Rita Black: Is it time to hit the road or fly the friendly skies? Have you been excited about getting away for the weekend or the week or even the month or the summer? Whether you are packing an overnight bag or a whole set of travel luggage, you definitely need a plan to stay on track with your weight goals. Travel creates many challenges for weight. Some of them are the obvious ones, like exotic food and drinks that tantalize your taste buds. Or the more subtle ones like stress eating when you missed your train. I have got you covered in this episode. With the inner guide to managing your weight while traveling, you can have an amazing time away and come home the same weight or even lighter! Really, it’s true. You wanna find out how? Grab your comfy neck pillow 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: Hey, ya’ll! I’m back from visiting my best friend from college in Nashville, Tennessee, where we spent the weekend in the Smoky Mountains and we’re reliving some old memories. So in the summer of, I don’t even remember, I think it was the summer of ’83, it was between sophomore and junior year. My friend Susan and I went from New York City, the big bad city of New York City to Nashville, and then ultimately to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where we were waitresses for the summer. And neither of us knew how to waitress at this point, which actually ended up being a really great skill to learn. But my friend Susan, convinced me we were gonna make so much money at these tourist joints nestled away in the Smoky Mountains. So we, you know, scraped together our money. We, I don’t even know how, I think we rented a car, got to Nashville, got up to the Smoky Mountains, and we rented a room in a boarding house, which above the doorway, it said, no spitting, no drinking, no men.

Rita Black: And every time we walked through the front door, the woman, the house matron, Mary Dowdy, was kind of staring us down. You know, we’d go and then we’d go upstairs and smoke cigarettes in our room. So I had so much fun that summer, I learned so much about life, but I really did not make any money. And I gained a lot of weight because I was eating those buttermilk biscuits that were so good. They melted in your mouth every morning. And then on my way home, because we had to walk through the tourist town, I’d hit up the fudge store, you know, and get my piece of fudge for the road, or a caramel apple or whatever, you know, the tourist town fudge. And there was so much food that was new to me because I had never been to the south before.

Rita Black: So I felt like I had to, you know, when you’re somewhere new, you’re like, I have to eat everything that there is. So all my clothes that I brought, like were bursting at the seams as I was waitressing. I mean, I burned a lot of calories waitressing, but let’s face it, I could make that up really fast. And, you know, I tried so hard to diet and be good, but every day, I swear to God, there was a busload of tourists that came into our restaurant, Tommy’s restaurant, on the main boulevard. This big old bus would come in and all these tourists would unload into our restaurant. Order breakfast, eat pancakes, their kids making a big mess on the table, syrup all over the table that we had to clean up ourselves. ’cause we bust our own tables. And then they’d say, you are the best waitress in the world.

Rita Black: And then they’d leave me 50 cents. So depressing. So I took that 50 cents and I’d buy myself a piece of fudge ’cause it wasn’t gonna go to my tuition for the next year, certainly. But in 1983, it could buy you a piece of fudge. So Susan and I went and revisited Gatlinburg, and when we were there, there was like this place called the Zou Foam House up tomorrow and the Elvis Museum, those things are gone now, but my daughter got to come and we got to tell her all the stories. It was super fun. And I came home from my trip, and even though I ate some fried chicken and some corn pudding and even piece of fudge, I stayed the same weight as when I left.

Rita Black: So there is a way to travel and have a good time and manage your weight, and it begins with your mind. So I am bringing back a summertime favorite podcast I aired a few years ago before my trip with my family to Buffalo, the glamorous place of Buffalo hay, hands up to all these buffalo people out there. This is where my husband grew up. And even though he’s British, he spent a lot of his childhood in Buffalo, New York. And I’m gonna walk you through what you can do to travel and truly enjoy yourself without gaining weight. And I have a sweet little something to add to what your whistle. I have an offer for $10 off my travel coaching and hypnosis download. This is a hypnosis session to help you manage your weight while you’re traveling. And a really awesome coaching session. I stand behind this coaching session a hundred percent. It’s got great juicy tidbits and so does this episode this. But this is a great asset to take with you, whether you’re heading to grandma’s house or to the House of Gucci. Just use the coupon code travel, and the link is in the show notes. And now let’s talk about travel, shall we?

Rita Black: Let’s face it, something happens in our minds the second we start a holiday or a vacation, right? There’s just this little thing that goes off in our brain, that little dopamine center in our brain starts firing away. Reward. Let’s party, let’s let down our hair. And usually for most of us, that means food. Food and more food and food. And then did I mention drinks? Oh, waiter, come over here. We need another one. And look, I’m the first to say, enjoy your vacation and have a good time. But as you know, and I know a good time can quickly go south when we overindulge and then we feel guilty, and then we throw all caution to the wind. I’ll be good when I get home. That’s what we say. But the problem is the rest of the vacation is spent thinking about the next food event or feeling overstuffed and woozy and chaotic and just feeling bad.

Rita Black: I can feel, I can remember many, many vacations just missing the entire vacation, just feeling sick to my stomach like I was overeating. Then my brain got into this thing like, where’s my next meal? Where’s my next treat? And just completely missing out on feeling good during the vacation when I’d worked so hard to go on the vacation. I can’t tell you how many vacations I went on that there was, I was just looking forward to being in this different place, enjoying the culture, the music, the atmosphere, and ended up in a food frenzy, hardly absorbing the place that I was in, in a carb coma. Then anxious and mad with myself, and not even feeling like I was on a vacation, but I was in this like food laden torture chamber that I couldn’t climb out of.

Rita Black: I remember one time, oh my gosh, I was in New Orleans with my husband and it was early in our marriage and we were there for a friend’s wedding. And I hardly, this is, what’s so sad, it was a very good friend’s wedding. And you know, if you ask me now like, what happened at that wedding, where was it, what was the reception like? I couldn’t even tell you because I was just, all of my memories are of that vacation are food. And I remember the beignets from Cafe Dumond. I remember the coffee, I remember walking down the whatever that, you know, in the French Quarter, the du la la la la I can’t remember the name with a hurricane glass in my hand. You know, wandering around wanting more food, looking for the next food event.

Rita Black: I was feeling stuffed and bloated from everything I’d already eaten, feeling hazy and hating myself. But at the same time, I remember, even though I felt this way, this is what’s crazy, I said to my husband, how long do you think it will take for us to feel hungry enough to eat again? That’s right. We were just literally eating and then waiting for enough space in our stomach to happen so that we could eat again. That was crazy. So since then, I went through my shift and I have maintained a 40 pound weight release for 25 years. And travel is a completely different experience, but I had to learn to work with my mind and not work against it while preparing for my trip and during my trip and yes, even after my trip.

Rita Black: So I’m excited to share with you my thin thinking strategies for having an awesome summer travel experience where you stay aligned with your weight release or weight maintenance goals. Okay, so let’s jump in. So first of all, you must plan for success. It, so first of all, you must plan for success. It ain’t gonna just happen. So let me tell you about the brain and travel in your brain. When you go traveling, like I said earlier, your brain equates travel with reward, letting down your hair, being away, time off. And it is your reward center is kind of on steroids. And, and for this reason, willpower just isn’t going to cut it. Now, if you follow me or know, you know, read anything I’ve written or have been on, seen any videos of mine, you know, there’s 12% of your mind is your willpower part of your mind. So that’s pretty much how much of your mind is engaged in being good when you travel.

Rita Black: Like, I can’t tell you how many clients or people that you know I’m helping will say, oh yeah, we’re going away. You know, I’m, I think I’ll, I’ve got it down, I think I’m gonna be good. And I was like, well, have you prepared? And they’re like, oh no, I, you know, like, I know I got it. I am gonna be good. No, no, you, the going in with just this idea of being good when you’re on vacation is, you know, like taking a butter knife into battle. It just ain’t gonna happen. And because the other 88% of your brain is wired for just the same outcome that you’ve ever had when you’ve gone traveling, and if you’re somebody who overeats and you know, gets off track when you travel, then chances are your brain is pretty much wired to rinse and repeat that scenario.

Rita Black: First of all, we have our travel identity in our subconscious mind and our identity is like, I’m somebody who goes on away and, and loves to eat and drink and, and, and, and overdo things. And then we have our habits, a habit of, you know, getting there the first night and getting a great bottle of wine and, and going out and finding that place to eat. Or, you know, going down the main boulevard. I remember working in a, a tourist town one summer. I worked in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in the Smoky Mountains. And you know, a lot of tourist towns are the same. They’ve got the fudge shop, they’ve got the caramel apples, they’ve got the funnel cakes. You know, most of these places are just pumping out the sugar laden products or the refine carbs. You know, just walking down the street, you know, waiting for you to go and, you know, quote unquote, have a good time and vacation, saltwater taffy, all those things. So, so we have the habits of eating or overeating and, and our favorites and, and our beliefs.

Rita Black: Like, it’s hard. Everybody else is having a good time. If I don’t eat that, you know, if I don’t eat, you know, how many times have I heard like I need to eat that local food in order to have felt like I was there, right? So we have a lot of resistance and subconscious conditioning that’s working against us when we go away. So here’s some things that you wanna start to do to get, you know, that 88% working with your 12%. One thing would be to create a powerful vision of how you want to come home feeling. Again, we go into our vacation just thinking, well, I’m gonna try to be good and be healthy. But you don’t really, what you’re doing when you engage a vision of how you wanna feel coming home on that plane or on that train or in that car, is you wanna feel as light and lean as you did when you left.

Rita Black: Or, you know, you wanna feel sort of the same or even lighter than when you left, right? You, you want to feel better. I remember many plane rides when I struggled with my weight, you know, leaving the, you know, on the plane going out and then coming back feeling like I’m three inches wider and my belly’s two inches bigger. You know, when I put the strap over my waist, right? So something that was a very powerful tool that I began to engage was that feeling of when I was in the plane or in the car driving to where the holiday was, that I really felt how that felt, because that’s a very visceral feeling, that feeling of being in a seat. And and I kind of imprinted that, and I would hold that in my mind, and every day when I woke up, I would say, I’m gonna go home feeling that same way in the plane seat or in the car seat on the way home.

Rita Black: And, and what that does is it engages your imagination. And that feeling though, that feeling and that emotion and that that feeling confident and good and light really engages your reticular activation system that filters out all those other lower level impulses. Oh, you know, I’ve gotta eat the salt water taffy, but, but no, no, I wanna go home feeling awesome. So how, what are the actions that I need to do to align with that? So that is one thing that you can.

Rita Black: Another thing that you can do is create your missions and your mission and value for the trip. So what I mean by that is, and I know that might sound like I’m a little crazy but what I mean by that is when we go on vacation again, if we’re more prone to go on vacations and think about the food and think about like, oh, where are we going to eat and what are we gonna do? That’s where our brain is gonna go, right? And, and a lot of times, so for instance, I’m going to be going to Buffalo with my family, Buffalo, New York, with my family, with my husband, with my children, and we are gonna meet my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law there, and they are coming up from Florida. So we’re all meeting at a, at, at a Airbnb. And my husband is originally from Buffalo. So he’s originally from England, actually. And he, he grew up until he was like seven years old. And then his family, his father was a doctor in England, and they were recruited in the United States in 1967. They were recruiting doctors from England because there weren’t enough doctors, I guess, out in the sticks in in New York or in, in various states. So they were recruiting doctors. So my husband’s family moved, he was about seven at the time, and he had this cute little British accent.

Rita Black: And then the first day at school, the boys, the tough boys from Buffalo, they were like, you sound like a pansy. And they beat him up. And then the next day he came to school and he had an a perfect American accent. So if you ever meet my husband, he speaks like an American, but he’s really a Brit and he does sometimes sound like a Brit if he has just a little too much to drink. So and definitely when we lived there in England for a few years, he sounded more English, but I digress. So getting back to Buffalo. So we’re gonna go there and, and I have never been to Buffalo before, and you might be thinking, why are you going to Buffalo on a vacation? But this is like the first time I’ve been to the place where my husband grew up.

Rita Black: And I’m really looking forward to that. And what I am focusing on, my mission for this trip is to be of service. It’s my, my husband’s mother’s birthday and we haven’t seen them in a year and a half since Covid. So I, and she’s she’s so healthy. I mean, she’s, she’s doing really well. I, she’s almost, she’s gonna be 86 years old, can you believe that? 86 years old, she still plays tennis. She’s amazing. I really wanna connect with her and my sister-in-law and my children. And I’m really thinking about the deeper experiences that I would love to create, you know, to go on walks with them and to be out in nature and to explore historic buffalo downtown. And so there’s what I’m doing by thinking about that ahead of time, like what are the deeper moments and, and the mission of my trip with regards to the people I’m going to be connecting with, with regards to the place that I’m going to be, I’m guiding my brain into before we even go there to be focusing on something deeper and different than just the food.

Rita Black: Because believe me, now, I don’t know about you, but when I do this, I have a deeper experience because I’ve already prepped my brain for it and gotten my brain excited about those deeper experiences. Otherwise, I might just show up on the first night, get a glass of wine, start eating and think, well, what’s for breakfast tomorrow? You know? And, and it could be very easy to devolve. It’s not to say that I wouldn’t be doing things. Of course we would be doing touristy things and fun things as well, but, but I am guiding myself. Those are gonna be my guiding, that’s gonna be my guiding vision and my guiding mission for our trip, and to be healthy and light and stay connected so that I can truly enjoy those deeper moments. Because since I’ve shifted and traveled it’s amazing how much more truly present I am if I’m not thinking about food all the time, or my weight or feeling bad about myself and how many more magical moments I get to experience while I’m away or in a, in a different place. Alright? So I’m, I’m focusing on that mission. So that’s something else you can do.

Rita Black: The other thing you can do before you go is to plan, plan, plan. You know, they say location, location, location. With regards to travel, plan, plan, plan, what can you plan? Well, what is your weight goal for your trip? I know that might sound a little strange, like, I’m not gonna lose weight, or we’ll, maybe if you are on a weight release journey, are you really truly gonna plan to release weight? And if you are, what is that going to look like? Again, we can hope to lose weight, but unless you truly have a plan of action, chances are habit is gonna take over and you’re, you’re going to end up in old behaviors. So if you truly wanna release weight while you’re away, think about the exercise.

Rita Black: Think about the meals that you might wanna have ahead of time. You might even think about going online and looking at restaurants that might have healthy options so that you can stay on track. Maybe you wanna just take a break and not gain weight while you’re away, but you wanna maintain your weight and loosen the grip a little bit. That’s a perfect option as well. Then you just wanna think about what is enough for you. You know, like what is gonna be your, you know, that is going to, you know, maintaining is gonna mean that you’re gonna still stave mindful and not go crazy off the rails. Because when we struggle with our weight, we usually have two modes. We have good and bad on or off all or nothing, right? And in order for you to really stay centered in your travel plans, you need to stay centered and connected to yourself and your food choices.

Rita Black: It doesn’t mean you have to think about it all the time, but it just means that you, you know, if you’re not chicken and broccoli, you, you, you wanna do just a little preparation in your mind for like, what is enough? Now, here are some things that you can do to help you. You can have booze boundaries, right? Like you can think about like, well, how much is enough for me while I’m drinking and I’m away? Maybe one drink a day, you know, maybe two drinks a day. It will, and it might depend on if you’re exercising or not. Is this a place where you’re gonna get a lot of walking in or is this something that is exercise something that you’re gonna have to fit into your day around the other activities that you’re doing? Like, get up and go for a walk in the morning, or, or if you’re at a hotel, use their gym.

Rita Black: You wanna have a plan in mind. You know, if you don’t have a plan, the world has one for you and it isn’t gonna be a slimming one with regards to your vacation. So think about alcohol and think about like, how much alcohol do I need to have to truly let down my hair and have a good time? And the answer usually is not that much. In fact, alcohol has sort of a, you know, if, if you drink alcohol, because some people don’t, but if you do, you know, a glass to a glass and a half is probably about the amount that you can have before it starts to have a downward spiral impact on your health, on you know, not even delivering, like loosening you up and making you feel chilled out. It starts to work against you. It’s a depressant. So you wanna think about that and you wanna think about how, you know, maybe you’ll have alternatives like drinking water or bringing you know, bringing some healthier options with you.

Rita Black: The same thing with treats. Like, are you gonna bring some treats from home that you know that you can eat? Like maybe some protein bars or some low carbohydrate treats if you, you know, if that’s your thing or are, you know, because I, I think one thing I see people getting into is they get into sugar on an empty stomach, and then that makes them money eat more and more and more and more. And it’s so easy when you’re away because a lot of vacation places, or, you know, when we travel it’s really easy to get into the sugar and carbs really quickly. So how are you gonna manage that for yourself? And may make sure that also that the people you’re traveling with, maybe you can get on board with them and get aligned with their expectations. You know before we went away for a spring break, we went up to where my daughter goes to school in northern California.

Rita Black: She’s at Berkeley. And we you know, she was not able to come home because the school was asking that students didn’t leave the area because of Covid. So we went to Napa Valley, and my family had never been there before, and that’s like the food capital of the world, right? Or the food capital of the west coast. So we knew that there was gonna be a lot of opportunities to eat out and to drink. And so we set some limits for ourselves. We said, we wanna have a really healthy holiday. We, we, we moved every day. We did some amazing hiking. It was beautiful in Napa. The, the, it was green. There were wild flowers. I’d just never seen it. You know, you hear about the fires in Napa and we thought the, the mountains would all be burned, but it was like, actually the part we were in, it was just gorgeous.

Rita Black: It looked like Ireland and, and lovely and green. And and we really set limits like with bread at dinner. I didn’t choose to have bread, but, you know, my kids were like, we don’t want to eat too much bread. If the waiter asked us for more, we said, no thank you. But we had all sort of signed off on that ahead of time, and that really made it easier in the moment. We, you know, that we had a theme to our vacation, which was to stay healthy and to leave our Napa vacation feeling like we didn’t go crazy. Now, once you’re there once you are on vacation, here’s some things that you wanna do is, do you wanna set your environment up for success? So one thing that you can do is if you’re going to stay at somebody’s house, and I like, for instance when I go and stay at my brother’s house, I always make, I always go to the grocery store and I make a big salad.

Rita Black: My brother isn’t a big vegetable and salad person. He’s more meat and potatoes, right? And he loves to cook big old meals. And so I remember when we were staying up there a lot when my, my mother was sick many years ago. And it was a very, very stressful situation. I remember I just kept a salad in the refrigerator the whole time. They laughed at me, but they actually started eating that salad too. But that salad saved me. Like, so when we sat down to these heavy meat and potato meals, I would have this salad. I, you know, I would eat some of what they were eating, but I would have my salad sort of as my base if I had to emotionally eat, because my mother was very sick and, and struggling. I had some salad to eat because I was just like, well, if I’m gonna eat, I’m gonna eat some salad.

Rita Black: And it just, it, I set my environment up for success. You would have food all over. I would just, you know, I just said that food is for my brother. That’s not for me. I had to play a powerful mind game. Now when I’m, I’m going to Buffalo, we’re gonna be staying in a house, my guess is there are gonna be also some treats. And I’m gonna have to, you know, we’re gonna talk, have to talk about managing the treats because my depending on the mood people are in my sister-in-law may wanna have some things. My mother-in-law may wanna have some things. They, they’re pretty healthy eaters, so for the most part, we should be fine. But if there are, are things sitting out on the counter, I’ll put them away in the cupboard just so that I don’t have to see them, you know, other people can eat them.

Rita Black: I’ll let them know where they are. But it usually helps to, you know, have signed off and say, Hey, you guys, these things are a bit of a temptation for me. So can we put them, you know, in the cupboard and, and you guys know that they’re there? Or then the pantry, they’re, they’re, and there, and I don’t have to look at them. So really, you know, bring things into your environment that are gonna work for you and get the things out or hidden that aren’t. I had a client who was in a similar situation where she was staying with her family and her family loved tortilla chips and salsa every night they would sit and have drinks and tortilla chips and salsa, and she thought through and she brought in carrots and celery, you know, and maybe that sounds a little too healthy for you, but she loved it.

Rita Black: It ended up being, and everybody ended up eating the carrots and celery instead of the tortilla chips. So often it will work for you if you make the healthier choice, but you just have to bring that stuff in and talk to your inner coach every day. Like, sit down and have a meeting every morning. How are we gonna be healthy today? Have that vision of you leaving that vacation feeling light and lean. Protect your blood sugar, meaning try to eat protein at your meals and, and or as a snack so that you keep stabilized. Eating sugar or refined carbs on an empty stomach is going to spike your blood sugar. You’re gonna crash, you’re gonna feel hungrier, more susceptible to overeat. Reinforce the support while you’re away. You know, keep reminding your guys like, oh, let’s let, how are we gonna move today?

Rita Black: You guys? What? You know, what are we gonna do for exercise? Will somebody walk with me after dinner? You know, you be the person of, you know, the health leader. And I think it’s also important for you to take breaks away from the crowd. You know, if you’re around a lot of people, maybe you’re on vacation by yourself, but if you’re with a bunch of people, especially in a house, I think it’s important to have you time away from everybody because our brain gets very overstimulated when we’re around other people, and then we tend to overeat. So take those brain breaks and forgive yourself. If you get off track, just get back on track. Do not start over. Do not start over and promise yourself that before you leave. I am not gonna start over when you get back home from your vacation. It’s also gonna help you, especially in your, as you are mastering your weight, is to really look at what worked for you and what didn’t.

Rita Black: You know, there’ll probably be things that you did that really worked very well. I think it’s important for you to go, oh, that worked well, let me do that again next time. And then there will probably be things that didn’t go well. And you can expect that things aren’t gonna go perfectly. That’s okay. But you know, when things don’t go perfectly, don’t lose the lesson. You know learn from it. So if you have to overeat a whole bag of salt water taffy to learn that doesn’t work for you ever again that’s probably the best bag of saltwater taffy you ever ate, right? So if you really learn from it, then you don’t lose the lesson. So, so really do what, you know, I would call the debrief of the of your vacation. And, you know, think of yourself like a CIA agent.

Rita Black: We’re doing a debrief now of the vacation with your inner coach so that you can really think about what worked, what didn’t. So the next time you travel you’ll be that much better and that much more masterful at traveling. All right? So you guys, you can do this. You can have an amazing vacation. Stay centered, stay connected with yourself. That’s the most important thing. Have a terrific time, have magical moments and not, you know, not get off track and feel regretful. Alright, y’all, well, I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode and got some really good tools for your travels this summer. And I hope wherever you are traveling, you are safe and sound and enjoy yourself thoroughly. And I hope that those techniques that we talked about, the thin, thin, thin, thin, thin techniques that we walked through, give you that ability to stay focused and on track.

Rita Black: And just to remind you, grab that travel coaching and hypnosis session, both the hypnosis and coaching. I think you’re gonna really like it. $10 off. Use that coupon code travel and the links are in the show notes, the show notes that that is. And like I said it’s something you can listen to every night while you’re away and keep your mind focused and come home feeling light, lean, and fabulous. So have an amazing week and remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door, the weight struggle to inside you. So keep listening and find it. Have a safe, healthy, and happy week. I’ll see you next week.

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