Rita Black: Boredom can be the silent killer of weight loss motivation. Whether you are starting to feel hemmed in by the salads that you seem to have lost enthusiasm for, or the thought of getting out to the gym is making you a little too sleepy, the weight loss blahs sneak in and they can slowly and surely derail your best intentions for a long term successful journey. So in this episode of the Thin Thinking Podcast, we look under the lid of boredom, which is actually quite fascinating, and we see all the other things that are lurking there, which are really amazing opportunities for you to move forward with enthusiasm on your journey. So put a little pep in your step 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 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, friend. And come on in. Have a seat. I’m looking forward to our time together this week. As I record this, I am looking at my nails and I’m seeing all the dirt underneath my fingernails. I was just walking out in my backyard and I saw this fairly new tomato plant that looked very limp and sad. I don’t know about you, but when I have tomato plants growing, they become like my babies that I foster. You know, I know each one on an individual basis. So when they’re really sad, I’m really sad. Well, not really, but I do get a little emotionally involved, especially with flowers like dahlia’s or dahlia’s, potato, potato, however you say it. And tomatoes, or tomatoes. So dahlias and tomatoes, because tomatoes, in my opinion here in Southern California, at least I don’t know about you and the other areas where things grow more abundantly in the summertime, but we definitely get the biggest return on our time with a full crop of some tomato flavor.

Rita Black: So I am not so sure about this year yet. ’cause Some years are awesome. Some years me not so great. Anyhow, so I saw the sweet little sad you know, stooped over tomato plant and I swooped it up out of the ground and I put it somewhere where I think it might flourish a little more and be a little less forlorn there. So that is the dirt under my fingernails. I used to think that certain aspects of gardening were really boring. You know? All I was into was the glamorous stuff, the planting, the seeds, planting what I was gonna grow, picking whatever the flowers or picking the fruit or the vegetables. But as I’ve gotten into gardening more, like for instance, I used to think dirt was boring. I thought I had friends who were gardeners and they would start to talk about the different levels of pH and acid and the, the fertilizers.

Rita Black: And I was like, ah, that’s boring. I don’t, I don’t want, I’ll just put some men in the ground and it’s gonna work and, and the seeds will grow. And that’s that, you know, end of story. But as I’ve gotten more sophisticated, well sophisticated probably isn’t the best word for it. But as I’ve gotten more into gardening and the more subtle levels of gardening, let’s say, I have began to really get into dirt and appreciate dirt and the kinds of dirts and the different micro climates in my garden. I mean, it’s fascinating when you get underneath the surface of all of that. But I used to think that always boring.

Rita Black: So I work with a lot of people and I see a lot of journeys to weight mastery. And let’s face it, one of the fastest, fastest roads to falling off your weight release journey is getting bored. Am I right? So I wanted to dive into this and dig into the dirt of weight loss boredom today. And will you dig with me, friends? Can I say enough puns for you today? So let’s start with where we are usually not bored, which is at the beginning of a diet or a plan of some sort. This is the glamorous and sexy part of weight loss, right? So first of all, it’s new and exciting. We’ve got this new plan. We’ve got a lot of steam under our belt. I, we’re gonna lose some weight. We’ve got the, the different things, the specific foods we’re going to eat and the way it’s gonna change our life. And our dopamine and reward brain is engaged, right? So we’ve got a little bit of high, it’s kind of like a new relationship, right? We’re kind of in love with the idea of the diet and love with ourselves being in the diet.

Rita Black: And there’s a structure, therefore a lack of chaos. And we love that because we spend a lot of our time struggling with our weight and a lot of chaos in our chaos, external chaos. So the fact that we are in a structure and we are, we know our place in the structure, man, that feels so good and the focus, we know what we’re gonna do and not do. This makes us feel safe. And there’s a willingness. Why? Because we’re in so much pain. It’s so painful to be in that chaos and to feel out of control and to be gaining weight. So we’re so willing, we’re so willing at this point, and we start off and it’s all amazing. We’re compliant. We feel great. We get on a scale every morning, or maybe we do and we’re losing weight, or our clothes are fitting us better. Somewhere along the way, things begin to change. The honeymoon is over. We’ve now been eating this thing a week, two weeks, a month. And as there’s a little sameness to that food and there’s not so much dopamine floating around in our brain anymore, we have the structure down. So guess what? That structure begins to feel like it’s hemming us in. It kind of feels monotonous.

Rita Black: And guess what? We’re getting on that scale. And we’re releasing that weight a little more slowly, way less fun. The dopamine hit on the scale has been replaced by frustration and anxiety. I’m not doing this right. Why did I not lose weight yesterday? Why did I gain weight? This diet isn’t working. My body’s broken. We start to have limiting beliefs. Those limiting beliefs that had gotten pushed to the back of our mind are starting to find their way back to the front of our mind. We feel a bit restless. We’re stuck in a feeling of sameness. It’s presenting us as one big snooze fest. And this is where we might find ourselves slipping, getting off track, reaching for things that aren’t on plan. Well, you know, I’ve been so good. Just have that one thing tonight. Ooh, well, okay, since I would had that one thing, I might as well have this other thing. And then, hmm, well I’ll have that thing too. And then tomorrow I’ll just get back right on that diet and I’ll be good. Maybe not. It’s the weekend. We’ll get really back on it on Monday. I promise we are gonna be so good on Monday. You just, you watch me, I’m going to just do like this diet, like it’s never been done.

Rita Black: Does that, that sound familiar? So if you’re feeling bored, here’s some advice. Well, here’s a way to look at it. I’m gonna go out on a limb here. ’cause I, this is a little radical you guys, but I’m gonna shake this up a bit now and I’m gonna put it out there to you that you are not really bored when this is happening. You’re not really bored, but your brain is telling you a boring story about what you’re doing and who you are being, your relationship to your weight mastery journey has gotten boring and it needs a reframe. So I would like to look at what you may consider boring through some new eyes and offer you some thin thinking. So first of all, the, you know, we get that sensation, the honeymoon is over. It’s not as fun as it used to be. And I get it, you know, the fun wears off on a lot of things that we’re committed to, right?

Rita Black: I mean, I think about things like marriage, those of you who are married less than seven years, maybe you won’t laugh as hard as those of us who’ve been married for many, many years. This year was 33 for me, you know, and I have them. I’m married to the man of my dreams, my soulmate. I love him dearly. But you know, sometimes marriage can be monotonous and boring. And, and, and, and again, I go back to, it’s not really boring, but it’s the story we tell ourselves. So other things, like even children can be boring, love my children, but being a parent sometimes can be monotonous and boring. But I’m still committed to my children. I’m still committed to my husband. Having good dental hygiene, brushing your teeth, it’s not the most exciting thing in the world, right? But I do it every day, a couple times a day, three times a day sometimes.

Rita Black: And I stand there and I hum or I think about other things, but, you know, not the most sent leading thing in the world. But I do it because I’m committed to my teeth. And even having a clean house, sometimes people are really excited about cleaning the house. I’m not one of those people, but I do it because my life works better when my house is clean. So some things are not always exciting, but our commitment to them is, you know, my commitment to my children, my commitment to my marriage really thrills me. Even though the actual, you know, my commitment to my weight mastery has never been boring. It’s always been exciting because I’m committed to being free. I’m committed to, to that person I am when I’m taking awesome care of myself. That’s never boring. That’s never boring. So I want you to start to look at your weight mastery, you know, and this idea that it’s boring, and think about your commitment to yourself and think about the fact that you are really on a hero’s journey.

Rita Black: Because sometimes I think the way we see ourselves becomes boring, right? Oh, I’m on this diet. I’m just struggling because we, we, we really put our struggle with our weight in this place of shame in our brain. And, and yeah, that can get boring. You know, being ashamed of ourselves, ashamed that we’re like this struggler and we’re struggling away and we don’t like to see ourselves this way. So when we go on a diet in the beginning days, we start to see ourselves in a different way. Maybe hold ourselves with a little more pride. But when things start to get a little, you know, same, that feeling ashamed starts to come back or we start to feel less good about ourselves. And I wanna remind you your commitment to your weight mastery journey. You’re a hero. You know, heroes have obstacles always thrown at them in boredom.

Rita Black: And overcoming boredom is an obstacle that expands you and makes you more of you. And I think when we get bored, I think we go to our place of shame, our place of like, why do I even have to lose weight in the first place? I’m a loser because I have to lose weight. What other people are luckier than me? You know, we can go to a very negative limiting place instead of remembering who you are. And I want you to remember who you are. You’re a hero on a powerful journey. And every obstacle you overcome, even boredom you are doing, you are expanding yourself. You are becoming more of who you are. It’s a journey of self realization. There’s, yes, weight loss is included, but this was really about your becoming your best self, stretching past where you stop and taking a hundred percent responsibility.

Rita Black: Folks, that makes it more exciting when you take a hundred percent responsibility for your weight mastery journey, that you’re not a victim of anybody or your circumstances or anything. It gets exciting really fast because you have to hold yourself accountable and you have to get really creative. And sometimes you have to have uncomfortable conversations with yourself or with other people. That’s not boring. That’s, that’s kind of exciting and it definitely stretches you. Hey. And you know, let me remind you, it’s not weight loss’ fault. You know, I think we think, oh, weight loss, so boring weight loss is weight loss. You are bringing the boring to it. You are making it seem boring. You are calling it boring bo weight loss is just innocent. It’s just the act of releasing weight and all the other crapola that you, you put on it, you pile on it.

Rita Black: That’s your stuff. So get a hundred percent responsible, blah blah responsible, and start putting some of that crapola in the doggy do bag, putting that in the trash and starting to clean up and take responsibility and be powerful. And remember, you are a hero. I remember you, maybe some of you remember with me, Mary Tyler Moore’s show, maybe some of you younger folks on in syndication a couple times. And I don’t know if you remember the newscaster Ted Baxter. He was a silver head, silver haired, smooth talking, a bit of a dumb blonde, but very handsome, played by Ted Knight, I believe. Brilliant, brilliant comedian. And Mary Tyler Moore played this news producer in this. And she was, you know, sort of a female ahead of her time. You know, a first producer of a TV station in Minneapolis. And there was an episode where this was probably a few seasons in, I think it was seven seasons, eight seasons long.

Rita Black: It was about halfway through the show. And she used to live in this one, one room apartment, sort of a studio apartment. And she had a girlfriend upstairs and she went through this depressed time where she just is like, life, my life is so boring. And she said, I just get up and I eat breakfast and I go to work and I eat lunch and I work some more and I go home and I eat dinner and I go to bed and then I get up and I do it again and again and again. And she’s just sitting there very moly. Everybody else around her is kind of going, yeah, yeah, I get it. But Ted, the anchorman, he’s like, well, Mary, I have the answer for you. And everybody turns and looks at him with expectant eyes and he says something, but it’s not even what he says.

Rita Black: It’s the way he said it. It’s so simple and it’s so brilliant. But it’s such an idiot savant sort of thing to say. He’s like, well Mary, you’ve just got to eat breakfast in the morning and then you’ve got to go to work, and then you eat your lunch and then you do more work. You know? And so he’s like, he’s very animated as he’s, you know, very excitedly eating breakfast and excitedly going to work. And, and that is so true that you could have this frame on your life, like it’s boring this frame on the way you eat. Like it’s boring. You can have this frame on your I exercise and think it’s boring. Or you can start to get curious about it and go, how can I bring some excitement to this? Because the more we just put that word boring over everything, the more it suppresses it and brings it down in our brain.

Rita Black: And let’s open up and let some light in and start to reframe how we see these things to ourself. If you’re bored with food, well then get excited about some food. You know, find some new recipes. Think of a go to the grocery store. Give yourself a extra half hour to look for things outside of what you normally get. We tend to eat the same foods. And folks, can I just tell you, you know, the bad things you eat, you eat about 10 of the bad meals and you eat when you’re eating healthy. 10 good meals. You know what I mean? Like, so it’s not like when you’re eating bad that it’s so much more variety. In fact, it’s probably a lot less variety than when you’re eating healthfully. So don’t tell me eating healthfully is boring. There’s nothing worrying about it. But as our approach to it can become stagnant, but that’s up to you.

Rita Black: You got to, you’ve got to bring some excitement. Same thing with exercise. Change it up. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve changed, learned new exercise. We have a woman in a group who brings all these wonderful different new exercises. She finds a centric, she gong, you know, she’s always trying new things. And I think it’s so smart because it keeps us in the game. It keeps us exciting. Even planning. I think the more you plan, I think we think of planning as boring, but planning really gives you a structure and a feeling of safety that sometimes allows you to experiment within it. And last but not least, create a mantra. Create a mantra that is a mantra that is going to make you excited about getting up and living your day.

Rita Black: I had today, we had a meeting with my group and when somebody had been just in this place, and she created a mantra that she said, I’m not my feelings, I’m not my emotions, I am the actions that I take. I love that. And she just started to take simple actions that she was putting off or avoiding and it made her feel so good. She said she had been so productive over the last few days. So create a new mantra for yourself. Okay, another cause of boredom. You’re releasing weight more slowly. And definitely that’s a cause of a lack of dopamine. I think one of the things that we do is really put all the attention on the scale. It’s all about the weight loss we run to see how much weight we’ve lost or how our clothes fit us. And I wanna remind you that the long-term journey, I mean, I get it, it’s exciting in the beginning. It’s a transformational process. You’re seeing the scale go down, but we can become addicted to that. And you know, we’re used to our dopamine hit the scale’s down so when it doesn’t go down or it doesn’t go down for a few days or a week, it becomes really hard for us because that feeling, we kind of almost go through withdraw because we’re not getting our fix on the scale.

Rita Black: And then we become interested in the diet rather than really looking at this more as a holistic approach. It’s not just about weight, but it’s all about the bigger picture. You can negate the process by just looking at your weight. You wanna create. So here are some things you can do. You can create a sexier vision of who you are becoming. Because I think sometimes, like I said, we start to look at ourselves kind of as in the same old ru, oh, here I am struggling with my weight and oh gosh, this is boring and I’ve gotta be on a boring diet and I’m a loser. Rather than being on a journey of who you are becoming, you know, really create that vision of you, 20, 40, 60 down pounds out the scale or ideal weight, not when you reach your weight, but five years into it.

Rita Black: Who is that you out in your life living fully because that you took no for, did not take no for an answer. That you had resilience and tenacity, that you is out in their life being a leader in their life. Because when you release weight and keep it off, others watch you and they’re like, wow, I want some of what they have now. They might not need release weight, but they see that journey and they’re like, that person did something. I want that too. So don’t underplay the powerful journey that you’re on and the example that you are setting for your kids, for your friends, for the people in your community. I have a saying, a alone, we diet together, we shift. We can shift this world just by starting to truly shift ourselves. Create rewards that entice you along the way. I can’t tell you how motivating this is when you know you’re gonna get a massage, when you reach that 20 pound goal, or when you’ve gotten used to, you know, when you’ve worked up to going five days to the gym, you know, having, going away for a trip to the beach for the weekend, you know, or buying yourself a new exercise product or a new outfit to exercise.

Rita Black: Give yourself rewards along the way. Treat yourself. Start living your life now and do stuff that scares you and that represents who you are becoming. Again, going back to that sexy vision is that you dancing, well take some dance lessons, is that you traveling, take a foreign language class. Do the things you’re putting off, you know, oh, I’ll do that when I get thin. Really? Well start doing it now, because putting all those things onto when you get thin, that’s gonna make getting thin really scary in your subconscious mind. So liven up your weight release journey by living your life now. Let’s do it. Come on. What, what are you gonna do by the end of the year that you’ve never done before that will say to you, I am on an extraordinary journey of weight mastery. Maybe it’s taking a cooking class, a healthy cooking class. Maybe it’s putting yourself on a dating app, a safe one, of course.

Rita Black: But you know, putting yourself out there, making a new friend, starting a walking group. Do something that represents to you that is, this is just not about running and getting on the scale that, but that this is about who you are becoming. Okay? Another reason for being bored is you might not feel challenged. That happens a lot of times. So one of the things that you can do is to deepen your journey by deepening your skills. And what I mean by that is, just like with me in gardening, there’s many surface things with weight loss that are the glamorous things. Weighing yourself, you know, the actual diet itself, certain things that you would think about when you go and go on a diet, but I’m talking about there’s really a skillset of weight mastery. And that whenever I’m feeling, you know, bored maintaining my weight, I always just kinda look at the skills that I use at like, for instance, exercise and say, okay, well how can I deepen my relationship with exercise?

Rita Black: You know, can I learn a new aspect of exercise? Can I lift a heavier weight? Can I challenge myself by running a little further? Can I do a more advanced version of what I’m doing with regards to food? There’s often I’ll deepen my skills of, there’s so many things with food, you know, right now I am really focusing on longevity. So I’ve learned more about what foods to eat that are, you know, aligned with longer lives. That’s a whole other episode. I’ll attack that. It’s a, I’ll share the book I’m reading with you. But yeah, so I’m kind of tweaking the way I’m eating right now and that I’ve, it always challenges me. You know, I’m, I have been maintaining my weight now a 40 pound weight release for 27 years. And in that time I’ve radically reshifted and deepened my relationship with food. I’ve have a much better understanding of all foods and how they interact in my body.

Rita Black: That’s from observing and being a scientist about that. I’ve, I’m really more clear like what supplements I need to eat or take to augment my health and maintain my blood sugar and to keep my muscles good. I, you know, so that’s what I’m saying is there’s never, don’t ever tell me while I’m bored with the food. You are being boring with the food. And I don’t mean this in a mean way. I mean, to inspire you, take that word boring away from your vocabulary. Look under the lid and start to get curious about how you can deepen your relationship with the aspects of the, the skills that you are. Because I really look at weight mastery as developing skills, not being good on something, right? Like not being a good on a diet. So what are the skills that you’re practicing and how can you deepen them?

Rita Black: And, and to add to that idea, I was just looking at my notes, you know, in our Money Mastery group, we do a challenge every month we challenge ourselves, you know, we’ll challenge what did we do? We did a measuring challenge to, you know, measure our food. ’cause A lot of food packaging actually ironically is inaccurate. So we all discovered that when we did the challenge. But it’s, it’s this idea that we’re over practicing a skill that we may not be doing or that we don’t do very often just to sharpen that skill so that, you know, when you measure something and then you stop measuring, you have a much better idea of how much you’re putting in your body and your mouth. Because our eyeballs are not very accurate judges. And as we discovered, neither are the packages that foods are the FDA can be or FDA has said that food companies can be up to 25% inaccurate in their calorie reporting and their nutritional reporting.

Rita Black: So bear that in mind. But you know, we did that challenge and we learned something from that challenge. We deepened our skill. And that’s what I mean by challenging yourself. There’s nothing boring about weight mastery journey. It’s a hero’s journey. And I know I’m saying that many, many times, but I want you to get it. Let’s see. Now the other thing that you might be feeling boring about or that the feeling boredom might be coming from is your inner rebel resistance is a coverup for different feelings. So it might not really be boredom, but boredom seems a lot safer than the other feelings that might be going on. We have this inner rubble within us. I know we talk about the inner critic a lot. Well, you know, in our inner rubble is that part of us that wants to say it’s not fair. Being on a diet’s not fair.

Rita Black: It’s boring. I wanna be free, I wanna be free. Whatever I want. It’s not fair, it’s not fun. I don’t want to, this is sucks. So everybody gets to do it and I don’t, right? Here’s what you wanna do, is you wanna acknowledge you’re inner rebel. You don’t wanna push it down because it just gets louder. Haven’t you noticed? But you can acknowledge them, say, oh, okay, you’re not having fun, I get it. Or You wanna be free. I understand. Oh, you don’t wanna do this. I really understand. You know? ’cause I think the more you acknowledge that part of you, the more I quiet down, it’s kind of like a child when they feel acknowledged, they kind of calm down. So once you do that, I want you to take that child, that little inner rubble within you, and I want you to walk with them through to the end.

Rita Black: Like, oh, I don’t want, you know, it’s not fair, it’s not fun. I wanna eat that chocolate chip cookie. It looks so good. Yum, yum, yum, yum. Okay. In a rebel. Well, let’s think about that. Okay, we could eat that cookie, but then, you know, how’s it gonna taste? Oh, it’s gonna taste amazing. Okay, okay, well, how’s it gonna feel after we eat the cookie? Well, you know, maybe our blood sugar is gonna be spiked. Maybe we’re gonna feel a little full, our, you know, feel a little off in balance. And how are we gonna feel tomorrow? How are we gonna feel the, you know, and when you walk through like a binge or when you walk through overeating, when you walk through a food choice, or when you walk through a lot of these things with your inner rubble through to the end, and when I call it the end past the fun part, what you’re really doing is retraining your mind to think the long game versus the short game.

Rita Black: Our inner focus, our dopamine center is so focused on impulsive, short-term gratification. But when we start to acknowledge this part of ourselves and we start to pause, acknowledge the desire, and then walk that desire through to the end point, often that desire for that thing, the color sort of drains out of it. If you, so to speak, that rebellious part of us becomes a little more rational and willing to actually get curious about something that would really be fulfilling rather than what it thinks would be fulfilling and focus. How powerful what you’re doing is not shameful, but how powerful it is. You don’t have to do it. You can say to your inner rebel, you get to do it. You know, you’re really dealing with a childlike part of yourself. So you can talk to that part, say, you really, you’re on this powerful journey.

Rita Black: Isn’t that exciting? It so much of our journey of weight mastery is the way we communicate with ourselves. We can beat that rebel down. We can say shut up, we can try to put it in the closet, but it’s still gonna be there, still gonna be banging. It’s much better to be reasonable and rational with it and to let it have a voice, but to also be the parent and to say, I got that. Yeah, you really wanna do that. Well, let’s think that through. Is that really the best? And is that really aligned with who we are becoming? And often, like I said, that rebel calms right down. So I hope you didn’t find this boring. I hope this was helpful for you. And if, and speaking of which, if you want some shows from me, well let me know. I, I am, I’m many things, but I’m not a mind reader.

Rita Black: So if you’re sitting here going, God, I wish you would talk about X, Y, Z. Well, there is a place in the show notes where you can just say, Rita, will you talk about X, Y, z? And I will take you up on it. I’m, it might not be the next episode, but I will read your request and I will do my best to take you up on it. So please let me know and please share in the show notes. Any other comments or questions, just go for it. I’d love to hear from you. Have an amazing week and a very exciting week and a non boring week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door the way struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it.

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.