Speaker 1: Did you know that there are words and phrases that you may be using unconsciously? You may think of them as innocent words. You have been using them your whole life, but under the surface, they take your power away and could be sabotaging your long-term weight mastery journey. Join me for today’s Thin Thinking Podcast episode, where we are going to lose your fattening, weight struggle words, starting with that word lose.

Speaker 1: 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, best-selling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery, I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict, and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need. Not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long-term and live your best life.

: Hello everyone and welcome. I hope you are having a fantastic week. Happy April Fool’s Day. I don’t have any pranks for you. Sorry. I’m a straight shooter. I’m not a prankster. My husband’s the prankster in the family, but it is crazy to think that we already have the first quarter of this year behind us. It’s gone by so fast. And I know that is so cliche now that it’s really spring, and the weather’s getting warmer and many people are thinking, Holy crap, I can’t hide under my big sweater anymore. And I better lose some weight. I gained that weight during COVID for the last year, and the sweater has been hiding it nicely during the winter, but now it’s coming off. Holy crap. And I remember one of my favorite things about living in colder climates like Seattle and New York and London, before I moved to sunny, Southern California, and sweaters, I don’t think I own some very thin little sweaters, not very many big thick sweaters, but what I loved about living in those colder climates was the winter. And you could wear those big sweaters that covered up your butt and your thighs, because believe me with my 40 pounds, it was all located in my buttocks and my thighs. I chose sweaters that literally went all the way down to my knees.

Speaker 1: So when it started to get warm and I couldn’t wear my sweater, it was hard. It was like, uh, going through withdrawal, taking that sweater off and I’d feel so vulnerable coming out. I mean, literally walking down the street, I felt naked. And I felt a lot of shame, a lot of shame around that part of my body. And so if you are a sweater gal or a sweater guy, I totally understand. And I’m here with you and if you’re listening in the UK, or Australia, I think, or any of those places where you use the word jumper instead of sweater, I am here with you too. And speaking of jumpers and England, um, when I lived in England, when I was first married, my husband and I moved to England, it was sort of like our adventure.

Speaker 1: We went and we lived there for almost four years, and I had to learn all the different slang words that the Brits used and it was fun. I literally had to use it in order to survive because I was embarrassed so many times socially by not knowing these words. So one word was jumper, which meant sweater. And I still don’t know why. I mean, jumper, like why would a jumper be a sweater? But then of course, why would a sweater be a jumper? I mean, sweater is kind of a weird word too, so, there you go. But another British word that totally cracked me up was the word pissed. I would have a friend who would say I got so pissed last night and I was like, Oh, really, why were you mad?

Speaker 1: And they would laugh. And they would go, no, no, no, pissed is drunk. I don’t understand. Or someone would say to me, I like your fringe. And I looked all over. I’m like, am I wearing something that’s got some fringe on it. Like, I don’t see any fringe, but what I learned was fringe meant your bangs. Okay. So yeah, and that kind of makes sense. It actually makes a lot more sense. But zucchini squash was called courget, and eggplant was ubergene. And they would say, it was spelled the same, but oregano was said funny, and even with weight, they didn’t say I’m dieting. They said, I’m reducing, which I find so cute. And then they weighed themselves in stones and that’s where they totally lost me.

Speaker 1: Although I liked the idea of, you know, weighing, because I think stones are 14, correct me if I’m wrong, 14 pounds are in a stone. So I like the idea of like weighing, you know, Oh, well I’m only, you know, 10 stone, I’m only nine stone. I’m only, you know, 15 stone or whatever. It was like, it’s a lot better than, you know, those higher numbers. All right. So obviously words are powerful and the same word can mean different things to different people. And in my Shift Weight Mastery Process, we look at the subconscious meaning of words and the impact they have on us when we use them. And when we are stuck in the weight, struggle, one of the number one biggest challenges is how we communicate with ourselves. And often the way we communicate with ourselves is very broken down. We are always making ourselves wrong, fat shaming, ourselves, beating ourselves up, and we would never even dream of speaking to others, even our most deepest, darkest enemies, the way that we speak to ourselves and often the words in language that we use to communicate with ourselves and our weight struggle, keep us in the struggle without our consciously even knowing it.

: So I want you to think of our weight struggle words as bricks and the language that we create with these word, like bricks are like the walls surrounding us. And they kind of box us into the struggle, making us a victim of this mindset. So today I want to just begin to do a bit of a demo job on some of those bricks and give you some tools, not only to keep knocking down those bricks, but to begin building the foundation of a new home for your weight mastery, to start to just start to look at words and the way you use language, you use language in a different way. So first we’re going to look at some weight struggler mindset words, or phrases, and these words sort of give our power away, keep us in the struggle.

Speaker 1: And then we’re going to look at the more masterful word that we can start to use. All right. So we’re going to start with the basics and I am going to say the first weight struggle word is weight, lose weight, lose weight. So the challenge with saying I’m losing weight is that, and maybe some of you know this, that if we say I’m losing weight, then on a subconscious level, we feel like we need to find it again. And often we do. So, the word that I prefer, the more masterful masterful word I prefer to use is release weight. Now you will still hear me say lose weight. And a lot of times will self-correct, because I hear the word weight loss. It’s just like one of those crazy, you know, it’s like speaking French and then speaking English at the same time, I’m flopping between two words, worlds of communicating with people who are still in the world of weight struggle, and then in the world of weight mastery.

Speaker 1: So, but in the world of weight mastery, I really like to use that word, weight release or releasing weight because we’re giving it away for the last time. And also obviously inverting that and word, the word or the praise, weight loss, we like to use weight release. Okay. So now, I want to look at a set of words that are, I think one of the biggest, um, challengers to our weight struggle and that, and I’m going to go through those and then we’ll look at some more powerful words to use. And that first word is, or the first phrase is I blew it. I blew it. Can I tell you how many times I hear people saying I blew it? I don’t know what happened, Rita. I just blew it. I just blew it. I blew it. I went away and I blew it.

Speaker 1: The holidays came and I just blew it. I blew it. And boy, does that term take your power away from you. Why? Well, it really just says it all. It just says there was no hope for me. I blew it and it was over, I was the victim of a situation. I blew it and it was over for me. I’m like, it’s Friday night and you’re going out and you planned to order the salad, but you got pizza instead. I blew it. Here comes that inner critic voice reinforcing that you’re bad. You cannot be trusted, usually leaving you feeling vulnerable for the next negative words that come along, usually, which is I blew it. So screw it. I’ll start over tomorrow now. So screw it. I start over tomorrow on one hand, it may seem well, you’re letting yourself off the hook and you might think, Oh, well, that’s a good thing.

Speaker 1: But the problem is, is that starting over tomorrow really usually never means starting over tomorrow, and usually means a lot more extracurricular eating than just the couple of slices of pie. Am I right? So instead of saying, I blew it, instead, I invite you to start saying, what did I learn? What did I learn? Why, why would we do that? If we’re in a situation where things didn’t go well for us, right? We planned to do something and it didn’t go as planned. I do. It gives you absolutely no insight and no learning. But when we ask our brain, what did I learn? It opens up your mind instead of beating you up, we’ll start to get curious. It will say, Oh, well, what did I learn from the situation? Because our inner coach, that part of us that is curious that part of us that wants us to learn and, and to improve, asks questions and our brain actually loves questions.

Speaker 1: And our brain loves to find solutions. It loves to figure things out. So when we start to ask ourselves in those moments, we feel the impulse to say, I blew it and instead ask why didn’t I learn? We step in. We intercept that thought pattern and open up our mind. And we begin to get insight into our behavior and how we can begin to change things, to set ourself up for success, either in that moment or in the future, because a long-term permanent weight, mastery journey. Isn’t about being perfect. It isn’t a straight line down the scale. It’s a journey of self-realization, figuring things out and solving the problems that you haven’t solved. Because most of us gain weight with the same plate in the same places, with the same foods. At the same times, it’s not a great mystery, but we’re treating it like a mystery.

Speaker 1: Like I blew it. There’s some mystery. There’s something wrong with me instead of let’s figure these things out so we can move past them and get some long-term permanent weight mastery. If you’re a long-term permanent weight master the day will come when you start figuring these things out. So why not start asking the question yourself, what did I learn? So chances are, you know, in this situation, that’s a Friday night pizza. It’s not the first Friday night pizza that went wrong, it’s something that probably happens over and over every time. And you always say, I blew it, or we always say, I blew it. You lose the lesson that is waiting for you. What did I learn?

Speaker 1: It’s like digging for gold. Because when you ask a question, your subconscious mind perks up and it gets curious, like I just said, so what did we learn on that Friday night? If we start to ask ourselves the questions, maybe we went to dinner without really practicing what we were going to order in our mind. First, you know, practicing ahead of time, helps your mind follow through on what you want to do. Because often when we’re coming to something that we do over and over again, like Friday night pizza and ordering the pizza, our brain needs a little help because we’re in a habit and a habit is a pattern that’s driven by dopamine. And that’s a very powerful force. So practicing. What we want to do ahead of time is a huge leg up into breaking patterns. So maybe that’s something you would learn if you asked, what did I learn?

Speaker 1: Or, maybe you went to dinner and you were too hungry. And that made you vulnerable to order the pizza. Maybe you need to make sure that before you go out for that Friday night, and you want to order something different, like the salad that you eat a little something so that you’re not so hungry and that you’re not so tenable to go for the pizza. What else did we learn at the Friday night pizza? When we really ask, well, maybe we learned that we gave into peer pressure and all of these things are great to know. No, because when next Friday night, when you’re heading out, you can start to implement these things that you are learning about yourself. Maybe you will practice ordering ahead of time or you’ll have that snack or you’ll practice telling your peers, go ahead, I’ll have a few bites of your pizza but I’m just in the mood for a salad.

: You know, if you practice that ahead of time, chances are you are going to follow through and say that. Then, if you just hope, you’re going to say that in the moment. So asking yourself and learning, when you lose, don’t lose, the lesson is going to open up a whole new door for you. So shift from the phrase, I blew it to, what did I learn? And now let’s follow that little phrase that usually goes after I blew it. So screw it. I’ll be good tomorrow, which gets us even deeper into mental dieting crap than I blew it, right? Let’s break this pizza scenario down shall we, even more than we already have. So we go out and we want to order the salad. We want to be good. And we order the pizza and we eat a couple of slices. And then internally we say to ourselves, so we feel bad.

Speaker 1: So what do we do when we feel bad? Well, we don’t want to feel bad. So we let ourselves off the hook. We’ll say so, screw it. I’ll start over tomorrow. Immediately all those bad feelings go away and we feel relief. And this becomes a habit. And what happens? Do we stop at that two slices of pizza? Oh, no. My dear friend, what do we do? We order some more things. Right? We finished the pizza. Where is there a chocolate tower for dessert? Awesome. Let’s get that. And chances are, if it’s the weekend, are we really going to start over again on Saturday morning? I don’t think so. Oh, no, no. We are not going to do that. We’re going to keep eating Saturday. We’re going to keep eating Sunday and the amount of food calories followed by the loads of negative self-talk equal one big hot mess by the end of the weekend. And probably some weight gain by Monday morning. Right?

: So take a deep breath and let that all go. And so instead of I blew it, if we can say what did I learn by that pizza experience, what lesson did I learn? And we start to learn the lesson, but we are also following that by another phrase, which is don’t start over, keep going. And if you have to forgive yourself in that moment, also do it. In fact, just do it anyway. Okay. I forgave myself. I ate the pizza. What did I learn? Don’t start over. Let’s just keep going. Don’t start over. Let’s just keep going. Don’t start over. Let’s just keep going. You ever see that movie Finding Nemo? I’ve probably seen it a million times because I had kids and I’ve seen that movie more times than I would’ve liked to have seen, but Dory, you know, just keep moving. Just keep moving. Just keep moving. Just keep moving on. Just keep going. Just keep going on your journey, learn and move forward, learn and move forward and break that. Start over tomorrow.

: Habit is the most slimming thing you’ll ever do because like, let’s break this down even more. The difference in calories between stopping at a couple of slices of pizza, maybe, hey, you know, 8,800 calories, 900 calories, maybe a thousand calories, right? And a weekend of wild overeating, which could easily add up to five, six tens, 20,000 extra calories. If we looked at this in a energy unit, that’s a shitload of difference in the calories, right? So, you know, often if we had just eaten a piece of cake and just kept going or eating a slice of pizza and forgiven ourselves and just kept going and ate something healthy at our next meal, you’re going to save yourself a world of a struggle, a world of self-hatred. You’re going to learn a lesson of you saying, what did I learn? And you’re also really going to just continue releasing weight because whatever chloric damage or damage that you did by eating whatever you did, it’s nothing it’s really a blip. But what we do when we, we not only keep starting over again tomorrow, uh, but we don’t learning anything.

Speaker 1: And then we continually have these big overeating episodes that really do take us back. You know, as far as energy wise, as far as releasing weight, it really becomes an interrupter to our weight mastery journey. So these phrases are very important. What did I learn? I forgive myself. Let’s just keep going. Let’s just keep moving forward. All right. So I hope you found that helpful. Now let’s look at a few other words. Now, word I hear a lot is the word I feel deprived, deprived. Okay. So I, and then the alternative word I want to offer you is what I would, I would say is create so deprivation again, you know, I’m going to say as a struggle word, because deprivation gives us this idea that something is being taken away and that we’re a victim. You know, I feel deprived. Something has been taken away from me.

Speaker 1: Something I value has been taken away from me. And I want to invite you into another world, a world where you take a hundred percent responsibility for yourself. And it’s very slimming, a world where you are the creator of your destiny and in your weight mastery. Oh yeah, sure. Other people exist in your world and food and all the challenges of the world full of food. Believe me, it’s full of food, but you are responsible for you and you have a powerful relationship with yourself and you are creating your weight mastery, because I will tell you the difference in my mindset between being 40 pounds heavier and 40 pounds lighter, it wasn’t about being good. And it wasn’t about being perfect. And it wasn’t about chicken and broccoli. It was about creating way of eating that I loved that allowed me to live at my ideal weight.

Speaker 1: Now love is, I adapted what I loved. You know, in my mind, I changed my mindset about fruits and vegetables. I, you know, I became passionate about certain things, because I knew the me living my life at my ideal weight was going to really be utilizing different things than that part of, you know, that me 40 pounds up the scale. And, um, and that 40 pound less me wasn’t a victim of anything or anyone. You know what I mean? You get your power back when you take responsibility and you aren’t deprived. Oh no, no, no. My friend you are creating something magnificent. You’re an artist. You know, it is an artist’s journey, this journey of weight mastery, because it, it requires imagination. It requires passion. It requires love. But there nothing is being taken away from you.

Speaker 1: If you think all those things that kept you in your struggle were worth having, well, then maybe, you know, maybe we want to look at, if you really feel like it’s a struggle, but if you want to leave that behind and own something that is yours, that allows you to be healthier. It allows you to be free, allows you to stop thinking about food all the time and beating yourself up all the time. That seems like something that’s powerful and that takes create creativity and you in our imagination exists in our subconscious mind. So start to think that you’re a creator, a creator of your destiny, a creator of your weight mastery journey, a creator of way of living your life at your ideal weight, whatever that may be your ideal, healthy, loving weight. But you are not deprived.

Speaker 1: Enough said. So you can see, I’m very passionate about those words. And now a couple of other words that follow along really pretty much in that same neighborhood is I can’t have that. I can’t have that. Oh, I can’t have that. Oh, I can’t have that. Oh, no, I’m on a diet. I can’t have that. Oh no, this diet, you can’t eat those. So I can’t have that. Again, that is coming from, you know, you might truly choose not to have something, but I can’t have that again makes you a victim and it puts you into a limited mind state. So I’m going to give you an alternative way to communicate with yourself. I have a choice and I choose not to have, I have a choice. Yes, you is a free country. I think the last I checked, but anyway, there’s no politics here. But I have a choice and I choose not to have it.

Speaker 3: That’s powerful. Again, in the same neighborhood, here’s another phrase I hear a lot. This is hard. Oh, this is hard, weight loss is hard. It’s hard. Okay. I’m going to give you something else to say, this is a challenge that I am rising to. This is a challenge that I am rising to. Oh yeah. So powerful. Okay.

Speaker 1: Now let’s put that all to the side. We’re going to move to a new neighborhood and I want to explore the word hungry. Hungry is not a negative word at all, but hungry, you know, when hungry, that feeling of hunger for us is just such a varied word. The word hunger describes a lot of different sensations. So I want to just start to differentiate true hunger from other things that we might attribute to hunger. So, often when we think we might feel those sensations of hungry, you know, our stomach is feeling a certain way, you know, feeling a certain feeling in our throat or in our mouth, but we are actually thirsty. So, it’s important on your weight mastery journey to absolutely stay hydrated, drink water, make sure you’re not thirsty. If you’re drinking tea or coffee or something that dehydrates, you make sure you also are hydrating yourself, but the word thirsty often is more accurate than the word hungry when we think we’re hungry.

Speaker 1: Because again, if we’re saying I’m hungry to myself, then often that will make us vulnerable to eat. But if we’re able to get underneath the hood of that word hungry and really get curious about it, and we can really decipher what is actually going on, that will save us from, you know, hundreds and thousands of eating episodes. Another interpretation might be, we just ate or we ate an hour ago and our blood sugar is crashing and we might feel some pangs in our stomach. We might feel lightheaded. And we might again say, Oh, I’m hungry. I know like when my kids eat crap food, you know, which they do, and an hour later they’re like, I’m hungry. Oh, hell no, you’re not hungry. You’re blood sugar is crashing because you ate that cinnamon roll or you had that ice cream, or you had that, you know, like really refined carbohydrate thing, whatever it was, you ate those potato chips or those Doritos or whatever.

Speaker 1: It’s not hunger. It’s your blood sugar crashing. Let’s just be clear. You may need to stabilize yourself with a little protein or something, if that is happening. I’m a big believer in that. But you don’t need to sit down and eat another meal, especially if you just, an hour earlier or half hour earlier you ate, hungry might be interpreted as I need to numb out. I need to just immerse my feelings. I want to eat down my feelings. So we might actually, you know, our dopamine center in our brain might actually mimic this feeling of hunger because we really want to just push something down. And the same with I’m bored, I’m bored. You know, our mind will just wander to the thought of food. And then that dopamine center in our brain creates an agitated feeling.

Speaker 1: And often that agitated feeling is we feel in our chest a little bit, but we often will feel it in our stomach. And then again, it gets interpreted as hunger. And the same thing, like with stressed. When we’re super stressed out that, what we’ll do is that the brain will feel that stressor, that cortisol. Often when we’re super stressed, we want to get out of stress and the impulse will be to eat, to calm ourselves down. So that might mimic hunger. So, really start to look at hunger with a lot of curiosity, there is true hunger, and then there’s a lot of other interpretations. And the more that you can communicate with yourself more clearly, what is going on physically in your body, the more power you have the more you can take care of yourself for all of those things, and start to address your true needs underneath the hood, of this interpretation of hunger.

Speaker 1: Okay. You are now ready for another shift tool. This is my favorite. I’m going to introduce you to a phrase that I think is quite magical, and it is, I am moving in the direction of. I am moving in the direction of-why is this so magical? Well, let’s say you have a negative belief. Like I hate exercise. I hate exercise. And you wanted to shift it. You wanted to not feel like you hated exercise. Well, the problem, you know, and you might say, well, I should just say to myself, I love exercise. I love exercise. Oh, exercise is so amazing. But your truth is that you hate it. That’s a limiting belief inside your subconscious mind, and your subconscious mind is defensive. Isn’t really very helpful because our defensive brain, our subconscious mind, it’s got to filter and it’s like, I don’t love exercise, and it’s just going to filter it out.

Speaker 1: So you could say it til the cows come home. You still aren’t going to want to wake up in the morning and exercise. So I am moving in the direction of exercising or loving exercise is so helpful is it says what you need to say, but it opens up your subconscious mind because it’s not saying not today, but I’m open to the idea of loving exercise. And why this is so cool is it’s like somebody opens up the door and you kind of put your foot in, and what you’re doing is planting a seed in your subconscious mind. I’m moving in the direction of loving exercise and your mind, your subconscious mind is like, Oh, I’m moving in the direction of enjoying exercise. I’m not confronted by that because I don’t have to do it right now, but I might be open to that idea.

Speaker 1: And then your imagination starts to engage. Oh, what would that look like? If I really enjoyed exercise? And your subconscious mind is like a computer, and then we’ll start to go to work on that. It will start to think, Oh, well, exercise, exercise. And you’ll start to be more open to those ideas of exercise. I love this phrase so much because it opens you up to so many things. I am moving in direction of enjoying eating more fruits and vegetables. I am moving in the direction of eating more fruits and vegetables. You know, again, you don’t have to do it today, but you’re opening yourself up. And your subconscious mind is getting that seed planted. And it’s beginning to grow inside your subconscious mind. And I know you might be thinking, this is a bunch of crap, it’s still foreign yet.

Speaker 1: But words are powerful. Mark my words, I don’t own any crystals. You know, nothing against crystals, but I’m not a crystal shaken mama. I like science. I like research. And I love our subconscious mind. And our subconscious mind works in a particular way. And we are now learning to work more powerfully with that old subconscious mind of ours. All right. So this has been fun. I love words, and you know, it’s fun to play with words. So this week, this is my coaching. Start to get conscious of the words that you’re using around weight and weight release this week, and just get aware. When you find a word, ask yourself, does this word give me power, or this does this word take my power away from me? And the more you get conscious to the subconscious language you use to communicate yourself, the more you can make swaps for more powerful language, and you will be speaking the language of weight mastery in no time.

: All right, so you can earn a free ticket to our upcoming live spring 2021 30 day Shift Weight Mastery Process guided by me. And all you need to do to be in the running is to write a review of our podcast and take a picture of it or a screenshot. I shouldn’t say a picture, but a screenshot. Send a screenshot and send it to rita@shiftweightmastery.com by April 12th, 2021. And you will be in the running for a drawing on April 13th, where I will give three winners a free ticket to the spring 2021 online Shift Weight Mastery Process. Take a few minutes of your time and get the chance to save hundreds of dollars when you win. Let’s have an amazing week. And remember that the key, and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it. Have a great week everyone.

Speaker 1: Do you want to dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release? Head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release, tips, strategies, and more, and be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book From Fat to Thin Thinking: Unlock Your Mind For Permanent Weight Loss.