Rita Black: Today we are tackling a topic that’s been keeping many of us frustrated for far too long. We are talking about weight set points, but with a twist. We’ve all experienced those stubborn plateaus where our weight seems to settle and resist our best efforts. It’s easy to blame genetics and metabolism, but what if there’s more to it? What if some of these set points are actually rooted in our minds? Yes, I am talking about mental weight set points. And in this Thin Thinking episode, together, we’re gonna uncover the hidden forces that might be holding us back and preventing us from achieving our weight loss goals. It’s time to break free from the limitations we’ve unknowingly set upon ourselves. Today, we’ll be busting through six major mental weight release set points that have been silently holding back. Our progress will be unveiling the secrets behind these set points, bringing them into the light so we can finally understand and overcome them. I have packed this episode with eyeopening insights, empowering strategies, and actionable steps that you can take right away to break through those mental barriers. Are you ready to bust through those mental weight loss set points? Well, come on. Let’s jump right into this episode.

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, bestselling 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 term and live your best life.

Rita Black: Hello! We are celebrating you here at the Thin Thinking Podcast. I just wanna take this moment to thank the community for the lovely emails and the DMs you sent about the show. Sharon from Ontario wrote, I love listening to your podcast during my morning walk. It’s always a great reminder to have a healthy day and leaves me feeling happy about myself. Dana from Denver, Colorado wrote, keep the episodes coming, please. I love binging them when I’m driving to see my son in Utah better than I love binging on road trip snacks. Oh, well that’s nice. And I have his wife and her cousin tuning in. We love the mindset tips. Love the ones about vegetables you did a few weeks ago. It really helped. I ate Brussels sprouts for the first time and I really enjoyed them. I am going to work up to Cauliflower by next month. Thanks, Dana. Enjoy that cauliflower.

Rita Black: Well, these emails and notes and reviews are so, so lovely. Not just for me, but for the whole Thin Thinking team who puts the podcast together and a big shout out to the team who edits, uploads and does all the behind scenes stuff that yours truly, the non-tech fluky can’t do. So I’m very blessed to have an amazing, amazing group of people helping and being part of the Thin Thinking podcast. So thank you all for bringing this great worldwide community together. I’m feeling very grateful today.

Rita Black: And today’s episode about mental weight set points is brought to you by my weight release masterclass called How to Stop the Start Over Weight Struggle Cycle and Start Releasing Weight for Good. And if you haven’t attended this masterclass yet, the links are in the show notes. In this masterclass, I dive deep into how the mind is designed to make it hard, not just for us only to take weight off, but to keep it off. And yes, the struggle you may be having with weight isn’t because you are deficient, but because the brain is amazing, but pretty topsy-turvy when it comes to weight and long-term weight management. So once you know though how to leverage the power of this amazing computer upstairs, you can begin a more powerful and sustainable journey to long-term weight release and maintenance. We also do some really cool weight loss hypnosis. It’s a great session that people love. So again, don’t be shy. Come and join me. I would love to see you in there. The link is in the show notes and the summer is an absolutely great time to start showing up for yourself and your health.

Rita Black: So, okay, so now, today’s episode, I wanna walk you through a new type of weight set point. So the old weight set point theory, right, you know, you’ve heard of weight set points, I’m sure a zillion times if you’ve struggled with your weight for any length of time. And if you don’t know about the weight set point theory, the weight set point theory states that our bodies have a preset weight baseline hardwired into our DNA. According to this theory, our weight and how much it changes from that set point might be limited. The theory says that some of us have higher weight set points than others, and our bodies fight to stay within these ranges. So I am not trying to dispel the weight set point theory at all but I do believe, like I said, I’ve been working in weight management for 20 years, that that set point theory can sometimes be a more harmful idea than a helpful idea because it creates a lot of limiting beliefs for people in their ability to release weight. In my practice and programs over the years, I’ve seen many successful weight release journeys, and I’ve had clients sure that they could only lose a certain amount of weight before they could reach the set point and then struggle.

Rita Black: But I found that usually these set points, instead of being physical set points, are actually more mental set points instead. And when a person’s mind is in the right place, they can blow past their old dusty set points. Myself included, you know, there was a weight for many years that I didn’t think I could get below, but once I really got my mind in the right place and I stopped believing that my body is broken, because many of us who struggle with our weight believe our body is broken, our body can actually do quite extraordinary things, you know, within the laws of physics and the laws of reason, of course. But I do believe that there’s so many things and beliefs and mythologies out there that set us up for struggle rather than success. So I wanna get into some mental weight set points that I see time and time again, that get in people’s ways of achieving their ideal weight.

Rita Black: And I’m gonna go in kind of order of how I see them happen. Okay? And again, these mental weight set points are just guidelines for you. There are many, many more that I might not get into here today. But the real point I’m making is that if you are stuck, and, and I do believe that people have struggle points in their weight release journeys, and that’s often where we, you know, get stuck with our weight and then we go back to the beginning or we start over or we get off track. Most of these struggle points are absolutely mental and environmental rather than physical, although I’m not discounting physical, but I’m just saying, I think if we look more deeply past this idea that my body is broken and that’s why I’m struggling, that we can actually start to get successful results and blow past these struggle points.

Rita Black: So one mental weight set point, I see a lot of people, a trap that a lot of people fall into is I deserve a reward. And usually that is one of the first and most seductive mental weight set points. How many of you out there now, be honest, have, you know, either released some weight and gotten on the scale and been down five pounds and been like, woo-hoo, I’ve lost weight. Let’s go celebrate and eat something. Or we, you know, have a really focused week where we’re really good and the eating’s really pristine and then, you know, on the weekend or after a couple of weeks, it’s like, I’ve been so good, I’m just gonna let loose and give myself a reward. And then of course, that reward or that celebration ends up to more eating.

Rita Black: And then we end up, you know, getting off track. So here’s the thing, you know, how do we blow past this? I deserve a reward thing with our set point. Well, when we struggle with our weight, we associate weight loss with deprivation, right? Like, and pulling it together and being good. And this creates a natural tension that builds more and more that, you know, needs to be released. And this becomes a habit being good then being bad, then being good, then being bad. And there is a payoff to being bad in that we get that release and our brain gets used to that. It’s a release. The brain likes that. The dopamine center, the brain’s like, woo-hoo, a release. The problem is, that dopamine center in the brain doesn’t realize that a few hours later we’re gonna be incredibly regretful and feel like, what did I do?

Rita Black: I worked so hard to lose those five pounds, and now I’m back at the starting point. So instead of approaching weight loss from this idea of like pulling it together and being good, or this idea of deprivation, really successful long-term weight management journeys start as that as a journey. So I want you to start to think of your weight management journey as a road that you are traveling on. That’s a very powerful journey that you have embarked upon and you’ve really committed to. And this is a journey of transformation. So it just isn’t about weight, but it is about transforming your life, transforming the way you think about yourself, transforming how you show up for yourself and communicate with yourself. So within that is a huge reward in and of itself.

Rita Black: I think once you are really powerfully on a journey of weight mastery, the food piece doesn’t become about deprivation. It becomes about really creating a way of eating that allows you to release weight but also feel like you’re living your life. I think often, we really, when we get into really restrictive ways of eating, then it’s the boomerang effect. You really want to create a way of eating that empowers you and makes you feel like, I love this, this makes me feel healthy and vital, but also has room for, you know, eating things that like some dessert or, you know some treats, you know, so you aren’t feeling like it’s this all or nothing mentality. And also, but we don’t wanna use those foods or I certainly don’t think that food should be a reward for hitting milestones on your journey. So when you’re on your journey of weight mastery, it isn’t a about just weight loss, but like I said, it’s a journey.

Rita Black: And journeys have milestones. I think about right now, you know, my daughter is in college up in northern California. I live in LA, she llives in Berkeley and I just took her back. We had a little mother-daughter road trip this summer up to take her back to school so she could do her internship for the summer. And I have driven on that road. Now,, for those of you who live in California, you know what I’m talking about. It’s some of the most boring roads side, like literally through Baron. Well, not Baron. It can be beautiful. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but you know, when it gets to be this time of year, the hills are just basically, you know, brown and dead. And so it’s not the most scenic journey.

Rita Black: So, but there are milestones. You know, we get over the grapevine, that’s a milestone. We get, you know, halfway through, there’s this little town we usually pull over and get a cup of coffee because it’s about the time we’re getting tired. And you know, so we have these little milestones now kind of worn into our trip up north. And, you know, journeys have milestones and I certainly think that you should create milestones on your journey. I have a client right now who’s released about 60 pounds so far. He has a little ways left to go, about another 40 pounds. But man, this guy is stoked and he who says stoked anymore, where did that come from? But no, he’s super excited because he’s been releasing weight consistently. His mindset’s very powerful, and he really looks at each 10 pounds as a decade.

Rita Black: He’s like, I’m visualizing being down in that next decade now Rita, where we’re going, we’re doing it right. And each decade, he kind of gives himself some sort of, you know, like, I’m going to get, you know, when I get down to the next decade I’m buying. He got himself an exercise bike, you know, and then he got himself another piece. He got one of himself, one of those like weight sets, you know. So each decade he does reward himself, but he’s rewarding himself with things that remind him of who he is on this journey, which is somebody who’s getting healthier and fitter and really looking after himself, which I love. You know? One of his rewards was going to go see his daughter. You know? And she likes to work out and, you know, so it was, you know, it, what he’s doing is creating these rewards that are coming from this idea of what he’s creating and he’s creating this, this healthier idea of himself on his journey of weight mastery.

Rita Black: So promise yourself rewards that reinforce this powerful weight master for you on the journey. And when you reach milestones, give yourself a reward. You know? Things like a workout outfit or treat yourself to a class or a subscription. You know? There’s a lot of cool exercise apps that, you know, are not that expensive. Maybe, you know, 20 bucks a year or something, but that are really cool, nifty, different types of exercise. I’m thinking right now of somebody in our Weight Mastery group. She is really into this thing called eccentric, if you like, the idea of stretching and toning, but through stretching and a completely different way. She’s in her sixties and it’s completely doing eccentric, has completely changed her body. And she invested in this, on her journey as a milestone, and I think it’s like 50 bucks a year, but it’s all these classes and it’s, you know, stretching and toning and mobility and joint work.

Rita Black: And I’ve done some of it now and I just love it. I think it’s so amazing. You do feel completely different. I got my husband to do it cause he plays tennis and he gets all achy, and you know, I was like, honey, let’s do our hamstrings. So this, with this eccentric and, you know, he felt so much better. So what I’m saying is look for rewards that remind you who you are on this journey and reinforce who you are and motivate you to keep moving forward towards those milestones. You know? And when you get to bigger milestones, maybe you give yourself a weekend away or you have your horoscope read. That’s such a Southern California thing to do. I know for my birthday, my best friend and I are gonna go get our horoscope done. She’s got this guy who reads your horoscope for you.

Rita Black: So, you know, whatever, it’s what you do. Or maybe you can get a puppy that you can go running with eventually, or get a dog, an older dog from the pound or something that you can go running with, you know, so think of things that are not food rewards because you are not going backwards, you’re moving forwards. I do think that it helps for you to decide on these things a little bit ahead of time, what your milestones are, what your rewards are, because they can be very self-motivating. And it’s a term that we use in hypnotherapy called future pacing. You’re kind of walking your brain through where you wanna go in your future, and that gets your brain excited and used to the idea. Okay?

Rita Black: Which brings me to the next mental set point, which is when we are feeling less pain, feeling less pain. So what do I mean by that? Well, I mean that when we are struggling with our weight, when we feel overweight, when our pants aren’t fitting us, when we get on the scale and we’re up 10 pounds that we didn’t expect to be, when we feel heavy and, and stuffed or out of control, we are in pain, right? That creates a lot of internal pain within us. So with our inner critic is very loud and we are upset with ourselves and we’re upset with the situation. There’s a lot of pain, and pain is a great motivator. The problem is, is that often we will react out of that pain and, you know, go on a diet. And again, the whole point of the diet isn’t a long-term journey to weight mastery, but it’s just to get out of the pain.

Rita Black: And what will happen is we’ll lose, you know, five, 10 pounds you know, doing pretty much anything, doing some crazy regime, you know, or, you know, doing some quick fix or, you know, just pulling it together. But then we lose the weight and then we get out of the pain. And this can be a really big set point because guess what? We didn’t really think past getting out of pain. We’re just like, holy crap, I’m up 10 pounds or my pants don’t fit in me anymore. I gotta fix this. And we fix it by losing weight. But the problem is then we’re outta the pain and we typically will go back to our old ways and gain the weight back, or at least get stuck. So there, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard, I’ve certainly said it here before, but maybe you haven’t heard me say it, is there is a great thing which is the pain pushes until the vision pulls.

Rita Black: So, as you are on your weight mastery journey, one of the important things to have with you on your journey, in your toolkit is your powerful vision of where you are going. And a vision is important to have, not just, you know, where you’re going weight-wise, but who you’re becoming, right? Because for most of us, what we wanna do in order to motivate ourselves to transform is to have a really clear idea of ourselves transformed. Who is it that we are becoming? That idea gets born in our brain first, and then it percolates and grows, like, you know, a little chicken inside an egg, and it gets bigger and bigger until it finally manifests in the out, external world, right? So our vision isn’t just this like, oh, you know, a picture of me in my mind, skinny. It is this idea of who you are becoming, that you nurture and grow.

Rita Black: And as you do, your mind gets you more and more used to this idea and you find yourself you know, inhabiting it more and it pulls you forward towards your journey. And it also reminds you, see, the me 40 pounds up the scale was a completely different me than the 40 pounds down the scale. And as I continued past my pain point and into my vision, I was always reminding myself like, would the person 40 pounds down the scale, living her life at our ideal weight make that decision of, you know, going to the party and overeating? Probably not. And so a lot of my decision making came from that vision that I was living into. Does that make sense? I certainly know now I have, you know, always had visions and plans for Shift Weight Mastery and for my smoking cessation business.

Rita Black: And I certainly have visions of where I wanna go and the reach I wanna have and the impact I wanna make. And that helps me stay with it when things get tough. And, you know, for any of those of you who are in business or own your own business, things get tough. I certainly, you know, had some crossroads this summer, but, you know, because I have a vision of where I’m going, I was like, well, you know, those tough times fit into this bigger vision of myself and where I’m going and growing pains certainly do occur. And, you know, growing pains occur on journeys of weight mastery. So you’ve gotta have that vision. So let’s just take a moment, except for those of you who are driving and listening to this podcast, take a moment and just close your eyes. Just close your eyes and let’s just work on your vision a little bit. Maybe you already have one. If you don’t, let’s start to percolate one a little bit. Just imagine an image of yourself up on a screen, you know, so like, just imagine you’re in a very like a movie theater, and you see yourself up on a screen out in your future at your ideal weight.

Rita Black: And on this movie screen, it’s sort of a magical movie screen because you look the way you wanna look. And if you can’t exactly see that yet, be patient with that and keep working on that. If you can’t see yourself at your ideal weight, maybe imagine what you would look like at one of your milestones, maybe 10 pounds, 20 pounds down the scale. Something that just is motivating for you. And what are you wearing in this vision? So see yourself on that screen wearing what you would wear and what are you doing? And again, you know, maybe the you in your future ideal vision is doing something different that you would normally be doing today. Or maybe you’re doing exactly what you would doing today, but you just feel more transformed. You look more transformed. Maybe you’re with your family, maybe you’re with your friends, maybe you’re by yourself.

Rita Black: Maybe you are hiking in the Himalayas. I mean, you know, just go for it. Think of something that really is, is inspiring for you. Who are you with? Are you with anybody? Are you on your own? What are you doing? And, and associate it with a bigger why. You know, like, why are you on this journey? Maybe you’re on this journey for health. Maybe you’re on this journey for confidence. Maybe you’re on your journey for weight or you know, all of the above. But connect that to that. Why? So if you’re in it for health, see yourself looking healthy and vital. Lean and strong. See yourself looking confident. See yourself at that weight that makes you feel and, you know, like, look and feel fantastic. You know, are you in this for your freedom? Freedom from the frustration? I know certainly for me, freedom is a huge motivator for even maintaining my weight.

Rita Black: So now allow your vision to feast your soul and just inspire you into the future engine at just now as you see yourself on the screen, looking the way you wanna look, step into that image of you on the screen. So merge with that image of you on that screen and sit inside that yourself, you know, at your ideal weight. So you’re feeling yourself from the inside out. You’re feeling those clothes that you’re wearing in your vision, pressing against your skin, feeling yourself feeling light and toned and lean. Feeling how confident you feel in your mind, feeling the health vibrating through your body, feeling how happy you are that you made this decision that you pushed yourself past, where you stop normally and moved forward. And just take a nice deep breath in and lock this vision in, locking it in as an internal blueprint and open your eyes. And now, just allow that vision to pull you forward. It’s okay to have the pain, you know, it’s okay to start with the pain, but have that vision ready to pull you into your powerful future.

Rita Black: Okay, so now the third mental set point. This is my favorite one, as you can tell, because I’m saying it, this is my favorite, is boredom, boredom, boredom. Oh my gosh, losing weight is boring. Oh my God, I’m so bored on this diet. Oh my God, it’s boring. Same old, same old, the same old food, the same old exercise, the same old routine. Do I hear this sometimes? Yes. So I ironically, if you think about it, when we struggle with weight, we are usually, so when we are struggling, I mean, when we are not trying to lose weight, but when we are weight struggle mode, we are usually eating the same foods, doing the same thing over and over again and feeling frustrated over and over again.

Rita Black: And yet, weirdly, we don’t consider it that boring. I mean, maybe if you’re really over it, you do, but you don’t often think back and go, wow, you know, struggling with weight is really boring, eating all the, the same foods again and again, the pizza and the hamburgers and the la la la you know, and I know you might be eating a really healthy diet and still struggling with your weight. So I’m not saying you’re a junk food junkie, so forgive me, but, you know, we struggle with the same foods in the same places in the same times typically, and those keep us in our weight struggles. So, you know, we never think that eating that way is boring. We typically think of eating healthy is boring. We think of, you know, so our brain tells us stories that keep us stuck, so you will know.

Rita Black: Now, I’m not saying that if you are, you know, what I do see a lot of people doing when they go into weight loss mode is they do very much limit what they’re eating. You know? I have that joke, chicken and broccoli, chicken and broccoli and salads, right? Like, and people are like, oh, I’m so tired of eating chicken and broccoli and salads. I’m like, okay, well look, there’s a crap load of other awesome food you can eat. We don’t need to just eat chicken and broccoli, but for whatever reason, our old mindset just holds us in this like sort of chicken and broccoli place. And we feel stuck and we feel like it’s a boring place to be. You know? When I work with smokers, it’s really interesting because not so much anymore, but people used to think of smoking as rebellious.

Rita Black: You know, like, I’m a rebel and I’m cool. And I like that cool mentality and that cool idea of myself. And I had a mentor once, well, I worked with this guy who well long story short you know, cool person, thought he was cool, quit smoking, thought that he missed cigarettes because they gave him his edge and then realized that choking yourself with smoke is probably the least cool thing you could do, right? So, you know, having that realization of like, oh yeah, smoking actually isn’t rebellious, you’re real, really rebelling against yourself, you know, but we have these mythologies that we live by and they keep us stuck, so we gotta start to poke holes in this boredom mythology. So one of the things that just, you know, as a, a hint or, or something that you might wanna look at is that we will know when we are starting to get bored.

Rita Black: Like, I certainly know when I’m starting to feel a little hemmed in to the foods I’m eating when I start eating more of them. You know, it’s like the food itself isn’t enough. So I feel like I need to eat more of it somehow, and that’s gonna make it better. And for years, because, you know, I’ve been managing my weight for 26 years, or almost 26 years that has always been an aha moment. Like, oh, I’m eating more. That means I’m, you know, getting a little tired of this. Let me liven up what I’m doing. And thats what I tell my clients. Like, look, start, you know, it’s your responsibility to liven things up. You know? For any of you who have been married for a long time, you know what I mean, right? You gotta liven things up every once in a while or else it gets pretty dull you know, around the marriage.

Rita Black: It’s like with anything that matters to you, it’s your responsibility to keep it, keep it going, and you gotta come at it from that versus being a victim of it, you know, it’s your opportunity. It isn’t a prison sentence. So something that helps me and many of my clients and students is to use the change of the season to bring in new flavors and taste. For instance, we are coming into the autumn, so it’s a great time to add spices. You know, the pumpkin spice, latte spice, you know, you don’t need to go out and get a latte, but you can bring those lovely spices into your food and cooking soups become more appealing this time of year. Salads don’t cut the mustard as much. You know? I always kind of laugh at eating salads in the middle of winter.

Rita Black: I mean, because, you know, I eat salads in winter sometimes, but I certainly don’t eat as many salads as I do in the summer when it’s hot outside in that light crispy lettuce feels a lot better in my body than in the freezing frigid winter. Well, LA, you know, that is not freezing and frigid, but you know, it’s the relative, right? But in the cold of winter, salad isn’t gonna be so, you know, I rely more on things like vegetables and roasted vegetables and, you know, so bring in new stuff, bring in, you know, I had a client who challenged herself to try all the different types of squashes there are out there, butter, nuts, squash. And like she was telling me about all these squashes I had never heard of, and she’d slice them up and bake them and, and have them for breakfast.

Rita Black: I mean, she just challenged herself and made it really fun. So that’s what I’m saying. And also I wanna point out that being healthy and releasing weight isn’t boring. It’s your interpretation of it. That’s boring. You know, take yourself back to that vision we worked with. That isn’t boring, right? That’s pretty exciting. What is boring is your interpretation. What is boring is you, sorry. And I don’t mean that in a mean way. I mean, like, let’s take responsibility and not be a victim of boring. You know? Don’t let that word haunt you and hem you in. I don’t like losing weight. It’s boring. This is an attitude that’s gonna get, is this an attitude that is going to get you to long-term weight mastery success? Uhuh? No. The word boring is boring, and it’s an umbrella for a lot of different feelings, actually.

Rita Black: Resistance fatigue. I don’t want to, you know, really notice when you use that word boring with yourself and go, I’m not gonna allow myself to use that word. What’s underneath this? What are the feelings underneath this? What’s really going on underneath boring? And things will start to get pretty fascinating pretty quickly. What is, ask yourself, what is it? What is causing me to be stuck or bored right now? And again, you’re usually up against something that is just waiting to be broken through it. Boring actually means a breakthrough is waiting to happen. So when you get bored, get super curious what’s underneath the boredom, the answers will come. And let me tell you, they won’t be boring. They will probably open up a door to the next level of your weight release journey. So ask yourself, how could I make this more fun, more challenging? You have to take responsibility for your journey.

Rita Black: Okay, now, mindset number four, other people’s reactions to our weight loss. So how can other people’s reactions be a mental set point? Well, we are tribal people and we wanna fit into the tribe often, and people in your life may be supportive of your weight loss, but they may not. And when you reach a certain level of weight release, it may bring stuff up in them for them that you need to mentally adapt to. And also perhaps help them work through, or at least work it through yourself about their attitude so that you can be okay with it. They might be afraid you are gonna leave them like a spouse. They might think, oh, you know, you’re now skinny and you look really healthy and beautiful. You know, maybe they’re afraid that you are gonna go out and have an affair or cheat on them, you know, or you’re not like them anymore.

Rita Black: You know, they feel threatened. Your friends may have feel like you have become different. They may think that you look sick and have lost weight too fast. They may think that you look just really great, and that really makes them jealous or envious, and they may try to sabotage you. So what people think about you in your weight is, what they think about you in your weight is none of your business, but how you feel about them thinking about you and your weight is your business. And so you have to work with your inner coach to learn, to stay focused, to learn, to stay on your journey, what your vision is, and take care of yourself. And, you know, it’s hard because when we struggle with our weight, we typically tend to be people pleasers, right? Like, and we don’t like to rock the boat.

Rita Black: We don’t want people paying attention to us. So, you know, part of your weight journey, and this is why this is a real mental set point, is to be responsible to yourself and responsible to your journey. And, you know, you will, if you have, you know, challenges with other people, I suggest that you can go back and listen to my, my podcast called the Hamburger Technique, which is about asking, you know working with other people and getting them to support you. I think that would be a very helpful session for you to listen to. But this is a skill, you know, like really staying focused despite what other people may say. And, you know, if they begin to sabotage you, the hamburger technique session, it’s not that many as it’s a few sessions back will help you communicate powerfully with them.

Rita Black: So you’re giving and you’re honoring them, but at the same time asking for what you need. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, this is the journey, is that you want to get support in your life. You want the people in your life to be supportive for you, but they’re on their own journey with your weight mastery. And you’ve got, you know, you do need to be sensitive to that, and you need to communicate about that with them so that they start to feel, you know, that you’re there for them. You need to reassure them, but you don’t, you aren’t responsible for their feelings, right? You can’t make them not have those feelings. They’re gonna have the feelings that they’re gonna have. You need to stay on your side of the street. But you can, of course let them know, I love you very much, and I am here for you.

Rita Black: My journey is about getting healthy and getting strong, and I know you support me in that. So check out that other podcast if you’re, you know, like if you are in a situation like this, but also when you’re coming from a place of inner strength and alignment you have more resilience with whatever is going on in your atmosphere. And, you know, if they’re saying, oh, well, you look really sickly like you’ve lost weight too quickly, you know, that might be their interpretation. And that, you know, it is true that when people release really quickly or release a significant amount of weight, our interpretation of that could be, you know, because we are pack animals and when an animal in the pack is sick or, you know, gets small that, you know, the animals all wanna take care of the other animal.

Rita Black: And our biological instinct is when somebody gets small, we interpret that as sick. You know? I’ve had a number of clients who’ve lost significant amounts of weight have people react in this way. And the irony is that, you know, I had a client who released maybe 80 pounds and people were saying, oh my gosh, you look, you gotta quit losing weight. You looked way too skinny, you look way too sick. And yet they had probably 60 or 70 pounds left to release. But it was just everybody’s interpretation. And when you are hearing things like that, it can really mess with your mindset. So you need to stay clear with your inner coach. Like, we’ve got our goals, we’ve got our process, we’ve got our operations. We’re gonna keep on keeping on despite what people are saying.

Rita Black: If we need to have a communication with them, then you do. You need to, like I said, part of this journey is communicating with yourself powerfully, but also learning to communicate with other people. But what they’re saying, you know, really, ultimately you have to have that little magical shield around you and you wanna take care of them and communicate powerfully, but their interpretation of you is their business, not your business. I hope this all makes sense. People will adapt to your transformation, the more secure you are in it. And understand that the easiest way to get people on your team is to get them to be healthy too. You know? If you have a bunch of unhealthy people in your life and you’ve all of a sudden decided to get healthy yeah, they might feel like, oh my gosh, you know, you’re a health nut and you know, we don’t like you anymore, whatever, but what wouldn’t it be awesome?

Rita Black: And I have seen this happen again and again when somebody says, you know what, if you can’t beat ’em, join them. Get them to get healthy with you. You become the leader. You become the health leader in their lives. And I’m telling you, it turns communities around you. You’ve got that power. Why not make it and take it now? Transform somebody else’s life with your own transformational journey. When somebody goes on a journey of transformation, you are inspiring other people, even if they aren’t telling you that you are.

Rita Black: Okay? So number five, feelings coming up with weight loss meaning feeling weaker and smaller, right? Weaker or smaller. So this is something I wanna spend a little more time on in its own podcast. Again, like, I don’t wanna dive too deep into this, this is a big subject, people feeling vulnerable when they release weight, but this is a mental set point. Many people as they release weight, feel smaller and smaller, means more vulnerable. And that can be another set point. They have had challenges, maybe challenges in childhood where being bigger, like adding weight made them feel safer. It was a buffer or overeating was an emotional buffer, and then that became a weight buffer, and that was somehow a payoff for them. With the journey of weight mastery, we are focusing on our relationship with our inner coach, right? Like the cornerstone of weight mastery is really developing an internal communication system that isn’t critical or rebellious, but that is proactive and nurturing and scientific. And this inner coach is what I call the wise loving adult within us, right? And really, it becomes our inner mentor.

Rita Black: And as we release weight and become slimmer, a slimmer silhouette of our former selves, we need that inner adult part of us to remind us that, that there to remind that little child within us, because we also have our little inner child that we’re adults now, and that we can be powerful even when we are thin, that we can use words. Now, you know, maybe as children, we didn’t have the words. We didn’t have the ability to communicate, or we weren’t listened to, our words didn’t have power, but now they do. And we don’t need the weight to buffer us anymore. We can use our words as our strengths and our confidence and to believe in ourselves from the inside out. We, we don’t need that weight as a buffer anymore. So now is the time to ask yourself, is it safe for me to be without my armor?

Rita Black: What is real at this time in my life? You know, it maybe was dangerous then, or hard then, or emotional then, but now it’s different. So just take a moment to wonder and really wonder what it is for you to feel comfortable using your powerful voice of your inner coach as you’re nurturing guide, shifting this old perception of you from weak into strong with your own inner boundary, your own self-care. The more you get comfortable inside your own mind, the safer you will feel in your lighter body, and you gain that inner trust and inner confidence. Okay? And we will tackle this more deeply in a later podcast. So now the last one is the permission to be successful. That can be a set point. This is a big one. Sometimes we have struggled for so long, we are afraid of success. We don’t know we can be successful, or what would it look like?

Rita Black: Our mind stays stuck with what it knows, and we need to begin to stretch and expand our mind to our vision. Again, going back to that vision and that idea of weight mastery, sometimes we feel guilty or silly having that vision. Sometimes we feel guilty or silly having weight loss as a big bold goal. So give yourself bold permission to create this in your mind first, and then build it into your reality on your journey. So like, when we struggle, we live in a house of struggle. And it’s a place like it’s a, it’s a world that we have, that world of struggling with ourselves, struggling with our weight you know, beating ourselves up all the time and feeling really hopeless and feeling incompetent. So now it’s time to live in the house of mastery, but we gotta build the house. You gotta build a foundation.

Rita Black: And that foundation is built on your identity and your identity as a powerful creator of your weight mastery. A powerful apprentice of the skills of weight mastery. It’s like you’re opening that door, you’re, you’re building that house and in your imagination, you know, step into this new place. You know, it’s not like you’re taking stuff away. You’re creating something new. And spend time in that vision of yours and in that vision, be grateful. Be grateful, like it’s already happened. Be grateful in that vision. Like, oh, wow, you know, I’m so grateful to have been on my journey of weight mastery and I’ve achieved my ideal weight. I’m so grateful that I feel so confident and powerful. I feel so grateful that I’ve healed my relationship with food, and I have a wonderful way of eating that I love. I’m so grateful because what that does in your mind is it opens your mind up to that.

Rita Black: Because if we just are starting with our world of struggle and just hoping that we’re gonna push past that, you’re not. You’ve got to get that mind of yours engaged in creating where you wanna go first and then manifesting that. And I don’t mean that like, you know, in a woowoo way. I mean that in a pragmatic and practical way. You know, anything that you’ve really created for yourself in your life, you’ve sort of started in your, you’ve definitely started in your mind. So get comfortable with feeling of, be that feeling of being at your ideal weight long term. It actually does take getting comfortable and safe and strong with it and giving yourself permission. So let’s do that. Let’s do that now. Just repeat after me, and you can say this inside your own mind. I give myself permission to leave this weight struggle behind and to live my life of weight mastery. Just repeat that. I give myself permission to leave the weight struggle behind and to live my life of weight mastery. Good. And again, I give myself permission to leave the weight struggle behind and live my life of weight mastery.

Rita Black: And again, I give myself permission to leave the weight struggle behind and live my life of weight mastery. Good, great job. Now, there are other mental set points, like I said, but I hope that the six that we covered today gave you some insights on how to bust through them. Look, you know, we’ve, we’ve got a choice here. We can keep going on that same merry-go-round over and over again, being good, being bad, struggle, struggle, struggle. Or we can start to use our mind powerfully to bust through these old set points and to create that powerful journey and really most importantly, that create that powerful you inside your own mind, that powerful. All right? That’s all folks. And if you wanna dive deeper into what holds us back from our ideal weight and also wanna really great weight loss hypnosis session, make sure you sign up for my free masterclass. Like I said, the link is in the show notes. Go check it out. Have an amazing week, and remember the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it, and I will see you all here this time.

Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to The Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that episode go by way too fast for you? If so, and do 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, and to learn how to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode.