[00:00:00] Rita Black: It’s my birthday and instead of a party with candles and frosting, I thought we’d do something a little different. Unwrap the real gift that changed my life. Mastering the mental side of weight for decades. I fought with food rules and endless cycles of starting over tomorrow. What really broke that cycle wasn’t another diet.

[00:00:25] Rita Black: It was learning how to train my mind for long-term freedom. So in this episode, I’m going to get into the nitty gritty and share the principles that helped me step off the merry-go-round of the struggle and stay at my healthiest weight for over 30 years. Think of it as setting the stage for a new kind of game.

[00:00:47] Rita Black: One where you finally get to win. So come on in and join the party.

[00:01:00] 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.

[00:01:27] 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.

[00:01:53] 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.

[00:02:14] Rita Black: Sound good? Let’s get started. Hello? Hello. And come on in. Welcome to my party. Please have a seat. You are a guest of honor. I am so glad that you are here and joining me with friends, uh, from our thin thinking community all over the world. I’m so honored. That you’re here. Um, and so I wanted to make your time worthwhile.

[00:02:39] Rita Black: Uh, it’s my birthday, so Well, if you’re listening around September 10th. Otherwise, it’s not my birthday anymore, although sometimes we can stretch our birthday into weeks and months, right? So anyway. I’m not one of those people though. I, I slide in on the day I slide out and other than my mentioning it on the podcast, my birthday 61 is a pretty lowkey birthday this year other than my time with you.

[00:03:07] Rita Black: So have a seat. Like I said, not a party with food. We are gonna be playing a game, the inner game of long term weight mastery. But there are some rules we will be discussing and these are the golden rules that have allowed me to take off 40 pounds and keep them off for over 30 years. Not diet rules, like don’t eat this, don’t eat that, yada yada.

[00:03:30] Rita Black: We, this is gonna be the inner stuff, the way to use your mind to win the game because if you’ve been struggling with weight, your mind has been rigged. To work against you and against long-term weight loss success in many ways. So here are some ways that our mind just is naturally ed rigged. Not even your fault.

[00:03:52] Rita Black: Uh, for many of you who are my students or, um, you know, have been in my thin thinking world. You know, uh, we have that 1288 PR PR principles. You know, 12% of our mind, our conscious mind wants to release weight. The other 88% our beliefs, our identity, our habits, uh, our imagination, all these things. Uh, our, the subconscious mind wants things to stay the same and will fight hard to keep the status quo.

[00:04:22] Rita Black: And then on top of that, our brain is negativity biased. That means that it’s always. Looking out and, um, thinking negative things because that’s a survival mechanism. So, uh, looking out perfectionistic, um, you know, don’t do this. Oh, you blew it. Yeah. And then there’s this thing called the. Dunning Kruger effect, which you may have heard me speak about in a previous episode, uh, which it I’m gonna get into a little later.

[00:04:54] Rita Black: It’s, it is very fascinating. And we also have, um, a comfort trap. Food isn’t just fuel as you know, it’s all these other things. It’s comfort, it’s celebration, it’s stress relief and escape, and the mind resists letting go of something that has multiple emotional jobs. Until those needs are met in new ways, the brain is gonna fight to pull you back into old patterns.

[00:05:23] Rita Black: Don’t we know it, but never fear with these inner game of long-term weight mastery rules. Uh, there are some mind shifts, uh, that I’m gonna share with you that I made on my journey and this is gonna be covered in two podcast episodes. ’cause I don’t want you sitting here all day. So today we’re gonna look at what it takes to release the weight, and next week we’re gonna look at what it takes to keep it off for 30 years.

[00:05:53] Rita Black: For many. That is the hard part. The rules are similar, interestingly, but the mindset is a bit different. So we, before we get out the game board, so to speak and set it up, I want you to know that we. Our, um, coming up to the live fall 2025 shift Weight mastery process. It’s starting this upcoming September 17th very soon, and I am going to be doing a free info session this coming Saturday, September 13th at 2:00 PM Pacific Standard time to do some teaching about the mind using it more effectively for long-term weight release because as we know, it works against us and about.

[00:06:36] Rita Black: I also doing some, and we’ll do a hypnosis session. Uh, so if you’ve never tried hypnosis before, I, it’s a great session and you can test drive hypnosis. And I will walk through what the shift weight mastery process is all about. So if you are curious or if you are on the fence, if you’ve been thinking about this, please come.

[00:06:56] Rita Black: I will answer your questions. Um, I will also have some former students there who will be coaches in the upcoming process who have released their weight and have been keeping it off as well. So they have been on their journey. And yeah, if you’re interested in learning more, please, please come again Saturday the 13th.

[00:07:15] Rita Black: The link is in the show notes, or you can go to www.shiftweightmastery.com. That’s shift weight mastery.com/info. Keep it easy slash info www. Do shift weight mastery.com/info. Okay, now let’s get out the game board and look at the rules of the inner game. I just love this because I just played monopoly with my kids and this made me think of this episode.

[00:07:47] Rita Black: Uh, we bought a new monopoly board ’cause ours was old and crusty and it was falling apart and the money was all wet and weird and we lost all the, you know, the little guys that go around the board. So we bought this new monopoly and it, it’s a little different. It’s a little more streamlined at the, it’s the same though, like if you’re worried about No, no, it’s all the, you know, it’s the same boardwalk and park place and the electric company and the railroads and all that stuff.

[00:08:15] Rita Black: It looks pretty much the same, but it’s lighter. So I think they’re conserving, you know, materials. Um. The pieces that you know, that you push around the board are a little more, uh, they seems a little different. Uh, and the money looks the same. It’s a little thinner. Um, but yeah, there was this rule packet and ’cause my son loves to cheat.

[00:08:41] Rita Black: I had to call him out a couple. He was calling me out. He was like, you’re doing this here. I was like, no, no. This is, this is a thing. Do you do this? And he’s like, no, no. And I was like, yes, yes. Let me get the rules out. I got the rules out. And sure enough, uh, there were some, uh, I was right. I love being right.

[00:08:58] Rita Black: But, uh, yeah. And then there were some rules, interestingly, like that you could look at different ways. So I thought, and I was like, this is so. Interesting. And I don’t like to think of weight management as like rules, like these rigid things, but there’s principles, there’s, you know, things that we can hang our hat on, especially the inner rules.

[00:09:18] Rita Black: You know, we all know diet rules, which are boring and, and you know, they’re outside of us. But I think these inner principles. Are very solid and so I’m looking forward to diving them in with them. But it was all inspired by a Monopoly game. Uh, we went away, uh, for a week. Uh, I hadn’t seen both my kids in the same place for over a year ’cause my daughter had gone away for a year, um, to Europe to teach and to do stuff and to have adventures.

[00:09:45] Rita Black: And now she’s back home and, you know, applying for master’s degrees and stuff like that. Very serious adult stuff. So she’s really glad she took that year off. Now. Speaking of that journeying and you know, being, playing the game. So here is rule number one. We’re gonna dive right in. Um, be on a hero’s journey, not a shame Sprint.

[00:10:09] Rita Black: Beyond hero’s journey and not a shame sprint. So I have worked with over 12,000 students over 20 years, and something that I’m keenly aware of and maybe are too, is that there is a very well worn path to about 10 to 20 pounds down the scale. We all know how to get there. Um, and then the path gets a little overgrown, right?

[00:10:36] Rita Black: So there’s this well worn tourist path, you know, that the people march up, you know, on the, I remember last year we climbed up Mount Rainier. In the state of Washington and there’s this very, you know, it’s like a asphalt path and you know, you go up like a quarter of a mile or half a mile is pretty flat.

[00:10:54] Rita Black: It’s before you get to the serious hiking and you know, that’s where everybody goes, you know? And then. It stops being an asphalt path, and then it starts being a rock path, and then it starts getting a little harder, and then things, you know, get narrower and, and the path isn’t even so clear. And so that’s kind of the same thing with the, the road to weight mastery.

[00:11:17] Rita Black: Um, after, you know, that 10, 20 pounds that we’re all used to gaining, losing, gaining, losing, but the the long-term path. Weight mastery. You need a bush whack to get through it. And why is this, why? Well, when we struggle with weight, our brain does this crazy thing. We’re in great pain, right? We’re not maybe in physical pain, but we’re just like, oh, why am I overweight?

[00:11:42] Rita Black: And we’re really hard on ourselves. We don’t like the feeling of feeling overweight or not fitting in our clothes. Feeling chaotic, feeling vulnerable. And we will, we become very vulnerable. We become pretty much willing to do anything to escape that horrible, awful feeling. Now, I know this so well because I struggled for decades and you know, my first diet was a really gross diet.

[00:12:07] Rita Black: It was the Scarsdale diet. It was just like dry toast, grapefruit meat, all day. Disgusting. But you know, that was the beginning for me. And over the years. I did crazy things to my diet, my body and, and crazy diets. I starved myself. I ate tasteless diet food. You know this, you know, we all have done it. Took pills that I bought from this was, I bought pills, like these herbal pills from some man out of his back door in Santa Monica, California.

[00:12:40] Rita Black: I’ll never forget that. I was just like, what am I doing? I drove up, I like had to park in this back alley. It was just like it was promised to make me not have any appetite, and they made me feel weird and, and, and I paid a lot of money, and it was just all in the name of not being fat because. We are more focused on that.

[00:13:05] Rita Black: You know, when we’re in pain, it’s like, I don’t wanna be fat, I don’t like myself. We beat ourselves up and we, you know, we, we, we feel like we’re a freak. We don’t fit in. And I can’t tell you how many times I. Had been called, you know, really horrible names, you know, by my family, my friends, men. I worked for, you know, this was way Preme too.

[00:13:33] Rita Black: Oh my god. You know, just horrible, awful names. And even women I worked for, and then people I didn’t even know on the street would say crap to me. And God, I just hated it. I wanted to shrink away and die. I wanted to hide. I wanted just to evaporate into the ether and just not be me anymore. You know what I mean?

[00:13:56] Rita Black: Like I was so desperate. And here’s the thing. When I got Gung Ho about weight loss, you know, when I got in enough pain, oh boy, I could lose. Lose the weight. I knew it’s well worn path to 10 to 20 pounds. But because it wasn’t sustainable, ’cause everything I did was just like, I’ve gotta get this off ASAP as fast as possible.

[00:14:19] Rita Black: Nothing was sustainable. I didn’t believe in myself and I thought I was a lazy, food addicted, crazy woman, and I lived in this narrow little world of self-abuse and self-sabotage, and I would be willing to spend anything and eat or not eat anything. Not to be in that shitty, pardon my friends, but it is.

[00:14:40] Rita Black: It’s that shitty, dark like world of struggling with my weight. It’s a horrible, awful place. And diets to me were an escape hatch. Like I got addicted to dieting and, and weight loss. I could only, like I said, I could get 10 pounds down, 20 pounds down, and sometimes I would get the whole 40, not to be confused with the whole 30, but I could get the whole 40 off of, because two things happened.

[00:15:10] Rita Black: I never kept it off. One the moment I didn’t feel so fat that I, you know, I got a little thinner. Thinner and enough that I got out of some pain and then something changed. The pain and the pain that had, you know, spurred me forward, dissipated, and I lost that fire under my butt, so I wasn’t so in pain anymore.

[00:15:33] Rita Black: And so I started looking around and food looked a little more appealing, and I was a little wishy-washy. And then, you know, I was eating stuff and then I was gaining weight back, and usually the diet wasn’t sustainable anyway. Right. So I would, you know, go off, get bored, you know, and the weight came back.

[00:15:54] Rita Black: Sound familiar? Yep. Should, because after a while it just becomes a habit. It becomes a habit in our brain, going on a diet, going off a diet, going on a diet, going off a diet, and the brain says, Hey, this is what we do. Let’s just put that on autopilot pilot. So the fact that you can’t. Get consistency isn’t your fault, it’s just that the brain is in autopilot and will pull you into it.

[00:16:22] Rita Black: So here’s the dilemma. You know, 12% of the mind wants the weight loss, but the other 88% are habits, beliefs, identity, the part that’s habitual, uh, you know, habituated in this struggle cycle. It just keeps pulling us back. And weight loss, I know I’ve said it here before, but you know, I can’t emphasize how addictive it is.

[00:16:44] Rita Black: Just, we get addicted to feeling good because we’re on a plan. It’s an addiction, you know, it’s, it organizes the chaos we feel, um, you know, when we’re self seeing ourself on a plan or a diet, uh, we are, um, looking good to ourselves, which is very rare. So, so we, we self see in this kind of high, sort of false way, you know, like, oh, I’m so good.

[00:17:13] Rita Black: But we know it’s not true. You know, it’s a hollow high and it’s a dopamine high, and it’s a false solution, and we fall off. And the second we fall off, we realize we don’t know anything. Like we just, we call ourselves a fool. Like, what did you, what made you think you really had it? And we shame ourselves desperately.

[00:17:40] Rita Black: To escape the pain of the shame we eat more and more dopamine. Hmm, this is good. And you know, we’ll start again tomorrow, so let’s eat it even more. And the brain’s like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Okay, this is good stuff because this is another crazy thing about the brain. It’s like, this feels good. It doesn’t see the pain, it doesn’t see all that pain we’re in.

[00:18:02] Rita Black: It just sees the high. And so pull us back again and again. Let’s do this. That felt good the last time. So one day I had lost weight, you know, and I, I, I’m sure if you’ve known me long enough, if you’re a student of mine, you know the story. You know, I got on the scale, it was down, and, and I, even though it was down, I wasn’t, I was just so unhappy.

[00:18:30] Rita Black: I was so broken. I was just like, I, I can’t even do this anymore. I just knew, even though it was down, it was just gonna go back up. So I just was broken. I just sat down on the scale. I, I just was like, I, you know, I, it, it was just like all that time and, and energy and, and high hopes, and then dashed hopes and disappointment.

[00:18:59] Rita Black: And I just was like, I can’t do this anymore. And it was a horrible feeling, but at the same time. It was like I went to the deepest, darkest depths of myself and I was just like, what are you doing? You are wasting your life and you know, this is you. This is like taking your relationships away from you.

[00:19:27] Rita Black: This is keeping you small, you know, what are you doing? And. In a way it was a blessing, right? Uh, and, and, uh, because I, you know, you meet that, that feeling within yourself and you kind of meet it with like, no, we’re not gonna do this anymore. And, and there’s this voice that came up within me and, and, and I bet it, it comes up in you in those dark moments where it’s like, we can do this.

[00:20:01] Rita Black: We’re better than this. We can do this. And, um. We call this in the shift weight mastery process, our turning point where we really just turn away from what isn’t working anymore. You know, we stop playing that game, you know, ’cause it’s a, it’s a rigged game, right? And the moment we decide we just can’t come from that same place, play those, those rules anymore, we’re just not gonna do it.

[00:20:32] Rita Black: So, um. I decided in that moment, I said, Rita, you’re never gonna diet again, and you are never gonna start over again. And I was very clear about that. You know, that moment of clarity when you’re just like, Nope, we’re done. And, um, we’re moving forward. I used to have, I worked at this place, I, I think I’ve, some of you may know this is, it is called the Old Homestead.

[00:20:54] Rita Black: It’s still there in New York. It’s a steakhouse. It looks a lot different than it did in the eighties when I worked there. And, um. It is over in the meat packing district or what used to be the meat packing district when I worked there was like, you know, the, the meat packers would be out in the early mornings, early morning and it was dangerous neighborhood ’cause it was eighties New York.

[00:21:16] Rita Black: Uh, we’d have to take a cab, you know, just to go five blocks ’cause it was so dangerous. Um, but now it’s like Rodeo Drive, it’s like got all the Gucci stores and it’s really, really fancy. So that’s how much New York has changed since I’ve lived there. But, um. I worked there and there was this guy, a couple of guys who owned the place.

[00:21:37] Rita Black: Um, I won’t say their names, just, you know, ’cause I won’t, but they, you know, they were New Jersey guys and, and they would say, honey, you know, you, you, you, you know, you’ll, if you lost some weight, you know, you could get a boyfriend, you could, you could have a boyfriend and he probably buy you lobster. You know, you could get a boyfriend and make him buy you lobster.

[00:21:57] Rita Black: You know, they, these weren’t these guys. These were their, their, uh, rules of the game they played by. And, um, anyway. They would say, you know, if you ever break up with your boyfriend, just keep going. Just keep going. The lights are with you. And so I felt like it was like a keep going. The lights are with you moment.

[00:22:18] Rita Black: Like I’m not turning back, I’m just moving forward. It was probably the only time in my life I ever took their advice. Um, but yeah, so it was a turning point moment, and in that moment I made that decision and I was gonna put faith in my ability to figure out any way forward. That is how a hero’s journey begins.

[00:22:39] Rita Black: We, uh, you know, talk about the hero’s journey a lot in the ship Weight mastery process kickoff. We have this orientation and it’s really a blast off orientation. We do hypnosis. We do a bunch of we cognitive processes to really give you momentum to, because there is so much crap pulling you back. And so you need that rocket launch.

[00:23:06] Rita Black: To get through that mire of disbelief in yourself, all the resentment you hold against yourself. Um, so we, we, we work through that stuff and get to the other side. Um, ’cause on the other side is you the true you, the real you that has integrity, that is, has value. Uh, that is enough. That can love yourself down the scale, but there’s a lot of crap holding, you know, in that, that little world of weight struggle that that needs to be blasted out and put in the dumpster so that you can move forward.

[00:23:46] Rita Black: So, and, and, and what usually that shows up as is fear, uh, resignation, cynicism, and, um, and, uh, resistance. If you’ve ever had, like, a lot of my students will have, uh, coming into the process, like they’ve been, you know, just get overwhelmed and I can’t do this and it’s too much, and I blah, blah. And their brains literally blow out and we’re like, no, no, just take this one step at a time.

[00:24:19] Rita Black: And, and once you kind of get through that mire, you come to the other side. So we leave that struggle or identity behind and move into a new world because that’s what we need is a new world. You can’t, you can’t stay in that struggle world. You have to step out. And this is called a cognitive reframe, right?

[00:24:36] Rita Black: Like we’re reframing how you see reality and we’re reframing how you see yourself and this is what you wanna do. You wanna, um, new rules on a new board game, right? You get a new, the player is the same. That’s you, your beautiful self. But you have a more self-respecting identity and you’re living in a world where you have power, an agency, and you are the captain of the ship, not some diet outside of you that’s just gonna shame you ultimately and make you feel bad about yourself.

[00:25:09] Rita Black: So I decided I was on a hero’s journey, and that did something in my brain. It changed my identity. Like I said, I wasn’t a struggler anymore. I was gonna be a courageous but very humble hero. Figuring it out one step, one little baby step at a time and recognized, hey, there is a lot to learn about myself and the obstacles to be encountered.

[00:25:35] Rita Black: But what I was really, you know, I was, I was excited, you know, the hero’s journey, just FYI is all about the transformational story that most cultures, um, have the story of the hero leaving. Um, the old world and entering into a new world in whatever form that might be. Um, but usually the hero is resistant at first.

[00:26:02] Rita Black: They don’t believe in themselves, and then they have to, you know, something bigger than them calls them into action. They have a guide. You know, like if you look at Luke Skywalker, it’s such a. Perfect hero’s journey. He was reluctant. Then, you know, he had his guide and then he meets the dragon. You know, like the hero always meets the inner dragon at the innermost cave has to slay the dragon and comes, you know, back to the village transformed.

[00:26:28] Rita Black: So. As the hero encounters obstacles along the way, uh, they, uh, grow. Right. And I don’t think the diet world poses things to us like that. I think it’s just like, be good on this diet and, you know, lose weight. And really the journey of weight mastery is, uh, you know, really learning, making the unknown the known.

[00:26:58] Rita Black: That is what brings growth. So anyway, I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but, um, here we are at rule number two. Um, and I’m gonna borrow from one of the greats, uh, Mr. Stephen Covey. I’m gonna say rule number two is begin with the end in mind. When I was beginning my weight release journey, um, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was a pretty big book at the time.

[00:27:27] Rita Black: And, uh, I had read it and that one really stuck with me. And I thought about that and, and, uh, I realized that so many times when I was dieting, it was just all about getting thin, right? Like, I gotta get thin, I got to get this weight off, I gotta get thin. And, and that’s usually where most diets are focusing.

[00:27:46] Rita Black: It is just like, lose the weight, lose the weight, lose the weight, get thin, but. That was the mistake I was making for decades. And, and I see so many strugglers make it, you know, but it’s not about the weight, you know? And, and, and all of my coaches who are doing the ship Weight Mastery process, if you ask ’em, it’s like, that’s awesome to, you know, release the weight, but it, you know, to keep it off.

[00:28:17] Rita Black: And, and I’m gonna talk about this more next week when we talk about the long-term part. It can’t be about the weight because you stopped releasing weight. Um, but it’s about who you become in the process of releasing weight, you know, working through those obstacles. It, it becomes about your growing yourself from the inside out, and that’s is the focus that turns the game in your favor Now, um.

[00:28:49] Rita Black: You know the word lose weight or weight loss, you know, loss means we wanna find it again, so that’s why we use different words in the shift. We use weight release, uh, because you release the weight forever. But more important than weight release was the idea of becoming a weight master. So for me, here I was 40 pounds above.

[00:29:13] Rita Black: You know, what I would consider my ideal weight. And instead of thinking myself thin, prancing around, you know, thinking of myself in the future, prancing around, you know, six months from now in a bikini on the beach, you know, okay, maybe I did that a little, but it wasn’t the focus. The focus wasn’t my body, the focus was on me.

[00:29:38] Rita Black: The questions I asked myself were about me, like, who is that Rita? In my vision of the future that Rita has transformed herself, um, into a long-term weight vision, you know, in the shift we don’t just focus you on achieving ideal weight, but we focus you on five years out when you have been maintaining your weight for that long.

[00:30:08] Rita Black: And that’s where I think the magic is, is that that length of focus, because again, when we’re struggling with our weight, the focus is like, I just wanna be thin in a month. Let me do, you know, let me cut off my arm, let me, um, you know, eat dirt and water for a month. ’cause some of those diet drinks taste like that.

[00:30:25] Rita Black: Or, you know, let me do whatever I need to. ’cause I’ve gotta be skinny soon. I’ve gotta, and not skinny, but I’ve just gotta get this weight off of myself so that I can love myself. But we don’t realize that we’re not loving ourselves. You know, we’re not owning ourselves and loving ourselves down the scale.

[00:30:46] Rita Black: Uh, you know, and then we lose the weight, but then we feel like an imposter because we don’t have that ownership. And we don’t even still, you know, let me lose more because I still don’t love myself yet. I see this at time and time again, so that’s why it’s just so important to develop yourself and to see yourself out in that future.

[00:31:07] Rita Black: Who is that you. It’s so empowering for your mind. You know that Rita, I would say to myself, isn’t the same Rita here today? Not ’cause she’s thinner, but because she’s gone on this courageous journey. She had a, you know, she has to, she created a way of eating that she loved and, and that way of eating actually allows her to live life at her ideal weight.

[00:31:34] Rita Black: And there’s an answer for that. There is a way forward through that. I don’t have that answer yet, which is scary, but I know that it exists. It’s just this big amorphous blob right now, but I just have to take that first action step. But that first action step is moving towards that and not moving towards being skinny.

[00:31:56] Rita Black: It’s moving towards that. Rita, who has created something and has developed herself. Does that make sense? She had a create a way of eating and exercising consistently. I didn’t know what the heck that would look like. But I just started taking baby steps, you know, and I, and I started just being with my feelings and allowing my feelings of fear.

[00:32:22] Rita Black: You know, sometimes I sit down and I, you know, like today I was like, oh, I, I’m gonna record the podcast. And sometimes I have fear, you know, because I get vulnerable and I, and I’m like, oh, am I gonna say something, you know, idiotic and, um. And I just, you know, I’m like, yeah, Rita, you probably will. And that’s okay.

[00:32:48] Rita Black: You know, I didn’t talk to myself like that. I used to just say, yeah, you’re an idiot. Don’t do it. You know, just, just don’t do it. Don’t take that risk. But now I just like feel the fear and it’s cool. Be courageous and do it anyway. And, uh, it’s all gonna be okay. You know, you, you give yourself kudos for just, for just putting yourself out there, right.

[00:33:13] Rita Black: So life is so much better when you can talk to yourself like that, you know what I mean? But I didn’t have that. I didn’t have any of that, but I just started with what I could do and um, and that little voice that was encouraging began to grow within me. And it wasn’t always strong at first. And sometimes that critic would get in there and beat me up again, but that voice would say, no, no, no, no.

[00:33:38] Rita Black: Don’t listen to that voice. You listen to me. We’re just doing this one step at a time, and we really, really do not have to do this perfectly. It is not gonna be, it’s gonna be highly imperfect. And the more mistakes we make, the more we learn and mistakes equal learning. So be brave, keep going, keep going.

[00:34:00] Rita Black: And, um, you know that Rita, 40 pounds down the scale, um, probably isn’t night eating or binging or secret eating. That Rita out there five years from now would’ve gone through five holiday seasons without overeating. I’d never done that before. I gained 30 pounds one Christmas. I’m serious. Um, you know, uh, that Rita’s gone out with friends.

[00:34:32] Rita Black: She’s traveled, she’s maintained her weight. How did she do that? I don’t know. But the one thing. That Rita could help it. The Rita present, she, you know, that Rita in the future could start to talk to the Rita in the present. That Rita in the future could start to communicate and that could, she could start to, you know, when I would be like, what would Rita in the future do, you know, answers would start to come and help me figure it out.

[00:35:05] Rita Black: So this vision worked because it was engaging my reticular activation system, which is something in our brain that helps us with vision and helps us get focused and get rid of all the crap that is distracting and, and also the vision work is in the imagination, and our imagination is in our subconscious mind.

[00:35:27] Rita Black: So I started leveraging my subconscious in a better way, started getting in there. Using hypnosis meditation i’d, I’d used hypnosis to quit smoking, so I, I already kinda had some access to using hypnosis and knowing that it could really help my subconscious mind. So I had this new identity. I was a learner on a hero’s journey.

[00:35:51] Rita Black: I was stepping out of my limiting beliefs that defined my weight struggle. Started getting curious about the beliefs that Reid had her ideal weight five years from now. Long-term mastery believed in herself. That lady could walk past tempting foods and not think twice about them. Unbelievable. She believed she could ask her husband and friends to support her choices and not feel selfish.

[00:36:18] Rita Black: Who knew? You know, and habits too, because I reframed my world and the path I was on. It was easier to let go of patterns that used to hold me and get curious about the habits and skills I would need to develop to support my life of weight mastery. So that is, you know, how I began humbly, beginning with the end in mind, really helped me define that path I was on and who I was be beginning to become.

[00:36:50] Rita Black: And that was great, but. I also had a lot of fear and resistance to this new path and, um, because the weight struggle is painful and frustrating and it’s so familiar and comfy though, you know, so stepping out of that world, that weight struggle world, I literally felt buck naked sometimes. Like my mind felt like jello, I was overwhelmed and woozy.

[00:37:19] Rita Black: That’s because you’re literally bringing yourself into this new world, and the brain is going to rebel and resist, and it wants to know before we go any further, like, I need to know. I need to know these things. You know, like I need to know I’m safe. So here’s rule number three. Make friends with your resistance, fear, and overwhelm.

[00:37:46] Rita Black: Don’t push them down. Befriend them. You know, the first stage of the hero’s journey, like I was saying earlier, is the reluctant hero. So maybe you’ve been feeling reluctant, not wanting to start feeling overwhelmed. Ah, who cares? It’s been too long. I’m too old. It’s never going to happen for me. Doesn’t even matter anymore.

[00:38:08] Rita Black: Right? But it does. It really does. Because this isn’t about the weight, it’s about your relationship with yourself. I really realized as I started out, I didn’t know anything and there was so much fear. And that inner voice, you know, that inner critic, you can’t do this like you, it’s too hard and you’re gonna fail, and then where are you gonna be?

[00:38:39] Rita Black: Lost? Lost. And then also that little rebel. Part of us that tempts us all the time to play small. Oh, just take the easy road. The easy road of tempting foods. Come on. You’ll do it later. You’ll do it next year. It’s too late. The holidays are coming. Oh, your birthday’s coming. Oh, you know, something’s always coming, and it’s always too overwhelming.

[00:39:08] Rita Black: So often I see people struggle with resistance and overwhelm. And in the days, especially, like I said earlier of just making a big change, we tend to do one of two things. We either say, yeah, yeah, you’re right. This is way too much for me. I can’t do it. And we give up or we push down the feelings and keep going.

[00:39:27] Rita Black: But we still feel that fear and resistance, which will cause us to give up really easily, pretty early on in the game. So here’s what I invite you to do, and this is something we work on in the Ship Weight Mastery process because my friends, and until you can really, you know, be with your fear and resistance and love it and own it and work with it, it’s always going to be the boss of you always.

[00:39:56] Rita Black: But when you get underneath it and you bring that sense of curiosity, which I know you have. Love, which I know you’ve got lots of, so your fear and resistance, you get to be the boss. You know, in the story of the hero’s journey, they, they, you know, like I said, the hero decides to go on the journey, step into the new world because the pain of staying the same finally becomes greater than the pain of the fear of the unknown.

[00:40:30] Rita Black: The opportunity for transformation calls the hero so powerfully to be the best they can be, and we all have that yearning within us to be the best we can be. So in order to move forward on my journey, this is what I decided to do when I felt the fear. I talked to the fear. I asked the fear, what are you afraid of?

[00:40:59] Rita Black: Fear of me and my fear. Spoke back. It said failure. I’m afraid to fail. And then so I asked it another question. I said, okay, okay, I get you. Well, what if we fail? What is the worst thing that could happen? I never asked myself that question before. Like, it, it, it was just like one layer down because I would just always give up.

[00:41:32] Rita Black: We don’t think our fear through to the core, we just react and, and so often it feels so primitive, it feels like we’re going to die. Like underneath that fear is like death. So I ask myself, so what are you so afraid of?

[00:41:52] Rita Black: I, I, I stood up to my fear and I said, you know what? If we fail, what’s gonna happen? And, and the fear was that we would be upset with ourselves, right? That, you know, I’m gonna feel foolish, I’m gonna feel lost, and I realized what I feared. Was my abusive inner critic yelling at me and mocking on me for believing in myself.

[00:42:22] Rita Black: That was my fear. It’s crazy how self-abusive our inner critic is and how we develop almost a post-traumatic stress disorder from this abusive relationship. So much to the that, that the extent. That we’re afraid to try for fear of the abuse of being hit down again, and we see ourselves as a failure. You know, I had so many people in my life, like I said earlier, make fun of me over the years.

[00:42:59] Rita Black: I mean, and say some really horrible things and do really horrible things to me and you know, around weight. Very hurtful things, but no one ever held a candle to my own mocking, cruel and vi vindictive inner critic. They all seemed angelic compared to her. So this is what holds us back. It’s not so much the fear of looking bad to others.

[00:43:37] Rita Black: It’s the fear of looking bad to ourselves. But what if, what if we created a powerful cheerleader within an inner coach that silenced the critic and applauded us when we took a risk and when things didn’t look good, instead of punishing us, our inner critic would say, Hey kid, good job. You tried and you know, something didn’t quite work here, but what are those things?

[00:44:13] Rita Black: Let’s get curious about that because I wanna learn how to do it different the next time and we can fix this, you know? So here’s the challenge. We face 90% of the journey of long-term weight mastery. I repeat is not, and I repeat it is not anything about being good on a plan. Or anything about willpower, but it’s something a little different and it needs courage and it needs a powerful cheerleader because what the journey of weight mastery is at deep down, it’s about turning the unknown into the known, and sometimes that is not gonna look good.

[00:45:03] Rita Black: It’s gonna feel awkward and sometimes it’s not gonna look good to our perfectionistic inner critic. And sometimes we have to say things that might be uncomfortable. Like we have to say no thanks to our mom when she pushes a, a second helping at us. You know, we never knew how to say no yet, but, but, but there’s a way you can say no to your mom and her feelings don’t get hurt.

[00:45:32] Rita Black: And you get to not have to eat a second helping to please her. There is a way, but you don’t know how to do that yet. Maybe, and it might feel awkward at first. I’m gonna read you something. I didn’t make this up. Um, but it, it’s, uh, so appropriate for what I’m talking about when you’re not used to being confident.

[00:46:00] Rita Black: Confidence feels like arrogance when you’re used to being passive. Assertiveness feels like aggression when you are not used to getting your needs met. Prioritizing yourself feels selfish. Your comfort zone is not a good benchmark. Isn’t that awesome? So appropriate here. So stretching ourselves and becoming who we deserve to be and asking for what we need and showing up for ourselves.

[00:46:38] Rita Black: It feels awkward at first, but we’re turning the unknowns into the no. And that’s why you need an inner coach. You know? You know enough about losing weight to write your own diet book, but yeah. You’re not maintaining your ideal weight long term, or if you’re not, um, you don’t have that skillset yet, and that isn’t a bad thing.

[00:47:02] Rita Black: It’s just something that you want to acknowledge and understand. It’s not about being smarter or more disciplined or willpower, but it’s about being willing to turn the unknowns into the known and guiding yourself on that journey. That’s where hypnosis and meditation and our inner coach really come in.

[00:47:24] Rita Black: These were my biggest allies in shifting my mind. So I had a hundred percent of my mind working towards my vision and learning all the lessons of my weight mastery with patience and respect for what I was doing and who I was becoming. So yes, I had resistance and I had a lot of fear along the way, but I had my inner coach and the ability to be with my resistance, and I turned it.

[00:47:49] Rita Black: Into curiosity and learned a lesson that allowed me to move forward, and you can too. So I was releasing weight and working with myself, and I felt all great and not like the dieting high, but that I was actually building myself from the inside out and it felt more real. And I was owning my pros progress and instead of being afraid it was.

[00:48:14] Rita Black: Going to all fall away. Um, I felt like I was, you know, really definitely moving step by step forward, even on the bad days. Definitely overate. Uh, you know, this path did not look clean. I made a lot of bad choices, a lot of trial and error, a lot of, you know, banging my head and going, what did I just do?

[00:48:39] Rita Black: That was just not a good choice. And I struggled with consistency, but I kept going, allowing myself to learn. Every step along the way and not punishing myself, I just kept cheering myself on even some days when it was like, I don’t feel like cheering you on, but we’re just going to keep going. Some days we crawled forward, we did not walk.

[00:49:05] Rita Black: But then, you know, I did hit a fork in the road. I had released some weight, you know, figuring out things. Um, and I felt like. I kept seeing that Rita, my future, had this confidence. Uh, and, and I wasn’t there yet. You know, I, I felt like there was this big hole missing ’cause I was doing good. I was making, you know, healthy choices and, and throwing some stuff together.

[00:49:34] Rita Black: But I didn’t feel like I had an inner framework yet, like an operating system. I and I did some research and I realized that there, you know, studies long-term weight release, there were common, uh, principles, skills, things that people were, you know, doing, showing up to habits that they formed that were all very similar.

[00:50:01] Rita Black: Even though these people didn’t necessarily know each other, there were some common behaviors that they engaged in. And so rule four of the inner game is instead of being good, we need to build the skillset of weight mastery. And from what I learned, I boiled them and you know, ’cause I like to keep things easy, I boiled them down to three skill sets.

[00:50:26] Rita Black: Um. Weight skills, environment skills and mind skills. You know, I just bought a little weight rack. I was so proud of myself. ’cause, you know, I’m doing resistance training because, you know, now I’m a, a lady of, um, mature years and, you know, it’s really important for us mature ladies to maintain our muscle tone, you know, for longevity.

[00:50:48] Rita Black: I’m, you know, that’s my game now. It’s my game of longevity. As I have a very big goal of, you know, seeing my son retire and, and I had him when I was 40. So you put the numbers together, you know what that means. And, uh, you know, I I, my students all know I’m gonna wear a red dress at his retirement party or his 60th birthday, one of those things out there in the future.

[00:51:15] Rita Black: And I have a neighbor, Frida, um, who I’m, I’m modeling myself on who. Uh, just turned 101 yesterday. I went to her hundredth birthday party last year. Um, and my hu husband’s been six, so, um, I didn’t go ’cause I didn’t wanna, you know, give her germs. But, uh. So I’ve got people around me that I’m like, okay, Frida, I’m, I’m, what are you doing?

[00:51:39] Rita Black: You know, and Frida would take the bus every day to the community center and work out, like, not work out hard, but she would walk around the park, she would play Mong. I think that’s a longevity thing too. I gotta learn. That’s another, that, that’s another, uh, podcast episode. I think I’ve got a, a friend of mine, I have one of, of, um.

[00:52:02] Rita Black: My, uh, friends who is into Mahjong, I said, okay, you’ve gotta teach me how to play that. So I just bought this weight rack and I have different weights for different muscle groups. And they all work together though, right? Like, I’ve gotta work on my quads, I’ve gotta work on my, my biceps, and I gotta work on my back muscles.

[00:52:23] Rita Black: And, uh. I, I, and believe me, I’m not, I’m not looking anything like, uh, the serious weightlifters, but uh, you know, I do my, my, my daughter, you know, laughs at my, my, my lady weights. Um, but, you know, it’s, they, all my muscles are working together and all these skills work together. The weight skills, the environment skills, and the mind skills.

[00:52:50] Rita Black: And the, you know, weight skills are the things that when we’re being good on a diet, that’s what we’re like, oh, I’m being good on a diet. And you know, it’s like eating healthy and exercising and the stuff that, you know, helps you actually, your body actually release weight. I would call those skills though, instead of like being good.

[00:53:07] Rita Black: Um, you’re developing skills and, but then there are environment skills and those are the more, the tougher skills. Those are the skills of like. Getting support and, and the people in your life, on your team. I mean, because you think about this people, it’s long-term permanent weight mastery. You’re not gonna be an island.

[00:53:26] Rita Black: You got to get the people. And that takes skill. And um, like I said, you know, saying no, thank you to your mama and getting her on your team, that, that takes some figuring out, right? It, it’s an unknown. And that has to become known. Or asking your husband to help you, that’s an unknown. If he’s a little stubborn, that’s gotta become unknown.

[00:53:49] Rita Black: And it doesn’t always have a straight path forward. And it doesn’t, it’s not always obvious. And that takes an inner coach. You know, I, I’ve had to have some conversations in my life because we teach people how to treat us right, and we got unteach them, uh, environment skills and then, and then our mind skills, which is a lot of what we’ve been talking about already.

[00:54:12] Rita Black: So with my coach and my vision and my hypnosis and meditation, the skills I was building, I, you know, I could see how much I was a novice and needing to keep building. So I kept supporting myself and slowly the skills became more and more who I was, less and less as something I had to be conscious about.

[00:54:33] Rita Black: And I reached my ideal weight about nine months into my journey, and I felt pretty solid like. I knew I could own my release. I, and I was well on my way to becoming that long-term weight masterful, masterful me as you think hitting that weight feels good and you think, oh, the butterflies are gonna be let outta the cage, and the unicorn gallops up and takes you off into the sunset.

[00:54:57] Rita Black: But no, it’s actually a lot different and frankly, ultimately a lot better than that. But releasing weight. Getting there to your ideal weight is just the beginning. There is a lot more inner game to be played with. More rules to learn as I continued my journey, things like not feeling vulnerable in my smaller body, uh, training my family and friends as I mentioned before.

[00:55:31] Rita Black: Going through really tough times, uh, you know, life, AKA life, 30 years of it, you know, things like death and menopause and children and blah, but going through it. And so I’ll be sharing that all with you next week. But I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Please, please come to my info session this Saturday if you want more coaching, and let’s do some hypnosis and let me answer your questions and qualms about participating in the amazing fall 2025 shift weight mastery process.

[00:56:10] Rita Black: This is gonna be so great. Uh, there’s so much magic in this process and not because of hypnosis and woo woo and all that. It’s magic because a group of really amazing people. More than almost 50 coaches who have some weight mastery under their belts are making themselves available to coach you and guide you.

[00:56:34] Rita Black: I’m there to coach you and guide you, and it’s this amazing, uh, community of, of love and showing up for you when you don’t even wanna show up for yourself and believing in you when you don’t even wanna believe in yourself. It’s, it’s a great. It’s a great environment for an amazing transformation for you to really step into the shoes of being your weight masterful self.

[00:57:01] Rita Black: And like I said, it’s not even about the weight, although that is a really great side effect. It’s really about you believing in yourself and and becoming your best You. So. Um, www.shiftwhitemastery.com/info, or the link is in the show notes. Um, there’ll be lots of other people, lots and lots of other people going through this process.

[00:57:33] Rita Black: We have an amazing group of people going through this process. So I hope I can answer your questions on Saturday. Um, and have a great week. And remember that the key and probably the only key. To unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it, and I will be here with you next week for part two of the, the Inner Game of Long-Term Weight Mastery.

[00:58:01] Rita Black: Thank you. See you soon.

[00:58:10] Rita Black: Do you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release? Head on over to www shift weight 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 to learn more about my book From Fat to Thin Thinking.

[00:58:39] Rita Black: Unlock your mind for permanent weight loss.