Rita Black: Picture this, you are armed with all the weight loss know-how fueled by a burning desire to rock that healthier version of yourself. But hold on, there’s this mischievous sidekick, your inner rebel, throwing banana peels on your path to fitness glory. Annoying, right? Well, today, in this Thin Thinking podcast, we’re not only gonna just acknowledge that wild child within you, but we’re gonna turn them into your weight loss wingman. Yep. You heard that right. No more self-sabotage. We’re making that rebel work for and not against you and your weight release goals. Weight release is like a puzzle with emotional and psychological pieces. And in this episode, we’re handing you the keys to unlock the mystery behind self-sabotage that has left you feeling powerless. So it’s time to confront that inner rebel head on, give them a high five and break free from the chains holding you back. So take a deep breath and another deep breath and come on in.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery, I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long-term and live your best life.

Rita Black: Welcome, welcome. Come in, come in and get comfy and cozy and warm your toes by the fake fire. So really quick, everyone and this is a message just for you. I want to remind you, if you haven’t subscribed to our podcast, please do so. We have lots of valuable episodes that we’re gonna be rolling out to help you over the holidays and how are you gonna know they exist if you don’t subscribe? So every week when you subscribe, we send you some love, we send you a reminder and so you can sign up in the show notes to get those reminders. And as we head into November, this is really officially the beginning of the holiday season, if you don’t count Halloween, which, you know, hopefully you aren’t recovering from a sugar coma. But I really wanna lay out some episodes for you that will be helpful for mastering your weight through the holidays and having an amazing, joyous, healthy, connected holiday season.

Rita Black: So what we are going to do is start with today, and we are gonna start with maybe the one of the main issues, which is our inner rebel. And of course, because next to Santa Claus and the Thanksgiving Turkey, this character usually plays a huge role in our lives during the holidays. Only, we don’t stuff our inner rebel, but our inner rebel usually causes us to stuff ourselves silly throughout the season. So let’s dive into our session today. Now, in the Shift Weight Mastery Process, I talk a lot about the two parts of our mind, the conscious and the subconscious, and how they work together to either work with us for weight release or work against us.

Rita Black: And the conscious mind is that 12%, is a very small part of our mind is, but is a very smart part of our mind. And that part of the mind knows everything there is to know about losing weight, why we should lose weight, how to lose weight, but then there’s that part that just wants things to stay pretty much the way they are and that we call the subconscious mind. And over time we develop quite a rebellious inner saboteur in our subconscious that really has become quite skilled at destroying any weight loss attempt that we go on consciously. Haven’t you noticed? So we work hard to work against this part of ourselves, but it seems the harder that we try to change, the harder we bounce back in the end. Now the problem is that we blame ourselves and we really see that this is a character flaw within us, that we can’t control this part of us, that we have this devilish aspect of ourselves, and that it, you know, it just acts out against us.

Rita Black: And it really makes us feel insane at times because consciously we know everything we should be doing. But, and yet this part just keeps, seeming to undo us. But I want you to understand that anyone who has struggled with weight over time has an inner rebel. And here’s the thing, there is nothing wrong with you, but the more that you try to work against this part of you, the more it bites back. So the key is to create a different relationship with this part of you, to really start to separate yourself out from this part of yourself and to really find ways to tame their rebellion and to really get to see them in a different light, to learn to manage them before they manage you. So I’d like to just take a moment to introduce you to your inner rebel a little more.

Rita Black: Our inner rebel is shortsighted and really driven by the dopamine part of our brain, the reward center in our brain. It’s a very powerful driving force, and dopamine wants what it wants, when it wants it, and it doesn’t care about the consequences. So that makes that part of our mind, that craving part of our mind, that impulsive part of our mind, that part that undoes us is really driven by that very powerful neurotransmitter dopamine. And, you know, like they gave rat sugar water and they stimulated. So this was a study and they stimulated the dopamine center in the rat brain, and the rat continued to drink sugar water until its stomach exploded. Like that’s how aggressive and impactful dopamine can be. So dopamine, I call it kind of the dumb the dumb child or the the child that is like putting its hand finger in the socket that looks like fun.

Rita Black: You know? It doesn’t really, it sees the instant gratification part of a scenario. It’s not really necessarily thinking things through. And it will, and it’s smart, though. It knows that. So it’s not really dumb, but it’s clever. It really knows how to get you to do something even against your own best interest. And often our inner rebel takes on different personalities that work against us when we’re trying to lose weight. You can, I’m going to walk through a few of the main ones that I see repeated over and over again, both within myself and with my clients, and, you know, the people that I work with.

Rita Black: So one aspect of the inner rebel I would call the inner diva. Now she is the star of the food show, your own inner food network, your own inner barefoot Contessa, who is a foodie extraordinaire and absolutely loves and adores food and is absolutely outraged that you are gonna take away her treats and fun when you go on a diet. No way, you don’t know who I am. I must have my rewards and I’m gonna make your life hell for you or anyone who takes them away. Now, deep down, the diva is really reacting out of fear. The fear of the idea of you’re taking away the food. She feels like if you take away food, life is not gonna be the same. Life will lose its color, it won’t be fun, it won’t be worth living, and she will feel deprived. Little does she know that the foods that seemingly create joy and fun, actually deep down can cause her great pain. Because obviously when we’re overeating and feeling out of overweight and out of control, obviously deep down that works against us. But like I said, she’s only looking at the front end and the fun part of it. And her fear is you’re taking away her fun and life isn’t gonna be worth living.

Rita Black: Now there’s this other aspect of ourselves, which I would call the inner child. Now, they don’t care about being thin, they just wanna feel the instant comfort when they are feeling bad or stressed. And the comfort is more important than being thin on the beach this summer. This aspect of our inner rebel is a bit whiny. They get to have it. Why can’t I, I feel bad and I need something to soothe me. But little does this aspect of ourselves know that ultimately overeating the carby foods, the sugary foods, the foods that seemingly soothe us, ultimately create more anxiety and more stress about our weight, about our health. At the end of the day, again, it’s really only looking at the front end of each scenario. Now, the last aspect that I’m gonna discuss with you, I, am, and I’m saying that I’m discussing three.

Rita Black: There might be, you might have a lot of other different aspects to your inner rebel, but that, the other one that I find really interesting is the inner con man. He’s more like the seducer and the deal maker. This is the smooth talking bastard part of our inner rebel that will seduce you and convince you in any way he knows how you should start over tomorrow in order to get that hedonistic pleasure today. Whether it’s ripping down the drive-through and getting on that impulse drive-through spree or the impulse buy at the checkout stand, or eating a few more slices of cake or more slices of pizza after we’ve had one go on, you’ve been doing. So well have a bit more. You can pull things together tomorrow and tomorrow, only tomorrow brings more eating and empty promises, making us feel bad about our willpower and forgiving in and the shame, the shame, the shame, the shame that we feel for allowing ourselves to be seduced by this clever character again and again.

Rita Black: Ah, why did I let him do that? So your inner rebel may have other aspects, like I said, of his or her personality, but what I want you to do is to start to notice, to get conscious of this aspect of yourself, to start to get wise and shift your inner rebel. So I’m gonna teach you a way to start to separate yourself out from these aspects of yourself and to get your inner rebel to lose some of their power and to, so you can start to manage them. In fact, I’m going to read you an excerpt from my book from Fat to Thin Thinking, where I tell a story about leading a client through two mind techniques to begin to manage his inner rebel. And I’m gonna lead you through one of these techniques and then I’m gonna walk you through how he managed the other technique. And it’s, it’s a pretty straightforward technique, so I know you’re gonna get this too. So I think these two techniques are gonna be very helpful for you to begin to tame and have some more power over this inner rebel aspect of yourself.

Rita Black: So I’m just gonna read from you this, this chapter is called the Inner Rebel and managing your Inner rebel is actually a skill of weight mastery. And you know, I have three areas of skills in the idea of weight mastery. And these are really taken by studies of over 200 studies of people who have taken weight and kept it off permanently. So really people who have long-term sustained weight management have learned to manage this part of themselves. You know, like they, that there’s a skill to this.

Rita Black: It just doesn’t happen overnight that we really, the more we get to know these aspects of ourselves, the more we can have power over them. Okay, so I’m gonna read you from this part of the chapter. Tom thought that being able to finish an entire pizza was a sign of manhood, my friends and I would consider you a wimp if you left a piece of pizza on the plate. If you ate it all, you won. Tom said at our consultation meeting. Tom grew up in Southern California and had been in the construction industry for a good part of his life. He had been a customer of the diet industry even longer. Tom had tried every weight loss program fast and cleanse out there twice. My mom always dieted and took me to my first Weight Watchers meeting when I was eight.

Rita Black: He shared with me when I asked him what his biggest challenge to long-term success was. Tom replied, I’m not sure I’m very good at following a diet structure and releasing 30 of the 50 pounds I need to lose. But somewhere along the way, I get bored of the diet or I go out with the guys and I eat pizza and I drink beer. It’s the devil sitting on my shoulder and he’s pretty hard to say no to when he wants something. I like to call that devil, your inner rebel. I said, ah, whatever you call it. Once I give into it, a part of me snaps and it doesn’t wanna return to the strictness of that diet, it’s off and I’m off until I regain all the weight. Well, tell me one way. Your inner rebel tries to seduce you into sabotaging your weight release efforts.

Rita Black: I asked Tom, Tom laughed, just one. Okay. if I started a diet and the weekend comes, I may go out with my family for dinner. If I see ribs on the menu, my inner rebel says, Hey, you worked hard this week. Let’s have the ribs and a beer and a side of fries. We’ll pull it together tomorrow. In reality, that means restarting my program on Monday. After eating a ton of food over the weekend, I asked Tom to close his eyes and imagine that his inner rebel was a character outside of him, a character in a movie or from his life. Tom smiled. I know exactly who my inner rebel is gonna be. I just bought a new truck and the guy sold it to me. The guy who sold it to me was the ultimate salesman. I went in there wanting to buy a pre-owned model, and he talked me into buying a brand new model with a bunch of added details.

Rita Black: This guy was smooth. He kept saying, you work so hard, you deserve it. I believed him and I didn’t know what hit me until I was driving home. Hmm. Well, could you imagine this smooth talker saying, go ahead, you work so hard, eat whatever you want and you can start again on Monday. I asked Sure, easily. Okay, so now imagine that voice that that guy’s voice becoming really silly and distorted like the voice of Homer Simpson or SpongeBob Squarepants. Tom laughed. I asked him, does it take the edge off the seduction a bit? Sure. I feel like I can hear my inner rebel from a mile away. He’s not gonna catch me daydreaming again, Tom said. So you can see what Tom did and what I’m gonna lead you through now was you, you start to separate yourself out from that inner rebel aspect of yourself.

Rita Black: And, and you do that by giving them a character. You really do create them as a, you see them, you see what they’re dressed as, you see how what they look like and that they’re separate from you. So you can start to have a dialogue with them. You can start to say no to them. You can start to hear them like that used car salesman from a different aspect. And it doesn’t, because often what we hear is just that voice in our head. Like, go on, you deserve it. And, and it, it’s, we think it’s part of us. So I’d like to now just take you through, okay, so now it’s time for you to show your inner rebel whose boss. I’m gonna just walk you through this, this exercise so that you can try it out too.

Rita Black: So if your inner rebel were a character in a movie, what character would he or she be? Or maybe just choose a very seductive person from your life to play the rebel. So just kind of imagine that that could be any movie that you’ve seen. I think of those black and white forties movies because I used to watch those with my dad. And I imagine like Jane Russell who’s like just super seductive and come on sailor. And she’s like, got this very seductive voice. So what does your inner rebel look like? Like I said, mine is kind of this seductress who’s a little wild and unkempt looking and has a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.

Rita Black: And now what is a seductive phrase that your inner rebel uses to sabotage you? For me, one was like, oh, go on. You work so hard or go on, everybody else is having, eating. You can too. You know? That those were something that my inner rebel loves to say. Okay, good. So now close your eyes and imagine your or not. If you’re driving your car, don’t close your eyes, but otherwise close your eyes. And just imagine, imagine your inner rebel saying that phrase, but in a silly voice like Homer or Marge Simpson or SpongeBob Square pants.

Rita Black: Good. And now thank your inner rebel for his opinion. And and I want you to imagine shrinking your inner rebel down. So like, imagine them going from that normal size in your brain to like teeny tiny, smaller and smaller, smaller until you can barely see them hiding behind a blade of grass. And then tell your inner rebel to take a nap. So just imagine them laying down and taking a nap. And then I want to you to imagine that you’re putting them in a little box behind your head. So what you’re in the back of your brain. So just imagine there’s a little box in the back of your, your brain and you’re, you’re putting your inner rebel in that box. So you’re separating yourself out from them, distorting that voice so it sounds silly to you. So you’re starting to play with these, these are neurolinguistic programming techniques and you’re actually shrinking them down.

Rita Black: So you’re shrinking down their importance. You’re telling them to go to sleep and you’re putting them in the back. And this is a great exercise to do with your inner critic as well. You know, when we start to make our inner critic sound silly, it also our inner critic can start to lose our power. I’m, I often will tell my inner critic, Hey, you’ve worked really hard today. Go ahead and take a nap. Or you can take vacation. I don’t need you right now. Okay? So that’s one way you can start to play around with your inner rebel and shrink their importance. Now I wanna teach you this other thing called the think it through strategy. And I’m gonna read to you from the book again. So, your inner rebel is very good at seducing you away from your weight release intentions.

Rita Black: The good news is that even though the seduction dance you do with your inner rebel is a powerful pole, ultimately it is predictable. A typical inner rebel seduction attempt might be convincing you that you’re too tired to exercise coming home from work when you’re hungry and overeating overindulging at social outings, restaurants and parties seducing you to get treats from the kitchen while watching TV at night. The way to shift out of the seduction is with a cognitive behavioral technique that I call the think it through strategy. It involves turning the tables and seducing your inner rebel into making the healthier choice for you. According to psychologist Philip David Zellasso PhD, our thoughts and the language we use to express them can be, can remind us of bad consequences and guide us to other actions and reinforce the value of success. So what I’m talking about is counter seducing your inner rebel with an offer she or he cannot refuse.

Rita Black: Remember, most of what drives our brain forward is the idea of perceived reward. That dopamine, the inner rebel is a master at making his reward seem better to you than sticking with your healthier option. But what if you started marketing your healthier option in a more enticing way? So this is how to think it through this technique allows you to shift your mind out of fat thinking, impulsive pleasure, seeking to thin thinking, healthy action taking. So one, you take a shift, breath and harness your inner coach. So you just bring that powerful, you get present and bring that powerful inner you that nurturing wise you within. Now think through how taking the inner rebels path will feel three hours from now after indulging. So if you’re sitting there at the checkout counter and you see, you know, the pound size of m&ms and you’re like thinking, oh, well I’ll just buy this and have a a few think it through to the fact that you probably will eat more than just a few and you’ll keep eating them.

Rita Black: And then you get halfway through the bag and you start to feel sick and woozy and then three hours later you’re feeling bad. And in a sugar coma, just think about how that would feel in your body, how that would feel that that sugar coma, feeling foggy, feeling gross, feeling stuffed, lethargic, and in your heart, regretful. Remorseful. Why did I do that? So, so you just think that through in your mind all the way through and you think through to the feeling part of it, right? Like how it feels. ’cause A feeling will trigger the brain that will start to leverage that dopamine in a different way. ’cause The brain’s gonna start to go, oh, that doesn’t feel good. We don’t want that.

Rita Black: All right, so next you wanna think through what would happen if you made the healthier choice? How would you feel three hours later in your body lightly energized? So like if you passed on the m&ms, you went home, ate a healthy, lighter dinner, and how would you feel three hours later going in, going to bed feeling light like you really took care of yourself, that you ate healthfully proud of yourself, and, and you’re really thinking through to that feeling like how would that feel in my body? So you’re giving yourself those two different feeling choices. And what you’re doing is leveraging dopamine. You’re leveraging. So you’re giving that, you’re saying, okay, in a rubble, we could eat all those m and ms, but how’s that really gonna feel three hours from now versus you know, taking a healthy choice and how’s that gonna feel? Because ultimately that higher level feeling of feeling proud of yourself and connected to yourself is something that we ultimately want more than instant gratification. So when you start to get your brain thinking forward like that, thinking it all the way through, you’ll often take that healthier option.

Rita Black: And this is a skill that you can begin to develop. So I’m gonna read to you what Tom did. So let’s look at how Tom used the think it through strategy with his inner rebel during his morning vision meditation to prepare for an upcoming social outing. And in the shift the book from Fat to Thin Thinking, there’s this morning meditation that you get as a recording with the book and hypnosis too, but the meditation kind of helps you think your day through. So he was using that morning vision meditation to prepare for an upcoming social outing. Tom thinks forward to the lunch meeting he is having with his friends at their favorite Italian restaurant. And as Tom thinks about the lunch, he immediately thinks about the restaurant’s fettuccine Alfredo that he loves. Tom’s inner rebel rears his head, thinking about the creamy noodles.

Rita Black: Tom’s inner rebel says, wow, that fettuccine is so good. Let’s get that today. Come on. We never go to that restaurant and your friend Joe is paying. I don’t wanna salad. That’s for sure. A salad would just be sad. Tom takes a shift breath and begins to think through the inner rebel choice. Tom says to himself, eating a plate of fettuccine would be amazing in the moment, but this afternoon I will feel bloated and gross. That fettuccine adding to the fat around my middle and pressing over the top of my pants. Do I really wanna feel that way later? Tom’s inner rebel responds, yikes, since you put it like that maybe not. Tom now paints a seductive picture of a healthier option as he romances his inner rebel. He says, well, I can order the lemon chicken and veggies instead of a big plate of fettuccine Alfredo, but I can order a small side of fettuccine and I can have a few bites and experience those fantastic flavors.

Rita Black: And then I will put the plate on the table in the middle for the others to share. And that way I can have the pasta and not become bloated and I can feel good about myself and good when I’m done eating because I ate healthfully too. Okay, so do you get that? So you’re, you’re starting to really use your mind just in a different way. This is thin thinking at its best. We’re really rewiring ourselves and rewiring the way we perceive things and especially leveraging the power of dopamine when it comes to our inner rebel. So next time that you’re feeling seduced like Tom, take your inner rebel through the two choices. Think that the less healthy or the the seductive fattening choice all the way through to the pain of overeating and feeling stuffed and bloated. And then guide your inner rubble through the healthier choice, feeling light, feeling connected to yourself because that’s the higher level emotion, that’s a higher level feeling. That’s a higher level place that we wanna get to. This is such a great way to begin managing that part of you without having to fight it.

Rita Black: And that my friends, is the beginning of you being the boss and not the of your inner rebel. Okay, I hope that session served you and I wanna remind you again, please, please subscribe and have your friends subscribe to our podcast. The more the merrier. Remember alone, we diet, together, we shift. We have so much valuable content coming up over these next couple of months. So I’m excited to be with you and share that with you. And remember the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door, the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it. I will be with you here next week.

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