[00:00:00] Rita Black: So often the decision to lose weight comes from a place of self-loathing, a moment of disgust in front of the mirror or the scale, a desperate attempt to fix what we feel is broken. But here’s the truth. Real sustainable weight loss doesn’t come from punishment. It comes from partnership. Partnership with yourself, with your body, with your mind.

[00:00:28] Rita Black: In today’s episode, self-Compassion Secrets to Sustainable Weight Loss. We are exploring why starting your weight release journey from a place of self-love isn’t just more empowering. It’s actually more effective. You’ll learn why shaming yourself than doesn’t work, how your inner critic sabotages your progress, and most importantly, how to build the in a relationship that supports long-term success on the scale and beyond. If you ever thought I’ll love myself when I’m thinner, this episode is for you because it’s time to flip that script. So let’s dive in.

[00:01:17] 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, [00:01:40] bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process.

[00:01:44] Rita Black: 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.

[00:02:10] Rita Black: 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.

[00:02:31] Rita Black: Sound good? Let’s get started. Hey. Come on in. Come on in and be at home. Hopefully. You feel at home? We certainly welcome you here and I hope you’re doing well and that the month of July has been all it could be for you. I have been holding back on this episode actually. I’ve been excited to share it.

[00:02:59] Rita Black: It’s an oldie but goodie episode that I recorded a number of years back. It was one of the, actually one of the first episodes. I recorded for the Thin Thinking Podcast back in the days of COVID. And I think a lot of people started podcasts during COVID. There were a lot of people [00:03:20] sitting in their closets like I was starting an idea.

[00:03:24] Rita Black: But it was one of our most popular episodes ever for that year that we started the Then Thinking Podcast. So I wanted to bring it back because we have been talking a lot this year about ideal weight and we in general, just from the perspective of self-worth and our bodies and the shape of our bodies and our relationship with our bodies and the shape of our bodies.

[00:03:52] Rita Black: I was holding off though until we were almost in August because of my membership community. August is our month of body love, so I thought this would be a great episode to kick off the month, but if you’re not in the membership fret not, you’re going to find this episode. Helpful this concept of loving yourself down the scale, which we’re really gonna dive into.

[00:04:16] Rita Black: But before we start, I just wanna remind those of you out there, if you haven’t caught my free masterclass called How to Stop the Start of a Weight Struggle Cycle. And it has weight release hypnosis. It’s a great. Masterclass on really breaking through the self-sabotage cycle that keeps most of us struggling with our weight perpetually.

[00:04:38] Rita Black: So check it out. You can find it in the show notes. The link is there, or you can go to www.shiftweightmastery.com/free. Okay? So grab that if you can. And, okay. And now let’s dive into the episode. [00:05:00] So as I’ve been thinking about this week’s episode and thinking about all of my students that I’ve had over the years, one student really sticks out.

[00:05:11] Rita Black: The most to me. You know how you go to think about something and then that one person just lingers in your mind? The person that lingers in my mind when it comes to loving yourself down the scale is my old student named Monica. I. And she was in my shift process a few years ago, and very much a successful woman, very highly regarded in her community.

[00:05:35] Rita Black: Beautiful. She has her own successful business, a super loving, amazing husband, highly functioning kids. This woman had it all but Monica was. So unhappy with herself and her weight? Very much she told me that she had spent tens of thousands of dollars on weight loss plans, spas, fat camps, oh, you name it, just.

[00:06:04] Rita Black: Everything and she could lose the weight. She was an expert at losing weight. She said that was never ever the issue. She said to me, I have the willpower in the short term. If you told me eat dog food and drink this yucky drink, for six weeks, I would do it. If you convinced me that it would help me lose weight, I would do.

[00:06:29] Rita Black: Anything not to feel fat and feel like a pathetic beach whale, but then once the diet was over, [00:06:40] all my weight would come back almost immediately. Rita, it’s like the second that scale hits that magic number I head for the fridge, and it’s embarrassing because. I’m a very public person and my whole community has seen me go up and down between size four and size 14.

[00:07:01] Rita Black: Over all the years I’ve been in my community, I am such a failure at this and it really makes me depressed. It makes me wanna hide, and I really think I’m hopeless. Even though I have this great life on the outside, I spend most of my waking hours beating myself up about my weight and hating myself for being so weak.

[00:07:25] Rita Black: So Monica had to learn to start from the same point that I’m going to walk you through to today, starting from a point of self-belief, self-respect, and self-trust, even when she felt overweight. Rather than self-hate, distrust and disrespect. Why? Because unless we start from a place of self-belief, self-respect, and self empathy, you’ll always be chasing your own tail when it comes to weight.

[00:08:04] Rita Black: Here is that fat thinking, dieting illusion given to us by our culture in the dieting industry. Go on a diet, get thin, and then you will have been a very good girl or [00:08:20] a very good boy. You will have attained you weight, and you will finally be able to give yourself permission to love yourself.

[00:08:30] Rita Black: After all, you will have earned it. It sounds so crazy, but isn’t this what we believe? When we are struggling with our weight, we do not let ourselves love ourselves. We are overweight. That is not lovable. We are out of control. Ugh, disdain. Obviously, we cannot be trusted. We are lazy. We’re good for nothing and completely and totally hopeless.

[00:09:03] Rita Black: Who would love us, honestly, this is a painful place to be, but usually it is where we are at when we struggle with weight. And believe me, we just wanna escape the pain of self-hate by pulling it together and focusing on getting the weight off as quickly as possible, even if it means eating the dog food diet that Monica was joking about.

[00:09:30] Rita Black: So the short term solution we are thrown to is to pull it together because the moment that we are on a diet or a plan or a regime, all of a sudden we feel in control. We feel good. See, I’m not so bad as long as I’m behaving and getting this weight off, and then I will really love myself, the self love will flow naturally somewhere over that weight loss rainbow.

[00:09:57] Rita Black: What is the problem with this? The [00:10:00] illusion is that when we lose the weight, we will love ourselves, but no, we won’t. The same monsters still exist in our head. Once we reach our skinny weight and what will happen, we will get to our skinny weight and realize, huh, life hasn’t really changed that much and will get discouraged and eat.

[00:10:25] Rita Black: Or think that we have to keep going and keep releasing weight because we don’t love ourselves yet, and five more pounds. Yeah, then I’ll love myself or we still hate our body and getting thin didn’t make our legs any longer or our belly any flatter. Or we make getting thin mean that we will finally give ourselves the permission to do everything that we’ve always dreamed and have put off until we lose the weight.

[00:10:56] Rita Black: Maybe we’ll find the job we love or allow ourselves to date. And so if we don’t love ourselves or trust ourselves, the closer we get to our ideal weight the fear of actually having to take action on our dreams scares the living crap out of us, and we self-sabotage. Or if we lose the weight, sometimes a smaller us means we feel more vulnerable because the weight was a buffer, and in a way it gave us power.

[00:11:27] Rita Black: The power to keep people away, and the power to not be seen, and the power to not be held accountable. If we start from a place of hating ourselves when we [00:11:40] start releasing weight, subconsciously, we are still harboring self-hate feelings about ourselves. Underneath the gloss of the dieting success and the laser focus on the diet and being good on it is not training our brain to really learn how to really feed ourselves in a way that is sustainable and doable.

[00:11:59] Rita Black: For when we get to our ideal weight, it isn’t retraining us to problem solve. When those challenge challenges pose themselves or we go through a stressful time, we are just focusing on getting the weight off so that we can accept ourselves. I have so many students in my shift weight mastery process like Monica, who have spent tens of thousands of dollars, who have had liposuction and surgery, or have done very drastic things or taken products that aren’t regulated and they got to the right weight, but subconsciously because they still didn’t trust themselves, they still didn’t love themselves.

[00:12:44] Rita Black: They were disappointed that their ideal weight didn’t change, that their lives didn’t magically change. In fact, they were very much the same and because they hadn’t learned to feed themselves in a sustainable way that they loved, that allowed them to live their life at this new weight, they began gaining it back and all the distrust and lack of self-respect.

[00:13:06] Rita Black: Came flooding back from that subconscious. Things quickly returned to the same old, frustrating place. I know this myself from it happening to me hundreds of times over the two decades of [00:13:20] struggling up and down the scale, 40 pounds. This is a horrible feeling and it is a hauntingly familiar place. So now I wanna walk through some ways that we can begin to turn this around.

[00:13:34] Rita Black: Some thin thinking ways that we can start our journey of weight mastery from a place of self-love. So the number uno, numero uno thing that I would like you to do and I will ask you to do, and I have all my students do, so this is something everybody does, is I’m gonna ask you to forgive yourself.

[00:14:00] Rita Black: Why? Because when we struggle with our weight, we have a lot of self resentment. We resent ourselves because of our health issues that come from weight. We resent ourselves because of the emotional issues. We resent ourselves because we feel like we are out of control. But. We need to have self empathy.

[00:14:25] Rita Black: And again, for those of you who have been listening to this podcast, know what I’m probably gonna say is no, this is not a California woowoo thing, but this actually has been proven by science, that self empathy connects you to yourself and allows you, your brain to work more effectively with you. It gives you more consistency, it gives you more focus because you aren’t so distracted.

[00:14:55] Rita Black: So I’m gonna ask you to forgive yourself for [00:15:00] many reasons. But because you deserve to be. You are on your own team and you really need to, this isn’t you. Duking it out with yourself and controlling yourself and beating yourself down into submission and being good. This is, I trust you.

[00:15:16] Rita Black: We are smart. We can figure this out, and we are. Going on this journey for the last time, and this journey is a journey of self-realization of self-love. And we are going to figure this out. You gotta be on your own team. So let’s start by just saying, taking a nice deep breath in, closing your eyes and just saying, I forgive myself.

[00:15:43] Rita Black: Go ahead. Just say it. Just for the hell of it. Just say it and take a deep breath. And let it in and let that ice around your heart. In the area of weight management, begin to melt a little and love yourself now. Number two, start forgiving your body and start owning it where it is right now. Oh yeah.

[00:16:11] Rita Black: That’s a hard one. If you, we don’t love our body and own it. Look, your body has gotten you to where you are in life now, and it has given you many things, many experiences. Our body is the vessel with which in we, we we live our lives. It’s an awesome thing no matter what shape it is, no matter what clothes it fits into.

[00:16:37] Rita Black: Our body is amazing [00:16:40] and we need to forgive it. We can start by forgiving it because we also, not only do we resent ourselves, we resent our bodies, we resent them. I know when I struggled with my weight, I resented every aspect of my body, but especially my butt. And my thighs. Ugh. Did they disgust me? Now, here’s the thing and the irony of it all is that when we release weight, when we release weight, our body shape pretty much.

[00:17:10] Rita Black: Remains the same. Like I was always shocked and horrified because my sister is gorgeous. I was the dark haired lumpy one. We’re both tall ladies. But my sister had long legs. She looked like a model, she was blonde, blue eyed. Perfect, beautiful figure, perfect sil silhouette.

[00:17:33] Rita Black: And I was the lumpy one, the pear shaped one with short stubby legs. Even though I was tall, I had stubby legs. Somehow that worked out and I always believed. I always believed, I don’t know how, where this came from, but again, dieting culture. I looked at magazines. I thought when I lose weight, my legs are gonna grow long, and they are gonna still, they’re gonna be these long live things.

[00:17:59] Rita Black: Like my sisters, no. When I released my weight, I, my body shape was pretty much the same except my legs were leaner, my butt was slimmer, but I was still the same shape. Now when I worked out. That alters your shape a bit, but your body shape is your body shape. So start [00:18:20] loving it. My arms are shaped the way that they’re always going to be shaped.

[00:18:24] Rita Black: And when I started owning my thighs and my butt, my life changed. I started to be proud of how I, and it’s a whole other podcast, but we’re gonna talk about really taking ownership of our body, but just for the moment. Forgive your body and say, okay, body. We are going on a beautiful journey together, and I am loving you right now unconditionally where we’re at, and I’m going to continue to love and take care of you because you gotta take care of your body as you’re loving yourself down the scale.

[00:18:56] Rita Black: Think of all those times that we ate the horrible foods, or maybe took those drugs that might’ve hurt our body. In the name of the scale being down, but really not thinking it through and really harming ourselves on the way We wanna show our beautiful body love and self care, and really nourish our bodies, love our bodies, worship our bodies down.

[00:19:20] Rita Black: Scale, no matter where they’re at. And you know what is so great that nowadays there are so many great mo role models of women and men out there doing that saying my body is powerful no matter what its shape, no matter what. I love where the world is going with that. It still has a ways to go. When I was growing up in the seventies, eighties.

[00:19:45] Rita Black: And into the early nineties it was, it was a lot different than it is now. My daughter, who is 19. Just turned 19. She and her friends had a completely different viewpoint in high school [00:20:00] about their bodies than me and my friends in high school. And I was so glad that was true.

[00:20:05] Rita Black: Listen, girls still freak out about their bodies and I’m not saying that all of that girl stuff isn’t still there. It is, unfortunately. But there are a lot of leaders and there is a lot more conversation about this that’s powerful. And I’m really. Excited and happy that the conversation is turning, but we, for ourselves, need to just take ownership and begin a different conversation with ourselves.

[00:20:31] Rita Black: And that’s what I hope that you begin to do. Okay. And now I want you to think of this journey that you’re going on as a journey. It’s a lifelong journey. That you are traveling on rather than a diet, which is a very short term thinking modality. A journey is a hero’s journey. And in again I work in Hollywood.

[00:20:56] Rita Black: I know a lot of screenwriters and you think of a Hollywood film. Our hero’s journey in Hollywood scripts are based on the hero’s journey and, the hero decides to usually in a Hollywood movie, any Hollywood movie that the protagonist is going to within the first 30 minutes decide to, go on whatever adventure, whatever that movie is about, and then immediately the hero is thrown obstacles. And that’s what makes up the story is all the different obstacles the hero has to overcome. And within that journey, a. The hero is growing, learning, becoming a more expanded individual, stronger stronger minded.

[00:21:39] Rita Black: [00:21:40] And usually towards the climax of the story the hero, has to really. Confront the biggest fears, the biggest obstacles. But by that time, the hero has become so strong from all the other obstacles that they’ve overcome, that they are able to slay the dragon or to, and jump over the shark tank or whatever the thing is and win and come through that journey of transformation, and this is a journey of transformation that you are on.

[00:22:12] Rita Black: There will be obstacles that you have to overcome, but each obstacle will build and build you as a person. I want you to see that you are a hero on your own journey, and it’s a journey of self-realization and transformation. So act like it and not like you’re all ashamed and on some diet that you’re super focused on.

[00:22:34] Rita Black: And you know you’ll love yourself when you lose 10 pounds. Something more and now we’ve. See people who are on these transformational journeys, and it’s really exciting to see people who have started something that’s a little different and a lot more effective in the long term.

[00:22:52] Rita Black: Now I. Also, I’m gonna ask you to do another thing, which is to start to communicate with yourself more powerfully. The way I like to introduce this to people is to start seeing that you have an inner coach within you. We know you have an inner critic. We know you have an inner rebel. They have been doing just fine with you, right?

[00:23:15] Rita Black: They have been beating you up and then seducing you to go eat food. They know their jobs [00:23:20] really well. They’re very loud voices within your head. I know, because they were. Super loud within mine. They still exist. Mine still exists, believe me, but I’ve turned down the volume on them quite a bit because I have another voice in my head which is the voice of my inner coach.

[00:23:34] Rita Black: And believe me, it’s okay to have lots of voices in your head. It’s perfectly normal. Enjoy. But that inner coach in you is the part of you that is wise, nurturing, motivational, inspirational, and you wanna start to communicate with yourself. In this way. Hey, I know we can figure this out. Hey, stupider people than me have figured this out.

[00:23:57] Rita Black: Like talking to yourself like, Hey, your own best friend. Put your arm around yourself. Hey kid, I got it. We’re gonna go on this and we’re gonna make this happen. And when I, when you know. 25 years ago when I made my shift at my turning point, I sat down with myself and I said, Hey, we can do this.

[00:24:17] Rita Black: There’s another way and you wanna be your own best friend. You wanna be a. On your own team and you start to think of that, and if you need to cultivate that voice within you, think of maybe a mentor in your life or maybe a therapist that you worked with, or maybe your, one of your parents, or a aunt or an uncle or somebody who is just very nurturing and very mentoring of you or.

[00:24:40] Rita Black: Maybe yourself and the way you are with other people. Maybe you are a leader in other areas of your life. Think of the way that you communicate with other people. Think of the way you communicate with your friends. That’s the way you wanna start to communicate with yourself. ’cause it often is not, we usually are very cruel and very high expectations with yourself.

[00:24:59] Rita Black: Way that we have [00:25:00] expectations of ourselves that we’d never put. Other people, but we do on ourselves. So start creating that inner coach. And speaking of expectations, start creating realistic expectations that you can follow through on. Often when we are stuck in the weight struggle, our expectations of what we need to deliver on are crazy.

[00:25:22] Rita Black: I have people coming to see me or in my processes who expect to lose. Crazy amounts of weight per week and not doable at all, and certainly not sustainable. Crazy amounts of exercise when they haven’t been exercising in God knows how long. Like these expectations come out of nowhere. Like W why would you expect to work out an hour and a half a day, seven days a week when you haven’t worked out?

[00:25:54] Rita Black: In two years, why would you do that to yourself? Because what happens when you don’t do what you say you’re gonna do? You don’t believe in yourself. You start to distrust yourself. You start to have a lack of respect for yourself. You start to see yourself as a failure. You start to see yourself as somebody who doesn’t do what they’re gonna, they say they’re gonna do.

[00:26:13] Rita Black: So guess what? Do what you say you were gonna do. Have a plan for the day that is doable, even if it seems a lot smaller than what you would. Think would be, create doable plans for yourself, especially at the beginning and with doable goals in mind. Because actually research shows a slower weight release actually [00:26:40] is more associated with long-term success than a fast one.

[00:26:44] Rita Black: If you’re speeding down the scale, how are you gonna learn how to sustain that? You aren’t gonna be able to sustain that. Not at all. So what you wanna do is create those expectations and goals. You wanna do what you say you’re gonna do. So make it doable and you’ll do it. And you go, wow, I did that.

[00:27:07] Rita Black: I followed through. And guess what? You stay connected to yourself. You show up for yourself. When you set these huge, unrealistic expectations, you are not showing up for yourself. You’re disconnecting. From yourself. It’s like you are putting yourself through some crazy obstacle course and saying, go and do it.

[00:27:25] Rita Black: Knowing you are gonna fail. Why would you do that to yourself? You love yourself. Be good to yourself. Set something that you know, we’re gonna get a win here. Have a consultation with your inner coach. Can we do this? Does this feel realistic? Good. Okay, let’s go. But. Make sure you’re checking in with yourself and saying, is this realistic?

[00:27:45] Rita Black: Can I feel like I can get a win here? We wanna go for the wins. And the small wins are awesome. They’re as good as the big wins. Just one little win at a time adds up to a big, long term weight release. Believe me, mark my words. I’ve seen it hundreds and thousands of times. Just trust. Now, if things don’t go right, forgive yourself.

[00:28:09] Rita Black: What did I learn? Learn when you lose, don’t lose the lesson. So forgive yourself. Oh, I did that. Oh, I ate the cookies that my [00:28:20] boss left and I wasn’t going to. I did that. How human, I did that? Own it. Forgive yourself. What did I learn here? What did I learn? Maybe you needed to take those cookies and just throw them away.

[00:28:33] Rita Black: Or give them away as soon as they’re on their desk or as soon as they landed on your desk. I don’t know the answer to that because everybody is different and what they need to do in different situations is different. I can’t tell you what to do, but I can say that nobody is in your head. 24, 7, 7 days a week except for you.

[00:28:53] Rita Black: So when you cultivate that powerful inner coach within you, you are a long way forward in your success journey because you’ve got a free coach working with you. That’s awesome. And forgive yourself, what did I learn? That’s what your coach is gonna start to ask you. What did we learn here? How can we make this better next time?

[00:29:16] Rita Black: How can we improve on this? Set yourself up for success. That’s the next thing. I can’t tell you how many people wake up and hope the day works for them. You know what I mean? If you don’t have a plan, the world has a plan for you. And it isn’t a, it isn’t a slimming one, if we step out the door and there are food signals and food signs and food messages all over.

[00:29:44] Rita Black: We walk into Starbucks, oh, there’s a big array of food. We go to the grocery store. They’ve positioned everything so that your eye hits it just at the right place. To so that your impulse control completely goes out the window and you grab that product and you buy it. The world is [00:30:00] not set up for you to win.

[00:30:01] Rita Black: Let me just be really blunt and honest with you, and I think you know what I’m talking about. So you, my friend, have got to set yourself up for success and you need to set your environment, at least your environment, and keep your environment like a mama bear. And if you’re going into the grocery store, know what you’re going to get.

[00:30:21] Rita Black: Get the hell out. Get the foods that work for you, get the hell out, and have a plan, and have a list. You’re going out, have a plan in mind and know how you wanna feel leaving that place. You’re going to the restaurant or the party. If you don’t have a plan, the world has one for you. So set yourself up for success, your environment and the people in it, meaning, let people know.

[00:30:46] Rita Black: How you want them to treat you. Now that you are treating yourself differently, you got to, get people enrolled in supporting you. It’s a huge part of weight mastery. You have to have the team, the Olympic athletes, they got the team, the movie stars. They got the team. You’re a star, you’re a weight mastery star.

[00:31:05] Rita Black: Get your support team. I can’t tell you how many people I have on my team. So trained, my husband, my kids my friends. I have friends who different friends every day of the week. I’m working out with them. I’m hanging out with them. It’s a beautiful thing. And they’ve got me trained too.

[00:31:23] Rita Black: Believe me. We’re all working for each other and we’re all working to be healthy and have fulfilling lives. Isn’t that great When you are in it for someone else and they’re in it for you? There’s nothing better than that when you’re both like wanting transformation and awesome life for [00:31:40] each other there.

[00:31:41] Rita Black: It doesn’t get. Any better than that does it? You might have to train your friends a little. You might have to engage them in getting healthy. And if they don’t wanna go along for the ride, that’s cool. That’s them. And, you work on your plan. And they’ll see you and they’ll see your transformation.

[00:31:56] Rita Black: And believe me they’re gonna want a piece of that action. And you can be their leader. You can let them, you can show them the way, you can model that awesome behavior for them. But it’s gotta start with you loving yourself down the scale, because that is irresistible. So make yourself and your health a priority above other people.

[00:32:17] Rita Black: So I cannot tell you. That you should be doing this enough, and especially for you moms out there, especially all moms, put themselves at the bottom of the totem pole. It just drives me crazy. And yes, I am sometimes. Guilty of doing that myself. But I work very hard to let everybody know my children and my husband.

[00:32:41] Rita Black: I’m like, if mama ain’t happy and nobody happy, so mama self care comes first because then when I’m taken care of, guess what? Everybody gets taken care of. I will take beautiful care of you. When I take care of myself, when I’m not taking care of myself, guess what? I become resentful. I become a victim. I become a martyr and martyrs and victims, they’re not fun to hang out with.

[00:33:05] Rita Black: So don’t be a martyr. Don’t be a victim. Take care of yourself first and get your family enrolled in supporting you too because you support them. So get them to support you. Here’s another one. Practice saying [00:33:20] no. No. Thank you. Oh, no thank you. Oh, that looks great. But no, thank you. And when I say practice that, practice that before you’re in the situations where you actually have to say no, create some boundaries.

[00:33:33] Rita Black: Boundaries are very slimming. Don’t say yes to everything. Say, oh, I will think about that and let me get back to you and then say no. When somebody offers you something. Often our impulse is to say, oh, thank you and take it. Because we all wanna be liked, we all want, we don’t wanna upset anybody.

[00:33:49] Rita Black: We don’t wanna rock the boat. But most of the time what we’re doing is really hurting us by saying yes. So say no. The I, when I started my business, somebody said the mark of a successful business owner. As a business owner that says, no. And I didn’t really get that in the beginning, but I get it now because you get so many offers.

[00:34:11] Rita Black: You get so many people coming at you asking you to do things, asking that, and you wanna stay focused. On what you need to do for you to serve your people the best and the best way is to stay focused. And if we’re saying yes to everything else, we get very distracted. So when we’re saying yes to everything out in our weight lives, we get distracted and we get overworked, and we get overwhelmed and we get spread out too thin, and that is fattening.

[00:34:41] Rita Black: So say no. No thank you, ADA. However you say it, in whatever language you say, learn how to say it and practice saying it. Another one. Don’t put garbage in your body. I have a word, I didn’t make it up, but I have taken ownership of this [00:35:00] word. And this word is gak and gak signifies like that kind of super refined, sugary carby food.

[00:35:08] Rita Black: It doesn’t need to be sugary necessarily, but super refined carby food that has no nutritive value. That is, just absolutely you eat it and it takes away from your body rather than giving to it. I call it gak. Now, sometimes if you bites a G can be lovely and everything but. Often when we are overeating, often when we are binging, we will put any sort of G in our mouth, any sort of shit in our mouth, just for the sake of eating.

[00:35:39] Rita Black: And we wanna start to be selective. We wanna start to be a snob about food. Let’s just put the A plus food in our body. And I don’t mean just, the fruits and vegetables and lean proteins, obviously those are the a plus foods and healthy fats, but I just mean any food that you’re gonna put in, you’re gonna own it.

[00:36:02] Rita Black: And so you’re gonna love it, enjoy it, eat a few buys of it. We are gonna talk about, food a lot more in later podcasts because I want to get. The mind stuff right first, but just, put the a you’re an a plus person. Put the fricking A plus stuff in your body and leave all the other shit on the side.

[00:36:23] Rita Black: Excuse my French, but I’m getting protective of you. I’m being the mama Bear here. You don’t deserve to put that other crap in your body, that gack in your body. Put the good stuff in and leave the bad stuff on the side. All right. And then, [00:36:40] respect yourself. Care enough to learn what doesn’t work and correct it.

[00:36:45] Rita Black: Don’t stand for traps that own you. Don’t get into situations that you know you are gonna struggle with. Like I said. Protect yourself like a mama bear. You’re gonna start to recognize the vulnerable times. Protect yourself, like you would one of your kids or you would your best friend.

[00:37:07] Rita Black: You wouldn’t let your best friend go into a bad situation. You wouldn’t let your best friend date an. Crappy guy, that’s often what we’ll let ourselves do is we’ll just let ourselves go blind into a situation we know we’re gonna get railroaded through. Stop doing that. Show up for yourself.

[00:37:23] Rita Black: Respect yourself. Respect the food you put in your mouth. Own it and respect the situations you put in yourself into. And don’t put yourself in situations where you know you’re gonna fail. Or think it through so that you know you can make it work. But, stop letting yourself get into those situations where you get into trouble.

[00:37:47] Rita Black: You don’t you don’t need to do it. Respect yourself. Start respecting yourself from that place. Fierce place of, like I said, a mama bear. And a mama bear. Can be ferocious and we wanna start to come with that self-love and that for ferocious for ourselves. We own it. Okay. And get support, get lots of support get lots of love from your friends, from your family, from groups, and [00:38:20] keep coming to this podcast.

[00:38:21] Rita Black: I’m here for you. I believe in you and I know I am speaking to you like I know you are on your journey of weight mastery. I have no doubt in my mind. So get the support where you need it. And lastly, start living your dreams. Today. Today, don’t wait for tomorrow. Don’t wait till you get skinny to start living your dreams.

[00:38:45] Rita Black: Love yourself now, and start living those dreams so that they aren’t so scary. A lot of, I see a lot of people release weight and. They get to their ideal weight and it’s so loaded with all these things they’re gonna start doing when they get thin that they self-sabotage. ’cause they’re super freaked out on subconscious level.

[00:39:05] Rita Black: Don’t do that. Start be loving. If you wanna go back to school, go now. Make that part of your Weight Mastery journey. I started becoming a hypnotherapist when I was on my weight mastery journey. I wanted that, I was, I stopped smoking with hypnosis. I managed, I got my weight journey going with hypnosis.

[00:39:24] Rita Black: Hypnosis was a big thing and I was like, wow, I really wanna help people in this way too. It’s so powerful. I want that for myself. I didn’t wait till I was. Super, at my ideal weight I started because I, it was part of my vision, part of my dream. And, I’ve had clients who, took this on board and it’s it just makes me cry.

[00:39:44] Rita Black: It’s such a beautiful thing when somebody really. Starts showing up for themselves and living their dreams before they release all their weight. I’ve had people go back to school, get divorced get married find the love of their lives even though they were 50 pounds up the [00:40:00] scale, they found somebody and and they love them 50 pounds above the scale at their ideal weight, that have had people, buy homes move across the planet leave a bad job and get a better job. Start their own business. You know what I mean? Like that. This is what I’m talking about, like this is your life. It isn’t just about weight. It is about you showing up for you and you starting to really engage in your life on a different level.

[00:40:25] Rita Black: Having a powerful vision and going for it. So think about that. Think about what have I been holding myself back from and what could I just begin? You don’t have to, it doesn’t have to happen all at once. What can you start to get curious about What you can you begin to surround yourself with?

[00:40:42] Rita Black: What could be that first step that you take with living your dreams? Today. So Monica started loving herself down the scale. She started employing a lot of these thin thinking strategies we have been talking about today, and a funny thing happened. You know what? She no longer felt shame. Around releasing weight, and she started sharing it with her friends instead of the secret thing that she was doing in order to, get back into her size four duress.

[00:41:11] Rita Black: She started to say, Hey, I struggle with my weight and now I’m on my journey, and you guys come with me. And she started enrolling other people in her community and inviting them to get healthy with her instead of seeing herself as a failure. She started to see herself as a leader and she started inspiring others and they all love themselves down the scale too.

[00:41:33] Rita Black: And she released 50 pounds and she’s kept it off for seven years. She got into [00:41:40] exercise, she got other people into exercise. I think she’s got like a running squad or a walking squad of friends now that she still goes and exercises every week with, it’s a beautiful thing, but she created that from a different place.

[00:41:54] Rita Black: You can too. Now, for this week’s thin thinking. I would like to do a little repetition. What I like. To call cognitive coaching. So if you’re driving your car, you can actually do this with me. It’s another term that you would use is called a direct drive technique. It’s just a repetition. We’re going to, I’m gonna say the same suggestion over and over three times, and what you’re gonna do is just repeat it powerfully to yourself inside your own mind.

[00:42:24] Rita Black: And it’s just to start to break up. The, some of those subconscious disbeliefs limiting beliefs inside your deeper mind. So just play along. You don’t need to say it out loud, just mentally repeat it. And I’m gonna do that three times with each suggestion. Alright, so here’s number one.

[00:42:44] Rita Black: I forgive myself for struggling with my weight. Good. And again, I forgive myself for struggling with my weight,

[00:42:58] Rita Black: and again, I forgive myself for struggling with my weight.

[00:43:08] Rita Black: I forgive my body for not living up to what I thought it should be.

[00:43:17] Rita Black: I forgive my body for [00:43:20] not living up to what I thought it should be.

[00:43:26] Rita Black: I forgive my body for not living up to what I thought it should be.

[00:43:37] Rita Black: I am open to loving my body right now for all it is right now.

[00:43:46] Rita Black: I am open to loving my body right now for all it is right now.

[00:43:56] Rita Black: I’m open to loving my body right now for all it is right now.

[00:44:07] Rita Black: I’m moving in the direction of believing in myself down the scale.

[00:44:16] Rita Black: I am moving in the direction of believing myself down the scale.

[00:44:24] Rita Black: I’m moving in the direction of believing myself down the scale.

[00:44:33] Rita Black: Last one. I am moving in the direction of loving myself down the scale. I am moving in the direction of loving myself down the scale.

[00:44:50] Rita Black: I am moving in the direction of loving myself down the scale.

[00:44:58] Rita Black: Excellent. [00:45:00] Good job. Take a nice deep breath in and just bring that all in. As your inner blueprint for the week. I hope this episode served you and that you really begin. That journey of loving yourself down the scale. If you’re already on that journey, good for you. Keep doing it. Keeping loving yourself and loving that body of yours and continuing your journey of weight mastery.

[00:45:31] Rita Black: And just a reminder, if you are new or have really want to break through that self-sabotage cycle that is mostly subconscious and can be broken through. Please join me for my free masterclass. The link, like I said, is in the show notes, or you can hop on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com/free and grab that just, you just sign up and you’ll find a time that works for you and we will send out a replay.

[00:46:05] Rita Black: If you miss it. Have an amazing week and remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it, and I will see you here next week. Thanks for listening to The Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that episode go by way too fast for you?

[00:46:30] Rita Black: If so, and you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www shift weight [00:46:40] mastery.com. That’s www shift weight mastery.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.