Rita Black: You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire ,universe deserve your love and attention. Buddha: you are never gonna be thin. You don’t have it in you. You’re lazy, you’re a fat pig. The way we talk to ourselves about our weight is not only abusive, but it drives us deeper into the weight struggle. Today marks a special milestone, our third anniversary of the Thin Thinking Podcast. And we are celebrating by delving into a topic close to many of your hearts, confronting the harsh reality of the self-abusive relationship we often foster with ourselves. It’s time to rewrite the narrative, to trade cruelty for kindness, and to embark on a journey of self-compassion. So, so step inside as we uncover and go through the layers of this abuse into a gentler, more nurturing inner dialogue leading to the ability to truly release weight from the inside out. So grab your third anniversary party hats 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, 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, but 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 and live your best life.

Rita Black: Hello and happy anniversary. Happy third anniversary. Grab a party hat, a horn, sit down at our table of celebration. I want to thank you all for being a part of this podcast community. We have officially, if we were a toddler, made it out of the terrible twos, although the twos were not terrible. They were quite lovely. And if this was a marriage, the third anniversary is the leather anniversary. I just looked that up. I couldn’t, I don’t remember leather being a thing when I was at my third anniversary, but again, that was a long time ago. But I will say three feels good. I started, for those of you who are new to our podcasts, I started this podcast in the middle of the pandemic in my closet with my son playing video games in his room next door, literally.

Rita Black: And now he’s away at college three years later and I’m out of the closet. And we have an amazing global thin thinking family of people tuning in to the show weekly from Norway to India, to Japan to Peru. It’s so amazing that we can all come together in this way to discuss the mindset of weight mastery. I just want you all to know you have a very special place in my heart and I wanna thank you listeners who have been with me from the beginning. Thank you for your tenacity and sticking with it. I wanna thank you newcomers who are definitely in the right place. Please make yourselves at home. And those of you who have been tuning in somewhere in between, thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart, and most of all, thank you to my amazing team who helps me get this podcast set up and out in the world every week. Rain or shine, slow or sleet, typhoon or hurricane, we get it out there. So thank you, team. You are small but mighty.

Rita Black: So today’s episode is a subject many of you ask me to speak about. And the question that you always ask me is, Rita, why are we so horrid with ourselves or to ourselves? Like, why are we so abusive? You know, we think of weight and we think about the pain of being overweight, the whole fat part, right? But really from conversations with thousands of amazing people from around the world, their struggle with weight, the most painful part of overweight is our broken down and aggressively abusive relationship with ourselves that develops. And so that is what I wanna dive into, seven actionable steps that you can take to break yourself free from abusing yourself in this way.

Rita Black: But before we start, I just want to invite you to do something. And when you do, you get a prize and an opportunity for an even bigger prize. Don’t you love it when that happens? All you need to do, my friend, is post a review, write a little review of the Thin Thinking podcast and post it, or put it literally in your favorite podcast platform. That’s a bit of a tongue twister. If you go where you listen, you’ll find that there is a place there to, you know, upload a review or write a review. And when you do, it is such a great service to me and to other people because it helps us get seen by more people who could benefit from a thin thinking mindset. There are so many people out there in this world who are abusing themselves. And so our goal is to set people free with their mindset and have them empower themselves.

Rita Black: So, which you’re all capable of doing as you know. So just write a review, take a photo, and take a photo of the review, not of yourself, sorry, and send it to me at support@shiftweightmastery.com. That’s support at shift weightmastery.com, all one word. And we will send you a coupon code to get a free download from our shift store. You can pick any of them. There’s lots of weight management downloads there lots that you’ll probably be very interested in. And you get that for free. You just go and put the coupon code at the end and it’s absolutely free. Just download it and away you go. And then you will be entered to win a free live shift weight mastery process. We’re gonna do a drawing at the, in a couple of weeks. And we are gonna do a drawing. And the winner is gonna receive a live shift weight mastery process, which will be starting at the end of the month of April, April 27th to be exact. So get out there and write that review.

Rita Black: I think sometimes when we’ve struggled with weight, we can become scarred emotionally from abuse from others. Definitely. I can remember one time my brother had this wonderful saying it, he would, he always was poking fun at my weight, but I remember specifically one rainy Seattle afternoon when we were so bored because we didn’t have things like games, video games and phones or distractions. So we had to kind of create our own fun. And so we used to, we had this cassette recorder and my brother, my sister and I would do funny little weird skits and record them like a radio station. And my brother, who was the DJ called it KFAT from Seattle.

Rita Black: And he said that I was the station’s owner. So definitely I, people poking fun at me from within my home. But I also, and, and something that I think you guys can all relate to, if you had mothers who were critical of your weight, my mother was overweight, but she could look at me just in a particular way or look at my thighs or touch me in a particular way and kind of roll her eyes or make a look without being too verbally abusive, but letting me know that, hmm, you know, I think at one point she said, your thighs are as wide as mine. You know, and I know many of you probably had parents who were critical of your weight. I certainly know this from seeing so many clients and hearing horrible stories of criticism from our parents. So, you know, having to put all these feelings and emotions in a place, especially as an adolescent, when you don’t really have the skills, the coping skills, and the emotional maturity that you have as adult, it’s hard enough as an adult, but it’s you, you know, it much more imprinting when a brains are young and vulnerable.

Rita Black: Our subconscious mind is open wide to, you know, latch on to limiting beliefs and ideas about ourselves. I remember one time, I’ll just tell you this last time, because you might get a little kick out of it. I mean, it’s, it’s horrific, but at the same time, I have to laugh. I really, really, really loved to dance. And I took dance lessons despite being the biggest girl in the room. And my mom was smart and enrolled me in modern dance, which was, you know, at the time, you know, I wasn’t going to be a twiggy ballerina, but modern dance was, you could have a little more muscle and a little more heft, you know, and it was more acceptable, I guess. So I, she, I did modern dance for a while, and then there, you know, I wanted to be in our high school musicals, and I actually was in every single musical, and I always wanted to play a leading role.

Rita Black: And, you know, my voice was okay. Like, my singing voice was okay, but I really liked dance. And I actually, you know, got cast as the dancer. I was always put in the back of the chorus, you know, in the very behind, because I was also tall. But we did West Side Story. I really, really, really wanted to be Anita. But of course, the role went to that’s Maria’s sister, if you know, west Side story. But anyway, she’s gets to sing. I’d like to be in America, and she’s a sassy woman. And you know, I, I thought I did a really good acting audition. But anyway, I didn’t get the role. I got the role of a dancer. And I remember us, and this was so humiliating, but we all had to dance. We had to learn dance. The specific, a very specific type of dance that was k kind of like a swing dance where the guys would like lift the girls up over their head and do all these kind of fancy things.

Rita Black: We, we took our musicals very, very seriously at our high school. There was a, that we were known for putting on good shows, and we had a very serious choreographer. And I remember I, they paired me up with this skinny little guy who was probably half my height, and I towered over him, and I was twice as wide as he was. And I just remember they were like, okay guys, grab the girl by the waist and lift her up over your head. And he couldn’t do it. And, you know, he, it was embarrassing enough that he couldn’t do it. But then he had to make a big hold scene about like, how fat I was and how he couldn’t lift me up over his head. So, you know, that’s my recollection of West Side story. But you know, again, it, we all have our stories.

Rita Black: In fact, they, they had a nickname for me, which was Dancing Bear. Everybody called me that. I was the Dancing Bear ’cause I was a dancer, but I was kind of also a teddy bear, you know, according to all my friends. And they didn’t mean it in a cruel way. But of course, my wounds run deep. So when I go back to Seattle, you know, I, well, not anymore, but in the, in the first years of going back to Seattle after I left, you know, I always kind of wanted to show them, you know, I always wanted to show them, I’ll show you. I’ll be thin, I’ll be successful. You’ll, you’ll see that you are wrong to be mean to me. And I think anybody who struggled with their weight has that fantasy or had, has, has nursed that fantasy at some point in their life.

Rita Black: And I remember going back to my, my 10th and my 10th reunion. I was living in London at the time, and I couldn’t, I don’t think I could afford to come back. But I, I went back to my 20th reunion and I remember I was so steeled, you know, because I had, I had, it was right around the time that I had, it wasn’t right around the time I lost weight. I had, I had kept my weight off for about five years at the point, I’m trying to remember my timeline, but I, I definitely wasn’t worried about my weight. I I was at my ideal weight. And I remember walking into this event, I, I believe it was, we, we do this big event, but we do event the night before. And everybody’s like, wow, Rita, you’ve been away for so long and we haven’t seen you.

Rita Black: And oh my gosh, you look amazing. And people were so kind and it was so lovely to see everybody. But I really remember this feeling of almost like fighting ghosts, if you know what I mean. Like, I feel like there was so much anxiety and pressure within me to prove myself. And as I got into conversations with people, especially the people who I had equated with my weight struggle, people who had called me dancing Bear, who people maybe had poked fun at me or, or guys who had done the old, you know, I’m dating your best friend and now I’m gonna date you so that your best, you know, your best friend will be jealous. They were the loveliest people in the world. They, we had such nice conversations. And I, I, it was so weird because I left that event and I still felt like I was fighting something.

Rita Black: I mean, I, it was, it was like I had buried some ghosts definitely in that room. You know, I left some pain behind me seeing that I was an equal, that I was, you know, a human being along with all these other human beings. And of course, it was lovely to see people from my past. I was very fortunate to go to a great high school full of beautiful, warm people, truly. But I realized as I left there, those ghosts weren’t in that room as much as they were inside me. And, and I realized that so much the pain that I went through during high school, it maybe it started outside of me, but it definitely had gotten pulled inside of me. And it was now like these ghosts were, were the ghosts of my own creation. That telling me I wasn’t enough, telling me I was never gonna measure up.

Rita Black: You know, that still feeling lesser than all those people in the room, even though I could rationally say I measure up or had been successful to a certain degree, you know, just as far as successful in life, I had a beautiful husband. I had a beautiful child. I, you know, I, I had, you know, I was starting to do the work that I’m doing here with you. You know, I was in a good place. There was so much good going on in my life. And yet there was a part of me that just felt like I was up against something and that there was this big void and, and I just couldn’t place it. And I really thought about it a lot. And I really started to see how much of that ghost was this, this really harsh, you know, inner critic that we always talk about, that self-abusive relationship.

Rita Black: It’s almost a trauma like almost a P-T-S-D that I had from that time in my life that was just not only external circumstances, but really this internal life that where I was so vicious with myself. And then that carried on through my twenties and into my early thirties before I began my own shift. Yeah.

Rita Black: So when we struggle with weight, we abuse ourselves and we keep ourselves from really knowing that we are not enough. I mean, we, that keeping ourselves from really knowing that we are enough right now, for those of you who’ve worked for me, you know, I have a saying which is love yourself down the scale. And why is that so important? Well, you know, I see so many people struggling with their weight and we really become very vulnerable when we wanna lose the weight in order to love ourselves. That puts this in a vulnerable position to wanna lose weight as quickly as possible.

Rita Black: So we glom onto these horrible diets or unsustainable diets just in the name of, well, I’ll love myself when I’m get these 10 pounds off and I can’t fill these rolls of fat or 20 pounds off or 30 pounds off. And then, then maybe then I will be good enough and be fit enough and be okay enough to love myself. But we all know really deep down that the work we need to do with loving ourselves begins now how many people I’ve seen release 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds, get to their ideal weight? And because they weren’t doing this work of really being with themselves and communicating with themselves in a more powerful way, then they get to their ideal weight and it’s not enough. And they either feel disappointed, like, oh, I was supposed to turn into a butterfly and, and then they just start gaining weight.

Rita Black: Or they try to lose more weight because they feel like, well, I’m not thin enough and if I lose more weight, then I’ll absolutely then, then I’ll be able to love myself five pounds less. Right? I also think that there’s that inner critic part of us that really believes that if our inner critic led up on us, didn’t abuse us, tells we were lazy, didn’t tell us you better lose some of this weight or, you know, stop eating that sugar part, I believe really, really thinks that if we let up on ourselves that we would be this, we would just go off on an eating rampage. That we would be uncontrollable. I really believe our inner critic, this part of us that is so vicious, so controlling that really makes us feel like we aren’t enough, is really acting vicious. Not out of the joy and pleasure of being vicious, but really out of a deep fear.

Rita Black: A deep fear that somehow because we don’t measure up, because we are this uncontrollable beast, that that is not only not okay, but that we will absolutely be shunned from the cave. You know, our, in our cavemen primitive mind that we will be, we will be excommunicated or, you know, sent off to be outside the village because we are not enough and we are not okay. And if anybody really knew how not okay, we were, you know, that would just be unforgivable and we would definitely be taken outside the village. I forget what the word for that is right now, but I’m gonna love myself enough to be okay with the fact that that word is escaping my tip of my tongue. I’ll come up with it in a moment. But it is that word for taking somebody outside and shipping them away. I, know you know it, so I’m not gonna worry about it.

Rita Black: So when we struggle with our weight, we develop this inner critic and like I said, very vicious, more vicious than we would be with any other person or dare be with any other person in our life. Even our worst enemy. We criticize our behavior, we criticize our body, we criticize our lives and how we live it. I’ve been doing a lot of work this month. I, I am sorry, not this month, but last month in the month of August with my monthly mastery group, we, it was basically the theme of the month was love yourself down the scale. So we did a lot of work on loving our bodies and loving ourselves. And what really was very surprising is I work with such an amazing group of people and very generous with each other in the group, but the, what they say coming out of their mouths about how they feel about themselves, they’re all working on themselves beautifully.

Rita Black: But you know, how we feel about our bodies, how we feel about our body parts, we really looked at our body parts. It, it was just unbelievable how negative and down on ourselves that we can be. It’s just, it’s resonating so strongly with me, one, because of the, the reunion, but two, because coming out of this month, so we did that body love challenge. And it was really interesting ’cause we all had to work on different parts of our bodies. I chose my neck crepe because I’m getting crepey neck skin. And other people chose, I didn’t even know the things called arm wings. You know, I know what these things look like under your arms, but I didn’t know they, they were called wings. I thought that was really kind of interesting. What, you know, some people chose their belly, some people chose their butts, but we had to really embrace that body part.

Rita Black: And, and I’m gonna get into a little exercise that you can use too that will really shift your relationship with any particular body part that you struggle with. But yeah, our critic really goes at it relentlessly, you know, and, and just add it over and over and over again, and that it becomes a negative pattern, thought loop and, and self-criticism loop. And, and again, it, it feels like we are trapped in this room with this very, very vicious and critical person, very abusive. How did we get so critical? So we are born into a ru a world of very high expectations of who you need to be in order to be loved. Don’t we? We have our family’s expectations. A lot of families have expectations of what we should look like, what we should act like, what we should, you know, how smart we should be, how productive we should be.

Rita Black: We have our parents’ fears. You know, I mentioned some of my mother’s fears. I think, you know, because she was obese. She didn’t want me to be obese, you know, and again, it came from a place of absolute love. But her fear manifested itself in, in ways that made me feel smaller and not enough. I can’t blame her, but I, you know, I can just see how many people are impacted from their parents’ opinions. And, you know, then the media, right? I grew up in the seventies and, and the eighties, which were really skinny decades, you know, the aesthetic was really thin and not, you could never be too thin, right? Never too thin. Never too rich. That was the saying. I think the aesthetic has changed, but we compare ourselves still. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had who look back at pictures of themselves when they were a girl, maybe in the seventies, in the sixties, and they see themselves and they say to me, I can’t believe how beautiful I was, but I thought I was a fat pig.

Rita Black: And I look back and I see I wasn’t fat at all. Maybe I wasn’t super skinny like my friends, but I wasn’t, there was nothing that was fat or chunk me chunky. But I felt like an elephant in the room. And, and I can relate because I felt absolutely the same. But, and at the time, we were steeped in this media culture of ultra thin women, the fashion world. The clothes don’t fit, or they make us look and feel dumpy, especially now that they have some fashions that actually are embracing, or the fashion world is embracing bigger sizes and, and curvy women, which is amazing. But, you know, a lot of us didn’t grow up in that time. We grew up in the world of Lane Bryant, of the world of, you know, having to not even shop in a normal store and having to go to big plus size stores and that shame and humiliation, you know, I remember looking for dresses for dances, and I couldn’t get into any of the teenage girl clothes that my friends were looking at.

Rita Black: I had to go into the women’s section where things were a lot more dumpy, especially in the seventies, and the eighties. Well, it was the seventies. Yeah, yeah. Eighties was college, and that was hard enough. But yeah, the seventies was tough. So we, we really develop, and then we have jobs, we have friends. So, you know, we, we, we get this limiting belief view from many, many places. And then we develop this very critical lens with, in with, through which we see ourselves. And it’s really driven by this fear, this fear that we are not enough, this fear that are going to be ostracized from our lives, our communities, our friends, if, if we’re gonna be rejected. And so this part of us develops in a way to protect us, to make us live up to these standards and to, to conform and be good.

Rita Black: But these high expectations in these false standards create this very abusive relationship that we have with ourselves. And, and it’s almost like there’s a part of us that shuts down after a while. We have this big evidence folder of things that we do wrong. You know, I do this exercise with clients. Sometimes I’m, I say to them, what’s, you know, what’s in that evidence folder that you’re not enough? And they’ll start to list all these things. And I’ll say, okay, well let’s look at that other evidence folder of you are enough. And they’re like, I can’t really think of anything. But yes, in that evidence folder is you’re a failure. And we bring that with us every time to every situation we go into, every diet we go on, we go into our weight loss attempts with, I’m not good enough. I can’t be controlled, I can’t be restricted.

Rita Black: So, because we believe that on a subconscious level, any attempt at really releasing weight or getting healthier, some, a lot of times is a disintegrated because we have this deep underlying belief. And so we give up on ourselves really easily, you know, hoping will be perfect one day. I think that’s the illusion of the critic, is that I’m going to work harder at making you conform. I’m gonna make you work harder at the gym. I’m gonna make you eat less food, no sugar for you, no, no white foods for you, no, no nothing for you, no food for you. Water only horrible drinks, horrible boxed food. You must conform and you must lose weight, and you must be loved this way. A cruel, cruel voice. And it’s a repeated cognitive loop over and over and over again, not very creative the way we talk to about, to ourselves in this way.

Rita Black: And we put ourselves in clothes that cut off our circulation. Now we put ourselves in these tight, tight, I remember my mother, oh my gosh, now we have Spanx, but which I think are a little kinder, but they’re still really tight. Or we wear these tight pants and the tight waistband cuts into us. I remember cutting off my circulation, almost wearing pants, trying, I fit into the jeans lying on the back of bed, you know, so that my stomach wasn’t as big and zipping them up and then standing up and, and then spending the whole night in discomfort. But my mom would get, had these girdles, man, these were, you know, 1960s girdles that she just would heave herself into. And it was so uncomfortable for her to be in. I remember her taking them off and having these deep welts in her skin. Ugh. And I know she hated herself so much for it. She would just yell at herself in the kitchen. So how do we begin to break this? How do we start to separate ourselves out from this voice? Because the problem is that we believe this voice, right? This voice isn’t, oh, I’m listening to my inner critic. This voice is the water we swim in. This is our reality. This is the way, this is what we hear, and the only thing we hear. So in a weird way, it’s like we’re in an abusive relationship and we’re stuck in this almost like a, an abusive relationship with a partner cycle.

Rita Black: So, so the first step to separate ourselves out and start to get some power back from this is to get conscious. Be conscious about how you abuse yourself. The, the pain, the good news is that the way you abuse yourself isn’t incredibly creative. Like I said, it’s kind of boring. It’s the, you, you abuse yourself, kind of in laughable, the same ways you always abuse yourself. When I started to get conscious to the way I abused myself, I was shocked at how, you know, I would just say the same thing over and over again. And I started to laugh at it. You know, I was kind of like you. That’s all you got. You know, it’s mean, it is really mean, but it’s not very creative. Oh, you, you’re fat, you’re lazy, you’re never gonna get this, you’re never gonna lose all the weight you’re eating that you blew it. You know, that’s what, that’s all you got. You’re gonna give it. So, but separate your start to just observe it. The restrictions, the way you wanna restrict yourself. No sugar for you, no coffee for you. You are going to, you know, you’re going to pull it together on Monday.

Rita Black: So two, start to become aware of the relationship with yourself that you do want. What would that look like? You know, when people are in abusive relationships, these are the first two steps. They say, get conscious of how that other person is abusing you. And then they say, start to create an idea of how you would like to be treated. What kind of relationship do you want to be in? Well, the same applies to us. What relationship do we wanna be with ourselves? Now I remember when I first started doing this work with myself, I remember I said, if I could change one thing, it would be the way I speak to myself when I first wake up in the morning.

Rita Black: Because that was the worst time of day for me. Oh boy. I would wake up after, you know, binging and just be like, you love, you did it last night. Why did you do it? You were doing good. And then you were just like, you’re like, you went to town, you overate. And, and, and I could feel the food in my belly. I would just, you’re never, ever going to work this out. That was my fear. It was just going to keep going for the rest of my life. And that voice, that negative loop, would really make me feel like I was almost, I had like ropes around me. I felt like such a prisoner of this situation. So for me, my vision was to wake up into loving thoughts of myself and loving thoughts of my life. So what I started to do was to be grateful in the morning.

Rita Black: So that’s what I did. I would write out a gratitude list and I would just have it by the bed, and I would just read it over. When I woke up in the morning and started speaking to myself in a critical fashion, I would get out my gratitude list. I’m grateful for my husband. I’m grateful for my, where I live. I’m grateful that I have a roof over my head. I am grateful that I have a body, that I’m alive. I’m grateful for my parents. You know, I would just have a list of things that I was grateful for, and then I would write about things that I was, I was gonna be grateful for in the future. Like, you know, I’m grateful that I stayed focused, that I moved my body lovingly every day. And, and those gratitudes, those future gratitudes really were helpful for me to start to get my mind wrapped around what I wanted to do in a really positive way.

Rita Black: And interestingly enough, I was speaking about this with my, my group and, and I’m starting to have them do it, is I just had them start writing out their gratitude list and then recording that. It’s very helpful. It’s a wonderful way. And this is what I do in the morning now, and I listen to it, and I always wake up into some positive vibes. Some, you know, I always wake up, I should say self-hypnosis. It’s, you know, I, I record where I grateful for where I am and grateful for where I’m going. So that is something I really envisioned myself. And then I started to work through that for myself. You see what I’m saying? So where is it that you, what is that relationship with yourself? Now, I attacked one area, my worst area, and I started from there and I worked out into my life.

Rita Black: But I want you to start to create a vision of the, a relationship with yourself that you want. We so know what we don’t want, but we rarely think about what is it you want? What is the relationship with yourself that you want? Okay? And, and, and you can have that relationship now, by the way, not when waiting until you’re thin. I think that’s the mistake most people make, is they think, oh, I’m gonna wait until I’m thin. And then that relationship will just naturally come. Well, it ain’t, it will not come naturally. You have to really cultivate, create it in your mind, and then start to work towards it.

Rita Black: Now, number three, you wanna make that decision to stop, to say, look, I am fed up. I am mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore. At those of you who remember that movie, I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore. I’m not gonna listen to this inner critic anymore. I am not going to, I’m going to leave this house of abuse. And I want you to recognize this is a recovery journey. It really is. And you need a new house to go to. You need a house of self-compassion. So, you know, in the shift, one of the things that we do, and you can do this right now, is you can create what I call your shift space. And it’s a place in your mind, and this is what I would call your health house of self-compassion. You can imagine this is just a, a beautiful place of your own design and choosing. Maybe you can just go ahead and take a nice deep breath in and close your eyes if, unless you’re driving a car. And just take a moment and think about a really beautiful, relaxing place in nature.

Rita Black: Maybe it’s a country meadow with beautiful wild flowers, or maybe it’s a beach with the waves lapping gently on the shore, the warm breezes caressing your skin. Or maybe it’s a, a mountain alpine mountain or a mountain hike, maybe under trees and it’s shady. Or maybe it’s a tropical forest with a little lagoon on the edge. Maybe it’s a beautiful room of your own design and choosing whatever it is you, you’re creating this place where you come to seek refuge and to create a shift in your life. And now, stay here with me for a moment. And I’d like you to imagine seeing yourself in that shift place. And I’d like you to step outside of yourself and observe yourself in that shift place. Maybe imagine you’re just relaxing there in a hammock or laying on the beach and you were observing yourself as a loving companion. I want you to think about the like friends or family that you love, that you,

Rita Black: The way that you speak with them, the way that you want the best for them. I just want you to, to observe yourself and see yourself in the same way you would one of your children or your best friends, or even an animal companion. Just the tenderness and the love and the compassion that you have for that other person. And in fact, I’d like you in this shift place to tenderly. Just touch your own cheek. Just reach down and imagine you’re just touching the cheeks, just so tenderly like, wow, I really appreciate you and love you. And as you’re going, as you’re doing that, I want you to think of yourself as now the guardian and the advocate for yourself. So it’s almost like you’re both, you and I call it the coach, but you can call it the compassionate guide. Whatever you feels right, right now, the nurturing parent, and touch your cheek in this shift place. And I’d like you to whisper to that. You, I am going to take care of you. You are good enough, you are worthy. You have a right to take up space in this world.

Rita Black: You are on your journey of being healthy and happy. And go ahead and say anything else to this you that you would like to let them know that they’re okay, just as they are. Just anything loving you wanna say to yourself, go ahead and say it now.

Rita Black: Good. Now, once you create this inner space of refuge, your shift place, you maybe can look at your abuser with some compassion to understand that your inner critic comes from fear and comes from kind of being grossly misinformed. Your inner critic took all of this information from the outside world and internalized it and is really acting out of protection, but just has it all wrong. You may not be able to forgive, but this allows you some space in this relationship with this abuser to kind of heal. Here’s something else. And it’s really, really radical, and you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but this is kind of crazy and it’s kind of cool, I didn’t make this up, but get this. And, and, and this is something that you can do with yourself, but I’d like you to try this on, is to sit down with a piece of paper and be your inner critic. And have your inner critic apologize to you. But write it out because this really gets you in your body, this in your body. So you could say things like, I apologize for calling you fat and undisciplined. Imagine how radical that is to have this aspect of you apologize to you. And to really go through that process. I am sorry, I called you lazy. You work very hard at improving.

Rita Black: I’m so sorry, I didn’t respect you. Do you see how powerful that can be? Try that on and see what you think.

Rita Black: Okay, now number five, just become aware of that. Now that you’re becoming aware of that critical loop, that was another step. I want you to start to self-advocate. To start to break it up and just say, stop. I don’t say that anymore. Like for instance, if that critical part of you said you blew it, you ate that junk food use, this is my favorite, and maybe you’ve heard me say this before, I’m gonna say it again. Use the term I am moving in the direction of moving the direction is a wonderful term to use for your subconscious mind. Because it’s not an affirmation. It’s not like saying, I’m eating healthy, but I’m moving in the direction of eating healthy. That opens up your subconscious mind because if you’re not quite there yet, your mind, your subconscious mind isn’t gonna buy it.

Rita Black: But if you’re saying, I’m moving in the direction, it can buy that. So it will take that on. But I sometimes, I really love that idea of stop. I don’t say that anymore. I say I am moving in the direction of making healthier choices or stop. I don’t say that anymore. Stop is a great word. You don’t have to be mean about it. You’re just saying, stop. We don’t do that. Stop, stop. I don’t say that anymore. It’s making a cognitive. What you’re doing is really, it’s like a little, you can take a breath when you’re saying it too. It’s like a little mini, it’s like a karate chop You are. And making an incision in that old loop. So it’s almost like you’re cutting through that loop and it, you’re cutting right through it by saying, stop. And time kind of stops and your brain kind of stops when you say that, stop. I don’t say that anymore. I say I’m moving in the direction of making healthier choices. Stop. I don’t say that anymore. I’m moving in the direction of taking care of stress in ways other than food. So you’re stopping and you’re refocusing on where you are going.

Rita Black: Okay, six, let’s talk about our body language. So I wanna, I want you to start advocating for your body as well and pick one part, part this week, pick a part right now. What’s the part of your body that makes you feel the worst, cringe the most that you would hide it? For me, it used to be my thighs. You know, when we did our body love in our monthly mastery group, it was my neck crepe. And I can’t believe how many other women in our group felt the same about their neck crepe. So last year we worked on it and I worked on my bunions, which I have. So, you know, there’s always a part we can work on. There’s never, we never run out parts. And I always feel better about that part. It’s such a loving thing to do. So just pick up a body part and start to touch it every day lovingly.

Rita Black: And I want you to rename that body part. You know, my thighs were fat, chunky, disgusting. So I came up with some better words. Now, I didn’t say my thighs were thin because they weren’t. And then I didn’t say my thighs were, you know, gorgeous. But I, it has to be a word that gives your body part respect, but also something that you can really embrace wholeheartedly with all of yourself. So what did I, so my body part, my crepey neck, I said that it was, I said it was witty and I said it was wise and I said it was sensuous. So here are some words that you might use and you can, please feel free. People are very creative when they start thinking about this long, strong, shapely, vibrant, lovely, pretty sexy, presidential, royal, spiritual goddess. Like whimsical, proud, witty, generous, statuesque, modern, toned, ripe, sensuous, handsome, bodacious, voluptuous, Olympic wise. So see what you can come up with for your body parts and just have fun.

Rita Black: And seven, start to observe all that you do that is powerful. And put that in your evidence folder that you are capable. And enough. For instance, I went for a walk today, even when I didn’t want to. We’re very quick to point out. We were talking about this in my group. We’re so quick to point out what we didn’t do right. And when we do something right, we’re very quick to move on from it and minimize it. Like it didn’t matter, right? Our brain will just, oh yeah, I did that. Yeah, okay, well let’s forget about that. Let’s move on. What’s not working now, right? So we wanna hold on to what we did. We wanna hold on to what we’re doing. We wanna even hold onto those moments where we feel good.

Rita Black: We wanna put them in that evidence folder that life is good, we’re enough that we do positive and healthy things. I can assure you right now, you’re probably 60 to 80% of what you’re doing is powerful and positive. You’re just not seeing it. So wake up to all those powerful things you are doing on a daily basis and put them in that evidence folder. The more you call attention to them, the more you will see them and the more you will start to see more that you do. I swear. So please do start doing that. I stopped after a couple of bites of dessert and I noticed it was enough. Put that in your evidence folder.

Rita Black: All right, so now I’m gonna wrestle my papers ’cause I’ve got some notes here. And I’m gonna just review really quickly what you wanna do to start to break up this relationship and start to have a more powerful relationship.

Rita Black: So number one, get, just get conscious and observe how you abuse yourself and the restrictions, the negative loops. And two, you wanna start to become aware of the relationship. You do want to have three. And make the decision to stop this whole thing that fed up. And then four, start to cultivate that shift place, that beautiful relaxing place, that inner refuge you can go to. Take a breath and enter in there when you’re feeling anxious, stressed, and need some self love. And really tune into that, that inner guide, that inner coach that can touch your face and have compassion for you that can be your own best advocate. Have that inner critic. Write an apology to you. What the hell? Why the hell not? Come on, life is short. Get that. That apology outta that inner critic before it’s too late. Five, become aware and hear the critical loop of your negative self speak and stop it.

Rita Black: Stop. I don’t say that anymore. And advocate, advocate. Be your own best lawyer. Get in there and or be your own best friend. Stop that bully on the playground in its tracks. We don’t say that anymore. We say this. And then tune into that body part that you wanna have some love for and start. Give it a new name. And, and observe all that you do that is powerful, healthy, all that you do in your day. There’s so much that you do that is wonderful and powerful. Put it in that evidence folder, please, that you are enough.

Rita Black: That’s it my friends. I hope this episode served you happy. Third anniversary. Thank you for being a loyal listener. I just wanna thank you so much and just to remind you to write that review, send a picture of it, send it to support@shiftweightmastery.com. Get your coupon for your free hypnosis download and get entered into our drawing for a shift weight mastery process. That’s a 30 day hypnosis meditation and coaching base process that I will be leading. And it will be starting April 27th and we’ll be going for 37 days. ’cause We do seven days of prep. People love it. They get a lot out of it. We’ll be doing things like having workshops like the Carb Savvy Workshop. People get a lot of transformation in 30 days. So please send those reviews and see. You might just be that lucky winner and have an amazing week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door, the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it. I will be with you here 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.