Rita Black: Emotional eating is something we have all done. Even thin people eat over their emotions sometimes, but when we’re using eating to cope on a regular basis, what seems to be soothing at the moment becomes an even bigger stress in our lives as we feel out of control and unable to stop. Today, in the Thin Thinking Podcast, we are gonna look at some tools that will help you prevent emotional eating in the first place. Developing the skill of prevention is critical to being able to master this old and self-sabotaging habit. So grab your soothing weighted blanket 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, hello and welcome to our podcast. If you are new, welcome, come on in and get cozy. And if you are a veteran thin thinker, come on in and you get cozy too. There’s room for everybody on the couch or in the big chair. And you know, a few extra seats over there. Everybody come on in. Let’s have some fun. Hey, have you ever gotten asked by somebody for something multiple times and you keep saying, sure, sounds like a good idea, but you have no time. And then you finally have time and it feels so good, it feels so good. Well, that was me this last month for a long time. Many people in my community have been asking, well, begging me to give them some powerful tools to deal with social eating. So I’ve been working away on this project for the last couple of months, since all of the hub of my personal life that this year has died down.

Rita Black: And I’ve been hyper-focused on my new creation that I will be letting loose on the world. It’s called Social Light. And it is what I would consider my social eating toolkit or mastering social eating toolkit. And within it are hypnosis sessions pre-party meditations or pre social event meditations. Some really fun things like practicing this direct drive technique for saying no to people when they keep wanting to push food on you. Lots of fun things packed into here, even pre-party huddles that you can listen to in the car on your way to just get your mindset ready and revved for whatever social event you may be going to. So, it’s right in time for the end of the summer into the autumn and into, let’s face it, that holiday season. So I’m really super excited to be unveiling this next week and making it available.

Rita Black: So also next week, I will be offering the social light mastering social eating toolkit for a discounted price. And it will, I will also have a double whammy of offering it alongside my emotional eating tool kit for two, for one price. So many, many opportunities are different ways to get this in your life. So watch out for all this goodness coming your way.

Rita Black: So this week I wanted to give you a taste from the emotional eating toolkit part of it. There are a couple of coaching sessions in here, but this coaching session is really focused on preventing emotional eating. And so this is part of part one’s coaching session with one of my, I mean, probably the most potent tool that I use for preventing emotional eating. So I’m sharing that today. It’s been my number one go-to for many years and this year with my daughter’s graduation and my husband’s knee surgery and some crazy, crazy, you wouldn’t even believe it, tech nightmares with my business. I have leaned in on this tool a lot. So let’s dive in and I hope you find this helpful.

Rita Black: Welcome to the coaching session for part one of shifting out of emotional eating, preventing emotional eating. In this coaching session, we will be working through the process of your building, the skills of preventing emotional eating in the first place. Prevention is one of the most powerful tools we have with regards to shifting out of emotional eating. And ultimately when we can manage and regulate feelings and emotions rather than eating over them, we feel more confident, more healthy, both mentally and physically, and have mastered an essential skillset in being able to be consistent with weight release and ultimately maintenance. As someone who struggled with weight all of my life from the age of age through the age of 30, up and down the scale, 40 pounds, I was a huge comfort eater. I would wake up in the morning and on the weekends, be stressed and begin baking and making scones and coffee cake.

Rita Black: And in the evenings I would stress eat or emotionally eat when I came home from school, raiding the refrigerator, snacking in front of the television at night. If I felt stressed or I was trying to avoid doing something or if I was mad at my husband or when I was a kid at my parents, or if I wanted to calm down. For me, learning to manage my feelings became learning how to manage my thoughts. And even more than that, learning to manage my brain and how stimulated it got. Once I started learning to manage my mind, my thoughts, and ultimately my feelings through many of the tools I’m gonna be sharing with you in this session, my need to eat over my emotions disappeared and I was able to soothe myself from the inside out, and that is what I want for you.

Rita Black: So, hello, take a breath and settle in to the session. In this session, we are gonna get you started on your journey of emotional mastery in a few ways, some of the tools we will explore are self connecting, shifting out of negative thoughts, down, shifting expectations, and comforting words and practices. After this coaching session, we will use our cognitive coaching session and hypnosis session to work these deeper into your subconscious. I want you to know that there is already a part of your mind that exists that can manage processing feelings and emotions, but then there is that part of your mind that has learned to use food to cope. And I want you to think of these parts of your mind, like muscles, the emotional eating muscle right now is strong and well-formed and the emotional mastery muscle might be a little weak and limp, but every step that you take on your journey of managing your emotions instead of eating over them is like flexing the emotional mastery muscle as the other emotional eating muscle gets weaker and weaker and weaker.

Rita Black: So to begin, I invite you to see that you are on a hero’s journey of shifting out of emotional eating. If you have gone through the shift weight mastery process or listened to my Thin Thinking podcast, you know that I think of weight mastery as a hero’s journey. Hero’s journey. Let me explain. There is this anthropologist, if you don’t know, Joseph Campbell was his name, and he studied cultures all over the world, and he found a common thread in their storytelling. The story of the hero and the transformation of the hero from, you know, the normal person into a hero. And while the hero became transformed is by first of all, going on a journey, stepping out of their normal world, whoever that hero is. And usually that hero is reluctant and stepping into a new world. And within that new world, they are thrown obstacles.

Rita Black: They have to encounter obstacles and grow in order to overcome the obstacles, ultimately slaying the dragon, becoming transformed and returning to the village or returning to wherever as you know, a better, the most evolved and best version of themselves. So if you are on your weight mastery journey already, good for you. This emotional eating mastery journey is a powerful leg on the journey of your transformation and one worth taking. Now, if you are new to the idea of the hero’s journey altogether, have never done the shift weight mastery process, that’s fine. I’m just gonna walk you through how it applies to your journey of emotional eating and mastery. So like I said in the story of transformation on a hero’s journey, most heroes are reluctant before they begin their journey. Think of a Hollywood movie. They are all based on this this hero’s journey structure.

Rita Black: They, and what happens, like I said, is the hero usually when we meet the hero is reluctant. The hero doesn’t start the movie typically doing what they end up doing in the movie. They’re usually doing something else. Their life gets interrupted and they’re called forth on an adventure or called forth to become bigger. You know, go get the girl, go get the money, go. I had a friend who was a a screenwriter and he said, every scene is either about getting love or getting money. So with that in mind, you’re not either getting either, but you’re getting emotional mastery for you. Maybe you have been reluctant to begin a journey of managing feelings and emotions. Maybe it seemed way too big of a project or too confronting, or you just didn’t believe you could do it, or it just seemed scary.

Rita Black: I’ll deal with it tomorrow. We say to ourselves, I’ll deal with it next year. I can’t. I’m too busy, I’m too stressed. Ah, I can’t do it. And that’s normal. Being reluctant keeps us in the comfort zone. Not that that zone is comfortable, struggling with weight and emotions is not comfortable, but it’s familiar eating to manage emotions is familiar, but there comes a moment when the pain becomes too great and we must embark upon the journey into the new land. And I wonder if the pain of emotional eating has become too great for you. Are you here because the familiar isn’t comfortable anymore and you’re willing to stretch, stretch into this new journey, this new world, this new idea of yourself? Well, if you are good for you, I’m here with you. You know, emotional eating or comfort eating, it’s really an interesting term because we think of it as like eating for comfort.

Rita Black: It numbs us. It numbs us from the feelings. What happens is we begin feeling a feeling and we begin feeling the feeling and the brain responds. It’s like, we don’t wanna feel this feeling, let’s numb it with food. This is the way we’ve gotten used to it. So the dopamine center of the brain will agitate us, we’ll say food, food, food. We need the food. And we see food not as food, but a portal into relief and calm. And when we eat, it relieves the dopamine agitation. And that agitated feeling, that stressed feeling goes away giving us a perceived feeling of calm, but it really hasn’t calmed us, but relieved the agitation of expecting the food, but then the sugar or refined foods hits our system, and that sets up this need, that feeling, this response for more sugar and fat. And we eat more and more and then we feel imbalanced, and then we feel bloated, and then we ultimately feel really mad at ourselves.

Rita Black: So then in order to get out of that pain of having over eaten, we promise ourselves that we’re gonna be good tomorrow. Which if you haven’t noticed, diverts our thinking about the thing that caused us to feel bad in the first place. And okay, maybe that sounds good. But then the problem is that that caused whatever caused us to feel bad is still there in the shadows. But now on top of it is we feel bad about overeating, but at least interestingly, that pain is familiar and not as scary as maybe the feeling we were feeling in the first place. And we can always control that bad feeling of having over eaten by promising to start over on a weight loss tomorrow or to be good tomorrow, which ultimately wipes the bad feelings away momentarily. But then we start over again tomorrow and yada yada.

Rita Black: So you can see that this keeps us stuck in that cycle because the next time we for our emotions, the whole inner cycle happens over again and we feel even more pain over and over again, feeling more chaotic and out of control and worse and worse about ourselves. So maybe this is where you are right now, and if this is just take a moment to allow yourself to acknowledge that this is where you are, and that is okay, take a breath. We’ve gotta start from somewhere and feel that feeling of being ready and acknowledging where you’re starting from, and just let that wash through you and notice how that feels in your body. Take a breath in of compassion and understanding. So lovingly just give yourself permission to be here, be in your body, take another breath in, and just let that acceptance wash through you that it’s okay, and you are okay. We’re starting from where we’re starting from. And you can start to acknowledge where you are and to be proud of yourself for starting and being willing to stretch out of the reluctance and fear and out of that comfort zone, which actually wasn’t so comfortable.

Rita Black: You are now moving out of reluctance into action. The pain pushes until the vision pulls the pain pushes until the vision pulls, pulls the pain pushes until the vision pulls in order to pull you. We wanna do two things to set you firmly on your path of your journey out of emotional eating. One thing is we wanna give you an identity. And the other thing is we wanna give you a vision. So let’s start with identity and giving you a new one. Right now, you probably see yourself as an emotional eater, and that identity is part of you. It’s part of how you see yourself. Identity in our mind is in our subconscious mind and how you see yourself. We have many identities. In fact, you probably have thousands. You have an identity of where you live, the city where you live, the state where you live, the country where you live. I am a losan. I also live in a community called St. Andrews Square. I live in a county.

Rita Black: I’m a, I’m a southern Californian. I am a Californian, I am an American of, I am a citizen of the United States of America. So you can see just by my location, I have many identities. I’m a mom, I’m a hypnotherapist. I’m a wife, I’m a gardener. I am a biker. I am a weight master. And you can see how the identities go on and on. You have a role in your family, you have your work or maybe you’re retired or you’re a student, or you’re a dog owner or a cat lover. And when we struggle with our weight, we see ourselves as a weight struggler. And that’s part of all these identities that swirl together in our subconscious mind and create our idea of ourselves. So there’s many identities under the umbrella of weight struggler, even there’s maybe sugar addict and exercise hater and social eater and emotional eater.

Rita Black: And this emotional eater identity has you trapped out of control. Can’t handle the feeling I need food for comfort. So it creates these negative and limiting beliefs about our ourself. Just the identity does. When we try not to emotionally eat, the brain doesn’t understand we’re an emotional eater. It’s part of our identity. That’s who we are. So there’s a tension. So in order to shift out of emotional eating, we need to begin with identity. When we try to not emotionally eat, the brain doesn’t understand, we are an emotional eater. That is who we are. And so there’s a tension and the brain doesn’t understand. So in order to truly shift out of emotional eating, we need to step into a new identity to let the old one go.

Rita Black: Now, in the shift weight mastery process, we shift from weight struggler to an apprentice of weight mastery. And the reason for that is when we step into that, we become a learner. And so it doesn’t matter what we weigh or where we’re at in our skillset of weight management, the moment you become a learner, it opens your brain up to see you with a different identity, a more powerful identity that of an apprentice or a learner. But it also opens your brain up to learning. You’re, you’re looking forward to, it’s a forward thinking identity rather than a passive identity. So as an emotional eater, we wanna become an apprentice of emotional mastery. Now why is this important? Well, this is a learning journey, and all heroes on their journey are apprentices. They are learning lessons. And you are gonna be learning the lesson of shifting out of emotional eating and becoming an apprentice of emotional mastery. So now, if and when you are emotionally eating, you are not reinforcing the old belief that you are an emotional eater, but you are in learning mode using whatever happens as a lesson to improve and get better, to proceed to emotional mastery.

Rita Black: So emotional eating for you now becomes a classroom and a way to learn and heal rather than something bad that just gets reinforced every time you do it and you feel bad about yourself, it re it reinforces those old limiting beliefs. So now you’re shifting out of that. You have shifted identities so many times in your life perhaps when you were a student and you went out into the real world and became a professional, you stepped into being a professional or you became an adult. You maybe shifted from being an apartment renter to a homeowner at one point, or you became a car owner or a dog owner. It. And usually these shifts of identities happen very quickly. When if you ever got married the moment you said I do, you stepped into being a wife or a husband or a partner.

Rita Black: You when you, if you ever had a child, when your child was presented to you, you really stepped into that role of being a parent. These things you step into and you begin to adapt to. When we are presented with a new and more powerful identity, the mind sees it as an adventure of transformation and the brain loves to do this. And in our upcoming cognitive coaching and hypnosis session, we will take you even deeper into shifting this identity. But for the moment, imagine slipping out of your emotional eating identity. Now take a deep breath in and let that identity go.

Rita Black: Just give yourself permission to let it go. Now take another deep breath in and put your hand over your heart and bring in your new emotional mastery apprentice identity, making the commitment to show up for yourself and learn and develop that powerful emotional mastery muscle in your mind. Take another deep breath in, just really lock that in. Very good. Alright, now apprentice of emotional eating mastery. Nice to meet you. Let’s move on to vision. Now, like I said, the pain pushes until the vision pulls. So it’s important that we create a vision for you. And this is your new emotional mastery apprentice. Moving towards this vision, every hero is pulled forth into action by a powerful vision of who they’re becoming and the outcome they are creating. And that will allow them to be transformed, taking that journey, engaging in that journey. Our brain doesn’t work with negatives.

Rita Black: It doesn’t like negatives. So if you have been trying not to emotionally eat and have been unsuccessful, it is probably because you have been focusing on not emotionally eating, but you haven’t given your brain any idea of what it wants in its place. So let’s create a vision of your achieving emotional mastery. We will be working on this more deeply in the preventing emotional eating hypnosis. But for the moment, just close your eyes, take a deep breath in and close your eyes if you can. And take a moment. Start to imagine what that might look like. A vision of you out in your future six months from now, managing stressful days, managing emotions that come up from the inside out. See yourself reacting to the stresses of life with calm authority. See yourself advocating for yourself, soothing yourself with comforting practices like taking a deep breath, with using your mind to soothe you and not food to soothe you, but where you are soothing yourself. Instead, it is totally possible for this to happen, but if any negative thoughts come up like this is silly or this is stupid, this ain’t possible, thank those thoughts for sharing and come back to the image. We will be working with those thoughts later. Just keep focusing on being open to the idea that this is possible and that you are now on the path of fulfilling this vision.

Rita Black: Just for now. I want you to think of that emotionally masterful you out in that future, moving through your life, handling feelings, stresses, emotions with having, without having to eat over them. What does that look like? And now I’d like you to look into that emotional masterful you out in your future. I’d like you to look into their eyes and see the confidence and compassion and strength in those eyes. How does this emotional masterful you look healthier, slimmer? What are they wearing?

Rita Black: And I’d like you to notice how this emotionally masterful you is reaching out their hand to you to join hands with you and just join hands in your imagination and feel that strength. I would like to suggest this emotional masterful you is your inner guide on your journey to emotional mastery. So you’ve created this in your mind, this emotionally masterful you and they are your guide. They’re here to coach you, to nurture you, to nurture and soothe you, and to be a powerful inner support for you on these days ahead. Take a breath. And now imagine becoming one with this powerful, you just imagine melting into that. Imagine becoming one with this powerful you imagine joining forces, this inner emotional guide. And now imagine inner mind taking that first step out onto your journey with that guide within you, you have begun. Now open your eyes. Good job. Now that might have felt a little weird, maybe you didn’t see everything at, and that’s okay. We we’re just starting to open up that door. We are gonna be working on this more in the cognitive coaching and hypnosis session.

Rita Black: So now you have a journey, you have started and you’ve begun letting the reluctance go. You have an identity as an apprentice of emotional mastery, you now have a vision of where you are heading. And most importantly, you now have a powerful inner emotional guide that’s gonna help you through the journey and to be there to support you. So now let’s get started with one powerful skill of preventing emotional eating. And that skill is called self connecting or the check-in tool. Now here’s the idea of self connecting. Often an emotional eating response happens because we spend too much time focused outside of ourselves and we don’t even notice the stress, emotions, fatigue and overwhelm building up until it’s too late. The skill of self connecting is creating the habit of checking in on your interstate throughout your day like you would a friend, Hey, how’s it going?

Rita Black: Are you okay? But often we check in on everything and everyone except ourselves, we rush through our day almost only in our minds not even paying attention to our body or our body’s needs or what feelings are going on within our body until it’s too late. The stress or the emotion or the hunger or the fatigue hit a peak. And then we find ourselves mindlessly eating or even eating with intention too numb. So the skill of checking in on yourself, your body and emotional state is a way to be your own best friend throughout the day and to start to create emotional mastery and resilience. You know how sports coaches call huddles throughout the game to get the team back on track. These check-ins are similar. They, I call them self-care huddles. You do one with yourself and they can be really fast may, they may be take a minute or two, but they help you tend to yourself your needs every few hours.

Rita Black: This can help you calm yourself down and think things through or feed yourself or give yourself some coaching before things reach an emotional eating point. These daily check-in huddles also serve as a way to calm your brain down. They are what I like to call brain breaks in a way. Your brain actually needs breaks to perform well. Cognitive studies show that every couple of hours our mind needs a brain break. All the stimulation from our digital lives and social interactions and decision making and stress and emotions. It needs a steam valve of sorts. And if we don’t decompress our brain every couple of hours, we get overwhelmed. We can’t think anymore, we can’t recall names, and our brains don’t perform well. We get emotional, we get cranky. So if you are hesitant to take these check-in breaks if you think I don’t have time or that sounds silly, realize it’s not only a part of your weight management plan and self-care plan, but it is also really a part of your productivity plan for the day as well. So here’s how a check-in goes. And you can try this with me if you aren’t driving or if you are driving, wait just wait until you can listen to this later or pull to the side right now and just sit for a moment and take a nice deep breath in and close your eyes in our preventing emotional eating hypnosis session. We’re gonna work on this shift breath by anchoring in a feeling of wellbeing with this breath. But for now, just take a deep breath in and then another one.

Rita Black: And then if your eyes aren’t closed, please close your eyes now. Just tune into your body. Yes, you have one. Did you forget? We often do. But just for now, just notice all the feelings going on in your body. Ask yourself what is going on in my body right now? And just notice you may be feeling a lot of electricity or stress, or maybe you feel calm or maybe you feel hungry or thirsty, and you need to tend to that before it becomes too hungry or thirsty and you end up overeating. So just scan your body and notice everything good and just take another deep breath in and send a wave of relaxation to the parts of your body that have any tension. If you’re feeling emotions, this will be your moment to notice this and to work with your emotions, with tools you will be learning. But for now, just tune in and notice, isn’t this nice? We aren’t done. Now the next question is, what is going on in my mind? What are you thinking? Are there any negative thoughts or are you feeling good and calm?

Rita Black: Are there thoughts of what you expect you need to get done causing some stress? Don’t worry, you’re gonna learn how to manage these, but for now, just tune in and notice. And now the next question, what do I need right now? What do I need right now? Are you feeling tired? Do you need a longer break? Do you, do you need a healthy snack, a drink of water? Do you need to give yourself a little love because you are feeling down? It’s amazing how just caring about yourself in this compassionate way can calm us right down. Do your best to tend to your needs because by doing so, now you are averting a future stress or emotional eating episode. Now, last question. What will I need later? So maybe you don’t need anything in the moment, but maybe you note that you will need to take a break in an hour or to make sure you stop and eat some lunch at noon.

Rita Black: Maybe you need to talk with the coworker who slightly you off and you need to process some stuff and get some things clear this checking in process, take a breath, close your eyes, ask What is going on in my body? What is going on in my mind? What do I need right now? What will I need later? Is a quick but powerful way to regulate your brain, body, and emotions over the course of your day. What are the times I suggest? Well, I think waking up and doing this before you get outta bed will start your day with so much more mindfulness and it will set you up for success mid-morning, midday, afternoon, before dinner, even in the evening. If you are someone who might be snacking at night mindlessly, this can help a lot. I wanna walk you through what this might look like.

Rita Black: And I’m going to use my client, Jeanie, when she came to see me, she was depleted and spent struggling with her weight and feeling totally out of control with her eating. She said, I eat my feelings and I don’t even know what I’m eating. I’m just eating to calm down. I eat for stress, I eat when I’m mad. I eat when I’m sad. Jeannie was 50 and totally sandwiched in between raising teenage kids. Her daughter was in club volleyball and her son was struggling with math and also taking care of her 80-year-old diabetic mom who lived with her. She also worked full-time for a property management company, and her husband worked construction. So he was up and out of the house early and often was away a few days a week on job sites out of the city. So Jeanie was waking up to a huge list of things she needed to do in order just to get out of the house in the morning. Her first thoughts were, hurry up as she went through getting the kids together, breakfast lunches, getting her mom, her coffee and medication, getting herself into the car and off to work. And she was lucky if she had time to eat anything. There was no self-care happening, just reaction to the needs of the day, like she was running a marathon.

Rita Black: And when she got to work, it was more of the same since she was the office manager, she started with her emails and then calls coming in, and then she was making sure that the plumbers and the electricians and the handymen were getting the things needed done on the properties, as well as managing the bookkeeping and following up on collecting past due rents. Around 10:00 AM she would usually find herself in the staff room, pouring a cup of coffee, putting lots of creamer in, and grabbing what there was maybe donuts from yesterday leftover half of a sandwich or even granola bars. She would spend about five minutes in there coming down, just coming down, eating to come down from her big dizzy morning and it made her feel more calm. But when she got back to her desk, she felt mad at herself. She should have brought something healthier to eat.

Rita Black: Why was she such a failure? These were the thoughts going on in her mind. Let soon the phone would ring and she was off to more managing until about one o’clock when she hurriedly ate a sandwich or a pizza that somebody ordered for the staff with a diet Coke. And then back to work, not even stopping to use the bathroom sometimes or even taking a drink of water until about three 30 when the other office manager came in. By that time it was time to leave to pick up her daughter and son and get her son home for tutoring and then to check in on her mom and give her her meds. And then her daughter off to volleyball practice where she sat in the car snacked on something she picked up at Starbucks to have while she was responded to more emails from work and then calling in to check in on her mom and her son.

Rita Black: And once she got home, she was making dinner, and then she snacked on tortilla chips while she cooked, always feeling a little stressed and behind. And by the time dinner rolled around, she tried to eat healthfully. Maybe she had some salad and some vegetables. But as she cleaned up, she mindlessly ate some of the pasta off her daughter’s plate and her husband hits bed early because he has to wake up early. So when the kids and her mom head for the rooms for the night, she finally gets to sit in front of the TV and finds that ice cream totally helps her soothe her long crazy day. And she goes to bed now mad at herself for being out of control. She never means to eat the ice cream, but it calls her name so loudly. Wow! I feel tired just thinking of Jeannie’s day.

Rita Black: But you can see how her emotional and comfort eating is the only coping mechanism that she’s had to deal with all the busyness and stress of her day. Jeanie isn’t at fault, she’s just trying to survive. But she got caught in this vicious cycle of just trying to survive and keep up, which is now hard to break. Jeanie spent all of her life focused on responses outside of herself until it was too late and food was the only thing she had to douse out the fire of her inner life. Maybe you can relate. So what we needed to do first was to start to give Jeanie the ability to begin to slow down and become mindful, to be her own best friend. And what was going on on the inside of Jeannie. Tuning into that, instead of just tending to the world and its needs, she needed to tune into Jeannie and her needs before the needs turned into mindlessly eating as a response. How well was starting with connecting with herself many times over the course of her day with the check-in.

Rita Black: Now you can imagine how a busy person like Jeanie was going to react to the idea of check-ins. What? I can’t do that. I mean, it sounds nice, but I don’t have time to brush my teeth, let alone check in on myself. She said, I explained to her, as I’m explaining to you, check-ins don’t take much time, but they will not only calm down your mind and help you prevent emotional eating, but they also let you connect with that powerful emotional manager inside of you, and you will not feel so alone because maybe right now you’re feeling very alone with all of this. Jeanie began to tear up. Yes, I feel very alone and helpless. I don’t know how to stop the madness. And it feels like a madness. I mean, it feels like I can’t keep going like this. Would you be willing to try this on? I asked.

Rita Black: Okay, I guess so what do I do? So I walked Jeanie through what I walked you through also mentioning that you can have a preset check-in that you do every day, but also just when you start to feel in your mind or your body, that feelings beginning to feel that stimulation. Then you can also do a check-in. So Jeanie began her day with a check-in, in bed in the morning, and it was hard. She wanted to get right outta bed right away and started taking care of everybody else. But she did it. She took a breath and she made herself do it. She closed her eyes and tuned into her body and she began to notice how her heart was racing. So she took a few more deep breaths and just slowed down and asked herself the question, what do I need today? And that calm voice in her mind said, you need to remember to bring lunch.

Rita Black: What else? You stop at 10 o’clock and drink some water and breathe again instead of going to the staff room. Well, that was interesting, Jeanie thought. So she got outta bed and she noticed that as she went through her mourning getting ready, she felt not just more calm, but she felt like she was connected to her body a bit more. She did another check in when she dropped the kids at school before heading to work, calming herself again, what do I need? The voice said, I need to have quiet in the car and not that news blaring on the way to work. Maybe I should have some peaceful music. And she noticed how nice and soothing the classical music channel was. She didn’t even really like listening to news, but it was just a stressor blaring in the background. And when she got to work, she fought the urge to get out of her car and dash inside to her desk.

Rita Black: But she just took another moment to check in again while that calming music played and she noticed she needed to eat, and she had a hard boiled egg that she brought to stabilize herself before her morning. So she ate it and promised herself to check in again mid-morning. And as she went through her day checking in every couple of hours, her day flowed better. She felt more connected to herself, less in need of going to the staff room to stuff down feelings with food. And for a quick midday break, instead of going to the staff room, she decided to take a couple of minutes and go outside with her water bottle and sit in the sun, which felt amazing as she went through her workday. She still got her work done, but she did it without all the fire alarms going off in her head.

Rita Black: And if they did go off, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes and took five more breaths, which just calmed her down in the afternoon when she took her daughter to volleyball, she opted not to go to Starbucks. And she asked herself what she really needed, and she realized what she needed was a walk and she took that instead. And when she walked, she thought about what she needed that evening. And it was then that she also planned to have a small but healthy snack before making dinner so that she wouldn’t mindlessly snack. And when she tuned in after dinner, instead of eating ice cream in front of the tv, she noticed what her body really wanted was a hot bath and a cup of herbal tea. And so she gave it to herself. Okay, I hope this session served you. Let’s all take a nice deep breath and connect and be ready. How am I? Am I good? Yes, you are. Let’s have a great week. So stay tuned next week when we dive into the world of social eating. And in the meantime, hit subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Have a great week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it. See you next week.

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