Rita Black: [00:00:00] What happens when you finally reach your ideal weight, but part of you still doesn’t believe it’s real? Today I am talking with Millie, who released 60 pounds and has been maintaining for almost a year and is about to celebrate her one year weight mastery anniversary. But when Millie first arrived at her ideal weight, something unexpected showed up, imposter syndrome, that quiet voice whispering, who do you think you are?

You failed before, this won’t last. If you ever hit a goal and felt more anxious than confident, you are not alone. In this episode, we unpack why imposter syndrome is so common after weight release and why it has nothing to do with willpower. We will talk about trust, identity, and how to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Let’s get into how Millie moved from fear to [00:01:00] self-trust and how you can too. So come on in.

Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there. I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process.

And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery. I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict, and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that [00:02:00] weight, I have kept it off for 25 years.

Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long term and live your best life.

Sound good? Let’s get started.

Hello. And how are you? Come on in. Please get comfortable. Let’s get cozy for a little while ’cause I have got a great interview for you today. I hope you enjoyed your Valentine’s Day and loved hard on yourself and not so much on the chocolates, but if you did, enjoy chocolate, I hope you enjoyed it slowly and delightfully.

I, speaking of delighted. Am delighted, I’m always delighted this time of year. It’s my favorite one of my favorite times of [00:03:00] year because it’s so green here in Southern California all the way up to Northern California where I just was and usually driving up the I five, for those of you who know what I’m talking about, it’s a long stretch of highway and it is boring.

You, when you think of Southern California road trip. You think of driving along the coast Big Sur and all the big crashing waves upon the shore. That’s not how we went because we cut two hours off of our travel time by driving up the boring I five. I’m gonna tell you more about my road trip.

I, in the next couple of episodes, I, one of those episodes will be my travel adventures. Staying thin thinking while traveling on a road trip and to Sonoma. But I just wanted to say how green it was. It was just because it had been raining a few weeks back, as we had a lot of rain, and it all turned into beautiful green.

It’s like we’re in Ireland now. Next month it won’t be brown, but [00:04:00] that long, boring stretch of highway turned into this beautiful just oceans of green. It was just gorgeous. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it like that before. So it was super cool ’cause it’s usually, believe me, brown. Now I want to share one of my community members, Millie, she has a lot to share with you that I think you can relate to, which is imposter syndrome.

When you reach your ideal weight. It’s a real epidemic. I see it many times and it takes a strong inner game to get past. But Millie is now celebrating almost we’re one week away from her maintaining her 60 pound weight release for one year. But before we dive in, please, if you have not yet caught my free masterclass with weight release hypnosis where we get at the root of the weight struggle a lot of weight loss.

Diets exercise. It is just focusing [00:05:00] on the food and exercise part. But for a long-term success, you need to shift the struggle at its root. And we get into this in this powerful masterclass. So if you wanna check it out, it’s www.shiftweightmastery.com/free. Check it out, or the link is in the show notes.

And now let’s talk

Millie: with Millie.

Rita Black: Hello Millie, and welcome to the Thin Thinking Podcast. This has been a long I wanted Millie to come on a while ago and she’s gonna tell her story, but, so I’ve been waiting for this interview for a long time.

Millie: Hi, Rita. Yeah, I was, I was shy about coming on and that in the end is gonna be part of what we’re talking about today.

I joined shift in May of 2004 and it was a long battle to try one more time. Like most people that have [00:06:00] weight problems, I’ve had weight problems since I was a teenager. I’ve, I actually calculated that I’ve lost about 700 pounds in my life, which is, I don’t wanna figure out what animal that would constitute.

Rita Black: When you were a teenager, what was your struggle? What was that something that was your family, was this a family genetic thing or was this just eating patterns? Was it both?

Millie: I think it was, I, it, I, it was eating patterns. I’ve had the good for, I didn’t have parents who leaned on me because I was chubby and I wasn’t, I look back now and realize I wasn’t that fat.

It’s just that, that I am 76 years old in another couple of weeks, and so I was definitely a late child, early teenage years, right in the beginning of the sixties, and that was probably the height of you can’t be too skinny. And I definitely, and I wasn’t built that way. If I lost another 20 pounds, I still would [00:07:00] not have the shape.

That was what the shape. The desired shape of the 1960s. And and I wasn’t real diet driven until the year after I started college and I decided that I really needed to buckle down that summer and I lost 40 pounds. I think I was 160 to start with, and ended up 120. And that lasted about as long as it as a mosquito’s life.

It just, and that was always my problem, but I could lose it, ease. I knew what I needed to do to lose it. I didn’t know what I needed to do to keep it off. And that pattern pretty much continued on through Crashy diets that were a little bit more sensible and, finally finding the low carb, high protein lifestyle that seemed to be the best thing that seemed the healthiest to me.

But the. The main last loss that I had before I found shift was in 2018. And in [00:08:00] 2018 I was at my highest weight. I was 220 pounds. I’m five foot I was five foot five then now I’m five foot three that we won’t talk about that. But I went to the doctor and I was diagnosed as the very low edge of type two diabetes and the thought of going blind or losing digits, finally it really just pushed me over and I said, I gotta do something about this.

I don’t wanna take medications. I will find a way. And I found a good CBT program online that had the excellent mechanics of treating. Dieting differently, but it was still diet and it did do a lot of the mind skills that really do help also. But it had really nothing in it as far as what do you do now?

It was 30 great days that you just kept repeating until you got to the point where you where you reached a number, the number, and you had succeeded. And then you were [00:09:00] on your own to go along. It wasn’t a diet program that said this is the specific things you have to eat at least.

So that’s helpful. Yeah. You had some ownership of the, of it, but it was pretty, it had pretty narrow binders to it, but I lost the weight and I knew that now that I had dealt with the mental issues that I was going to, this was, time was going to be different. Now you gotta realize this was a year.

It was 2019 in December when I reached my weight. And we all know what happened in 2020 and 2021, and most people gained some weight and I gained, I think 20 is what people say they gained. I gained 40 because on top of that my husband was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. We really were in lockdown because he couldn’t be exposed to any of that.

And the only way, we, I had always kept a clean house. I didn’t [00:10:00] have a lot of, I didn’t have junk food in the house. And that’s a big factor for me in being successful. He was very good about that. But once he got sick, the only thing that tasted right to him were the kinds of things that were not so good for me to have in the house.

And I had to keep them around in case he wanted them. But it was hard to do because once they were in the house, I was the one that was eating them and they still weren’t around. But in the end I gained back about 40 of the 70 pounds that I had lost from that diet. What I lost there was any belief that I could keep the weight off.

And it took me three more years to finally try again. It really did. I just. I didn’t trust myself. I thought, I can’t bear to go through that and then not be able to keep it off. That’s where I felt failure. I didn’t feel bad about being heavier, but I felt really bad about gaining the weight back.[00:11:00]

I think

Rita Black: that’s the worst

Millie: feeling in the interrupt.

Rita Black: I think for most people that’s the worst feeling.

Millie: Yeah. Yeah. That, that was the terror. And so if I was going to start, I had to believe that what I would do this time wouldn’t be dieting to get to a weight. It would be finding a way to practice to be able to maintain.

And that’s what I found in shift.

That I really feel like shift is the training the Olympic training period to get to the goal, which isn’t. The weight you’re losing, but the ability to trust yourself, to keep it off, and to have the skills to take care of the day-to-day things that bump up against you and make it hard to, to eat in the best way for your body’s health.

And you know that that’s why I entered with Shift. And I came in, as I said, in May of [00:12:00] 2024, and by February of 2025 I had lost six 50 pounds. And that was, I was at the number I wanted to be. And I, every, how do you pick your ideal weight? I, I picked BMI and then it turned out that when I actually realized that I had lost two inches in my life, my BMI changed.

And then I so in the next six months after I went into maintenance, I kept losing weight at a very deliberately slow weight rate. I wanted to see where I, what calorie level I was comfortable at. That I could feel like I wasn’t being deprived, that I was get satisfied with it. And I figured I’ll hit a point where I can’t maintain a weight and I’m not going down anymore.

And then that’s where I’ll stay. So I was waiting for a plateau that took 10 more pounds to finally reach. And so now it’s 60 pounds. So

Rita Black: that’s [00:13:00] interesting. Can I ask you about that? So the BMI was your first initial, ’cause everybody is always asking me about how did I decide my ideal weight? Yeah. And it’s a hard question because it really depends on so many factors.

How have you ever been at good weight and sustained a good weight? Have you health markers, all of those things can factor into it. But that was interesting that you chose BMI. ’cause everybody,

Millie: and I think honestly part of what, the reason I chose it was the BMI that I picked when I thought I was five foot five matched up with the weight I had reached in that last diet.

And I had a closet full of clothes that I had bought. When I reached that weight and I wanted to get back into those,

Rita Black: That’ll do it

Millie: too. There was a legitimate reason, I know there were people that have jeans that they wore when they were 17 that they’re hoping to get back into when it’s oh God bless you.[00:14:00]

That’s probably not gonna happen. ’cause even if you get the weight down, you’re, weight lands in different places and they probably aren’t gonna, and they’re not gonna be outta style anyway. But, but I did have a closet full of clothes and those clothes had been a big factor when I lost the weight that, that last time before this.

I really tried to pick reasons for losing weight that didn’t have anything to do with the scale. And one of them was that I wanted to be able to wear really nice clothes and be able to find really nice clothes. Because, the clothing industry tends to figure that if you’re fat, you’re also, you frumpy.

That you don’t really have any style. And frankly, a lot of clothes don’t look as good, they’re the way they’re cut, it makes it hard for them to look as good. And I had a closet full of TJ Maxx Ralph Lauren. Ralph and I have had a deep and meaningful relationship.

Of course, now he’s not in TJ Maxx anymore, and. I don’t love Ralph enough to pay retail, but every once in a [00:15:00] while, my, my rebel says, couldn’t we just have one more Ralph, and then maybe I’ll go and find him on sale. But, but I, it really that have, getting back in those clothes was my marker that I was succeeding more than the number on the scale

Rita Black: Uhhuh.

Millie: But yeah, I think ev every, some people pick the number they were at a certain age or, and I think you just have, you have to pick something, but then you have to be flexible about it.

Rita Black: I think it’s, I think for somebody who has a significant amount of weight to release, choosing milestones is the first step.

Don’t try to go for the goal weight, choose a milestone, but for you, clearly you had that weight, like you said, that you had been at, that felt good for you, that you were really clear about. So in, it’s interesting that you got there and. Then you continue to release weight to and what you did was very I think very good.

You let the data [00:16:00] drive you like what is this? What is the amount that feels right? Like that I can consume on a daily basis, the amount I’m willing to exercise that allows me to live at this particular place comfortably and happily not. Feeling deprived.

Millie: Yeah. And I’ll be honest, I think part of the reason that I was very careful at the beginning was that I was worried about whether I’d be able to maintain, whether I would just, you immediately start going back up.

Rita Black: Yeah.

Millie: So I, I was reluctant to let go of the, of that information. And I’m always gonna be the information person. I, you gotta get your dopamine where you can. And if the scale’s not going down, I wanna look at all of the factors of, how am I managing these different things?

And, but I tend to look at them as bigger units now. It’s like I keep track daily of my exercise and, and what I’m eating, but I also really look at it more in [00:17:00] terms of week and month. What’s my average been this week? Is there a pattern significantly of it going up? Am I starting to cheat a little bit here?

I am this month in the Shift group we’re talking about, being honest with yourself. And I will never stop measuring and weighing food. I just won’t because I know I can’t eyeball it. I really can’t. And so I have lots of little tricks that make it a little bit easier, but still the same.

I understand that’s the first place that it happens, a

Rita Black: hundred percent. I was thinking about that today too, Millie, because I was thinking about I doing a podcast and I was, and we have a weighing and measuring challenge coming up and. There is that is usually the first place where we start gaining weight.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: Is I both get a little bigger.

Millie: It’s justification. It’s just, it I don’t wanna become obsessed with food. Oh, yeah.

Rita Black: I think also it [00:18:00] is it’s easy to the brain collapses. Yeah. Ideas, information. And so it’s easy to look at a plate of food and go, that’s about 300 calories.

Yeah. Where it’s, clearly not if you looked at and I think that’s where the biggest point of frustration is for most people is that they aren’t measuring, or, and again, for those of you who don’t measure and whatever, this isn’t, I just, I feel like. You don’t have to measure everything all the time but you need to readjust your eyeballs probably once a month at least, that’s what I’ve learned after maintaining my weight for so long. It’s that if my scale starts going up, I, the first place I look is the food measurements and looking at is that really a tablespoon of peanut butter? Is that really three ounces of whatever?

Millie: And I can’t [00:19:00] say that, as time goes by in maintenance that I’m not going to do Exactly.

That I am, that I’m not gonna be become more relaxed about it. It’s just that I know I’m just bad at eyeballing. Yeah. I know that

Rita Black: you know yourself well.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: So I have a question for you. When you reached your ideal weight. This time.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: D did you what did you expect to feel like?

Did you expect to feel differently or what did you expect to feel and did you feel that?

Millie: I think because I had fairly recently, it hadn’t been that many years since I had reached that before. The first time I reached maintenance back in 19, I felt like I wanted to put fireworks up.

And this time it was more mature. It was, it was just, okay, this has got, this plan had and what I’m doing has successfully gotten me to this point that I was going to now begins, will it carry me through the next stage,

Rita Black: Uhhuh,

Millie: And that was [00:20:00] really, that was always my goal.

My goal at the very beginning was. Get to maintenance and be able to maintain. Okay. It wasn’t it honestly wasn’t the number. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t real con, I just was like, ah, pick a number. That number looks good, but I think it, rea maintenance was really the key, because we all know statistically people don’t keep the weight off.

Rita Black: No.

Millie: From my life, I have up until, I haven’t been able to keep the weight off. And and so that there’s, that, it’s that scary thing out there. It’s not just your internal critic saying you’ve never succeeded in an at this before, so why are you doing this?

It’s factually a something that’s true that I have not been able to. The difference, and what I had to make sure that I was convinced of was that this time really was different. And it was different in a lot of respects. I live alone, after my husband died. I [00:21:00] live alone. What’s in my house is what I bring into it, and I do not bring things that are triggers for me.

I do not bring things in that I don’t need. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have treats, but if I’m going to have a treat, I’m going to have it at someone else’s house. I’m going to have a measured amount. I’m not getting the box of 10 of this protein bar because I’m going to eat eight of them. Maybe not today.

And it’s, it, it’s interesting because my, I have been a binge eater and not. It’s not even fun binge, it’s it’s that mindless thing. And I’ve really come to understand a whole lot about what that is. That was one of the things in shift, the whole idea of how eating carbs creates that monster has really been a help to me because instead of you thinking there’s something wrong with me, I have binge OCD, which is what I’ve been [00:22:00] saying all along that I had.

And instead of saying there’s something wrong with me, it’s there’s a chemical thing that happens here and I can track, I can see it coming, I can do something about it. It is just biology and it’s, and that it’s not my fault.

Rita Black: It’s not personal

Millie: unless you take that fault and guilt out of the picture because fault and guilt are fattening as hell.

They really are. And that, that’s part of the thing that happens with when you lose when you fall outta maintenance. Once you start to gain weight that voice saying here you go, failing again is, it’s got to be enormous. And I don’t have a big inner critic as far as most stuff, that’s been the one place that I just haven’t been terribly successful in the past.

And when I came into maintenance, yeah. I was scared to death. And then about a month after I came in, I went on a month long trip to England. And travel is the thing that scares everybody. [00:23:00] And

Rita Black: can I ask you, before you start to talk about England, because I’m fascinated by it because, we’re here, we’re talking about imposter syndrome, right?

Yeah. So you got to. Your, and when you say maintenance weight, you were locking in at that original weight and then you were slowly releasing the 10 pounds. Correct?

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: So what, where did you start to feel like, did, was it immediate that the imposter syndrome c kicked in or was it, did it take a little time?

Were you, because I think that this is really fascinating because so many people get this, so I’d like to Yeah. Dig into it. Yeah. I think it,

Millie: it wasn’t immediate, but what I noticed was I think you had asked me to be a speaker at one of the Zoom meetings and my reluctance to do it because I felt like I’m not sure if I’m really qualified to talk about this now.

I had just lost 60 [00:24:00] pounds or 50 pounds at that point, in, nine, 10 months.

Rita Black: Yeah.

Millie: I had been ridiculously perfect. Really pretty perfect about it. I wish I’d been. Less perfect and actually wish I had lost a little bit more slowly because I think it does affect, I ended up getting emic face without ozempic.

Rita Black: Your is gorgeous Milli, but I understand what you mean.

Millie: It’s it’s pumping up a little bit. Now I have hopes, but I really, I, it I learned that you didn’t necessarily have to look at your own naked body if you didn’t want to. That tended to give me some perspective on, on the whole thing.

But, but the thing was that asking me to come to that mean, that was my first hint that I, that imposter of that imposter syndrome. But then when I went to England, was right when we were having a live shift. I had [00:25:00] volunteered to be part of the Zooms and to be, rah rowing people on the Facebook pages

to

Rita Black: be a coach.

Yeah.

Millie: And I couldn’t do it there. I was in England eating six English candy bars at one sitting in the room because I bought them to take home for people. Oh, okay. Now I’m in a small space and I’ve been. Traveling with the same group of people and and they’re, and it, and I’m, we all still have a little bit of social anxiety left over from the plague.

And so I’m dealing with that. I’m in a room alone with candy bars and with English biscuits and terrible things. Oh my gosh. That’s, and that was the kind of stuff I was eating. But the funny thing is, I felt terrible about it, and I and I was like why am I doing this? But I, there was no way I could participate in that shift, right?

’cause the imposter syndrome was so strong. What do I have to talk to these people and tell them they’ll be okay? And I had that happen when I reached maintenance the [00:26:00] last time too. My doctor’s wife had been somebody that was doing a class with type two diabetes people, and he was so impressed with the way I had lost the weight then that he introduced me to her.

And I came in to talk to those people, and I was just then starting to slip. And

You

Rita Black: felt like it was a repeated history.

Millie: Yeah. And I came out of that really feeling I’m a big fat fraud. I may not be as fat a fraud as I used to be, but I’m a fraud,

Rita Black: the worst feeling too.

Millie: Oh. Just

Rita Black: because

Millie: it was, and then I, what I really had to do was say, okay, why is this time different? And this time was different. I have different circumstances, I have much, much less stress. I have the capacity to completely control my environment as far as the food. I don’t have outside people that are food pushers.

My kids are on the same page with me, and that’s really helpful. I don’t have the kind of social life that [00:27:00] tends to throw you into. Cocktail party type stuff. If I go out to dinner, I’ve always been good about making sure that I check the menu before I go and I have a pretty clear picture of what I’m going to eat.

And also now I look at, okay, if this is going to be a large calorie day, I know that the next day or two I’m going to not be that hungry and I’m going to eat less. I don’t, I never bring leftovers home that, because then you’ve made it two days in a row. And, I’ve tried to make rules for myself that are my rules.

I am someone who does not overeat two days in a row. That’s an easy rule.

Rita Black: Did that evolve though in maintenance?

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: Or when you were

Millie: released? No, I think it was involving evolving all along. At the very beginning I really was thinking as I do this. What kind of person am I becoming?

I, if my identity was, I [00:28:00] am a heavy set person on A diet was my hobby, it was what defined me. I was always on a diet or off a diet, I was good or I was bad and this was different. And so it was, okay, what am I learning from this experience that I’ll take forward into maintenance so that this doesn’t.

So that I handle it better because I want my definition not to be that I’m a dieter, but that I’m a person who lives a healthy lifestyle.

Rita Black: So that is key. And I think just for our listeners who maybe haven’t gone through the Shift Weight Mastery program, which is fine. What Millie is really addressing is is the identity perspective.

Like we are really, because identity is at the heart of it. And what you, and what many successful people define is not just one identity. ’cause in shift we talk about being an apprentice and learning, but as an [00:29:00] identity. But then you came up with all these micro identities Yeah. Which were like, I’m somebody who doesn’t bring leftovers home and I’m somebody who yeah.

Looks at a menu before I head to the restaurant. And when that starts to become, it’s not something you’re doing, but who you are.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: It’s a completely different frame.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: So when you were in that hotel room in England, because that seemed like a pivotal moment for you. That seemed a make it or break it moment.

There was a choice you made where I, like I can either go buy some more, I know those English candy bars ’cause I lived in England. Like I know those crack cracky, they’re like crack bars and then Oh, and then the biscuit.

Millie: Biscuit. Oh no, there’s no, they’re, there’s crack in this stuff. And I, and candy actually isn’t my big thing.

Cookies are. Oh, the biscuits.

Rita Black: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Don’t even talk to me about vids because I know those are the ones you were talking about. So in that moment though, which is a really hard moment, you [00:30:00] had to take a breath and then. Redefine yourself. Yes. ’cause I think this is really critical for everybody listening.

It’s not like it’s all over in that one moment. It’s who are you in that moment? That this is what resilience is.

Millie: No. And it wasn’t every day that, that, I think that was the important thing that, that I had plenty of days when it was perfectly fine. I was getting tons of exercise too.

And as I and for meals, I was eating very reasonably. If there was something that I hadn’t tried before, I was going to have it fell in love with blood pudding and tried desperately to get the other people on the trip to at least try it. But, that kind of a thing.

Every day I had my little piece of the. Blood sausage just because oh. Don’t make that face, honey.

Rita Black: My husband loves blood sausage, but I was, knew I

Millie: was never,

Rita Black: I, go ahead. I was [00:31:00] one of your, like one of your companions I like

Millie: Nope, not going there. No, I

Rita Black: You’re very adventurous.

Millie: I enjoyed it.

It was something different and I genuinely knew it was something I was not going to probably ever have a chance to have again.

And I and I’m still sorting that out. When Christmas came this year, this was a interesting Christmas. It was not unlike that trip in that I had a couple of real kind of seriously bingey days on very specific foods.

And afterward I thought, that’s really about the fact that if you don’t eat this now, you really aren’t going to be eating it. Again for another year. And in that case, you’re never gonna be eating it again. Now, that didn’t explain away the candy bars and the cookies. But I, you know what, when I got home and that this really helped with the, I still have imposter syndrome.

It’s because nobody’s perfect. I don’t wanna be perfect, I’m still figuring this out. This is a journey.

Rita Black: I do think it takes a [00:32:00] good while in maintenance to, I know you’re about eight months in, and I think it takes a while to really feel that, it takes what people don’t understand.

It takes moments like you had in England, probably moments that you had at Christmas to bring yourself back from that to, it’s not about being good for a year. It is really about like actually being human.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: And. Having those chemical biological trigger experiences where you’re like, wow, that really didn’t work out for me, but who I am still is somebody who’s maintaining my ideal weight and putting all the skills into

Millie: Exactly.

Because what happened in that was, and it was a different thing in the past that binge on the candy bars to the point of being sick would have been, I would beat myself up and in this case, and the same thing happened at Christmas time. It’s what the hell just happened there? And what can I learn from that? And [00:33:00] how will I deal with this in the future? That trip taught me more about how I’ll try. It didn’t teach me that I can never travel again. It taught me more about the things I need to do to protect my health. When I’m traveling that I don’t, that I think I won’t have any trouble following.

And at Christmas time, I, I know I told you af at Christmas, I made a long little note to myself about what I ate during the holidays and how it made me feel as far as because I really made me sick. It made me physically sick and what I thought I could do to still enjoy those things and not do self damage in the coming Christmas.

And then I stapled that to the calendar for November. So when I get there, I can look and talk to myself out of being stupid again, because I knew going in when I brought those foods into the house that I was going to eat them. I mean that, right? It, you the less choices you [00:34:00] force on yourself.

Choice is exhausting.

Rita Black: Yeah,

Millie: it really is. We live in a society where, there are 800 kinds of toothpaste on the aisle, and you could stand there for 20 minutes trying to figure out which one is the best one for your situation. And that doesn’t, that may seem like, isn’t that wonderful to have all that choice?

But in fact it’s exhausting, yeah. And having cake sitting on the counter and have to constantly convince yourself to not have a slice of it is just wears you down.

Rita Black: It’s that’s why stimulus control is like 65, 70%.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: But I think we have to like surrender to certain foods, I think we keep hoping, there’s that little inner rebel that keeps thinking that’s the part that talks us into it.

And I think as we mature, like you say, you’re you feel like your weight mastery is a bit more mature because you have a. It’s not hoping anymore. It’s being aware and being aware of [00:35:00] yourself and your, and having some compassion for yourself and also understanding, look, we could bring that into the house, but we’re gonna end up feeling sick.

We’re gonna end up feeling not well, and do we really wanna do that to ourselves? Probably not. I love that you did that for next November. Yeah. So something that Millie’s talking about, just so that our listeners understand is like when you, like Millie, she’s making some boundaries around the food, so it’s not like she’s saying, I’m never going to eat.

What was it that. At Christmas that you overeat?

Millie: Oh, it was le kuchin, the very intensely flavor of German gingerbread.

Rita Black: Oh, and fruit. Okay.

Millie: Fruit,

Rita Black: okay. Isn’t, aren’t those crazy? Like those kinds of cakes have that real because they’re very emotionally charged because they’re from our childhood and it brings back all this other stuff.

Millie: Yeah. Yeah.

Rita Black: And it [00:36:00] has the kind of fruitcake has that candied fruit in it that hits the brain, like the British, crack. It will make it very hard to say.

Millie: I also actually, after I ate. Great deal of fruitcake and it really sat in my stomach like a brick and made me sick and messed up my by bio derm.

I did not have the germs in my gut to deal with fruit. They went, what do we do with this?

Rita Black: They had to think about it. Yeah,

they

Millie: had to go a little, it wasn’t, it was not a pleasant experience. But then I followed that up with one simple thing. I took the time to actually calculate what my fruit cake is per slice, and it was.

Horr,

Rita Black: you mean calorically?

Millie: Oh yeah. Did you

Rita Black: make the fruitcake or did

Millie: somebody else? Oh, yeah. No, this is my fruitcake. It’s a great fruitcake, but I won’t give you the recipe.

Rita Black: Thank you. I don’t want it.

Millie: [00:37:00] No. And now I actually, I’ve always made it for other people who look forward to having it, but I moved here so I don’t have the same people to give it to so I can make smaller batches.

But now I feel like, oh my God, if I give this to somebody, I’m killing them, because it really was bad. It isn’t, doesn’t have a lot of, the calories and carbs and just bad. Things all around. It just it I got a CGM con continuous glucose monitor because I’m type two diabetic, but I’m under control and I wanted to get some ideas of spiking and stuff.

And so I’m real conscious right now about what those spikes in your carbohydrate studious.

Rita Black: Yeah, it’s crazy. I feel the same, I used to be a big baker and I still do bake occasionally, but I started to see, and I did a CGM, but there’s many reasons why I changed the way I baked and yeah.

And part the baking,

Millie: baking for a lot of people is love, yeah. You’ve talked about the fact that your mom. [00:38:00] Totally. And those things that she baked, represent, love,

Rita Black: nurturing

Millie: and love. And that this kind always was with me. A lot of times I would bake and just to take something to somebody and then I’d also have some myself, but,

Rita Black: oh,

Millie: of course.

Not. Gotta make sure it taste still tastes okay. But bringing treats to people that you love was a love language. And I’ve learned for my own self, I can’t do that anymore. Yeah, I can buy a treat for somebody and take it to them. And if they say, would you like a piece? I can have a piece and that’s okay, but I can’t be making that kind of stuff.

Yeah. It just, it isn’t it, I have to protect from. That’s human biology,

Rita Black: yeah. It is. You have to and the more you stay in your body during those experiences, like when you binge and you actually stay in your body and [00:39:00] really with, because you’re removing the shame and you’re removing all those feelings that trigger you to just shut down and just numb out more, when you’re just like, whoa, when I eat a fruitcake, this is how it feels.

It actually is aversion therapy because then when you actually think about the next time, you’re like, no way am I going back there. I don’t wanna feel like that again.

Millie: No. And as I’m sitting here, if I think about eating fruitcake, it isn’t something that I think, gee, I wish I still had some at all. Yeah.

It isn’t, it’s an interesting thing that way,

Rita Black: it’s a it when you really allow yourself to be present without the shame.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: You begin to train yourself on how it feels after you eat that food in your body and that emotion and physiology, the way you feel physiologically becomes aversive to wanting to do that again.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: And I think that’s a huge piece of also maintenance because [00:40:00] FYI folks out there who think, you’re gonna get to your ideal weight and it’s all gonna be, butterflies and unicorns. You are probably gonna binge and you probably are gonna get off track and you are gonna multiple times.

And that’s what Billy is saying is that these experiences of bringing herself back and she learns something every time, it’s, it is a maturing process.

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: It is really, I think maintenance is about just becoming. Mature with yourself in the area of food. We are you’re, you were a very successful person in so many areas of your life, and we just as as many of our listeners are so successful in other areas of our life, but it’s when, but those successful areas you matured into.

You didn’t all of a sudden wake up one day and you were perfect. Same with this. Yeah. So I’m curious, like, how does it feel now versus eight months ago? You said you still have imposter syndrome some days, and I totally get that, but like, how does it feel [00:41:00] emotionally now?

Millie: I think it’s very different.

It’s just I do have imposter syndrome and I don’t wanna sound like, everything is perfect and I never have any errors that happened. And, because that’s, that isn’t, that’s not real. It’s not a realistic thing. And I don’t want someone who is listening to me es especially in the shift group situation and thinking she’s got everything, she’s got everything all together and I don’t, so I’m a failure, if I don’t, on the other hand, I don’t wanna lie and say that I’m not basically doing okay.

Somebody put up a thing on the Facebook page that shift the other day that I loved GPS doesn’t judge, it just says recalibrating route. And that’s the way I, and that’s the way I feel that it’s like. You’re going along. I’m I’ve always viewed this as a long trip that ne doesn’t, the journey is ne endless.

You never get to the end of it. [00:42:00] But you know that there are times when you get a flat tire and then you have to stop and change the flat tire because life gives you flat tires. And there are times when you make a wrong turn and you don’t keep going that way. If you were driving someplace and you made a wrong turn, you wouldn’t just keep going to that, down that road until you reach the Pacific Ocean.

You would stop and say, Ooh, geez, what happened there? And then you would look at your GPS and recalibrate and go back and you wouldn’t say I’m never gonna drive again. And and there were times when you need to take a detour. Yeah. Or you need to just stop and rest for a little bit.

And that doesn’t, I think of that in maintenance that if you’ve been in maintenance. You’ve gotten off track for a while and maybe you’ve gained back some of the weight. You’re still in maintenance. You’re just, you’ve already reached the land of maintenance and now it’s just a case of using what you learned to get there in the first place.

If [00:43:00] you got there, you know how to get there again. And

Rita Black: yeah, and you build the skills like

Millie: you build. Yeah. And it’s an skillset. And then you say, now I understand this thing because there’s always gonna be something. That’s why I say I am never going to be a master of this. I am an apprentice of.

Mass of maintenance because I don’t know what’s out there. I, I’ve, everybody has different things that happen. I, illness happens, injuries happen, people die, social tragedies, who knows? We all have different stressors that can just really become the center of things and maybe just make us need to concentrate on something else at a level that makes it hard to keep going.

But I think if you have habits built in and if you have regular things that are just part of that, you don’t have to think about doing that. That gives you a little bit of protection,

Rita Black: right? You have that muscle [00:44:00] memory and you have the cognitive muscle memory of your identity. I think those things break.

We talk about that. A lot in our membership we talk about, and Millie, you’ve been a part of these conversations where it’s when thing, when the shift hits the fan what are the top three things that you can do on a daily basis? Just forget everything else, but what are those three that make the biggest difference for you?

Staying connected to yourself and continuing on, and you’re going into plan B mode, ’cause we, I think that is, I have a question though. What would you say to somebody who is thinking, when they reach their ideal weight and feels like an imposter, what would you say?

What do you want them to know from your experience?

Millie: That I think that it’s a pretty normal reaction. Again, our, the mere fact. That you, [00:45:00] especially because a lot of our people are, a little older, and so clearly they’ve had lots of adventures with trying to succeed at this.

And and so their life history tells ’em that this may not succeed. And that certainly is part of the imposter syndrome. And if you go out and you read any of the studies that are out there, as small as the number of them is it, it doesn’t look, the statistics are not in your favor. But my feeling is that, you need to look at where you are, not where the world is.

And that the things that for, for people, and I’m talking to people from the shift that have reached maintenance, the things that you’ve learned about yourself and about. The things that keep you on track are different than what the general population has. Someone who got on a diet believed in the plan, the diet was the key.

Now the diet’s over [00:46:00] and they’ve got no nothing, no idea. What they’re gonna do now is different from shift where what you’ve learned to believe in is yourself. And and and you’ve got a supportive crew of people and all of the things that make it more likely that you’re going to succeed.

And so the longer you’re in maintenance, I think the easier it is to feel confident that instead of saying, I’m a person who’s always on a diet that you’re saying, I’m a person who takes care of my physical health. I’m a person who’s, who maintains their weight. Who eats. Who does not live to eat, but eats to live.

Whatever phrases you can put into your head that kind of get in there, I’m a big believer in mantras that are in the back of your head there,

Rita Black: yeah, me

Millie: too. I am a person, all through when I gained the weight back from the, from that time back before the plague, I had two things that I was doing then [00:47:00] I never ate after dinner and I never ate in the car.

And I continued to do that even as I gained the weight, interesting. That were habits that were just so ingrained.

That it, I didn’t have to think about those, and if I did eat at night or if I did buy something and start to eat it in the car, I knew that was a sign that I was in trouble.

Not that it was bad, not that it was wrong, not that, but just that it meant that my, I was distracted in a way that I needed to pull myself back,

Rita Black: yeah. You were outside your moral

Millie: Yeah. That I had made, that I was, because I was being honest with myself. Who am I punishing?

If I cheat on my diet?

Rita Black: Yeah.

Millie: Are you gonna be crying, Rita? Because I ate a cookie when I did when I said I wasn’t going to, but, you make promises to yourself and then you keep them. And the more you keep those promises, the [00:48:00] more you trust yourself. And I think that the the imposter syndrome is part of not really trusting yourself, whether it’s based on factual evidence from the past.

The past is a predictor, but it’s not determination, and this time, what you, what I’ve said to myself all along in the last year is this time is different. Yeah. It’s I’m in a different situation. I’m a different person, and I have different skills and abilities.

Rita Black: And like you said, you have a, a. Different voice you’re listening to in your head when it comes to managing the weight, which is your inner coach versus your critic or your rebel. Yeah. Which brings me to one of my last questions which is like, what does freedom mean for you now, as you’re maintaining your weight versus the number on the scale?

Because I think that’s one of the things that, everybody gets that dopamine high from getting on the [00:49:00] scale and getting going down and where do you get your boost and alignment and sense of freedom now?

Millie: Yeah, I think I think finding new dopamine highs. It’s really important because you’re absolutely right once that scale’s not going down.

And for me, I don’t think I’ve had two days in a row that I’ve been the same weight in this entire year. It’s really bizarre. And it, and sometimes I can figure out, I ate out yesterday or I ate something that was salty or I didn’t get enough water or, whatever. And it’s mo it’s all water weight type stuff back and forth.

It’s never anything real. But the,

I’ve just lost my kind of thought.

Rita Black: We were just talking about the sense of freedom and the dopamine, ah, the dopamine now

Millie: from other sources. Right now my dopamine is I’m getting from the continuous glucose monitor [00:50:00] because my last barrier has been that I do occasionally have.

Bingey days, not very often. And a lot less than they used to be. But I do, and I suddenly realized they may not just be that carbs make you want more carbs, but that it’s about my blood glucose. And so I’m now really chasing what causes that feeling to happen.

What can you do it all, and I’m right now, this is my year for exercise. I was one of those people that, you should, along with with taking care of the way that you eat, you should be exercising for a whole lot of reasons. And I did walk, but I’ve not been somebody who exercised. I just didn’t, I don’t like the whole concept of exercise.

So this year is my year to, for movement, and I’m every month going to give a month. To a different kind of exercise to [00:51:00] see if there’s something I really enjoy doing. So that’s my dopamine is in that, it’s in tracking the glucose and it’s still in broadly tracking. How am I doing as far as how much, how much energy am I using and how much am I eating right?

And how am I eating? Yeah, am I getting a good range, a good balance of protein and carbs. It’s also trying different kinds of food, expanding what I eat not in terms of eating more calories necessarily, but just in saying, okay, this is what I always eat for breakfast. What else can I eat for breakfast?

That gives me the same satisfaction and keeps me happy until lunchtime.

Rita Black: Yeah.

Millie: And

Rita Black: I think that’s great that,

Millie: But it’s also outside stuff too. I was living in an area where there wasn’t a whole lot of things to do. I’m really active in much more active in meetups and social activities here and the cultural things that a [00:52:00] place like Portland has to offer.

And I’m much more involved in that kind of thing, and buying clothes. My rebel is perfectly happy to give up a treat that I might see when I’m standing in line in the grocery store if I promise that there’s something that the, at TJ Maxx the next time we go there.

Rita Black: I love that you love TJ Maxx.

Yeah. Such a great place. That was really helpful. I think it, for our listeners and I certainly can nod in that same direction too, that I think when you reach maintenance that you. It’s not okay, I’m done here, but you dive deeper into other things around your health

Millie: Yeah.

Rita Black: That, that can deepen that relationship.

Yeah. Because I think the big takeaway from today is Millie changed her relationship with herself, and you have a very intimate relationship with that inner coach, inner strategist, inner [00:53:00] problem solver. Than you had before. Yeah. And I think that’s I’m not, I think for me with my maintenance, it’s, I love that relationship so much.

I just wouldn’t wanna give up on it.

Millie: No. I love the whole idea that, when something doesn’t go the way you expected or planned, it’s a problem to be solved. It’s not a moral question. It’s nothing to do with your value, it’s just a problem to be solved. And the other thing is, for all the fact, I think the, one of the things that helped me conquer the imposter syndrome was a real, genuine desire to feel like when this has been, was such a success.

It was such a learning experience for me that I felt like I owed back. And then I wanted to be able to help other people. And so that overrode the question of who am I to act like I know everything. It’s I don’t know everything, but I know some stuff and apparently it was successful. And I wanna be able to share that.

And I wanna be able mostly to [00:54:00] just te say to people, you’re okay. You’re good enough. Your weight is really not the issue of whether you’re good enough to begin with, you are. None of it’s not your fault. Guilt, shame are not, they’re fattening.

Rita Black: Yeah.

Yeah. They are very fattening. Thank you so much, Millie. I a hundred percent agree and I’m so glad that you did come on and share. I too because, you were very honest and I think these kinds of honest conversations about what this, the, this place is like. It isn’t, about unicorns and butterflies and being perfect.

It is really about being very human and very courageous in, and having that powerful relationship with yourself and keeping building upon it, which you had.

Millie: And I really wish I had the strength of character when I was going through that imposter syndrome of talking about it openly on [00:55:00] the website, because I think it’s important for people to hear that everybody there is struggling, everybody has moments of struggle that that’s just part of this, no one has smooth sailing.

Rita Black: No. Absolutely.

Millie: It’s if you want, we all wanna believe there are people out there that never gain weight and can eat everything that they want to and, and they eat

Rita Black: Yeah.

Millie: Giant meals of junk at every opportunity and they actually lose weight and, and those people aren’t real, no. And the, and in the same way. It’s everybody has good days, good bad days, good moments. It’s all one moment, every meal is its own opportunity.

Rita Black: Yeah.

Thank you so much Millie, for coming on, but then thinking Podcast, podcast, we’ll have to have you back when when another year of maintenance has passed for more.

Millie: Yeah. That’s golden. Golden nugget mean. That’s really the key. 1, 1, 1 year is, I think, more exciting to celebrate than reaching the weight.

Maybe

Millie: that’s really the end of it.

Rita Black: [00:56:00] Yeah. Maybe,

Millie: As excited as I was about reach, reaching my goal weight. I’m really excited about making one year and I’ll be over the moon when I make five because I know the statistics on that.

Yeah. Again you’ll be

Rita Black: there. We’ll be bringing out the fireworks for 5 million.

Millie: Yes. Yeah. I’ll be having a party. Everybody’s in invited.

Rita Black: Thank you. Thank you for coming on.

Millie: My pleasure, Rita.

Rita Black: Thank you, Millie. Thank you for sharing so much. Isn’t she amazing? I just love speaking with her.

She has such insights into herself and into the weight journey. And if you want to get into that free masterclass with weight release hypnosis, www.shiftweightmastery.com/free, and the link is in the show notes. And have a great week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle [00:57:00] is inside you.

So keep listening and find it, and I will be with you here. Next week, 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. Unlock your mind for permanent weight loss.