Rita Black: Oscar winning actors have them. Olympic athletes have them. And so do weight masters. What am I talking about? Did you know that research studies of people who have achieved and sustained long-term weight management over time, most of these long-term masters cited having a support team on their journey as one of the keys to their success. There are so many ways the world is set up to sabotage our goals with weight and even people within our lives. So it is important as someone who wants to have a successful and continued weight success journey, to actively seek out a support team that is going to be with you, advising you, guiding you, rooting for you, and supporting you on your journey. So in today’s Thin Thinking podcast, I’m gonna walk through the key five people, the five positions you want to fill or gonna want on this all important team. So grab your contacts database 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 achieve 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, long-term and live your best life.

Rita Black: Hello, friend. And come on in to the Thin Thinking Podcast. Welcome to this week. It is here as this episode drops the first week in April on the April of 2023. And this is one of my favorite weeks. April, the first week in April. It is one of my favorite weeks in the year. Everything in our neighborhood smells so good and around our house, Jasmine here in southern California is blooming so we can smell that all over the place. And Honeysuckle, such an amazing fragrance. I just love it. It’s my favorite, one of my favorite plants. And 21 years ago this week, I was giving birth. I gave birth to my very first child, my daughter, who is now 21 as of April 2nd. And I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I have a 21 year old. I have an adult child.

Rita Black: It’s official. I never thought this day would happen, but it’s very special. I’m very excited for her. And she’s such a beautiful young woman out. She’s – right now she’s studying abroad. If you guys have been following the podcast, you know, she’s in Berlin and she’s doing a semester away. And she has been so busy. Oh my gosh, she is having a blast and I’m so excited for her because her freshman year in college, it was COVID. She was kind of locked away in a dorm room. So this has kind of been her freshman year going away because all these kids are also all coming from all over the world, converging and being students together and new to this city of Berlin. And it’s an exciting city for them to be in. It’s such a city for young people. So I’m very excited for her.

Rita Black: But going back to my pregnancy, so I remember so distinctly, you know, how smells that you just, they connect you the most vividly to your memory just goes right there. So I smell the honeysuckle, I smell the jasmine, and I think about walking around my neighborhood more than nine months pregnant because my daughter was very late. She was over two weeks late. And I remember I had all this advice from my support team cause I did, I was an LA woman and I had not a paid support team, maybe one paid physician, but I definitely had all these advisors, right? So, and my friends, some of my friends told me that there was a salad. If you went over your due date, there’s this restaurant in the valley that you go to and you order the salad. I don’t remember the restaurant and I don’t remember the name of the salad, but I remember the salad.

Rita Black: It had nuts in it and all these different things in it, but the dressing was supposed to have this ingredient in it that induced labor. And it did not for me. I went and I had the salad. It was a nice salad. But yeah, I was still pregnant and I still, my baby was still not willing to come out into the world after that salad. So, but my friends had good advice for me. And then I had a hypnobirthing coach who also was awesome. She gave me some great hypnosis for the birth, the rainbow relaxation, which is such a great technique. I’ll have to do it it with you guys sometimes. It’s that gradual relaxing. I remember listening to it over and over again because my labor was 36 hours once I, that baby just decided to come and she really hung on, you know?

Rita Black: And so I listened to that relaxation and my other hypnobirthing was it a tape at the time? I think it was a tape. Oh my God, it was 2002, were people – yeah, we were using tapes back then. So yeah, it was a tape. And then so my hypno birthing coach, and then another thing she did, and I don’t know if you’ve ever given birth or if you ever plan on giving birth, but she told me to get some oil of evening primroses oil and stretch out my opening. Now, maybe this is a little TMI, but I am telling you that was probably the best piece of advice anyone ever gave me because I delivered and it was pretty easy and I didn’t tear anything for those of you who know. So this is really getting graphic.

Rita Black: I promise you it’s not gonna be any more graphic. That’s the worst. I should have given you a little warning. I had a belly dancing class that I went to when I was pregnant, I really went all out, you know, it was my first baby. I was super excited and so that was great. And so I had my belly dancing teacher, you know, showing me all the moves and the squats. I squatted everyday for 15 minutes just to build up. I was just getting, getting in such, and then I had another friend who I would consider more of a mentor who had a number of children. And she said, just don’t listen to anybody’s birth story not until you have the baby. I don’t care if they tell you, oh, it’s a great story. Just don’t listen to any stories because it predisposes you.

Rita Black: You know, it just makes you, most people wanna tell you a horrible and graphic story. Oh, I like me, 36 hours and, you know, in labor forever. But you don’t wanna listen to them. You just wanna think you’re gonna have a nice and easy birth. And that’s what she said. And my mother-in-law, of course, she, God love her. She said, just drink some wine. You know, she said, you’ve gone through, your baby’s gonna be fine. Just have a little wine relax. So I remember when I did start having contractions we went out to lunch because the doctor said, Hey, it’s gonna be, you know, another probably 24 hours. We went out to lunch and I had some wine to drink. So and to walk forever. That’s what I just did. Walking, walking, walking.

Rita Black: So anyway, so I, I’m telling you this because I am now getting you ready to think about your advisory team. And I was so grateful for my advisory team for my birth, but I was also very grateful for my advisory support team that I continue to have as somebody who manages my weight and who’s, you know, on my weight release journey. I had people advising and helping me along the way. And I’m gonna get into that. But I still continue to this day. I consider the people in my life a support system. And I’d like you to start to think of the support system you wanna create for yourself. Because I think when we struggle with our weight, I want, we are really, we feel alone a lot of the time. We don’t wanna tell anybody that we’re struggling with our weight or that we’re trying to release weight because maybe we’ve done it so many times, we’re a little ashamed of it.

Rita Black: We have the people in our life, maybe not the biggest and best support system. I can’t tell you how many people tell me their husband sabotage them or their kids or the people in their life are, you know, skinny and they can eat whatever they want. And so they have all this crap food around the house. So that is when we come to thinking about releasing weight, we are kind of going on it alone. We are an island. Now before I dive into the power five that I believe you should have, I just wanna thank everybody who participated in our March review contest. We have done the drawing and I’ve posted the winner’s name in the show notes. They have been contacted, and they are gonna get an honorary seat in the upcoming online live 30-day live online 30-day Shift Weight Mastery process that I am guiding.

Rita Black: And it’s starting May 4th, 2023. So if you didn’t win, we all won because you all participated. And thank you for your amazing reviews and you hopefully got that free hypnosis download. And if for some reason you didn’t get the coupon sent to you, email me at ritashiftweightmastery.com and just remind me, Hey, I sent you a review and or I did review you. Or if you forgot to send it in, send it in and we will give you a coupon for free hypnosis download. I also, speaking of free, have an exciting free masterclass coming up on Wednesday, April 26th. And there’s gonna be two of them. There’s gonna be one at 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time and one at 5:00 PM Pacific Standard Time. And I hope you join me. It’s called How to Break Through the Weight Struggle Cycle So That You Can Release Weight Consistently and Permanently.

Rita Black: Cause I continue to hear people struggling with that, struggling with feeling like they’re struggling with themselves all the time in that honor of good or bad all or nothing cycle. So we’re gonna really dive into, breakthrough that, we’re gonna do some weight loss hypnosis and we’re gonna have a good time. So, and it’s live, come and join me and you can ask questions at the end. I’m super excited. So sign up and the link is in the show notes.

Rita Black: So now let’s dive into it building a team for our weight mastery. So why do you think having a support team is cited by people who have been successful in the long term? I actually think having a support system is so important that I have actually made it one of the skills of long-term permanent weight mastery, which are basically built, or I didn’t make these skills up, they were gleaned from a lot of research into long-term success studies. So, and I saw, huh, people who are successful are supported. And research shows that even in support groups, that people are twice as successful for long-term success and any type of endeavor. But as definitely in weight, they have found that people in weight support groups are twice as successful and for twice the amount of time. Now, like I said, it’s really easy to give up when we’re by ourselves. Most of the reasons that we aren’t consistent with weight is that we throw up our hands and we give up at some point. We give up on ourselves mostly, you know, you, anybody who struggles with their weight, I consider them a very disciplined person because endeavoring so much to manage your weight, it requires discipline, it requires willpower. But I think the big problem we have, or the biggest challenge we have is our self communication.

Rita Black: And so that’s why support can be so helpful because support can help bolster our own communication with ourself in this area of our life. So here is the group. Without much further ado, this is the list of our support team, our Power Five. And I’m gonna give the credit for this Power Five to Stacy Powers, who is a coach. Now, this Power Five could be used for any endeavor, not just, wait, but I certainly know that I had these five positions filled, not on purpose necessarily, but my, I naturally gravitated would be the word towards these key figures in my weight mastery and continue to have these figures in my life maybe filled by different people because people do come in and out of our lives, or we maybe need somebody with a little more experience or a little more compassion or a different person.

Rita Black: So you wanna have these types of people in your life, but those positions may change. So here are the five positions. So the first one is mentor, and I’m gonna get into each one of those, but I’m just, I’m just saying. The first one is mentor, the second one is coach, the third one is a peer, and the fourth one is the cheerleader, and the fifth one is the friend. Alright? So, and you can have more than one of any of these positions, but these are the types of positions you wanna start thinking about filling for your weight mastery journey.

Rita Black: So the first one is the mentor. And I would say a mentor focuses on providing guidance and advice for navigating your journey. A mentor hopefully is somebody who’s been where you have been and can provide you the path and the vision and the inspiration, that knowledge, if they can do it, you can do it. So they’re, they’re inspiring you, they’re guiding you. They, they’ve been there before, they’ve been in the trenches, and now they can be somebody from your life. But it can also be somebody that you listen to on a podcast like yours truly, I’d love to think of myself as your mentor or one of your mentors or on YouTube or some book that you read. And I have found mentors in books and cassette tapes back in the day. Then I moved on to CDs, and then I moved on to listening to podcasts. I consider I have a number of mentors in my life for varying degrees. I have a gardening mentor I listen to, and I have a mental health and mindfulness mentors. So I have lots of mentors in my life, and I hope that you start thinking of if you don’t have mentors, that they’re, these are very key positions for you to fill and, and you don’t have to pay for them.

Rita Black: They can be there out in the world, but they’re just somebody who’s inspiring you and giving, leading you forward on the path. Even if you don’t know them personally, they, you can feel like you know them personally, because mentorship, for me, when I was in my weight release mode, it wasn’t just about food and exercise, but it was definitely how I managed my feelings and emotions, how I learned to love and nurture myself. So I, it wasn’t that I didn’t have mentors for nutrition, but I did look for mentors or was, were drawn to mentors that were helping me mentally as well as with the food and exercise, if that makes sense. So definitely choose your mentor or mentors.

Rita Black: Now, a coach in my mind is a little different than a mentor, although they could be the same person. Their role with you is a little different when they’re coaching you rather than when they’re mentoring you. Because a coach works with you specifically to keep you accountable, to set goals, whether that’s daily, weekly, monthly. And a coach will keep your mind focused specifically on meeting milestones, whether that’s a weight release goal, an exercise goal, improving eating, or all three. A coach is gonna help you decide what is next. So it’s, they’re gonna be helping you focus your mind in a specific way. They’re gonna also help you decide on how much you can bite off, so to speak, meaning how much you can take on without overwhelming yourself. And they’re also gonna hold you accountable. And then when, and if you don’t follow through, they’re not gonna shame you hopefully, but what they’re gonna do is look at what didn’t work or if you don’t meet that specific goal, they’re gonna look at what didn’t work. Again, not to shame you, but to really learn, help you learn and improve.

Rita Black: So now in the shift process, we work on developing what I would call an inner coach. Yes. So it’s great to have an outer coach if and if you can afford one or to get your friend to be your coach for you, sometimes people coach each other or you have a coach in your life, great. But I really am a big believer in having a coach in your mind 24/7. And so that’s why in our Shift Weight Mastery Process, we definitely work on cultivating that inner coach, that one that can help us be successful in the long term. I definitely utilize my inner coach every day, every day of my life, you know, for very, for 27 years. So I’m glad I took the time and energy to develop my inner coach. And I think once you have an inner coach, it really gives you a lot of confidence.

Rita Black: It really helps for you to have that goal setting rational part of your mind rather than the critical, critical and rebellious part of your mind. And I know we’ve talked about that a lot in this podcast, so I know you’re up to speed on this, but definitely choose the coach. You could have somebody in your life, like I said, work with you and coach you and hold you accountable. I had this girl when I was releasing weight. I was, had this girl who was training to be a fitness coach, and she helped me a lot, especially with keeping track of things. So one thing she helped me with is I had a really long plateau and I was getting really a little frustrated, although, you know, I wasn’t on a diet, I wasn’t trying to lose weight super fast, I hit this long plateau.

Rita Black: And so she had me track my food and exercise. And what was interesting is because we kind of treated it as an experiment, she said, you know, just do it as an experiment. Write down your food and exercise, look at how much you’re taking in. Because I was convinced I wasn’t eating hardly anything and that I was really exercising a lot, and I tracked and I saw something really fascinating. I saw on the weekend I was overeating and that all that exercise that I thought I was doing wasn’t doing enough to release weight with the amount of food that I was eating. I ate less during the week, but my mind interestingly was focusing on Monday and Tuesday when I was being very focused and not so much on the weekend when I was a little blosser eating more, maybe having some cocktails or drinking.

Rita Black: And so that was so enlightening because then all of a sudden it made sense why I plateaued. I got really clear on the tweaks that I had to make in my behavior. So it was really helpful for her to guide me and step in and say, Hey, try this. And then she would look at my stuff with me and walk me through it. And it really helped me get strategic, it helped me get specific and it helped me not kid myself basically on thinking you know, because our brain underestimates the amount we eat a significant amount, almost half when we struggle with our weight. So it was really helpful for me to get clear. It wasn’t like I was dieting, but it was more getting clear and being what I like to call an inner scientist, getting the facts and getting really clear with everything.

Rita Black: And that really helped me get clear on the path that I needed to take to release the rest of my weight. So I think a coach also reminds you of your original goal because sometimes it’s easy to give up and we forget why we’re on a weight release journey in the first place, especially after we release a certain amount of weight and maybe we get out of the initial pain. A goal, a coach is also there to remind you, Hey, look, it wasn’t just about getting out of the pain, it was about you wanted to be super healthy, you wanted to get super fit. I’m a stand for your original goal and commitment to yourself. I remember writing the book from Fat Thin Thinking and I got to the middle of it. And as much as I love helping people in this way, I got really down on myself.

Rita Black: I was like, why am I even writing this book? Nobody’s gonna read it. Nobody’s gonna, I’m gonna get these really bad reviews on Amazon. And I had all these negative, just like all this negative stuff came flowing in. But my husband was my book coach and he was so helpful because he had, he has written so many books and I mean, he’s just incredibly a prolific writer. And he said, look, you know, you should definitely just remember who are you writing this book for and what is the value you wanna bring? And so he helped me, you know, write a little list of all the person I was writing to. He’s like, just think of one person you’re writing your book to. And it was so helpful for me to get out of my little me me me, you know, and I’m a victim and you know, blah, you know, whatever.

Rita Black: That really just negative head you get in. When you take on a big endeavor, it’s really easy to forget and get down on yourself and how many people give up in the middle of their weight release journey. A lot of people hit a plateau, oh, it’s too hard, I don’t care. Oh, and you know, I’m gonna love myself for who I’m, which you should, you should love for yourself for who you are right now. But if you have a goal and you wanted to reach, you wanna be healthier, you wanna be fitter, you wanna be stronger, whatever that goal is, it’s really wonderful to have somebody at your side reminding you who you are and who you wanna be.

Rita Black: Alright, so now number three, a peer. P e e r, a peer and a peer or you know, is somebody who is on the same journey as you. How cool is that? Right? Somebody you can complain to, exchange ideas with, get insights from, from, you know insights from how they are doing and talk about food ideas, exercise ideas. Our membership, our monthly mastery membership group is a great example. People are all on the same journey. And maybe you have a group on Facebook or online. And even within our membership, there are smaller groups of people like Buddy Systems who check in with each other on a weekly basis. They report their progress on Friday. There’s some walking groups who are people who have created walking groups at work, who at lunchtime they go out and they walk. I’m thinking about Melanie who’s kind of gotten people from work to go walking with her at lunchtime. And so who can be a peer with you in your life?

Rita Black: When I was releasing weight, I definitely had some other people who were releasing weight that I would exercise with and we would talk about what we were doing and what worked and didn’t work. And I still have weight peers. I do this with people in my life who I’ve developed a healthy lifestyle with. Meaning, you know, we’ve been going and walking and hiking on a day, on a weekly basis. I have a friend I walk with on hike with on Monday. I have my friend I bike with on Sundays. And we have been doing this for years and we really do motivate each other about staying healthy. We’ve gone through a lot of different life experiences together, having children, now we’re, you know, gonna be empty nesters and you know, we’re heading into you know, new decades together and different goals and different focuses come into play. And peers are definitely people who can help you, give you ideas and walk through this together. Not feeling so alone.

Rita Black: Alright, so number four is having a cheerleader. Somebody who believes in you and knows you can do it. They may not be on the journey with you, but they believe in you and they believe in you deep down. They know where you are going and they can be somebody you celebrate your milestones with. And they can also be somebody who helps, pick you up if you’ve had a bad day or a bad week or a bad month. My husband was this for me on my journey of weight mastery. He loved me for who I was. So he never said, Hey, gotta lose a few pounds. Never, ever. And I loved him that for that so much. But he also knew that my freedom and my peace of mind were so important because I was so unhappy being in the weight struggle.

Rita Black: And he just saw me struggle so much so often all the time. I was obsessed. And he just said, let me, what are we gonna do? Let’s, let’s, you know. So when I started my journey, he was helping me, just the biggest cheerleader, anyone, Hey, you did that. You, and it wasn’t just about weight release, it was about overcoming obsession with food and binge eating and all those things. You know? He’s like, wow, you went to that party and you made healthy choices and you did great. And you know, so it was nice to have somebody to be victorious with and to notice. But there were also, he was not perfect. There were times I had to remind him, Hey, don’t bring those bagels home. You’re my cheerleader, right? So who can you get to be your cheerleader? Or maybe you already have someone. And again, they could be also the peer. I’m, these rules can overlap, but I’m just kind of focusing you on just like different aspects of support that you want. And sometimes, a lot of times our support system needs reminding, and that’s why it’s good to have more than one type of support. And our inner support team, meaning our inner coach also needs reminding sometimes.

Rita Black: Okay, so last but not least, the friend, number five position. Somebody who knows you and can hear you bitch and moan. Yeah, it’s tough, it’s hard, but you’re gonna keep going, right? You know, they listen to you without judgment. Sometimes my friends, like my best friend Susan never struggled with her weight, but she knew me so well and she knew the pain of when I went through with the yo-yo dieting and she was definitely there for me. And she could be a shoulder I could cry on in an empathetic and not, non-judgmental ear to listen to me because sometimes it really just helped to talk about all the secret stuff and get it out. And that was stuff I didn’t wanna talk to my husband about. He was my cheerleader. But you know, she was somebody I could just tell it all too. I remember telling her that I was bulimic and about my bulimia, I wasn’t my weight struggles spanned many years. So there were a few years there that I was bulimic and I was taking laxatives and I was throwing up and it was such a secret and I was so ashamed about it and I didn’t tell anyone. It was, it was, and then when I started my journey, I had worked through my bulimia, but I still had never told anybody about it. And I just, I just told her, yeah, this is what, and we were even roommates when this was going on and she was like, wow, I never knew. Gosh, I love you. You know? I’m so sorry you had to go through all that. And it was just so freeing to have somebody who you could be naked with ,just bury your soul and tell all your, like diet and shameful what you consider shameful secrets to binging for days, hiding food, eating out of the trash can, all that stuff too. And they just sit there and love you and say, wow, and I still love you. And that is such a powerful experience. So having somebody like that in your life is definitely wonderful as well.

Rita Black: Okay, so I hope that has been helpful. I’m gonna review these all now just so you get it. If you wanna write ’em down, go for it. One, a mentor, people who’s gonna be your guide. Two, a coach, somebody’s who’s gonna get you specifics, set really specific goals and help you stay accountable. Peer, somebody who’s in it with you, who’s doing on the same journey. A cheerleader, somebody who’s gonna jump up and down and be supportive of you even when you’re down. And a friend, someone who can just be there, who can stand by you, know who you are and love you for you, who you are today, and is also supportive of the you you are becoming. So if you don’t have anyone yet, that is okay. We have opened up a little room in your subconscious mind for those people now to come in and I hope I’m one of those first people as one of your mentors. I would be honored.

Rita Black: So I also have remember this free masterclass coming up on April 26th. That’s April 26th, 2023. It’s a Wednesday and there’s gonna be one at 9:00 AM Pacific time and 5:00 PM Pacific time. And I hope you’ll join me. It’s called How to Break Through the Weight Struggle Cycle so that You Can Release Weight Consistently and Permanently. And I’m really excited to do this with you. So please go to the show notes and sign up and have an amazing week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it. See you next week.

Rita Black: You wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com. That’s www.shiftweightmastery.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.