekend, are we really gonna start over again on Saturday morning? I don’t think so. Oh, no, no. We are not gonna do that. We’re gonna keep eating Saturday. We’re gonna keep eating Sunday. And the amount of food calories followed by the shitloads of negative self-talk equal one big hot mess by the end of the weekend and probably some weight gain by Monday morning, right? So take a deep breath and let that all go. And so instead of I blew it, if we can say, what did I learn by that pizza experience?

Rita Black: What lesson did I learn? And start to learn the lesson. But we are also following that by another phrase, which is, don’t start over, keep going. And if you have to forgive yourself in that moment, also do it. In fact, just do it anyway. Okay? I forgave myself, I ate the pizza. What did I learn? Don’t start over. Let’s just keep going. Don’t start over. Let’s just keep going. Don’t start over. Let’s just keep going. You ever see that movie Finding Nemo? I’ve probably seen it a million times because I had kids and I’ve seen that movie more times than I would’ve liked to seen. But Dory, you know, just keep moving, just keep moving, just keep moving. Just keep moving on. Just keep going. Just keep going on your journey. Learn and move forward, learn and move forward and break that start over tomorrow habit. It’s the most slimming thing you’ll ever do, because, like, let’s break this down even more.

Rita Black: The difference in calories between stopping at a couple of slices of pizza, maybe hey, you know, 800 calories, 900 calories and maybe a thousand calories, right? And a weekend of wild overeating, which could easily add up to 5, 6, 10, 20,000 extra calories. If we looked at this in a energy unit, that’s a shitload of difference in the calories, right? So you know, often if we had just eaten the piece of cake and just kept going or eaten the slice of pizza and forgiven ourself and just kept going and ate something healthy at our next meal, you’re gonna save yourself a world of struggle, a world of self hatred. You’ll learn, you’re gonna learn a lesson and you say, what did I learn? And you’re also really gonna just continue releasing weight because whatever chloric damage or damage that you did by eating whatever you did, it’s nothing. It’s really a blip.

Rita Black: But what we do when we, we not only keep starting over again tomorrow but we don’t learn anything, and then we continually have these big overeating episodes that really do take us back. You know? As far as energy-wise, as far as releasing weight, it really becomes an interrupter to our weight mastery journey. So these phrases are very important. What did I learn? I forgive myself. Let’s just keep going. Let’s just keep moving forward. All right? So I hope you found that helpful.

Rita Black: Now, let’s look at a few other words. Now, word I hear a lot is the word I feel deprived. Deprived. Okay, so I, and then the the alternative word I wanna offer you is what I would say is create. So deprivation, again, you know, I’m, I’m going to say is a struggle word, because deprivation gives us this idea that something is being taken away and that we’re a victim. You know? I feel deprived. Something has been taken away from me. Something I value has been taken away from me. And I wanna invite you into another world, a world where you take a hundred percent responsibility for yourself. That’s very slimming. A world where you are the creator of your destiny and in your weight mastery. Oh yeah, sure. Other people exist in your world and food and all the challenges of the world full of food. Believe me, it’s full of food. But you are responsible for you and you have a powerful relationship with yourself, and you are creating your weight mastery. Because I will tell you the difference in my mindset between being 40 pounds heavier and 40 pounds lighter. It wasn’t about being good and it wasn’t about being perfect, and it wasn’t about chicken and broccoli. It was about creating a way of eating that I loved that allowed me to live at my ideal weight.

Rita Black: Now, love is, I adapted what I loved. You know? In my mind, I changed my mindset about fruits and vegetables. I, you know, learned in a way love is you know, in, it became passionate about certain things because I knew the me living my life at the, my ideal weight was gonna really be utilizing different things than that part of, you know, that me 40 pounds up the scale and that 40 pound less me wasn’t a victim of anything or anyone. You know what I mean? You get your power back when you take responsibility and you aren’t deprived. Oh, no, no, no, my friend. You are creating something magnificent. You are an artist. You know? It is an artist’s journey, this journey of weight mastery, because it requires imagination, it requires passion, it requires love but there, nothing is being taken away from you.

Rita Black: You know? Oh, if you think all those things that kept you in your struggle were worth having, well then maybe, you know, maybe we wanna look at if you really feel like it’s a struggle. But if you wanna leave that behind and own something that is yours, that allows you to be healthier, it allows you to be free, allows you to stop thinking about food all the time, and beating yourself up all the time, that seems like something that’s powerful. And that takes create creativity. And you, and our imagination exists in our subconscious mind. So start to think that you are a creator, a creator of your destiny, a creator of your weight mastery journey, a creator of way of living your life at your ideal weight, whatever that may be, your ideal, healthy, loving weight but you are not deprived.

Rita Black: You know, and that’s that. Okay, enough said. So you can see, I’m very passionate about those words. And now a couple of other words that follow along really pretty much in that same neighborhood is I can’t have that. I can’t have that. Oh, I can’t have that. Oh, I can’t have that. Oh no, I’m on a diet. I can’t have that. Oh, no, this diet is, you can’t eat those. So I can’t have that. Again, that is coming from you know, you might truly, you know, choose not to have something, but I can’t have that again makes you a victim and it puts you into a limited mind state. So I’m gonna give you an alternative way to communicate with yourself. I have a choice, and I choose not to have. I have a choice. Yes, you, it’s a free country.

Rita Black: I think the last I checked, but anyway, no politics here. This is, but I have a choice and I choose not to have. Cool. That’s powerful. Okay? Again, in the same neighborhood. Here’s another phrase I hear a lot. This is hard. Oh, this is hard. It’s, weight loss is hard. It’s hard. Okay, I’m gonna give you something else to say. This is a challenge that I am rising to. This is a challenge that I am rising to. Oh, yeah, so powerful. Okay, now let’s put that all to the side. We’re gonna move to a new neighborhood, and I wanna explore the word hungry. And not, hungry is not a negative word at all, but hungry. You know? When a hungry, that feeling of hunger for us is just like such a varied, the word hunger describes a lot of different sensations. So I wanna just start to differentiate true hunger from other things that we might attribute to hunger.

Rita Black: So often when we think we might feel those sensations of hungry, you know, our stomach feeling a certain way you know, feeling a certain feeling in our throat or our mouth, we are actually thirsty. So it’s important on your weight mastery journey to absolutely stay hydrated, drink, you know, water, make sure you’re not, if you’re drinking tea or coffee or something that dehydrates you, make sure you also are hydrating yourself. But the word thirsty often is more accurate than the word hungry. When we think we’re hungry, because again, if we’re saying I’m hungry to myself, then often that will make us vulnerable to eat. But if we’re able to get underneath the hood of that word hungry and really get curious about it, and we can really decipher what is actually going on, that will save us from, you know, hundreds and thousands of eating episodes.

Rita Black: Another interpretation might be just like we are, we just ate or we ate an hour ago and our blood sugar is crashing, and that might feel, we might feel some pangs in our stomach. We might feel lightheaded, and we might again say, oh, I’m hungry. I know like when my kids eat crap food, you know, which they do, and an hour later they’re like, I’m hungry. I’m like, oh, hell no, you’re not hungry. You are, your blood sugar is crashing because you ate that cinnamon roll. Or you know, had that ice cream or you had that, you know, like really refined carbohydrate thing, whatever it was, you eat those potato chips or those Doritos or whatever. You’re not, it’s not hunger, it’s your blood sugar is crashing. Let’s just be clear. So you may need to stabilize yourself with a little protein or something if that is happening.

Rita Black: I’m a big believer in that. But you know, you don’t need to sit down and eat another meal, especially if you just, you know, ate an hour earlier, a half hour earlier. Hungry might be interpreted as, I need to numb out. I need to just immerse my feelings. I want to eat down my feelings. So we might actually, you know, our dopamine center and our brain might actually mimic this feeling of hunger because we really wanna just push something down. And the same with, I’m bored, I’m bored, you know? Our mind will just wander to the thought of food. And then that dopamine center in our brain creates an agitated feeling. And often that agitated feeling is we feel in our chest a little bit but we often will feel it in our stomach. And then again, it gets interpreted as hunger.

Rita Black: And the same thing like with stressed, when we’re super stressed out that you know, are, what we’ll do is that the brain will feel that stressor, that cortisol and say, often when we’re super stressed, we wanna get out of stress, and the impulse will be to eat, to calm ourselves down. So that might mimic hunger. So really start to look at hunger with a lot of curiosity. There is true hunger, and then there’s a lot of other interpretations. And the more that you can communicate with yourself more clearly, what is going on physically in your body, the more power you have, and the more you can take care of yourself for all of those things and start to address your true needs underneath the hood of this interpretation of hunger.

Rita Black: Okay, you, now ready for another shift tool, another Thin Thinking tool. Well, this is my favorite. I’m gonna introduce you to a phrase that I think is quite magical, and it is, I am moving in the direction of, I am moving in the direction of. Why is this so magical? Well let’s say you have a negative belief, like, I hate exercise, I hate exercise. And you wanted to shift it. You wanted to not feel like you hated exercise. Well, the problem, you know, you, and you might say, well, I should just say to myself, I love exercise. I love exercise. Oh, exercise is so amazing. But your truth is that you hate it. That’s a limiting belief inside your subconscious mind. And your subconscious mind is defensive. It doesn’t want, you know, like, you know, like the the saying affirmations often isn’t really very helpful because our defensive brain, our subconscious mind, it’s gotta filter. And it’s like, I don’t love exercise and it’s just gonna filter right out. So you could say it till the cows come home. You still aren’t gonna wanna wake up in the morning and exercise.

Rita Black: So why I am moving in the direction of exercising or loving exercise is so helpful is it says what you need to say, but it opens up your subconscious mind, because it’s not saying, not today, but I’m open to the idea of loving exercise. And why this is so cool is it’s like you’re putting your foot in a you know, like in that, like somebody opens up the door and you kind of put your foot in, and what you’re doing is planting a seat in your subconscious mind. I’m moving in the direction of loving exercise. And your mind, your subconscious mind’s like, oh, I’m moving in the direction of enjoying exercise.

Rita Black: Okay? I’m not confronted by that because I don’t have to do it right now, but I might be open to that idea. And your imagination starts to engage, oh, what would that look like if I really enjoyed exercise? And your subconscious mind is like a computer. And we’ll start to go to work on that. And we’ll start to think, oh, well exercise, exercise. And you’ll start to be more open to those ideas of exercise. It that, I love this phrase so much because it opens you up to so many things. Try it out. I am moving in the direction of enjoying eating more fruits and vegetables. I am moving in the direction of eating more fruits and vegetables. You know, again, you don’t have to do it today, but you’re opening yourself up and, and your subconscious mind is getting that seed planted and it’s beginning to grow inside your subconscious mind.

Rita Black: And I know you might be thinking, this is a bunch of California woo woo, but words are powerful. Mark my words. I am, I don’t own any crystals. You know? I’m nothing against crystals, but I’m not a crystal shaken mama. I am, you know, I like science, I like research, and I love our subconscious mind. And our subconscious mind works in a particular way. And we are now learning to work more powerfully with that old subconscious mind of ours. All right?

Rita Black: So this has been fun. I love words and you know, it’s fun to play with words. So this week, this is my coaching. Start to get conscious of the words that you’re using around weight and weight release this week. And just get a where when you find a word, ask yourself, does this word give me power? Or this does this word take my power away from me. And the more you get conscious to the subconscious language you use to communicate to yourself, the more you make, you can make swaps for more powerful language, and you will be speaking the language of weight mastery in no time. All right, well, I hope that you got a new happy Thin Thinking vocabulary to use. Send me a DM and let me know your favorite new word. And again, thank you from the bottom of my heart, listeners. I cannot believe we are at 100. It flew by. This has been such an incredible journey and continues to be because of listeners like you. Please, if you have a moment, make a review for us. Send us that you know, photo or a screenshot. It helps us get discovered by other Thin Thinkers. And I’m happy, happy, happy to send you a coupon to go so you can go into the Shift Shop and pick out a great download to start to enjoy.

Rita Black: So happy 100! Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart, and have an amazing week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door the way it struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it. I will see you all or be with you all next week.

Rita Black: You wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www shift weight mastery.com. That’s www shift weight mastery.com, where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release tips, strategies, and more. And be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book From Fat to Thin Thinking, Unlock Your Mind for Permanent Weight Loss.