Rita Black: We struggle with our weight, we struggle with our bodies, but most of all, we struggle with ourselves. My guest, Susan Winchester, is a member and coach in our shift community and has been maintaining her weight for some time now. Susan’s struggle started at the age of 14 and went on for decades. Here at the age of 60, she finally feels free. In my continuing series on mastering maintenance, Susan and I discuss her powerful journey of healing and finding happiness, not just with her weight but herself. So come and join me for a candid and impactful interview with a truly inspirational woman. Leave your inner perfectionist at the door 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. Sound good? Let’s get started.

Rita Black: Hello, friend. Come on in. Welcome. And let’s just take a breath. Just take a moment to settle. You know, I love this time of year because as a gardener here in Southern California, it’s the time that all of my bulbs are starting to bloom. And it’s sort of the beginning of our spring, if you can believe that. I know those of you in colder climates, it’s hard to even imagine that. But as I have mentioned before, we have a beautiful winter, but then the summers are really hot and everything is dead when you are probably experiencing beautiful blooms and green grass at that time. So, and as a reminder though, we have many great episodes blooming the Spring. So remember to subscribe so you never miss a Thin Thinking episode.

Rita Black: Today we are continuing our exploration of the inner journey of maintenance, and I am gonna bring on my amazing guest Susan Winchester in just a moment. Susan J. Schmidt Winchester is the past Chief HR Officer for Applied Materials, a Fortune 150 Silicon Valley Company, and Rockwell Automation, a Fortune 500 Midwest company. And she is an author and sought after keynote speaker, Ted x speaker and HR consultant known for her book, Healing At Work, A Guide to Using Career Conflicts to Overcome Your Past and Build the Future You Deserve. It is a great book. I have read it. And Susan’s passion lies in teaching inspiring executives, leaders and professionals to discover greater self-acceptance, fulfillment and joy at work and in life. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, the highest professional honor for leaders in hr. So thank you so much, Susan, for being here today.

Susan Winchester: Rita, I’m so happy to be here with you. I’ve listened to so many of her podcasts and I am delighted and feeling very honored. Thank you.

Rita Black: Well, Susan, we’re very happy to have you. We’re gonna talk to you later about your TED Talks ’cause you are fresh off at Ted Talks, so you’re glowing, but you’re glowing with all the work that you’re doing in your life. So you’re you know, maybe tell us a little bit about you and where you’re at today, like, what you’re doing in your life. ’cause you’re up to a lot of stuff. And then I’d love to hear more about like your weight journey, how you got here. But just tell us where do you live? So our listeners know, and just a little bit about you.

Susan Winchester: Sure. I live in Wisconsin. I’m a Midwest girl. I grew up in the Midwest, went to college in the Midwest, went to graduate school in the Midwest. Worked in the Midwest. I’ve also lived in different places for my job. I spent 36 years in corporate HR. My middle name is HR. And the privilege of working with some great companies like Kellogg Company, Rockwell Automation, Applied Materials. And the last 16 and a half of those years, I had, again, had the privilege of serving as the Chief HR officer for Rockwell for 11 years. And then for Applied Materials for five and a half years. And of course, Applied’s based in Santa Clara, California. And I know you’re in Southern California. So I made the decision with my husband to announce my retirement from the corporate world back in March of this year.

Susan Winchester: But I don’t really consider what I’m doing, quote retirement. I am now doing all my passion work that I love to do. I’m doing a little consulting for leaders. I love little HR consulting. I do some keynote speaking based on the book that I published with a woman named Martha Finney back in 2021. And also just enjoying building strength, strength training. As you and I both know, as we get older. I’m 61 years old. I know you’re 60. I was diagnosed with osteoporosis, so I’ve been spending time with strength training, a lot of physical fitness. And actually shift really helped me internalize the idea that I am a person who exercises regularly. I exercised always, but not regularly or consistently until shift. And I am so happy somehow. I ended up on your email list back in September of 2023, and I signed up for your self-study program because I felt like you knew me.

Susan Winchester: I felt like your message in your, it was like you were talking just to me. Everything you were describing was exactly what I’d experienced with my relationship with my body and food and the scale for so many years that I was really intrigued. I just finished a five day fast through a company. I hated it. I feel really good at the end of it ’cause I’d get on the scale and the magic number would be like, oh, I’m good today. But the next day I’d eat everything back and I’d be back to, I’m not good. And I was just, I was just so sick of that struggle. I was thinking about getting ready for this podcast. My struggle started when I was 14 years old, and I’m successful now. And I often described it as a, just a tortured relationship with how I viewed my body.

Susan Winchester: And, and I’m fortunate because I’m not a person. I mean, I was never like needing to lose a hundred pounds, but it almost didn’t matter because of how badly I treated myself. And it all started, it was such a stupid thing, but a friend of mine made a comment about she weighed a certain weight and I was five pounds bigger and immediately concluded that I was on a trajectory to never being pretty, my last name when I was growing up was Wallace. And I got called Walrus all the time, and I had a riding instructor. I I’m a horse person. And she would say things like, well, your sister got the looks, you got the brains before you get on the horse, you need to go run up and down the hills a couple time, couple times. You know? So, and it just, it started this relationship with, no matter what I did, it never felt like it was enough.

Susan Winchester: I don’t know how many people out there do this, but I had a magic number that if the scale told me I was that number or lower, it was gonna be a good day. But if it was over that number, I was gonna beat myself up and be mad at myself and angry and tell myself I’m gonna be better tomorrow. And it literally could be, if I got on the scale one day, it was the magic number, and the next day it was like 0.1 pounds bigger, but it put me over the magic number. I would, it was, you know, I was beating myself up restricting, you know, just doing a lot of really unhealthy things. And I just was sick of it. I was so sick of it. And so your message spoke to me so much. And so I started the self-study and I, it was like somebody had opened up the dictionary on understanding how this thing all works.

Susan Winchester: I didn’t understand anything about the science of food. I had no clue about my daily caloric body calorie, the caloric budget I needed to be eating to be in a good range. I didn’t know how weight got released. If the, if the scale, if I ate something like a chocolate chip cookie, I would assume the scale was gonna go up five pounds. And I just didn’t understand how it worked until you came into my life. I mean, I honestly, I am, I am so joyous about the process of learning shift and becoming the inner scientist. We were talking about that before we started the podcast. But, you know, I had this relationship with this scale that I dreaded getting on it. I dreaded, I like, held my breath, hoping that it was gonna be a number that I was gonna feel good about.

Susan Winchester: And if it wasn’t, I was really mean to me. And I had a therapist, I mentioned this in one of our meetings recently, but I had a therapist and I was talking to her about this one time, and she made the comment, it was really kind of profound. It really caught me off guard. She said, well, your scale’s become your dad. Nothing you do is good enough. And you know, that kind of shifted the whole relationship with the scale. She had me actually taken out my driveway and smash it. And and it did feel good. It didn’t change anything about how I was eating though. ’cause I didn’t really, I still didn’t understand all the principles that you teach. But it was a really interesting connection that, you know, for so many years of my career, even most of my career success was fueled by my underlying belief. I wasn’t good enough and never really made the connection about how much that belief system fueled, overeating, restricting laxatives, diuretics, all that stuff. So, yeah. I’m kind of rambling here, but that, that’s a little bit.

Rita Black: No, you’re not rambling. I think you’re getting to something really interesting, which I’d like to lean into, which is how, as women, especially, I’m not discounting men and their experiences, but I think in our culture, and you and I are about the same age growing up you’re 61 and I’m 60 in our timeframe, we, and, and because I don’t see that my daughter’s generation doing this as much as our generation, which is really being enough, is tied into weight. And I could, because, you know, look at you, you’re a successful woman, and for how many years you were leading teams and in leadership positions, and people looked up to you and respected you and, and you, you know, have a advanced education and that wasn’t enough, and you were still getting on the scale and measuring yourself against that. And, you know you know, you so, so, and your children, like you raise children.

Rita Black: Like I think about everything we do as women and how valuable we are to other people, but we still measure ourselves against something like the scale to be good enough. Because I’ll see people, and maybe you were one of these two, and and I get the sense you were that you could lose weight. Then you would wanna lose more weight because it’s not enough. Like, the scale then became like, well, I got to this weight, but I still hate myself, or I still don’t feel valuable enough. So if I lose more right, then I’ll be more valuable. Which is just unbelievable to me.

Susan Winchester: Yeah, I’ll be thin enough, then maybe I’ll be pretty enough and then maybe I’ll feel good about myself. Just all the conditions around how my relationship with myself, which was not great. And, you know, you, you’re so good about teaching about the inner critic and the inner rebel. My inner critic was in charge all the time. And it, it’s just, it’s just a miserable way to live.

Rita Black: Yeah. So you went through the shift. What did you think about hypnosis? Had you ever, ’cause I know you’ve done a lot of work on yourself. And had you been exposed to meditation or hypnosis prior to the shift? I’m assuming you had

Susan Winchester: Just Yes. was, and the way I was, was through the equestrian world because my perfectionism, which showed up everywhere, including in the ring when I was competing with my horses, was if I, if I didn’t do well or if I had a fall, you know, again, it was just a constant beating myself over the head on it. And somebody recommended a woman named Laura King who does hypnosis in the equestrian world and works with very high level equestrians who are competing to really help them with the mental part of the riding of the sport. And and so I’ve worked with Laura for many years. Not a lot, you know, but maybe if I was getting ready for a horse show and was feeling really nervous, or if I was feeling, you know, unready for it mentally, I would sit down and do a hypnosis session with her.

Susan Winchester: And I loved it. I mean, it was just such a soothing, calming experience. And that was, that’s really been my only introduction into the world of hypnosis until shift. But I, I’m intrigued by it because I do agree with what you teach, which is so much of how we, how we operate, our body system is unconscious. And starting to put messages into that unconscious to support the conscious, to me is a really powerful proposition. I, every single night, I remember when I started shift, I was totally overwhelmed. I’m like, oh my God, I can’t do all this. And my corporate job, I was like, another job. But I fell in love. I, you know, I just did what I could. I did the hypnosis every day. I did the coaching session, and I would typically do the workbook. I’d sometimes do that and catch up on the weekend. But the hypnosis to this day, I go to bed at night, I pick one of the hypnosis sessions. I’m in the maintenance one right now. I’ve been listening to the one that’s 24 minutes. I love it. And I turn it on low. My husband’s very toler tolerant and fall asleep to your, your hypnosis every single night.

Rita Black: Aw.

Susan Winchester: I do. Every night. I listen to you. I love it. And I think it’s an incredibly powerful element of your program because it’s reinforcing things. Like I said, I’ve always been active, but I’ve never been consistent. I’ve never done strength training. I’ve never done regular consistent cardio. But my, I now say to myself, I’m a person who exercises. And so I get up and sometimes I think, I don’t really feel like exercising, but then my, my little body goes, no, no, you, you, you are an exercise person. It’s part of who you are. And I just get on and I do what I need to do. And I get off and I, and I, and I talk to myself. I’m like, I’m really proud of you. Good job. You know?

Rita Black: I love that.

Susan Winchester: Yeah. She’s she’s come a long ways. So yeah. No, I, I love it. I love the hypnosis.

Rita Black: So you took your inner coach. ’cause I would imagine working in the world that you worked in, in HR and doing what you do, you were a major problem solver. And so you had an inner coach that helped you in that area of your life. But in the area of weight, I, I’m, and I’m saying this Susan, as an example, to people who might be listening, who might be saying, well, I’m such a failure because of my weight. It’s probably like, chances are like you highly functioning in your life, and definitely have a way of communicating with yourself that’s powerful. Proactive problem solving, strategic, but then when it comes to weight, we fall into this old dynamic, which is good, bad on or awful or nothing. And that you brought your coach in to this part of your life and really started to apply it.

Susan Winchester: I would say it was never, I was never conscious of that inner coach. And I’ve been very blessed by a lot of mentors and coaches along my career path. I’ve been very blessed with very creative, innovative people who’ve been my guides. In fact, to some extent, I would say I almost became too dependent on, on some of them. Rather than relying on my own inner coach, which I’m much better at doing now. But a lot of my own journey, which I mentioned was, I didn’t really feel good about myself in any part of my life. I mean, I never felt like I was a good enough rider. I was always in this sort of pins a needle hypervigilant state at work, kinda waiting for the next thing to go wrong. You know, that was just part of the upbringing I had when I was growing up was, you know, you kind of had to constantly be on guard.

Susan Winchester: And, and so it wasn’t a joyful, you know, 30 of my 36 years were, were not, I, I can’t say they weren’t fun ’cause I had a lot of really good years, but there were so many, so many days where I’d go to work, and no matter what I did, I’d come home and beat myself up and think to myself, I shouldn’t have said this. I should have said that. Why didn’t I speak up? And, you know, unfortunately, like many overachieving perfectionists, we sometimes turned unhealthy self-soothing habits to take the edge off those painful emotions. And so mine was chardonnay and I were very good friends for many years until basically God intervened, thankfully. And I have been sober for 20 years. But for me it was alcohol for and, and sugar. You know, I’ve been a sugar addict. You and I, this is the other thing. I’m like, frosting’s my trigger. I love frosting

Rita Black: I love thoseas well. We’re sugar addict, Susan.

Susan Winchester: Yeah. So I think we’re, I think we’re related somehow. Either overeat sugar or drinking, which is really sugar. I mean, alcohol is really just sugar. So that’s how I spent many, many years of my career until becoming more aware of how many, how many of my unconscious patterns, my beliefs that my limiting beliefs about myself, my coping mechanisms, my responses to other people were actually just old patterns from my, my childhood growing up with an unpredictable angry dad. He had many wonderful traits about him, but there were some that were not great. And then learning how to manage it, become conscious and aware of it, which is what you teach, and shift is becoming conscious, staying in a state of reality with what you’re putting into your mouth and what you’re eating and, and how it balances out in terms of the protein and the carbs and the fat. It is just, it is just, I just feel so much more aware of how to manage my weight based on everything that you teach. And I will tell you, stepping into maintenance was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.

Rita Black: Yeah. Because I, I remember when you stepped in, so e everybody yeah. Susan released 20 pounds. She, and you’ve kept the weight off now. 13 months you said. But, but you transitioned, you went through a, a vulnerable time. What was that like internally as you were approaching maintenance given that the you know –

Susan Winchester: I was super shaky. I felt, I felt frightened to go into maintenance because there’s so much structure in the, especially in the live program, stepping out of that structure sort of felt like I was jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. That’s what I remember getting close to the end of the 30 day live program thinking, oh no, how am I ever gonna possibly manage this? Because they didn’t trust me. ’cause I had never been able to maintain. And so I would say I had a lot of anxiety about it. And I had anxiety about it for a little, a little while. I don’t remember exactly how long, but I just kept practicing what you teach. You teach it in the consistency workshop. You teach it in the getting on back on track workshop that actually, when you’re not maintaining anytime you go off track is really good because you’re learning then how to get back on track, which is what the whole experience of maintenance is.

Susan Winchester: It’s managing, when you go up a little bit, like, I went up a couple times above the range that I wanted and I thought, oh no, I’m, it’s done. I’m going right back to where I started, you know, 20 pounds ago. And I mean, I really, I was really worried. But then, you know, you follow the community. I love the Facebook community and all the experts and the other coaches and what they share and how you teach basically at practice for getting back on track. What’s the lesson that I learned, why did I go off track? How am I gonna not do that in the future? And then how do I put the carbs on B to sleep by upping my protein, by basically staying away from sugary foods for at least three days and my weight would go right back down. In fact, this last week, I’ve been traveling basically for 10 days.

Susan Winchester: And toward, you know, the last five days were really intense. Some of the work that I was doing. And I took all my healthy food with me. I had carrots in my fridge, I had cherry tomatoes, I had deli ham, I had my healthy snacks. I would take that with me every day to the, the work that I was doing. And my, I took my scale ’cause I could drive to where I was going just to keep track. And one day it went up, it jumped up like three pounds. And I thought, oh, this is really interesting. There’s no way I ate what I’d have to eat. What, how many pounds for for five.

Rita Black: I think 10,500, something like that.

Susan Winchester: Yeah. I, like, I didn’t do that. Then I started thinking about, you know, being the inner scientist. Okay, well what did I eat yesterday? Well, I had this, this, and this. Oh, it was pretty salty. Oh, I’ve been traveling and yeah, I haven’t had my normal, my system’s not working as normally as it nor as it usually does when I’m home. And I just said, it’s okay. You know the, there’s not enough calories that have been eaten to, to justify this. A scale owes me. And, you know, that little inner scientist getting on the ceiling, huh, this is really interesting. I wonder what’s going on? And kind of replaying it and thinking, oh, it’ll come down. And the next day it was down two pounds. And today I was back to exactly where I was when I left 10 days ago. You know, so it’s actually sort of like a, this is really interesting.

Susan Winchester: And when it’s going on, oh, lemme look at what I’ve been keeping track of. ’cause I really am diligent about tracking everything I put in my mouth, which is one of the reasons why I know I’ve been successful at maintaining for 13 months. Because I don’t lie to myself. I don’t go, oh, okay, well I ate that chocolate, but I’m not gonna write it down. ’cause There’s only 70 calories. I write it down. And every time it’s like, you know, you go right back to where you wanna be. And it’s, it’s actually kind of fun. It’s like, now I’m so much more relaxed if it goes up a, I know what I need to do to get back on track. I look at what was going on and my inner coach says, okay, well next time when this goes on, this is what we need to do.

Susan Winchester: And actually, I think it’s Mary mcd in the community. I, I’m pretty sure it was her who has a great definition of the inner coach is that when you’re, ’cause I wasn’t real, or the shift breath. I wasn’t really getting the shift breath. I didn’t really understand it. And she said, well, first of all, when you’re going off track, you just call on your inner coach to come in. You take the breath, you call your inner coach to come in, and then you ask your inner coach what you should do. And it was so helpful. ’cause I, I’m like, oh, okay. All right. Inner coach, what should we do here? Okay, well, my inner coach told me one day to put a little post-it note on my pantry door that says, I this came up in one of the classes I wish I could give credit to. You actually created it. Little note that says, what is it I really need right now? And a lot of times, really, I might just need water or I might just need to go outside and take a break from whatever it is I’m doing. Or I might actually just need to go lay down for 20 minutes, which I’m terrible at doing. But all those techniques have really helped me. It’s really helped, you know, 20 pound release for 13 months. I’m just, I’m, I, this is such a cool program.

Rita Black: Well, I think the journey you’ve been on has been really wonderful and I, you know, wanna point out you know, with what the program provided, a structure and a, and a context. But you came in and committed and, and put yourself into it. And you were ready. And I was Right. You’ve done a lot of inner work, you know, too, in your life.

Susan Winchester: True. But I had never really understood how to manage my weight in a healthy, in a healthy way. This, for me, this was, this is the only thing I’ve ever experienced. And I say this to people, people sometimes will say, whoa, why are you tracking all that? You don’t need to track. You’re small. What are you doing? I say, I’m just keeping myself honest. How do I know what I’m doing if I’m not tracking? And just that whole experience of taking responsibility and owning it. And I like you, after that five day, I won’t say the name of the company, but after they’re fast, I thought, I cannot do this again. I cannot do this again. Something has to change. And literally your email showed up that day.

Rita Black: That’s amazing. I think what you’re talking about, ’cause I wanna lean into this is the way you use your brain rational versus irrational thinking. Because I think speaking to those people who are like, you don’t need to write everything down. ’cause It may seem to an outsider like that seems really, you know, retentive or, or very obsessive, obsessive. But when we look at the, because when we use our brain in a rational way, it calms us down. It keeps us focused. And like you said, the conversation you have is a high level conversation, which is just like, yeah, you did that. You can calm down. Rather than, unfortunately when we’ve been struggling for 10, 20, 30 years, our brain has literally been wired, crip wired into triggers that then take us into emotional loops that we have no control over anymore. So our thinking isn’t even our own, our thinking is thinking us versus us having the thinking.

Rita Black: So the, the rational what what Susan’s describing is like, you know, that conversation on the scale and pulling herself, she’s pulling herself into her rational brain where she is present using her smart brain, her frontal lobe, her, you know, the, the, the smart brain. And, and thank you. And, and, and taking that, the shift breath in a way for me is taking you from the emotional limbic brain up through the front brain and bringing all the smarts down over so you can have that rational, smart conversation with yourself, the scientist versus falling into our rational triggers, which we really, once we get into that place, we really do not have much power. Yeah. So I think what you are the, you know, what people may have a lens on as you know, super obsessive or something actually brings a lot of people a lot of peace because it really quickly brings you into a part of your brain where you get your power back very quickly within seconds and can calm yourself down.

Susan Winchester: I could not agree more with what you just said. And early in my maintenance phase, I didn’t fully, I had not internalized that. And so when the scale went up, I would immediately kind of start to go into a panic. Oh my God, this isn’t really working. I’m bad. You know, and then I’d say, okay, slow down. Go back to the science of the food. How many calories did you eat yesterday? What did you eat? Was something super salty? Was there, you know, were you dehydrated? What was going on? And you’re right, it immediately calms you down when you say, well, there’s no way I could have eaten five, you know, 7,000 calories. There’s no way I did that to gain weight. And it will go back down. And I just now, like you say, you get on the scale and you get off. I always hug myself too, that loving yourself down the scale, that’s another great practice. I hug my little body and I say, I love my body. No, I love my weight. No matter what it is, I love myself.

Rita Black: That’s fantastic.

Susan Winchester: It it is. It’s really, it’s really powerful. Boom, boom. On and off. Make a note. Okay. Interesting. I need to go do a little dissecting of the data and make some adjustments.

Rita Black: Yeah. Forensics. The CSI. ,

Susan Winchester: Yeah. It’s. That’s exactly what it’s, I love it/

Rita Black: Susan. I know people will wanna hear, you’ve written a wonderful book about the workplace. Tell us a little bit about that, because I do think it ties into, you were saying you’ve been in HR, you know, you work with people healing at work and tying that in, because you said a lot of people struggle with eating at work and

Susan Winchester: Yeah. Well, you know, so thank you. The book is called Healing at Work. And it, it is with my co-author, the Amazing Martha Finney, A Guide to Using Career Conflicts to Overcome Your Past and Build the Future You Deserve. And so, without going into a great big story having the privilege of working with a lot of people, a lot of complex people over all those years, as well as my own journey of, you know, up and down stress and anxiety in working with Martha, Martha was key in this as well, was recognizing that a lot of our behavior at work, a lot of our reactions at work are actually unconscious patterns from our, our past, our childhoods. And the research shows that nearly two thirds of us experienced at least one of what they call the ACEs, the adverse childhood experiences. And the ACEs are 10 really traumatic things that can happen to someone when they’re younger.

Susan Winchester: It includes physical, sexual, emotional abuse, physical and emotional neglect addiction in the homes divorce, you know, there’s 10 really significant things. Two thirds of us experienced at least one 40% of us experienced two. And then there’s some of us like myself, who experienced four or more, and I never thought of my childhood as dysfunctional, but we come away often from, you know, dysfunctional childhood with certain beliefs about ourselves. My career su success for many years was fueled by my belief I wasn’t good enough. There are lots of limiting beliefs I would easily get triggered in the workplace by other people because I somehow, without realizing it, took it to, to believe that it was everybody else’s job to determine my worth, especially men in authority. And my job was to be as perfect and pleasing as possible, trying to chase that validation.

Susan Winchester: But what I know about myself and many is that when we get triggered at work and we’re having these uncomfortable emotions, painful emotions, many of us turn to unhealthy self-soothing habits. Mine was chardonnay for a lot of people, it’s food. It could be gambling or social media. I mean, there’s a long list of unhealthy habits. But I, I saw so many people who after I’ve spoken when I share my message, or just the people I’ve worked with, who then share with me all the experiences they had when they were younger and how food is a way of self-soothing. And what I teach in the book is basically how to use workplace conflict. What I call a bumper car moment when we crash into somebody or we feel like someone’s crashed into us, is actually the opportunity to start rewiring the neural networks in our brain.

Susan Winchester: The science of neuroplasticity tells us we can reform how we think so we can lower the volume, whether it’s the, the inner critic and the inner rubble in shift, or the inner critic at work that’s beating us up, that we’ve done something wrong. And adding on the research of positive psychology, which teaches us that when we focus on positive things, we improve the quality of our lives, we can actually start to take those triggered moments, those bumper car crashes, and start to use them as opportunities to reshape and understand what’s my limiting belief? How am I reacting? Is it giving me what I want? Is it making things worse? And that’s what, what Martha and I teach in the book is help people understand, I call it the rapid power reclaim, how you reclaim your power when you’re feeling emotionally charged up or wound up at work. Especially in those moments that we wanna to, to run away from. Mm-Hmm. And that’s basically what I’m teaching is, you know, I call it transforming from the unconscious wounded career path where I spent 30 years, 36 years in this constant repetitious cycle, like a hamster on a wheel, stepping off that onto the conscious healing career path where we become conscious of our belief system, our limiting beliefs, how they’re fueling our reactions, how it’s making us feel. And we start to do some reprogramming on how we think about those things.

Rita Black: How fantastic. Wow. That is great. I’m holding the book right here. I think this is gonna be primary audio, but I just wanna reinforce how, what a beautiful cover it is and Oops. And what a great book it is. And also you have been have a great quote from Jack Canfield, the Chicken Soup for the Soul, which I think is a really great reinforcement of the power of this book. ’cause He’s, he thinks it’s one of the top five because it’s so valuable, so important and so critical. So good for you.

Susan Winchester: One of the top five favorite books he’s ever read. He said, mine’s in his top five favorites.

Rita Black: That is, yay. Good for you, Susan. That is so amazing.

Susan Winchester: And I’d like you said, Julie and I had a chance together, Julie Barker, who is is Barker, no, sorry, Julie Trainer. I know a Julie Barker somewhere else. Julie Trainer and I were both together in Cincinnati last week, we’re both invited to give our TEDx talks. Hers was amazing on the gifts and loss. And I know she’s been on your podcast as well. I listened to her podcast when she was on yours, and then mine was on tackling perfectionism at work, which I bring in some of these concepts about bumper car moments and how to, how to use them to help you basically when your past gets in the way of your future, how to change that. And that’s what I’m teaching.

Rita Black: That is so cool. When will this TEDx talk? Do you know when it will be out?

Susan Winchester: They told us about six to eight weeks. And so now that would be five to seven weeks. I know that Julie and I will definitely share it with you to share with the, the Amazing Shift community.

Rita Black: Yes. And I will definitely put this your TEDx talk in the show notes if well, whenever it airs. But, but this will be airing maybe about the same time that your TEDx talk comes out, so. We’ll

Susan Winchester: That’s great.

Rita Black: We’ll align the two together so that it can be in the show notes. Is there anything that you would like to share? Like as far as like if somebody is out there struggling and they, you know, like first steps that you would have somebody take, you know, they’re not believing in themselves you know, what, what would be your first step?

Susan Winchester: Well, my first step would be to sign up for Shift.

Rita Black: Okay. The next step after that, or the step maybe the maybe step before that.

Susan Winchester: The next step is just to start reading the messages in the Facebook community. One of the things I’ve loved about my own shift experience is the amazing supportive community that you have built. And you have built it because you are so loving and compassionate for every single person in that community. And so people feel safe in sharing everything I have. I’ve often felt alone on this journey, like I’m the only one who feels this crappy about herself based on how her skills behaving or misbehaving. And I found so much strength and ideas and advice and guidance through the members of your community. I would highly recommend, even if you just go in and read what people have written, I guarantee that whatever you’re struggling with, many of us have struggled with. And if you just put a question out there about how have we handled it, you’ll get back, you know, 25 different amazing ideas as well as love and support. I would say that would be the, the next thing I would do is once, once I signed up and started working in the program, I would get into that community and start doing some reading to know that you are not alone, no matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter how much weight you need to release, there are people in this community who’ve been there, done it, and are coming through it and changing their lives.

Rita Black: Love that. I have another question for you, and then I’m gonna let you go. ’cause I know you’re, you’re, you’re a busy lady. You know, you released 20 Pounds and we were having a conversation about the last 20 pounds because usually the last 20 pounds is really about a little more than weight release. It is about self-belief, it’s really about intention, it’s really about vision. I mean, what in your last 20 pounds would you say were the three driving, you know, things pulling you forward in your journey of releasing 20 pounds?

Susan Winchester: Things pulling me forward. Were trusting the science. Secondly was the vision. I think one of the most powerful things that I’ve gotten from you is the power of a vision. A long-term vision and a short-term vision. And my long-term visions you, you inspired me, is really all about a high quality life longevity. And I’ve got lots of things planned that I wanna do when I’m in my eighties and nineties. But, but when I’m feeling lost, I just sink back up on, okay, what’s the vision? And the vision may just be my vision for tonight. And I just wanna be, I wanna go to bed feeling light. When I was in Chicago this weekend, I really wanted to have some candy before I went to bed. And I thought, how am I gonna feel when I wake up in the morning? I wanna feel ready to go. I don’t wanna feel sick to my stomach. So the vision of connecting into, I wanna feel lighter when I wake up and not have that chocolate guilt on me. ’cause I didn’t need it. I was already at my calorie budget. So a short-term and a long-term vision would be the second thing. And the third thing that has helped me stay committed to my maintenance is, is just the practice of the nine skills. And, and really that is such a beautiful framework for staying consistent. And, and that’s what I would say. Those would be my three things.

Rita Black: Okay. Those are really great things. Susan, I cannot thank you enough for being here today. I know, like I said, you’ve been a busy lady. You’ve been doing your TEDx talk and then you went and gave a lot of your, did some leadership this last weekend. So I appreciate your sitting down and talking to us. There are a lot of powerful things you had to say here for us, so I appreciate your sharing them with us and your sharing your time.

Susan Winchester: I just love talking to you live. I think you’re an amazing woman. You’ve created an amazing community and I’m incredibly grateful that I ended up on your email list.

Rita Black: Oh, well thank you. And we will look forward to having you back talking more.

Susan Winchester: Well, good. Thank you. See everybody.

Rita Black: Thank you Susan so much. That was such a great interview and so inspiring. Thank you. Be for being both vulnerable and powerful. And those of you who would love to watch Susan’s TEDx talk and get access to her book, the links are in the show notes. Have a great week everybody, 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. We will be here same place next week.

Rita Black: Thanks for listening to The Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that episode go by way too fast for you? If so, and do 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 and to learn how to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode.