Speaker 1: It’s frustrating, right? You probably know enough about weight loss and dieting to write your own New York Times bestselling weight loss book. And yet when it comes to keeping weight off permanently, it just seems impossible. In today’s podcast, I reveal subconscious reasons why you may still be struggling despite your years of weight loss experience. And I will also give you some very doable ways you can begin to turn this around on the subconscious level. So come on in to the Thin Thinking Podcast.

: Did you 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.

Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to today’s episode. As I am recording this, we are deep into Spring in Los Angeles. So the flowers are blooming and the grass is green. It’s my favorite time of year. I actually planted tulip bulbs in Los Angeles for the very first time this year. Well, the very first time in 20 years, and they came up and it’s just so sweet because in Los Angeles, you really don’t see tulip bulbs too much, but we have daffodils and tulips, and it’s just beautiful. So if you’re listening from a colder part of the world, don’t be jealous. In a few months, it will pretty much be dead and brown here. And we’ll be back to business as usual here in Southern California. And you’ll have your lovely lush green life surrounding you. But I do love this time of year. It’s like we’re all coming out of hibernation mode and the longer days just does something to my mood, at least.

Speaker 1: And now with things hopefully turning around with this pandemic, I hope you’re feeling a little more hope in your heart as well. Speaking of hope, I hope that those of you who are ready to leave us a review for the Thin Thinking Podcast will stay tuned to the end of today’s episode, where I’m going to share with you how you can turn your review into a chance to win a free seat in my upcoming online 30 day Shift Weight Mastery Process that will be starting at the beginning of May 2021. So info on how to write a review and enter the drawing is going to be available at the end of this podcast, as well as in the show notes.

: So now here is the big question that we are addressing here today in episode two…I know everything there is to know about weight loss, why am I still struggling? As a hypnotherapist and someone who helps people, coaches people, guides people into long-term permanent weight mastery, believe me, I hear that question all of the time. You know, by the time people have decided to approach and use something like hypnosis and use their mind, they’ve pretty much gone through probably every diet or regime. I know meditation and hypnosis are now coming to the forefront a lot more, but especially in the early days of my career, you know, cause I’ve been in business for over 20 years, people were a little more wary of hypnosis or using my techniques. So the people who would come to me would be like, okay, I’ve done every single diet. Now I think there’s something wrong with my mind. And I think I need your help. Right? I know everything there is to know I’m still not doing it. What is wrong with me?

: And you know, when it comes to weight mastery and really busting through those barriers, it’s hard because we are dealing with the mind. And if we don’t start with our mind first, the food, the exercise, it does elude us. So I get people coming to me who are weight loss professionals. These are people who make a living for weight loss, but for themselves, they might still be struggling. Or a lot of them are struggling when they come to see me. So they might know everything there is to know about the food. They might know everything there is to know about the exercise, but they still struggle with, you know, what I call fat thinking and get into thinking those roadblocks, those mental roadblocks that just keep them from that, getting that own their own mind wrapped around it in the right way.

Speaker 1: I know when I struggled up and down the scale 40 pounds, I honestly did think I was insane. I really, really did. I had all these different voices in my head and we’re going to be talking about some of those voices, because I think you might have them too. So I want to tell you a story of my own insanity, because the story just sorta underlines a lot of what the struggle I feel like you might be in right now, but mine was amplified like 10 times because the summer just was the quintessential weight struggle story. So, after my freshman year of college, I decided to go home to Seattle, for many reasons, one was to work and make more money for college, but two was to be in my brother’s wedding.

Speaker 1: And so I came home and in my second term in NYU, I was working really hard to lose weight because I’d actually gained a bunch of weight at Christmas time after losing weight in the autumn. Can you see a trend here? And anyway, so I had dieted down and I literally was eating stuff like salads with that zero calorie dressing. I mean, like it was pathetic. It was, you know, there was just so such meagerness going on in the way I was feeding myself, but I was committed, committed. I was going to go home and I was going to be thin and I was going to look great for my brother’s wedding. And I was going to live happily ever after. So as I touched down in Seattle, I was about five pounds above what I would call my ideal weight.

Speaker 1: But I was not quite satisfied and I felt I needed to lose five more pounds. So I got off the plane and I headed home with my family. And of course my mother being the major cook and baker that she was, there was a huge feast laid out before me. Now I thought, oh, I’ve gotta be good. I’ve gotta be good. But of course I ended up eating everything, bingeing, eating even more and pretty much eating, you know, every single thing in sight for the next few days. I spent the weekend thinking, okay, I’ll start on Monday. Right? Our famous refrain. So anyway, get on the scale on Monday. And now, instead of being five pounds above my ideal weight, I’m now eight pounds above my ideal weight. And I think, okay, well, I can manage this. I’m going to just pull it together this week.

Speaker 1: Now I’m going to eat the lettuce, chicken and broccoli, super hard exercise. And I’m going to get that eight pounds off this week. No problem. So, you know, first day, second day doing great third day, fourth day, doing great. And then of course, you know, around Friday, the weekend again, I went out with some friends and what do you do? And when you’re in Seattle, you go to Kidd Valley, this place where I used to work, which is a hamburger stand and oh my gosh, they make the best hamburgers and milkshakes and all that stuff. So off we went and I was like, okay, well, since I’m at Kidd Valley, then I just might as well eat more on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And oh, by the way, did I mention I was making my brother’s cake? Yeah. So that also meant I had to bake and sample frosting and cake.

Speaker 1: And, I’m going to get into my whole cake thing in later podcasts, but I am a cakeoholic and a frostingoholic. So, for me to be making my brother’s cake, then I’m losing weight and all of this, it was just a hot mess. So by the end of the second weekend, not only was I eight pounds above my ideal weight, I was now 10 pounds above my ideal weight. So I said, no problem. The summer is long. I’ve got three months before I have to head back to NYU. I’ve got a month before my brother’s wedding. I’m going to whip this into shape. I’m going to be so fricking perfect. You’re not even going to believe it. Chicken and broccoli, chicken and broccoli, whatever the healthiest foods were.

Speaker 1: I’m just going to be a little saint and bang this out, get that weight down the scale. So now what was complicating things was the fact that I had gotten a job summer. Can I just tell you how I did not set myself up for success for the summer whatsoever, right. I’m like, what was I thinking? Because, this summer I was working at this place called Delaurentis in Seattle. Now, if any of, you know, Seattle, and if any of, you know, the Pike’s Place Market in Seattle, Delaurentis is a famous Italian deli there. It’s quite famous. It’s probably been bought out by a corporation by now, cause this was a long time ago.

Speaker 1: But I had a job, you know, in the department where I was doling out like goodies and weighing flour. And I knew about Italian food because I’d worked in New York at a deli there as well. So I had a fairly good understanding of Italian food. And of course through eating lots of Italian food, I had a very good understanding of it, but there I was down at Pike’s Place Market. And for those of you who don’t know that you could just imagine it’s just like a food forum, where every day you could go to a different place and try different foods. So it was just like a food lovers extravaganza. And here I was, I was trying to be chicken and broccoli in the midst of all this food, the smells of Delaurentis, there was a pizza counter, there was, you know, the cappuccino counter and it was just a lot. And here I was, you know, trying to be good on a diet, what a joke. So the first week at Delaurentis, oh, you must try this and try this cheese and you must do this. So every night I go home. And I say, well, I blew it today. I might as well eat a big dinner and I’ll start again tomorrow and start again tomorrow. So you can see the running theme here. So by the time it was my brother’s wedding a month later, not only was I 10 pounds above the scale, I was about 20 pounds above the scale. And it was horrifying because I had bought this dress for the slimmer me and I was not wearing that. I had to go out with my mom and get a bigger dress.

Speaker 1: And I was so disappointed in myself and getting sort of unraveled here because I was like, holy crap. You know, like it’s all coming apart at the seams. And the more I tried to lose weight, the more desperate I got. So the more desperately I tried to diet, you know, drinking only water for a day. I mean, literally limiting myself so much because now I was like, I was doing math. I was like, okay, it’s two months left. And I’ve got, you know, 20 pounds to lose. Let’s divide that by, you know, eight and that’s, you know, three or four pounds a week. How can I do that? I think that’s right. My math is so bad, but anyway, I definitely was challenged. And so my stress kept mounting. The promises I made to myself kept getting bigger.

Speaker 1: So by the time the summer was almost done, I was over 35 pounds overweight. And my mom, and people who saw me at the beginning of the summer and my friends, nobody said anything, except you could see it in their eyes. I’d struggled with my weight. Everybody knew I was a struggle or a yo-yo dieter, but I think this was like one of those summers where people were like, maybe there is a problem here. And I definitely felt insane. You know, I would go to bed at night, just beating myself up and saying, you’ve got to pull yourself together. And you’re going back to New York. You’ve got to look good. You know, like literally that last week, I was like, if I do not eat anything all week, and if I exercise for three hours a day, maybe I can lose 10 pounds.

Speaker 1: And of course that didn’t happen. So I ended up going back to New York, getting out of the cab at my dorm. And my roommates literally looked at me like, what the hell happened to you? Never go back to Seattle for the summer. Again, promise me, you know, they were just shaking their heads and they just couldn’t believe it. And neither could I, it was heartbreaking. So we feel that we are insane. You know, because I knew how to diet, I knew how to lose weight. But I just could not get myself to do it. And maybe you feel the same way too. I am assuming that if you’re listening to this podcast, you are hoping to get some more tools to help you get over those mental humps, the things that seem to be your roadblocks to your success.

Speaker 1: Okay. So that’s my horrific story of my horrific summer. And, you know, my being convinced I was insane. And if you have been struggling, maybe you have felt insane too, or just like, what is wrong with me? You know, do I need a lobotomy? Do I need to be put into a rehab facility? I mean, wouldn’t it be great if we could all go to that deserted island and just nothing was around us. And we worked out with trainers like they did, you know, in the Biggest Loser. Oh, that would be great, but no, we live in the real world and we need to really powerfully learn to communicate with ourselves so that we can release weight for the last time. So now when it comes to this struggle, what’s going on are a couple of things. You are absolutely not crazy.

Speaker 1: There is nothing wrong with you. But there are two things from the way I see it that are going on. One is the way our brain is designed. And the other is the crazy weight loss culture that is built out of these weird unrealistic expectations. So let me talk about the mind first. So when it comes to weight loss, I mean, or anything, here’s one of the challenges is that our mind is really divided into two, right? We have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind, and the conscious mind is our logical rational willpower part of our mind. And this is the part of the mind that will usually put us on a diet. This is the part of the mind that knows about weight loss and exercise and all those good things, right? This is the part of the mind that’s like eat less, exercise more, start on Monday, come on, let’s go.

Speaker 1: And then there’s the subconscious mind. Well, you know how that conscious mind, it wants us to lose weight? It puts us on the diet, is very, very invested in our losing weight. Our subconscious mind pretty much wants things to stay the same. Yeah. Business as usual in our subconscious mind. We have our beliefs. We have beliefs like food tastes good when I feel bad. And my metabolism is slow and I love to eat a whole plate of food. And one is not enough. And chocolate makes me happy, you know. And then we have our habits and those are those repeatable patterns that happen over and over again, beneath our consciousness. So even though we might want to come home and exercise, if we’ve been coming home and cracking a beer and opening up a sleeve of crackers, that’s unconscious mind has that pretty much wired in.

Speaker 1: And we will feel compelled to do that. Even though consciously we’ve said, hey, let’s go home and exercise we ended up cracking that beer or that sleeve of crackers and saying, why am I doing this? This is crazy. And then we also have other things, like our memory is in our subconscious mind. Our imagination is in our subconscious mind and even our identity’s in our subconscious mind, our emotions, all of these things sort of swirl around together in this 88% that wants us pretty much to state the same. So when 12% of our mind wants us to be good and wants us to lose weight, that 88% wants things to say the same. What will happen now, where you might go on a diet and you might lose weight or go on a regime or go on some sort of thing and you get so far, but unless you’re really impacting your subconscious mind, unless you’re making deeper changes, ultimately what will happen is, you know, a month later, six months later, something will happen.

: And that subconscious mind is just there sitting there kind of waiting for the diet to be over. So it’s like, yeah, business as usual. So you know, those of you who are baffled by the fact that, you know, in the past, maybe you have been able to pull it together and lose weight for a month or six months, or until the reunion happens, or, you know, until, you win the contest or whatever it is, or until you fit into your skinny clothes. A lot of times we will go back to the old behaviors that caused us to gain weight in the first place unfortunately. So, that is what is really working against us.

Speaker 1: And that’s why it’s so important to get tools, to get working with your subconscious mind. We’re going to look at a couple of those today. And the other thing is, is that we have a crazy weight loss culture that is built of weird unrealistic expectations, right? I mean, think of any of the diets that you have gone on in your life. And, you know, you read a diet book and it promises you, okay, everything’s going to be great. You follow this structure, you’re going win. You’re gonna lose weight and life is going to be great. And you know, you see pictures posted on Instagram and social media and you see the before and after pictures and all the dieting, uh, culture really promises like if you’ve got it together to be good and really be disciplined focused, and, and you know, this perfect person, then not only will you lose weight, but you are going to live happily ever after.

Speaker 1: And it just promotes the idea that all the answers are outside of you, you know, whether it’s going to a guru or, you know, the specific exercise class. Any of these things might work, but unless you’re communicating powerfully with yourself, unless you’re really engaging yourself on a deeper level, none of these external things are going to be successful in the long run. But we live in a culture that is like, you are going to walk off into the skinny sunset and live happily ever after. It never is realistic to say, because, you know what? Long-term permanent weight management is a continuing story. It is a journey with yourself and it is a relationship with yourself that you need to continue to tend to. And I don’t mean this in a harsh disciplinary way. I just mean like your journey.

Speaker 1: If you talk to anybody who’s taken weight off and kept it off long-term, it wasn’t like, oh yeah, I lost the weight. And then it was all good. Yeah. They are continuing their journey. It is a continuing journey into maintenance and into long-term maintenance. And it’s a powerful journey. It is an exciting journey, but it isn’t a journey where you just lose the weight and then you can check out, you know, whatever you want or, you know, and, and I think that that’s really, uh, our screwy dieting culture. So here’s the thing. This is what I want to get into today is to get some thin thinking strategies to get that 12% of your mind working together with that 88% of the mind, what we’re going to look at is two things. We’re going to look at our identity and our beliefs.

Speaker 1: I feel like those are like the core of our challenge. And, you know, are some of the biggest roadblocks that we have on our journey, at least in beginning our journey of weight mastery. Because, you know, when I lead a shift weight mastery process, we start with identity because any transformation starts at the core and at the core is our identity. And our identity is really how we see ourselves. You know, it’s who we are in the world. And also we get labeled with identities from the external world, but really how we see ourselves in the world and our place in the world is at the root of identity. And the interesting thing is we all have multiple identities. It’s not like we just have one, like I am a mom, I am a wife, I’m a Southern California and I am a hypnotherapist.

Speaker 1: I am a gardener or like to think I am, except when you, you know, see my Brussels sprouts aren’t really growing very well. I’m a bike biker. You know, I’m a hiker, you know, and I’m an enthusiast of food. I love to cook. I love to entertain, you know, those are all identities that I have, and I’m sure you have a lot of identities and there’s so many identities out there. So all of my identities kind of swirl around in my mind and allow me to think, see myself as I am out in the world, like it creates my identity. And one of my identities is I am a weight master, or I’m not, I don’t see myself as like the master master, like somebody who has like a black belt in karate, but I am on a mastery journey.

Speaker 1: Right. And I am an apprentice of weight mastery, and apprentice is an ongoing apprenticeship. So I see myself in that, and what happens is when we struggle with our weight, we see ourselves as a weight struggler, and we live in this world of struggle. You know? We struggle with food, right? It’s like a food fight. We’re always in a fight with food. Good, bad. You know, it’s always like, should I have this in my house? Should I not have it in my house? Should I order it? Should I not order it? Is it good, is it bad? What am I going to eat today? Oh, I hope I don’t eat that at the party. It’s such a struggle. And then exercise. I’ve got to exercise. Oh my God, how am I going to exercise? Oh, I haven’t exercised in a week, you know? Oh, I’ve been exercising. Oh, I’m, you know, I hurt my hip.

Speaker 1: You know, it’s a struggle. And we struggle with our body. Oh my gosh, I feel fat. Oh my God, feel the rolls on my stomach. Oh my God. I wish my legs would be longer. Oh my gosh. Look at the flap on the back of my arms, you know? And then, and then we also struggle with saboteurs, you know, those other people in our life who say, oh come on, have a brownie. I baked them for you. Oh, look, you guys. I got you some bagels, you know.

Speaker 1: And on and on. And we struggle with the scale and my God, I was so good. Why is this scale up to day? You know, all of these things. We live in a world of struggle where we’re always struggling is on our mind. You know, I have clients who come to me, beautiful clients who have these lives, that seem so amazing. And they’re like Rita, I can’t even enjoy my life because I’m thinking about my weight and my struggle with weight all the time. It’s obsessing my mind! And our weight struggle identity, it is sticky, sticky. And what I mean by that is you know, is something that we bring with us wherever we go. And no matter how much weight we lose, we still see ourselves as a struggler.

Speaker 1: And that’s why a lot of people still struggle. They can go on the diet and lose weight, but they’re still in a struggle. You know, and, and that’s why a lot of times, people have told me, they said I lost the weight, but then I didn’t, I still didn’t believe in myself. And I didn’t believe I could keep the weight off. A lot of people when they approach their ideal way to get very nervous. Like, am I going to be able to do this? Cause I’m a struggler. And it just doesn’t seem like I’m going to feel confident because we have this identity and being a struggler. It really thoughts our success because it predicts our future because I struggled. Therefore I am. So, you know, when we’re starting on any weight loss attempt, we are a struggler going on a weight loss attempt, right?

: So in our deep subconscious mind, we’re like, well, I’m a struggler. You know, I’m somebody who I can’t trust myself, I’m not good on a diet. I’ve never, you know, lost my weight and kept it off. So we have all these beliefs that create the identity that we’re bringing with ourselves on the diet. And what chance in hell do you think somebody is going to have of being successful? If they see themselves as a struggler, you know, strugglers also our identity takes your power away, right? Because it makes us a victim, right? We give so much power away to the struggle, you know, and we make excuses to ourselves about ourselves. So it was so hard for me. I can’t do it. I don’t have a metabolism. I hate to exercise. I don’t like vegetables. You know, we’ll make excuses to ourselves. We’ll give our power away to these things outside of ourselves. My husband doesn’t respect the fact that I want to lose weight. And he just is always tempting me.

Speaker 1: I work with smokers too, by the way. And I’m going to use the smoker identity shift because I think it’s a little more clear cut than what I’m going to get into with the weight. I mean, the weight and smoking, there’s a lot of similarities and I work with smokers by the way, because I, if you don’t know about me, I am a former, also a pack and a half a day smoker. So not only did I struggle up and down the scale of 40 pounds, I was puffing away while I was doing it too, if anybody is curious. ButI quit smoking with hypnosis. Thank you very much hypnosis. And in that hypnosis session, I became a non-smoker and that shift is so clear. And you know, when I work with smokers, you know, the thing with the smoker is they live in the world of smoking.

Speaker 1: They see themselves, they self identify as a smoker. So they might be a mom or a dad or a lawyer, but they’re also a smoker. And when they quote unquote, try not to smoke, they are still in a smoker mindset. And they’re trying not to smoke and their mind just doesn’t get it. It’s like, but I’m a smoker. So they feel deprived. They feel victimized. They feel like this is being taken away from them. So we don’t go that way. We work with the brain the right way. We say, Hey, no, you’re going to decide to be a non-smoker. And you’re going to step into this, the whole new idea of yourself and really recreate it’s a transformation, right? So instead of a weight struggler, I’m going to give you a suggestion. I’m going to say, join me and become a weight mastery learner, become a learner or an apprentice.

Speaker 1: Now why is being an apprentice so powerful? You know, again, we want you to take your power back from this struggler identity. It doesn’t suit you. You’re not a victim, you’re a powerful person. And the more power you take back, the more power you have from all of this nonsense. And, you know, look, I don’t mean to call it nonsense. It’s it’s real. But you know, when you start to poke holes in it and say, Hey, you know what, maybe that struggle, eh, it was fun in the beginning, but aren’t you tired of it? Let’s, let’s try something new on. And you know, in your subconscious mind is your imagination. And that’s what I love to engage people in is, is seeing themselves, you know, from their imagination in a whole new way, you’re taking, you’re giving back your power or you’re taking your, sorry. You’re taking all that victim hood of being in that struggle. And you’re going, I don’t need that anymore. I’m going to become an apprentice of weight mastery and weight mastery journey is a learner’s journey. And you can start it. And why I feel like an apprenticeship is so important is because a learner can start from anywhere they are. If you’ve never tried to lose weight before or release weight before it’s not a problem. If you have hundreds of pounds to lose, not a problem. If you have five pounds to release, not a problem at any point,

Speaker 1: You can become an apprentice. And, and here’s what happens in your brain when you are a learner versus a struggler. Is that anything that happens to you in the learning journey? All good, meaningyou overeat, you go to the buffet table and you plan to eat something healthy and you end up loading up some macaroni and cheese and eating it. Oh. Why did I do that? Well, in a struggler mindset, that reinforces your idea that you’re a failure. You’re not disciplined. You’re a fat pig. What are, however, you’d speak to yourself in an apprentice mindset. You say, Oh, that didn’t work for me, what did I learn from that?

Speaker 1: And you begin to start to self-correct those things that are getting in your way, those beliefs and those habits that are stopping you, because what happens when we just say, Oh, well, I blew it. And we go back to the beginning, or I’ll start again tomorrow, or I’ll go off this diet and I’ll start a new one is that we don’t learn anything. And really long-term weight mastery is a learning journey. It’s a self-correcting learning journey where we learn about our behaviors. We learn about our thinking. We learn what is stopping us. And we say, okay, let me fix that. Now, let me find a solution. And our brain is powerful. It’s like a computer. It will start to help you find the solutions, but you need to start to come from a new framework. And that framework in neuro-linguistic programming, they call it a reframe.

Speaker 1: You are reframing how you see yourself to yourself. And the reframe is I am no longer a struggler, but I’m an apprentice. In my shift weight mastery process, I believe in this so much, you know, in the very beginning, everybody signs an apprentice contract because, and it’s amazing what happens to people when they start coming at this from the eyes of a learner and apprentice is they start connecting with themselves. They start respecting themselves because they’re learning. They’re like, and you know that feeling when you go to school or if you, you know, you’ve signed up for an adult education class, or you do that thing, it’s like, Oh, I’m learning, I’m learning. And we see self, see ourselves from a much more powerful place. We respect ourselves. Oh, I just learned something there. And, and it does something. And a lot of our long-term permanent weight mastery journey is about staying connected and showing up for ourselves in those moments that we used to abandon ourselves abandoned ship and just go screw it.

Speaker 3: I’ll start over tomorrow. Or I’ll start over next month or I’ll start over next year. And I just don’t want to think about, and we want to get turned on, tuned up and be engaged from a completely different place. And that’s the place of a learner. Okay. So that is number one, identity. All right. Now, now that we’ve looked at identity, I want to look at the next piece of the puzzle, which is our limiting beliefs around our ability to be successful. So our belief system, our weight struggler belief system, we develop beliefs about food, eating and ourselves at a very early age. And it’s deeply rooted in our subconscious. We develop beliefs around food. Food is love. Food is comfort. Food relaxes me beliefs around our weight. I am fat. I have no metabolism. I am the biggest in my family, or I’m the biggest amongst my friends, beliefs about other people’s weight.

Speaker 3: Skinny people are lucky. Skinny people have it together, and that’s why they are thin. And then we develop beliefs about our body. My body is broken. My body is ugly. My thighs are disgusting. You know, a former client of mine was a world famous singer. You probably know who this person is. And this woman is hailed as sexy and beautiful by millions and millions of fans. And you know what she had to say about her body? She said, my body looks like a buffalo seriously. I mean, you know, it makes your jaw drop. When you think about that, and you think about you look at these beautiful people and you think, well, they don’t have a care in the world. Well, think again, we also have beliefs about our ability to lose weight. I am a sugar addict. I have no willpower.

Speaker 3: I’m a bottomless pit. I’m a foodie. I hate to sweat. I’m lazy and undisciplined. I could go on, but you get the picture, right? Well, here’s the thing about our beliefs. They are not real. They are opinions and interpretations formed through the eyes of our crazy diet culture, our family, our friends and ourselves. Can I tell you something? And this is something that is so extraordinary to me. You know, I’ve worked with thousands of people. The reason why I say that is I’ve worked with everybody from every walk of life and every that we are all the same. And if I could tell you how many women especially have told me that when they were young, you know, in school in fifth grade, sixth grade, in their teen years, and they were convinced they were fat. You know, like so fat amongst them, their friends, you know, like, Oh, I would pose in pictures and I’d feel horrible. And I was the fattest girl and I hated myself and I hateed my body.

: And then, you know, here I am now 30, 40, 50 years old. And I look back at those old photos of myself and I see that I wasn’t fat at all. I actually was thin. I actually was beautiful. And I wish I could have gone back in time and told myself that then, because I didn’t believe it then. And I suffered so much about weight, you know? And that’s what I mean, like, it’s not just one person who’s told me this. It’s hundreds. It’s thousands of people who’ve told me this, our beliefs are these interpretations that strangle us, that keep us from living our best life. So we need to start to bust up these beliefs and get some tools to bust up these beliefs. Okay, so are beliefs are not necessarily true. How do we shift them?

: So I want to introduce you to one of those characters that may be lurking in your head. I certainly know I have one in mine and that character is what I like to call your inner critic. And your inner critic is that critical part of you. And that’s the part of you that pretty much is the harsh, high expectations, perfectionistic part of you that doesn’t believe that you got it in you to lose the weight. And it doesn’t believe that you are disciplined and thinks you’re laz. Thinks you know, that you’re kind of a failure because you keeps failing over and over and over again. And she’s probably counted or he’s probably counted every single time you failed and let you know you failed. So our negative inner critic, I want you to start to develop a relationship with them because I want you to understand they exist. And we want to start to see them as sort of like that librarian perfectionistic, like, you know, with the pursed lips and like looking at you because the more silly that they seem, the less power that they have.

: And I want you to start to tune into what this inner critic says to you, because a lot of times it goes on. So subconsciously we aren’t even aware, we might feel anxious. We might feel bad about ourselves, but we aren’t hearing that inner shaming that is going on. And when you start listening to it, it gets quite ridiculous. It gets quite laughable almost. So we’ll definitely. So once we start tuning in and understanding it’s coming from just this one part of our psyche that is very insecure, doesn’t believe, you know, like that we’ve got us in it and you know, your inner critic doesn’t hate you. It wants the best for you, but it just thinks that you’re doing it also wrong. And, and, you know, you could do it so much better. So this inner critic over the years has created this huge file in your subconscious mind.

Speaker 1: Like it’s sort of like an evidence folder, your inner critic is like the prosecuting lawyer, right? And she’s got this big old evidence folder of why it’s going to be impossible for you to ever lose weight. How incapable you are, how slothful you are. You’re no good. You, you, you know that you’re unworthy, your thighs are ugly and you’re just, you’re a buffalo. I love that word, buffalo. It just is such a wonderful word. Isn’t it? I don’t want anybody to think themselves as a buffalo, but you know, so anyway, here you have this huge file that your inner critic has very meticulously over the years, put together for you. Now, there does exist your weight mastery file in your subconscious mind. And at the moment it doesn’t have anything in it, or it has very few things in it, right?

Speaker 1: So we’re going to start to work on that though. We have this big, huge negative file folder. And so what we need to do is start to understand that we do have an inner critic and our inner critic exists. And, and I want you to create an image of them, like, sort of like, again, not beautiful, but you know, like the lady with the librarian, with the little glasses, and then she’s just very, or he’s just very like you know, nitpicky and perfectionistic. Okay. And then I want you to now start to create a new character in your head. And I don’t know that this character exists yet for you. Yeah. I mean, I know that this part of you exists, for other people in your life. And I bet because you’re, you know, there are parts of your life that probably work for you, that you are this part of you exist in other parts of your life, but in the area of weight management, I don’t know, we’ve got to pull this part in, and this is the inner advocate.

Speaker 1: This is your inner coach. And this is, and we want to really create a powerful inner weight mastery coach. That is your partner on your weight mastery journey. This is so important. This is the key to your success because this is the part of you that is going to advocate for you against that critic. But this is also your partner. This is the part of you that is going to nurture you, inspire you, guide you because you guys, nobody, you know, look, I don’t think I could hire a personal trainer. I don’t have, I’m not a millionaire. I don’t, you know, like I don’t have the money to hire somebody to follow me around 24/7, telling me what to eat and what to do.

: That’s super cool. I know. Oh my gosh. I do. I think I wrote about this in my book. I did have back when we lived in London, my husband worked for this man who had a wife who had a man who liked followed her around and helped her quit smoking by just telling her not to whenever she wanted to. And then he told her, you know, then she gained weight and he did the same with food, but, you know, we’re not like that. We don’t have all the money in the world. We aren’t like an investment banker in London, but even so, we need to develop that powerful inner coach that can be with us for 24/7, helping us make those powerful choices and helping guide us. And, you know, we’re going to get deep into the inner coach in a lot of different podcasts, because this is the most important relationship with yourself, your inner communication system.

Speaker 1: I want you to start to develop this a way you speak to yourself. And, and again, if you’ve been harsh with yourself, maybe you’re like, well read, I don’t know where to begin. So where are you want to begin? Take a moment and just do this little exercise with me, and I’m going to call it your inner coach exercise. And if you’re driving in your car, cause I’m going to have you close your eyes for a moment, please don’t do that. Or pull over to the side of the road and follow along. Please do not listen to this while you’re driving, or if you do, please don’t really listen to it. Okay. So take a moment and close your eyes. Or if you can’t close your eyes, don’t close your eyes, but I think it would be good for you to close your eyes and think about when you were being loving or nurturing to someone in your life. Maybe it was a child, maybe it was, you know, a loved one. Maybe it was a coworker that you were helping out or a really good friend. And I just want you to, to listen to the way that you’re communicating with that person, the tone of your voice, the soothing sounds, you’re making the empathetic way that you are probably communicating with them or coaching them, being powerful,

Speaker 3: Being inspirational, being motivational, just spend some time thinking about the way you are with other people. Now, if this is hard for you, maybe you want to think about somebody else in your life who is, you know, a therapist or an aunt or an uncle or a grandmother, parent who’s just very loving, and you could adopt their voice until you can come up with your own. But start to do this for yourself. But right now, just think about the way that you, you know, looked at that person. And just imagine now that you are stepping outside of yourself and looking at the, you, listening to me and look at yourself as you were looking at that child or that friend, or that loved one with so much admiration and admiration and respect, love, empathy. And now in that loving voice, I want you to say to yourself, I believe in you, I believe in you and we can release weight for good. And it’s going to take commitment and it’s going to take patience and it’s going to take focus, but we can do this.

Speaker 3: And just feel that for a moment, we can do this, say that to yourself and take a deep breath in and bring that inner coach energy within you. Let it kind of crack open a little place in your heart. And in a certain way they’re like a seed. And then let it go and open your eyes. All right. So we’ve given birth to this inner coach. And if you have worked with me or are already on a journey with me, I hope you found that helpful to even beef up your inner coach’s voice even more. So, now here’s the thing that you want to start to do. You’re going to still hear your inner critic’s voice, and you want to start to question what your inner coach is saying with their coach. You’re sorry. Want to question that inner critic with your coach?

: I wasn’t lazy yesterday when I woke up and I went to work and I did all that stuff that I was doing at work. And then I came home and I took the kids to practice and then I made dinner and then I cleaned up and then I did the laundry. Then I don’t think that that’s really a lazy pig. So that’s what we want to do. We really want to start to really poke holes in those limiting beliefs. So you want to get conscious to them and then we want to start really questioning them. So, so it will, it will mean you and your inner coach are going to be tuning in and then questioning things. And believe me, this is where the magic begins. And the next thing you want to do is you want to start to put new, positive beliefs in that weight mastery folder.

Speaker 1: There is such a thing as what we call cognitive distortion. And it’s like, we amplify what is wrong. And we diminish the positives with our mind. And there are a lot of behaviors right now that probably are aligned already. You know, you’re probably doing a lot of behaviors on a daily basis that are aligned with your releasing weight for good. But now with your inner coach, you’re going to observe these habits and behaviors that you already have. And you’re going to put them into that. I believe I can achieve weight mastery file. So, you know, maybe you eat a healthy breakfast. Well, go ahead and put that in the file. Maybe you are in the habit of ordering a salad instead of fries. Well, that sounds pretty good. Put that in the file. Maybe you take a walk every day with your coworkers at lunch.

Speaker 1: Well, you know, not during the pandemic, but maybe you’re getting up and taking a walk after lunch, you know, at home, or if you are back in the office, put that back in the file and you’ll start to see things emerge. Once you’re looking at them with that filter, you’re starting to look at them from an I believe in myself filter and just put them in the file and why this is important is not only are we building up that, um, folder, but we’re really building up that positive communication muscle with ourselves. We’re really starting to create and connect with ourselves. And, and we’re starting to respect and believe in ourself because when we struggle with our weight, there is a very little self-respect and there is very little belief and we really have to start from here ground one, ground, zero, whatever that is.

Speaker 1: Okay. The last thing that will help you really build up that belief file is to start doing what you say you’re going to do now. What do I mean by that? Well, often we set such high expectations for ourselves with our weight loss attempts. They become impossible to do just impossible. Like back in my summer in Seattle, when, you know, I was trying to lose 20 pounds in one week. Well, that was impossible. I can’t tell you how many clients have said to me. Like when I say, well, how, where do you want to start with exercise? And they’ll say, well, I think about seven days a week, an hour and a half a day. Sounds good. And I’m like, Oh, okay, well, have you been exercising already? Taking measurements? They’re like, oh no, I haven’t exercised in 20 years. And I was like, exercise seven days a week, an hour and a half a day, you know, but that’s what we do.

Speaker 1: We set these really high, impossible expectations with that inner critic in our head. Like, that’s what you should be doing. And you should be eating the chicken and broccoli perfectly every day. You should be being good. That’s what it looks like. And then it’s hard to live up to that. And then we fail and then we reinforce that negative belief. So we want to just start to set the bar a little lower, you know. I have a joke. I’ve been married to my husband for now almost 32 years. And people will say, Oh my gosh, what’s the key? And I was like low expectations. I was like, yeah, two words, low expectations.

Speaker 1: You know, when I lowered my expectations, I got happy. It was really good. And you know, I think weight mastery journey is we want to expect, you know, we have goals, we have focus, we have vision, which we will be talking about in future podcasts. But those expectations, we want to be able to do what we say we’re going to do, and we want to start to do on a daily basis. So we want to be realistic with ourselves. And that’s something that your inner coach can work with you on is to say, okay, well, what, maybe we’re not going to exercise seven days a week, an hour and a half a day. Maybe we are going to do 10 minutes a day. Could we do that? Just like start 10 minutes, five days a week, going, walking around the block, you know?

Speaker 1: And that might be super low for some of you guys, obviously you might be super fit and fitness experts and all of that stuff, but that’s just sort of an example of like, you want to have a little conversation with yourself as like, well, you know, do I want to eat three meals today? Do I want to eat two? Do I want to eat, you know, five snacks? And does that feel doable? Can I do that? You know, and you write it out, have a plan, or create a food plan for your day. If you don’t have a plan, let me tell you, the world has one for you and it is not a healthy one. So, at least in the beginning, when you are rebuilding trust with yourself, I really do because here’s the thing, your brain is kind of wired to do what it’s gonna do and what it’s gonna do isn’t getting you weight mastery, right?

: So we want to start to create realistic plans that you can follow through on. And I’ll tell you something else you want to practice the plan. You want to think that plan through for the day, at the beginning of the day, when your willpower is high, because when we wake up, our mind is fresh. And if we can visualize how we want to feel by the end of our day and say, okay, you know, this is what I’m going to do for breakfast. This is what I’m going to do midday. And dinner’s going to look like this. And I know I can do this, and I’m going to walk around the block a couple of times, or I’m going to go for my run or whatever it is that you do. And you see yourself getting in the bed.

Speaker 1: And what you’re doing is sort of creating an imprint, a blueprint for your day and the beginning of the day, because change, you can’t hope to come to a habit area in your life. Like if you’re hardwired to come home and eat and cheese and crackers without having practice, you know, like athletes, don’t go onto the field without having practiced the play. And your inner coach is there to get in a huddle with you in the morning and go, let’s practice the play. What are we going to do? And how is it going to work out? Oh, when the husband brings in those cheese fries tonight, because he does that every Thursday night, why don’t we practice yours saying, Hey, no, thank you, honey. I appreciate the offer, but I’m going to eat this or, oh, well, you know, or practice taking three, the cheese fries, because that will work for you and eating your healthy dinner and having a little bit of the cheese fries, but you finish them, and you did it.

Speaker 1: And you got through feeling, like you took care of yourself, right? So you’re working with this aspect of yourself, the center coach, and you’re thinking it through and you’re getting those wins and you’re putting them in that belief folder. And this is how you start to connect with yourself. You start to what I call, show up for yourself on a consistent basis, because let me tell ya weight struggle, we jumped ship. We’re like, I’m out of here. I blew it. So screw it. I don’t care. We’ll start again tomorrow, you know, and we get in the habit of doing that, and that’s a whole other thing altogether. So create that realistic food plan for the day. What you know is doable and stick to it. And you reconnect and build that trust and your practice that ahead of time.

Speaker 1: And this is like I said, I call this like the morning huddle, and I’m going to be honest with you. I’ve been doing my morning huddle for 25 years. That’s right. And it’s one of the biggest keys to my success is because I think it through, I know in my week where I’m vulnerable, if I know social events are coming up, I think those through that’s what I’m saying. You guys it’s not like, just lose the weight and live happily ever after. I’ve been working with myself and my inner coach for a really long time. And I will tell you, it’s the most amazing relationship that I have. I mean, this ability to connect with myself and think my life through and really ask me, why do I want to create this week? I mean, it really is a creative journey. And when you’re working from this place, I’ll tell you, your life will change.

Speaker 1: I mean, many people go through the shift weight mastery process, and it’s not just about the weight. It’s wow. Look at how much power I have and I’ve taken back my power. And it’s not just the area of weight. It’s my relationships. It’s because when we start connecting with ourselves and believing in ourselves, our lives change, and I wouldn’t give that up for the world. So I have to meet with my coach every morning. I kind of like them. And I kind of like being able to create my life instead of living this life where I show up and I hope things work, you know, I want to be creative and active out there, you know, making the world work and loving my life. And I’m telling you this relationship with this inner coach, it’s the start of it. So let me just say that one more time. Start advocating for yourself and start this week, go out and practice practice using that powerful voice within.

: And I hope you are beginning to see that you’re not a failure. And the challenge is the way our mind is designed and wired, and this crazy diet culture. But when you start stepping into that powerful new identity as an apprentice of weight mastery, and you’re immediately removing yourself from being a victim and start being a powerful learning learner, you’re learning and you’re gaining knowledge or gaining self knowledge and changing things, and you are developing this powerful relationship with your inner coach. You’re turning down the volume on that inner critic, breaking up all those old beliefs in that file folder and starting to put powerful beliefs in yourself in that new file folder and your subconscious mind. And you can do this. Like I said, this week, just practice practice, being with that and talking to your inner coach and starting to bust those things up, getting conscious to how you’re speaking to yourself in that negative way. You know, start to laugh, bring some humor into this, especially with that inner critic. You know, it’s kind of easy to laugh at her once you see how serious she is.

Speaker 3: So now I just want to tell you something, you can earn a free ticket to my upcoming live Spring, 2021 days, Shift Weight Mastery Process guided by me. And all you need to do to be in the running is to write a review of our podcast and take a picture of it and send it to rita@shiftweightmastery.com by April 12th, 2021. And you will be in the running for a drawing on April 13th, where I will give the three lucky winners a free ticket to the spring 2021 online Shift Weight Mastery Process. Take a few minutes of your time and get the chance to save hundreds of dollars when you win. All right, everyone, have an amazing week. It has been so wonderful to share this time with you, seriously. I mean that. 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.

: Thanks for listening to the Thin Thinking Podcast. If you want to 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 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.