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As a smart, capable person, you might often wonder: “Why do I struggle with weight when I know so much about losing it?” 

You’re not alone. I hear this question from new listeners, prospective students, and clients all the time.

In this special birthday episode of Thin Thinking, I’m taking a deep dive into this very topic.

 Weight management can feel frustrating, confusing, and overwhelming, especially in today’s culture. But here’s the truth—it doesn’t have to be. The solution lies not in what we’re doing, but in how we’re being.

I’ll be sharing key mindset shifts that can help you bridge the gap between knowledge and lasting success. 

It’s about unlocking a new approach that aligns with your life and goals—without the frustration.

So, grab your party favor and join me as we celebrate and dive into powerful insights that can truly transform your weight journey.

See you at the party!

Come on in!

NEW FREE ONLINE MASTERCLASS WITH HYPNOSIS

Classes available from September 24th – September 28th

Breaking Free: Mastering your Mindset for Lasting Weight Release

Enroll Here Now! 

Slots are Limited!

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

The challenges of the mind when it comes to weight loss.

The 88% and 12% of our brain explained.

How today’s weight loss culture builds unrealistic expectations.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Join my FREE Masterclass: “How to Stop the “Start Over Tomorrow” Weight Struggle Cycle and Begin Releasing Weight for Good.”

FREE Shift Out of Sugar Cravings Hypnosis Session

My book, From Fat to Thin Thinking: Unlock Your Mind for Permanent Weight Loss (Includes a 30-day hypnosis process.)

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“I am a smart person. A lot of things in my life work. So why is weight still a problem when I know everything there is to know about losing weight?”

If you’ve ever said some version of that to yourself, you’re not alone. I hear it from new listeners, students, and clients all the time. You might have shelves of diet books, expertise in macros, and a history of “being good”…for a while. And yet, the scale and your clothes keep telling a different story.

Here’s the key truth I want you to really take in:

Most people aren’t stuck losing weight because they don’t know what to do. They’re stuck because of how their mind is wired and how they see themselves.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through the core mental shifts that finally allowed me—and thousands of my students—to stop starting over and create lasting weight release, even in midlife and beyond.

We’ll talk about why you keep sabotaging yourself when you “know better,” how diet culture quietly keeps you in struggle, and how to move from “weight struggler” to “weight mastery apprentice” using practical tools you can start today.

Let’s dive in.

1. Why do I feel so stuck losing weight when I already know what to do?

Feeling stuck losing weight—even though you know a lot about weight loss—isn’t a sign that you’re weak or broken; it’s a sign that knowledge alone isn’t enough.

By the time people come to me for hypnosis and mindset work, they’ve usually tried every diet, app, and workout plan. Many of them are weight-loss professionals themselves—trainers, nutritionists, nurses. They can tell you the calorie counts, the macronutrients, the “right” foods…and yet, they still end their nights elbow-deep in a bag of chips or promising to “start again Monday.”

I get it, because I lived that insanity too.

I once spent a whole summer in Seattle trying to get “perfectly thin” for my brother’s wedding. I arrived home from college just five pounds above my ideal weight…and still decided I needed to diet harder. Within weeks of bingeing, “last chance” weekends, a job in a delicious Italian deli, and baking his wedding cake (yes, I’m a frosting-aholic), I had gained over thirty-five pounds.

Every night I’d lie in bed promising myself, Tomorrow I’ll be good. I know exactly what to do. And every day I’d repeat the same patterns.

If this sounds familiar, here’s what I want you to know:

  • You are not crazy.
  • Your problem is not a lack of information.
  • Your problem is that your current way of thinking and being is wired for struggle, not mastery.

Once you understand what’s happening in your brain, and how your identity and beliefs are pulling the strings, your “stuckness” makes sense—and it becomes changeable.


“If this resonates, you may also find Thin Thinking Episode 176: Why You Self-Sabotage and How to Stop really helpful.”

2. How does my brain quietly keep me stuck in the same weight-loss patterns?

When it comes to long-term weight loss, your brain is not a neutral player. It’s wired in a way that naturally resists change, especially around food and routines.

A simple way to think about your mind is this:

  • 12% is conscious – the logical, willpower part that reads the diet books and says, “Start Monday, eat less, move more.”
  • 88% is subconscious – the part that loves autopilot, comfort, and keeping things the same.

Your conscious mind is the one that decides, “I’m done. I’m losing this weight.”
 Your subconscious mind is the one that says, “Mmm…pizza. We always eat the whole thing on Friday nights; let’s stick with that.”

In your subconscious, you have:

  • Beliefs like “food makes me feel better,” “my metabolism is broken,” “I’m a sugar addict,” “I always regain the weight.”
  • Habits like coming home and automatically grabbing a snack, finishing the kids’ leftovers, or eating in front of the TV.
  • Emotional associations like “chocolate = comfort,” “popcorn = movie night,” “wine = relaxation.”
  • Identity (“I’m a weight struggler,” “I’m the big one in my family.”)

So, picture this:

  • 12% of your mind is shouting, “Let’s be good and lose weight!”
  • 88% of your mind is quietly voting, “Let’s keep everything the same.”

Who’s going to win that election most of the time?

This is why you can do a diet perfectly for a while—especially if there’s a big event coming—then slowly drift back into your old behaviors once the novelty or urgency wears off. The diet changed your actions temporarily, but it didn’t change your subconscious wiring.

Real, lasting change happens when you:

  1. Work with your subconscious mind instead of fighting it.
  2. Shift your identity and beliefs, not just your meal plan.
  3. Rewire your daily habits in a realistic, compassionate way.


If this part of the journey resonates, you may also appreciate Episode 126: The Key Mental Hack to Actually Prevent Emotional Eating, where I dive even deeper into how your brain uses old emotional patterns to override your best weight-loss intentions.

That’s the heart of “thin thinking”—leading your brain instead of being led by old programming.

3. How does diet culture train me to struggle with my weight?

Diet culture doesn’t just sell you meal plans—it sells you an unrealistic story about weight loss.

The story usually goes like this:
Follow this plan perfectly. Be “good.” Lose the weight. Walk off into the skinny sunset and live happily ever after.

You see before-and-after photos on social media and get the message:

  • “If you were disciplined enough, this would be easy.”
  • “The problem is you—not the approach.”
  • “All the answers live outside of you, in the next diet, app, or guru.”

This creates some really sneaky side effects:

  • You chase quick fixes, rather than sustainable changes.
  • You judge yourself harshly for every “mistake.”
  • You believe that once you hit goal weight, everything will magically stay that way, without ongoing inner work.

Here’s what diet culture doesn’t tell you:

Long-term weight mastery is not a 30-day challenge; it is an ongoing relationship with yourself.

People who have released weight and kept it off for years don’t say, “I lost it and then it was all easy.” They’ll tell you they’re still:

  • Planning ahead.
  • Staying connected to their inner world.
  • Learning from slip-ups instead of quitting.
  • Adjusting to new seasons of life (aging, hormones, stress, travel, etc.).

When you believe the diet-culture story, you approach weight loss as a test of perfection instead of a learning journey. The moment you “mess up,” you feel like a failure and want to abandon ship.

Once you see weight mastery as a continuing story—a journey you walk with yourself—“failure” turns into feedback, and every day becomes an opportunity to learn, refine, and grow.

That shift alone can start to unstick you.

4. Who am I if I’m not “a weight struggler” anymore?

One of the biggest reasons you stay stuck losing weight is your identity.

Your identity is simply how you see yourself in the world. I, for example, see myself as a mom, a wife, a hypnotherapist, a gardener, a bike rider, a food lover…and a weight mastery apprentice.

For many years though, I saw myself as a weight struggler:

  • I struggled with food.
  • I struggled with exercise.
  • I struggled with my body in the mirror.
  • I struggled with the scale, with other people’s comments, with saboteurs offering brownies “just for you.”

Struggle was my home base.

Even when I lost weight, I did it as a struggler who was dieting. I never truly believed I could keep it off, so my subconscious was always waiting for the “after” photo so it could go back to business as usual.

Here’s the problem with the “weight struggler” identity:

  • It’s sticky – you carry it into every new plan.
  • It predicts your future – “I struggle, therefore I am.”
  • It keeps you in victim mode – food, your metabolism, your spouse, your schedule all seem more powerful than you.

To get unstuck, you don’t have to become a perfect “weight master” overnight. Instead, I invite you into a much more doable and powerful identity:

Become a weight mastery apprentice.

An apprentice is a learner. An apprentice:

  • Is allowed to be imperfect.
  • Is allowed to make mistakes.
  • Treats every situation as a chance to understand and refine.

When you see yourself as an apprentice of weight mastery:

  • Overeating at a buffet becomes data: “What triggered me? What can I do differently next time?”
  • A skipped workout becomes curiosity: “What got in my way? How can I support myself better?”
  • You stop labeling yourself lazy or hopeless and start self-correcting instead of self-attacking.

In my Shift Weight Mastery Process, everyone begins by signing an “apprentice contract”—because this mindset is that important. From the first day, you’re not “on a diet”; you’re on a learning journey with yourself.

And that changes everything.

5. How do I challenge the beliefs that keep me overweight?

Underneath your weight struggle are a bunch of limiting beliefs that feel like facts but are really just old stories.

Some examples:

  • “I’m a sugar addict.”
  • “My body is broken.”
  • “I have no willpower.”
  • “I’m the big one in my family.”
  • “Skinny people are lucky; I’m not.”
  • “I’m lazy and undisciplined.”

These beliefs usually come from:

  • Family comments.
  • Childhood experiences.
  • Diet culture messages.
  • Misinterpreted memories (like thinking you were “huge” in high school, then seeing old photos now and realizing you were actually pretty slim).

One celebrity client once told me, “My body looks like a buffalo.” This was a woman celebrated as sexy and beautiful by millions. That’s the power of distorted beliefs.

To change them, you need two inner characters:

  1. Your inner critic – the harsh, perfectionistic voice you already know too well.
  2. Your inner coach – the wise, kind, grounded part of you we’re going to strengthen.

Your inner critic has kept a very thick evidence file on why you can’t lose weight:

  • Every diet you “failed.”
  • Every binge.
  • Every skipped workout.
  • Every unflattering photo.

It uses this file to replay “proof” that you’re hopeless.

Your first step is simply to notice that critic:

  • Hear how it speaks to you.
  • Notice the labels it uses.
  • Catch the sweeping statements: “You always… You never… You’re just…”

Then, you bring in your inner coach to question it.

For example, if you hear, “You’re a lazy pig,” your inner coach can ask:

  • “Says who?”
  • “Am I really lazy?”
  • “Did I look lazy yesterday when I worked all day, took care of my family, and kept the household running?”

By gently poking holes in these beliefs, you loosen their grip.

At the same time, you start building a new evidence file:

  • “I eat a healthy breakfast most days.”
  • “I often choose salad over fries.”
  • “I walk at lunch with coworkers.”
  • “I’ve successfully changed habits in other areas of my life.”

You begin to collect proof that you are, in fact, capable of change. That’s how we move from “I’m hopeless” to “I’m learning,” and from “I can’t” to “I’m already doing some things right.”

6. How do I build an inner coach that helps me follow through?

Your inner coach is the game-changer in getting unstuck with weight loss. It’s the part of you that believes in you, advocates for you, and helps you stay connected instead of abandoning yourself.

If you’re used to being harsh with yourself, this may feel strange at first. So I like to start with a simple exercise.

Think of a time when you were loving and supportive toward someone else:

  • A child.
  • A close friend going through a hard time.
  • A coworker you were mentoring.

Notice:

  • The tone of your voice.
  • The patience you had.
  • The way you encouraged them, even when they messed up.

That loving, encouraging voice? That’s the voice I want you to start using with yourself.

You can even do a quick visualization:

  1. Close your eyes (not while driving!) and picture yourself sitting across from…you.
  2. Let your “coach self” look at you with the same respect and care you had for that other person.
  3. In that warm voice, say:
    “I believe in you. We can release weight for good. It will take commitment, patience, and focus—but we can do this.

Then, throughout your day, practice:

  • Catching your inner critic.
  • Letting your inner coach respond.

Example:

  • Critic: “You blew it at lunch. Typical. You’ll never change.”
  • Coach: “Okay, that meal wasn’t how we wanted it, but what did we learn? And what’s one small thing we can do differently at dinner?”

Over time, your coach becomes:

  • Your planner – helping you think ahead.
  • Your motivator – reminding you why you care.
  • Your comforter – soothing you without using food.
  • Your strategist – helping you find solutions instead of shame.

This is the relationship I’ve been cultivating with myself for over 25 years. I still “meet” with my inner coach every morning. It’s not just how I maintain my 40-pound weight release—it’s how I create my life on purpose.

7. What does a realistic, brain-friendly weight-loss day look like?

To get unstuck losing weight, you need to consistently do what you say you’ll do—and that means setting realistic expectations your brain can actually meet.

Most of us do the opposite:

  • We go from no exercise to “I’ll work out 7 days a week for 90 minutes.”
  • We go from chaotic eating to “I’ll be perfect—no sugar, no carbs, no eating after 6pm.”
  • We go from no planning to “I’ll food-prep like a professional chef.”

Then, when we inevitably can’t maintain that, we “prove” our inner critic right.

Instead, I want you to think smaller but consistent.

Here’s what a brain-friendly day might look like:

1. Morning “huddle” with your inner coach

Spend a few minutes—literally 3–5—planning your day:

  • What will you have for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks?
  • When will you move your body (even 10 minutes counts)?
  • Where are your vulnerable moments—after work, at the office sweets table, late at night?
  • How will you handle those? (E.g., “When my husband brings home fries, I’ll have three and savor them, then enjoy my planned dinner.”)

You’re rehearsing your day like an athlete practices a play. You’re creating a mental blueprint before you get into your habit zones.

2. Set doable commitments

Ask yourself:

“On a hard day, could I still do this?”

If the answer is no, lower the bar until the answer is yes.

Examples:

  • Instead of “I’ll walk 5 miles,” try “I’ll walk 10–15 minutes after lunch.”
  • Instead of “I’ll never snack at night again,” try “Tonight I’ll have one planned snack and brush my teeth after.”
  • Instead of “I’ll cut all sugar,” try “Today I’ll skip the office donuts and enjoy my planned dessert after dinner.”

Every time you follow through, you’re telling your brain:

“When I make a promise to myself, I keep it.”

That builds trust—and that trust fuels bigger changes down the road.

3. Practice, don’t perform

During the day, expect imperfections. When something doesn’t go as planned:

  • Pause.
  • Breathe.
  • Ask your inner coach: “What can we learn here?”
  • Adjust the next decision, not next Monday.

By the end of the day, instead of reviewing everything you did “wrong,” ask:

  • “What went well today?”
  • “Where did I keep my promise to myself?”
  • “What’s one small tweak for tomorrow?”

That’s what a realistic, brain-friendly weight-loss day looks like—not perfect, but aligned, curious, and connected.

FAQ: Getting Unstuck with Weight Loss

1. Why am I stuck losing weight even though I know exactly what to do?

You’re likely stuck because your subconscious mind, identity, and habits are still wired for your old patterns. Your conscious mind wants change, but your deeper programming wants comfort and familiarity. Until you address the mental game—not just the food and exercise—you’ll keep bumping into the same walls.

2. Is it harder to lose weight after 50 or 60?

Hormones, metabolism, and lifestyle shifts can absolutely influence weight after 50 or 60, but they don’t make weight loss impossible. My community is full of women in their 50s, 60s, 70s—even one who reached her goal weight and maintained it into her 70s after decades of struggle. The key is working with your mind and body as they are now, not as they were at 25.

3. How do I stop “starting over Monday” every week?

You stop “starting over Monday” by dropping perfectionism and adopting an apprentice mindset. Instead of: “I blew it, so I’ll start over later,” you shift to: “I slipped; what can I learn and adjust in my next choice?” Every day becomes part of one continuous journey—not a pass/fail test.

4. Can hypnosis really help with weight loss, or is it just woo-woo?

Hypnosis is simply a focused, relaxed state where your mind is more open to suggestion. I used hypnosis to lose 40 pounds and keep it off for over 25 years, and I’ve seen it help thousands of others. It’s not magic, but it’s a powerful tool for retraining your subconscious beliefs, habits, and identity so your actions finally line up with what you know.

5. How do I deal with my inner critic when I overeat?

First, recognize that your inner critic is trying (in a very unhelpful way) to “motivate” you through shame. Then invite your inner coach to speak:

  • “Okay, that wasn’t what we planned, but what triggered it?”
  • “How was I feeling before I ate?”
  • “What could I try next time in a similar situation?”

Shifting from attack to curiosity is what allows you to grow instead of repeat the pattern.

6. What if I’ve failed at every diet—how do I start to trust myself again?

You rebuild trust by making small, realistic promises and keeping them. That might be:

  • Drinking a glass of water before coffee.
  • Planning one meal ahead.
  • Taking a 10-minute walk.

Every kept promise goes into your new “I can do this” file in your brain. Over time, those small wins add up to a very different self-image.

7. Where should I start if I feel completely overwhelmed?

Start with one thing:

  • One daily morning huddle.
  • One meal you plan and follow through on.
  • One evening where you notice your cravings without judging yourself.

You don’t have to fix everything at once. You just have to begin showing up for yourself in a new way—today.

Conclusion: You’re Not Broken—You’re Ready to Shift

If you’ve been stuck losing weight despite knowing exactly what to do, I want you to hear this clearly:

  • You are not a failure.
  • You are not too old.
  • Your body is not your enemy.
  • Your mind simply needs new leadership.

When you:

  • Step out of the “weight struggler” identity and into the “weight mastery apprentice” identity…
  • Learn to work with your subconscious mind instead of fighting it…
  • Question your limiting beliefs and build up a compassionate, powerful inner coach…
  • And practice simple, realistic daily plans that you can actually follow through on…

…that’s when everything you “know” about weight loss finally becomes usable. You stop starting over and start walking a real, sustainable path of weight mastery.

A natural next step

If this resonates with you and you’re ready to take this deeper, I’d love to invite you to join me for my free online masterclass on mastering your mindset for lasting weight release. In it, we dive further into:

  • How your subconscious patterns keep you stuck.
  • How to rewire your “fat thinking” into “thin thinking.”
  • How to use light hypnosis to get your mind working for you, not against you.

You can find details on my website at Shift Weight Mastery or through my podcast resources. Come learn how to unlock your own inner tools—you already have them inside you.

Remember:

The key—or probably the only key—to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you.

Keep listening, keep learning, and keep showing up for yourself. I’m cheering you on every step of the way.

Want to learn more? Check out my free masterclass, How to Stop The “Start Over Tomorrow” Weight Struggle Cycle and Start Releasing Weight For Good.

If you found this episode helpful, you might also enjoy this related Thin Thinking episode:

Episode 150: Rocio Shares Her Mindset Behind 95 Pounds Release

Podcast Transcript

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Rita Black: I am a smart person. A lot of things in my life work. So why is weight still a problem when I know everything there is to know about losing weight? In this episode, my birthday episode, we are diving into the question that I get asked the most by new listeners and perspective students and clients. Weight management can be so frustrating and confusing, and our current culture has made it even more so. But it doesn’t have to be. The answer lies not in what we are doing, but how we are being. In this episode, I walk you through key transitions that you can make in your thinking so you can use that knowledge you have and really use it to finally be successful. So grab your birthday party favor and come on into the party.

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: Hello and welcome to the party. Woo-Hoo woo. Yes. My birthday is finally here! The big 60. And I am ready. I wanna thank you, dear listener, for being with me up until this big day, as we have explored many topics around getting older. I appreciate you and I am delighted to have you here with me. I love, love, love this community, and I cherish this community that we have all created all over the world. I have many older women above 50, and let me just say that is not old. I was just at my neighbor’s 100th birthday a few weeks ago, and I literally was the youngest one there. I felt like a spring chicken. And it’s all relative, right? I mean, but anyhow I get these women in their fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, who come to me and say, is it really possible for me to lose weight?

Rita Black: I failed my whole life. I think of myself as a lost cause and my body is broken. For any listeners or students in your sixties, fifties, seventies, eighties, nineties, I wanna inspire you by reading something that was shared in my community. I thought, oh, I wanna share this with my podcast listeners. I just think it’s so inspirational. So I was, I was constantly being at war with myself, years and years of gaining and losing the same 20, 30 pounds obsessing about food, about clothes, buying skinny clothes, and shaming myself when they stopped fitting. And now I’ve achieved my goal weight and I’m at a weight that I have not been since my twenties and I turned 70 in June. I love my body now, wrinkles and all, and I love feeling fit and committed to staying active. And I’m beyond thankful to Rita. She truly does understand the psychology of weight better than any program or publication I’ve encountered and very grateful for this program and the support of the fellow shifters because we have a saying, alone we diet, together we shift.

Rita Black: And she said, I’m celebrating my one year weight maintenance anniversary, cheering on all my fellow shifters on this fabulous journey. Alright? So if anybody’s feeling down, trodden, or feeling like they’re too old to release weight or finally be done with this weight struggle I hope that inspired you. What a great birthday gift to read that, you know, at 60, I don’t really want stuff, but the excitement of having people make a shift in their thinking and change their lives, what better thing could you ask for, right? Even for frosting, you know, which those of you who know me, frosting is my little Achilles heel. So, you know, that’s big.

Rita Black: And so, which brings me to my next point, which is I am giving some lots of love this month of my birthday and offering you all the chance to come to a live free online masterclass that I’m hosting and is coming up really soon called Breaking Free Mastering Your Mindset for Lasting Weight Release. I love teaching these online classes because we dive deep into the workings of the subconscious mind, the patterns, the beliefs, the identities that stop our being able to lose weight long term. So you’re gonna learn how to use your mind way more effectively so that you can bypass the mental self-sabotage that keeps you struggling. And I will also be doing some light hypnosis for you so you can leave the class feeling ready and focused for success as we head into the autumn ready to finally let go of the wait for good. So please join me, go to the show notes. The link is there. Just click and sign up. And I will look forward to seeing you in one of those classes. I’m offering for it for different times, so I know you can make one of them, but also just FYI, the space is limited. So make sure you do that today or pretty soon, because they’re coming up and I don’t want you to not be able to get in. Okay?

Rita Black: So Today’s episode came about because I’m leaving to celebrate my birthday in Seattle with my siblings, which I’m really excited about because we have not all been together since 2015. Yeah. Way before the pandemic. And those of you who know, I’m from Seattle, and that reminds me of my weight struggle because that’s where it all began. So I’m pulling out for my birthday, our most popular episode from the Thin Thinking Podcast to share with you today, because in it, we dive deep into the why. Why am I struggling despite knowing everything there is to know about losing weight? Because you do! You know everything. So what is in between you and success? We’re going to dive into that right now. So enjoy!

Rita Black: I know everything there is to know about weight loss. Why am I still struggling as a hypnotherapist and someone who helps people, coaches, people, guides people into long-term permanent weight mastery? Believe me, I hear that question all of the time. You know, by the time people have decided to approach and use something like hypnosis and use their mind, they’ve pretty much gone through probably every diet or a regime. I know meditation and hypnosis are now coming to the forefront a lot more, but in, especially in the early days of my career, you know, ’cause I’ve been in business for over 20 years, you know, people were a little more wary of hypnosis or using mind techniques. So the people who would come to me would be like, okay, I’ve done every single diet now I think there’s something wrong with my mind, and I think I need your help.

Rita Black: Right? I know everything there is to know. I’m still not doing it. What is wrong with me? And, you know, when it comes to weight mastery and really busting through those barriers it’s hard because we are dealing with the mind. And if we don’t start with our mind first, the food, the exercise, it does elude us. So I get people coming to me who are weight loss professionals. These are people who make a living for weight loss, but for themselves, they might still be struggling or a lot of them are struggling when they come to see me. So they might know everything there is to know about the food. They might know everything there is to know about the exercise, but they still struggle with, you know, what I call fat thinking and get into thinking those roadblocks, those mental roadblocks that just keep them from that, getting that own their own mind wrapped around it in the right way.

Rita Black: I was a bit of a tongue twister. You know. I know when I struggled up and down the scale, 40 pounds, I honestly did think I was insane. I really, really did. I had all these different voices in my head. We, and we’re gonna be talking about some of those voices because I think you might have them too. So I wanna tell you a story of my own insanity because this story just sort of underlines a lot of what the struggle I feel like you might be in right now. But mine was amplified like 10 times because this summer just was the quintessential weight struggle story. So after my freshman year of college, I decided to go home to Seattle for many reasons. One was to work and make more money for college, but two was to be in my brother’s wedding.

Rita Black: And so I came home and my second term in at, in NYU I was working really hard to lose weight because I had actually gained a bunch of weight at Christmas time after losing weight in the autumn. Can you see a trend here? And anyway, so I had dieted down and I literally was eating stuff like salads with that zero calorie dressing. I mean, like, it was pathetic. It was, you know, there was just so, such meagerness going on in the way I was feeding myself, but I was, you know, I was, I was, you know, committed, committed. I was gonna go home and I was gonna be thin, and I was gonna look great for my brother’s wedding, and it was all gonna, you know, I was gonna live happily ever after. So, as I touched down in Seattle, I was about five pounds above what you, I would call my ideal weight.

Rita Black: But I was not quite satisfied and I felt I need to lose five more pounds. So I got off the plane and I headed home with my family. And of course, my mother being the major cook and baker that she was there was a huge feast laid out before me. Now I thought, oh, I’ve gotta be good. I’ve gotta be good. But of course, I ended up eating everything, binging, eating even more, and pretty much eating, you know, everything thing in sight for the, the next few days for the weekend thinking, okay, I’ll be, I’ll start on Monday, right? Our famous refrain. So anyway, I get on the scale on Monday, and now instead of being five pounds above my ideal weight, I’m now eight pounds above my ideal weight. And I think, okay, well I can manage this. I’m gonna just pull it together this week and now eat the lettuce, chicken and broccoli workout, super hard exercise, and I’m gonna get that eight pounds off this week, no problem.

Rita Black: So I, you know, first day, second day, doing great, third day, fourth day, doing great. And then of course, you know, around Friday the weekend again, hmm, I went out with some friends and what do you do? And when you’re in Seattle, you go to Kid Valley, this place where I used to work, which is a hamburger stand, and oh my gosh, they make the best hamburgers and milkshakes and all that stuff. So off we went and I was like, okay, well, since I ate Kid Valley, then I just might as well eat more on Fri Saturday and Sunday. And oh, by the wait, did I mention I was making my brother’s wedding cake? Yeah. So that also meant I had to bake and sample frosting and cake. And yeah. So I, I’m gonna get into my whole cake thing in later podcasts, but I am a cake aholic and a frosting aholic.

Rita Black: So for me to be making my brother’s cake and thinking then I’m losing weight and all of this, oh, it was just a hot mess. So by the end of the second weekend, hmm, not only was I eight pounds above my ideal weight, I was now 10 pounds above my ideal weight. So I said, no problem. The summer is long. I’ve got three months before I have to head back to NYU. I’ve got a month before my brother’s wedding. I’m gonna whip this into shape. I’m gonna be so fricking perfect. You’re not even gonna believe it. Chicken and broccoli, chicken and broccoli, whatever the, you know, the healthiest most meager portions, I’m just gonna be a little saint and, and bang this out. Get that, you know, that weight down the scale. So I, now, now what was complicating things was the fact that I had gotten a job for the summer and my job, can I just tell you how I did not set myself up for success for the summer whatsoever?

Rita Black: Now that I’m telling this story, I’m like, what was I thinking? Because this summer I was working at this place called Dees in Seattle. Now, if any of you know Seattle, and if you any of you know, the Pikes Place Market in Seattle, Dees is a famous Italian deli in the Pike Place market in Seattle. It’s, it’s quite famous ’cause it’s been for the years and years and there years. Lovely family owneds that I don’t even, it’s probably been bought out by a corporation by now. ’cause This was a long time ago. But I had a job, you know, in the department where I was doling out like goodies and weighing flour and Lina flour. And I knew about Italian food because I had, I had worked in New York at Adel there as well. So I had a fair, fairly good understanding of Italian food and, and of course through eating lots of Italian food, I had a very good understanding of it.

Rita Black: But there, I was down to the Pikes Place market. And for those of you who don’t know that you could just imagine it’s just like a food forum of every day. It’s like you could go to a different place and try a different food. So it was just like a food lovers extravaganza. And here I was trying to be chicken and broccoli in the midst of all this food, the smells of Dealer Rentees, there was a pizza counter, there was, you know, the cappuccino counter, and it was just all so Italian. And, and here I was, you know, trying to be good on a diet. What a joke. So my first week at Dealer Rentees, oh, you must try this and try this cheese, and you must do this. So every night I would go home and I say, well, I blew it today.

Rita Black: I might as well eat a big dinner and I’ll start again tomorrow and start again tomorrow. So you can see the running theme here. So by the time it was my brother’s wedding, a month later, not only was I 10 pounds above the scale, I was about 20 pounds above the scale. And it was horrifying because I had bought this dress for the slimmer me, and I was not wearing that. I had to go out with my mom and get a bigger dress. And I was so disappointed in myself and getting sort of unraveled here because I was like, is holy crap. You know, like, it, it’s all coming apart at the seams. And I, and the more I tried to lose weight, the more desperate I got. So the more desperately I tried to diet, you know, drinking only water for a day, I mean, literally limiting myself so much, because now I was like, I was doing math, I was like, okay, it’s two months left and I’ve got you know, 20 pounds to lose.

Rita Black: Let’s divide that by, you know, eight, and that’s, you know, three, four pounds a week. How can I do that? I think that’s right. My math is so bad. But anyway, I definitely was challenged and and, but the challenge, so my stress kept mounting, the promises I made to myself kept getting bigger. So by the time the summer was almost done, I was over 35 pounds overweight. And you know, and my mom, my dad, like, you know, people who saw me at the beginning of the summer and my friends, nobody said anything except you could see it in their eyes, right? And, you know, I’d struggled with my weight. Everybody knew I was a struggler a yo-yo dieter. But I think this was like the one of those summers where people were like, maybe there is a problem here. And I definitely felt insane.

Rita Black: You know, I would go to bed at night just beating myself up and saying, you’ve gotta pull yourself together. And you, you, you know, you look, you’re going back to New York, you’ve gotta look good. You know, like literally that last week I was like, if I do not eat anything all week, and if I exercise for three hours a day, maybe I can lose 10 pounds. And of course, that didn’t happen. So I ended up going back to New York, getting out of the cab at my dorm, and my roommates were like, literally looked at me like, what the hell happened to you? Never go back to Seattle for the summer again, promise me, you know, they, they were just shaking their heads and they just couldn’t believe it. And neither could I, it was heartbreaking. So there is a lot of, we feel that we are insane, you know, because I knew how to diet, I knew how to lose weight but I just could not get myself to do it.

Rita Black: So and maybe you feel the same way too. I am assuming that if you’re listening to this podcast you are hoping to get some, some more tools to help you get over those mental humps the things that seem to be your roadblocks to your success. Okay? So that’s my horrific story of my horrific summer. And, you know, being convinced I was insane. And if you have been struggling, maybe you have felt insane too, or just like, what is wrong with me? You know, do I need a lobotomy? Do I need, you know some sort of just to be put into a rehab facility? I mean, wouldn’t it be great if we could all go to that desert island and just nothing was around us, and we worked out with trainers like they did, you know, in the Biggest Loser?

Rita Black: Oh, that would be great. But no, we live in the real world and we need to really powerfully learn to communicate with ourselves so that we can release weight for the last time. So now, when it comes to this struggle, what’s going on are a couple of things. You are absolutely not crazy. There is nothing wrong with you. But there are two things from the way I see it that are going on. One is the way our brain is designed, and the other is the crazy weight loss culture that is built out of these weird, unrealistic expectations. So let me talk about the mind first. So when it comes to weight loss, I mean, or anything, here’s one of the challenges is that our mind is really divided into two, right? We have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. And the conscious mind is our logical, rational, willpower part of our mind.

Rita Black: And this is the part of the mind that will usually put us on a diet. This is the part of the mind that knows about weight loss and exercise and all those good things, right? This is the part of the mind that’s like, eat less, exercise more, start on Monday, come on, let’s go. And then there’s the subconscious mind. And you know how that conscious mind, well, it wants us to lose weight. It puts us on the diet. It is very, very invested in our losing weight. Our subconscious mind, eh, pretty much wants things to stay the same. Yeah, business as usual, even our subconscious mind. We have our beliefs, we have beliefs like food tastes good when I feel bad. And my metabolism is slow and I love to eat a whole plate of food, and I one is not enough, and a chocolate makes me happy.

Rita Black: You know? And then we have our habits, and those are those repeatable patterns that happen over and over again beneath our consciousness. So even though we might wanna come home and exercise, if we’ve been coming home and cracking a beer and opening up a sleeve of crackers, that subconscious mind has that pretty much wired in. And and it, we will feel compelled to do that even though consciously we’ve said, Hey, let’s go home and exercise. We end up cracking that beer and eating that sleeve of crackers and saying, why am I doing this? This is crazy. And then we also have other things, like our memory is in our subconscious mind. Our imagination is in our subconscious mind, and even our identities in our subconscious mind, our emotions, all of these things sort of swirl around together in this 88% that wants us pretty much to stay the same.

Rita Black: So when 12% of our mind wants us to be good and wants us to lose weight, and 88% wants things to stay the same, what will happen now, you might go on a diet and you might lose weight or go on a regime or go on some sort of thing, and you get so far. But unless you’re really impacting your subconscious mind, unless you’re making deeper changes, ultimately what will happen is, you know, a month later, six months later, something will happen. And that subconscious mind is just there, sitting there kind of waiting for the diet to be over. So it’s like, yeah, business as usual. So, you know, those of you who are baffled by the fact that, you know, in the past, maybe you have been able to pull it together and lose weight for a month or six months, or until the reunion happens, or, you know, until you win the contest or whatever it is or, you know, or until you fit into your, your skinny clothes a a lot of times we will go back to the old behaviors that caused us to gain weight in the first place, unfortunately.

Rita Black: So, so, so that is what is really working against us, and that’s why it’s so important to get tools to get working with your subconscious mind. We’re gonna look at a couple of those to the other thing is, is that we have a crazy weight loss culture that is built of weird, unrealistic expectations, right? I mean, think of any of the diets that you have gone on in your life and, you know, you read a diet book and it promises you, okay, everything’s gonna be great. You follow this structure, you’re gonna win, you’re gonna lose weight, and life is gonna be great. And, you know, you see pictures posted on Instagram and social media, and you see the before and after pictures, and it all, the dieting culture really promises, like, if you’ve got it together to be good and really be disciplined and focused and, and you know this perfect person, then not only will you lose weight, but you are gonna live happily ever after.

Rita Black: And it just promotes the idea that all the answers are outside of you. You know, you know, whether it’s again, going to a guru or, you know, the specific exercise class. Now, I, any of these things might work. But unless you are communicating powerfully with yourself, unless you are really engaging yourself on a deeper level, none of these external things are going to be successful in the long run. But we live in a culture that is like you are gonna walk off into the skinny sunset and live happily ever after. It never is realistic with you to say, you know what? Long-Term, permanent weight management is a continuing story. It is a journey with yourself, and it is a relationship with yourself that you need to continue to tend to, and I don’t mean this in a harsher disciplinary way, I just mean like your journey.

Rita Black: If you talk to anybody who’s taken weight off and kept it off long-term, it wasn’t like, oh yeah, I lost the weight, and then it was all good. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. It’s like they are continuing their journey. It is a continuing journey into maintenance and into long-term maintenance. And it’s a powerful journey. It is an exciting journey, but it isn’t a journey where you just don’t lose the weight, and then you can check out e you know, whatever you want, or, you know, and, and I think that that’s really a, a, our screwy dieting culture. So here’s the thing. This is what I want to get into today, is to get some thin thinking strategies to get that 12% of your mind working together with that 88% of the mind. What we’re gonna look at is two things. We’re gonna look at our identity and our beliefs.

Rita Black: I feel like those are like the core of our challenge and you know, our, some of the biggest roadblocks that we have on our journey, at least in beginning our journey of weight mastery. Because, you know, when I lead a shift weight mastery process, we start with identity. Because any transformation starts at the core. And at the core is our identity. And our identity is really how we see ourselves. You know, it’s who we are in the world, and also we get labeled with identities from the external world. But really how we see ourselves in the world, and our place in the world is at the root of I identity. And the interesting thing is, we all have multiple identities. It’s not like we just have one. Like I am a a mom, I am a wife, I’m a southern Californian, I am a hypnotherapist.

Rita Black: I am a gardener. I like to think I am, except when you, you know, see my Brussels sprouts aren’t really growing very well. But you know, I am a I’m a bike biker. You know, I’m a hiker. You know, like I, and I am an enthusiast of food. I love to cook. I love to entertain. You know, those are all identities that I have. And I’m sure you have a lot of identities, and there’s so many identities out there. So all of my identities kind of swirl around in my mind and allow me to think, see myself as I am out in the world. Like it creates my identity. And one of my identities is I am a weight master, or I’m not a, I don’t see myself as like the master master, like somebody who has like a, you know, black belt and karate.

Rita Black: But I am on a mastery journey, right? And, and I am an apprentice of weight mastery and Apprentice is an ongoing apprenticeship, right? So I see myself in that. But see, what, what happens is when we struggle with our weight, we see ourselves as a weight struggler. And we live in this world of struggle. You know we, we struggle with food, right? We, it’s always like, it’s like a food fight. We’re always in a fight with food, good, bad. You know, it’s always like, should I have it in my house? Should I not have it in my house? Should I order it? Should I not order it? Is it good? Is it bad? What am I going to eat today? Oh, I hope I don’t eat that at the party. It’s such a struggle. And then exercise. Oh God, I’m gonna exercise. Oh my God, how am I gonna exercise?

Rita Black: Oh, I haven’t exercise in a week. You know, oh, I’ve been exercising. Oh, I’m, you know, I’m, I hurt my, my hip. I’m, I was exercising. You know, like, like, it’s a struggle. And, and we struggle with our body. Oh my gosh, I feel fat. Oh my God, feel the roll on my stomach. Oh my God, I wish my legs would be longer. Oh my gosh, I wish. Look at the flap on the back of my arms. You know? And then, and then we also struggle with saboteurs, you know, those other people in our life. Oh, come on, have a brownie. I baked them for you. Oh, look, you guys, I got you some bagels, , you know, and when, and on and on. And we struggle with the scale. Oh my God, I was so good. Why is the scale up to date? You know, all of these things.

Rita Black: It, we live in a world of struggle where we’re always struggling is on our mind. You know, I have clients who come to me, beautiful clients who have these lives that seem so amazing, and yet they’re like, Rita, I can’t even enjoy my life because I’m thinking about my weight and my struggle with weight all the time. It’s obsessing my mind and our weight struggle, identity. It is sticky, sticky. And what I mean by that is you know, it’s something that is, we bring with us wherever we go. And no matter how much weight we lose, we still see ourselves as a struggler. And that’s why a lot of people still struggle. They can go on the diet and lose weight, but they’re still in a struggle. You know, and, and, and that’s why a lot of times people have told me, they, they said, I lost the weight, but then I didn’t, I still didn’t believe in myself, and I didn’t believe I could keep the weight off.

Rita Black: A lot of people when they approach their ideal weight, they get very nervous, like, am I gonna be able to do this? ’cause I’m a struggler? And it just doesn’t seem like I’m gonna feel confidence because we have this identity. And being a struggler, it really thwarts our success because it predicts our future, because I struggle, therefore I am. So you know, when, when we’re starting on any weight loss attempt, we are a struggler going on a weight loss attempt, right? So in our deep subconscious mind, we’re like, well, I’m a struggler, you know, I’m somebody who I can’t trust myself. I’m not good on a diet. I’ve never, you know, lost my weight and kept it off. So we have all these beliefs that create the identity that we’re bringing with ourselves on the, the diet. And what chance in hell do you think somebody’s gonna have of being successful if they see themselves as a struggler?

Rita Black: You know strugglers also, our identity takes your power away, right? Because it makes us a victim, right? We give so much power away to the struggle, you know? And we make excuses to ourselves about ourselves. It was so hard for me. I can’t do it. I don’t have a metabolism. I hate to exercise. I don’t like vegetables. You know? We’ll, we’ll make excuses to ourselves. We’ll give our power away to these things outside of ourselves. My husband doesn’t respect the fact that I wanna lose weight. And he just is always tempting me like that, that, that we remain a struggler. The more and more we give our power away. So, you know, I work with smokers too, just by the way. And I’m gonna use the smoker identity shift because I, I think it’s a little more clear cut than what I’m gonna get into the, with the weight.

Rita Black: I mean, the weight in smoking are, there’s a lot of similarities. And I work with smokers, by the way, because I, if you don’t know about me I’m a former also pack and a half a day smoker. So not only did I struggle up and down the scale, 40 pounds, I was puffing away while I was doing it too, on Benson hedges. Ultralight, methylated, if anybody is curious. But and I I quit smoking with hypnosis, thank you very much, hypnosis. And in that hypnosis session, I became an non-smoker. And that shift is so clear. And, you know, when I work with smokers, you know, the, the thing with a smoker is they live in the world of smoking. They see themselves, they self-identify as a smoker. So they might be a mom or a dad or a lawyer, but they’re also a smoker.

Rita Black: And when they quote unquote, try not to smoke, they are still in a smoker mindset, and they’re trying not to smoke. And their mind just doesn’t get it. It’s like, but I’m a smoker. So they feel deprived, they feel victimized, they feel like this is being taken away from them. So we, we don’t go that way. We work with the brain the right way. We say, Hey, no, you’re gonna decide to be a non-smoker, and you’re gonna step into this, the whole new idea of yourself and really recreate. It’s a transformation, right? So instead of a weight struggler, I’m gonna give you a suggestion. I’m gonna say, join me and become a weight mastery learner. Become a learner or an apprentice. Now, why is being an apprentice so powerful? You know, again, we want you to take your power back from this struggler identity.

Rita Black: It doesn’t suit you. You’re not a victim. You’re a powerful person. And the more power you take back, the more power you have from all of this nonsense. And, you know, look, I don’t mean to call it nonsense, it’s, it’s real. But you know, when you start to poke holes in it and say, Hey, you know what? Maybe that struggle, eh, it was fun in the beginning, but aren’t you tired of it? Let’s, let’s try something new on. And, you know, in your subconscious mind, in your imagination, and that’s what I love to engage people in, is, is seeing themselves, you know, from their imagination in a whole new way. You’re taking, you’re giving a back your power, or you’re taking your, sorry. You’re taking all that victimhood of being in that struggle, and you’re going, I don’t need that in anymore. I’m gonna become an apprentice of weight mastery.

Rita Black: And a weight mastery journey is a learner’s journey. Anytime that, and, and you can start it, and why I feel like an apprenticeship is so important is because a learner can start from anywhere they are. If you’ve never tried to lose weight before or release weight before, not a problem. If you have hundreds of pounds to lose, not a problem. If you have five pounds to release, not a problem. At any point, you can become an apprentice. And, and here’s what happens in your brain when you are a learner versus a struggler, is that anything that happens to you in a learning journey is all good. Meaning you, you eat you overeat you go to the buffet table and you plan to eat something healthy, and you end up loading up some macaroni cheese and eating it. Oh, why did I do that?

Rita Black: Well, in a struggler mindset that reinforces your idea that you’re a failure, you’re undisciplined, you’re a fat pig, whatever, however you speak to yourself in an apprentice mindset, you say, oh, that didn’t work for me. What did I learn from that? And you begin to start to self-correct? Those things that are getting in your way, those beliefs and those habits that are, is, are stopping you. Because what happens when we just say, oh, well, I blew it. And we go back to the beginning, or I’ll start again tomorrow, or I’ll go off this diet and I’ll start a new one, is that we don’t learn anything. And really long-term weight mastery is a learning journey. It’s a self-correcting learning journey where we learn about our behaviors, we learn about our thinking, we learn what is stopping us. And we say, okay, let me fix that.

Rita Black: Now, let me find a solution. And our brain is powerful. It’s like a computer. It will start to help you find the solutions, but you start need to start to come from a new framework. And that framework in neurolinguistic programming, they call it a reframe. You are reframing how you see yourself to yourself. And the reframe is, I am no longer a stronger struggler, but I’m an apprentice. But in my shift weight mastery process I believe in this so much, you know, in the very beginning, everybody signs an apprentice contract because, and, and it’s amazing what happens to people when they start coming at this from the eyes of a learner and apprentice, is they start connecting with themselves. They start respecting themselves. ’cause They’re learning. They’re like, and you know, you know that feeling when you go to school or if you, you know, you’ve signed up for an adult education class or you do that thing.

Rita Black: It’s like, oh, I’m learning, I’m learning. And we see self, see ourselves from a much more powerful place. We respect ourselves. Oh, I just learned something there. And, and it does something. And, and a lot of our long-term permanent weight mastery journey is about staying connected and showing up for ourselves in those moments that we used to abandon ourselves, abandon ship, and just go, screw it, I’ll start over tomorrow, or I’ll start over next month, or I’ll start over next year. And I just don’t wanna think about it. And we want to get turned on, tuned up and be engaged from a completely different place. And that’s the place of a learner. Okay? So that is number one, identity. Alright? Now, now that we’ve looked at identity, I wanna look at the next piece of the puzzle, which is our limiting beliefs around our ability to be successful.

Rita Black: So our belief system, our weight struggler belief system. We develop beliefs about food eating and ourselves at a very early age. And it’s deeply rooted in our subconscious. We develop beliefs around food. Food is love, food is comfort. Food relaxes me, beliefs around our weight. I am fat. I have no metabolism. I am the biggest in my family, or I’m the biggest amongst my friends beliefs about other people’s weight. Skinny people are lucky, skinny people are. Other people have it together and that’s why they are thin. And then we develop beliefs about our body. My body is broken, my body is ugly, my thighs are disgusting. You know, a former client of mine was a world famous singer. You probably know who this person is. And this woman is hailed as sexy and beautiful by millions and millions of fans. And you know what she had to say about her body? She said, my body looks like a buffalo. Seriously. I mean, you know, it makes your jaw drop. When you think about that and you think about, you look at these beautiful people and you think, well, they don’t have a care in the world. Well, think again.

Rita Black: We also have beliefs about our ability to lose weight. I’m a sugar addict. I have no willpower. I’m a bottomless pit. I’m a foodie. I hate to sweat. I’m lazy and undisciplined. I could go on, but you get the picture right. Well, here’s the thing about our beliefs. They are not real. They are opinions and interpretations formed through the eyes of our crazy diet culture, our family, our friends, and ourselves. Can I tell you something? And this is something that is so extraordinary to me. You know, I’ve worked with thousands of people. The reason why I say that is I have worked with everybody from every walk of life and every that we are all the same. And if I could tell you how many women especially have told me that when they were young, you know, in school, maybe in fifth grade, sixth grade, or in their teen years, and they were convinced they were fat, you know, like, so fat amongst them, their friends, you know, like, oh, I would pose them pictures and I, and I’d feel horrible.

Rita Black: And I was the fattest girl and I hated myself and I hated my body. And then, you know, here I am now, 30, 40, 50 years old, and I look back at those old photos of myself and I see that I wasn’t fat at all. I actually was thin. I actually was beautiful. And I wish I could have gone back in time and told myself that then because I didn’t believe it then. And I suffered so much. And what a waste. You know? And that’s what I mean. Like, it’s not just one person who’s told me this. It’s, it’s hundreds, it’s thousands of people who’ve told me this. See, our beliefs are these interpretations that strangle us, that keep us from living our best life. So we need to start to bust up these beliefs and get some tools to bust up these beliefs. Okay? So our beliefs are not necessarily true.

Rita Black: How do we shift them? So I wanna introduce you to one of those characters that may be lurking in your head. I certainly know I have one in mine. And that character is what I like to call your inner critic. And your inner critic is that critical part of you. And that’s the part of you that pretty much is the harsh high expectations perfectionistic part of you that doesn’t believe that you got it in you to lose the weight, and it doesn’t believe that you are disciplined and thinks you’re lazy, thinks you are you know, kind of a failure ’cause you keep failing over and over and over again. And she’s probably counted, or he’s probably counted every single time you failed and let you know you failed. So our negative inner critic, I want you to start to develop a relationship with them because I want you to understand they exist and we wanna start to see them as sort of like that librarian perfectionistic, like, you know, with the purse lips and like looking at you because the more silly that they seem, the less power that they have.

Rita Black: And I want you to start to tune into what this inner critic says to you, because a lot of times it goes on so subconsciously we aren’t even aware. We might feel anxious, we might feel bad about ourselves, but we aren’t hearing that inner shaming that is going on. And when you start listening to it, it gets quite ridiculous. It gets quite laughable almost. So, we’ll definitely. So we, we, the once we start tuning in and understanding it’s coming from just this one part of our psyche that is very insecure, doesn’t believe, you know, like that we’ve got us in it. And you know, your inner critic doesn’t hate you. It wants the best for you, but it just thinks that you’re doing it also wrong. And, and you know, it’s, you could do it so much better. So this inner critic over the years has created this huge file in your subconscious mind.

Rita Black: Like, it’s sort of like an evidence folder. Your your, your inner critic is like the prosecuting lawyer, right? And she’s got this big old evidence folder of why it’s gonna be impossible for you to ever lose weight. How incapable you are, how slothful you are. You’re no good. You, you, you know that you’re unworthy. Your thighs are ugly and you’re just, you’re a buffalo. You’re a buffalo. I love that word buffalo. It just is such a wonderful word, isn’t it? I don’t want anybody to think themselves of buffalo, but you know, so anyway, here you have this huge file that your inner critic has very meticulously over the years put together for you. Now, there does exist your weight mastery file in your subconscious mind, and at the moment it doesn’t have anything in it, or it has very few things in it, right?

Rita Black: So we’re gonna start to work on that. But we have this big huge negative file folder. And, and so what we need to do is start to understand that we do have an inner critic, and our inner critic exists. And, and I want you to create a image of them. Like sort of like, again, not beautiful and quaffed, but you know, like, like the, the lady with the librarian with the little glasses, and then she’s just very, or he’s just very like, so, you know, nitpicky and perfectionistic and me, me, me, me, me. Okay? And then I want you to now start to create a new character in your head. And I don’t know that this character exists yet for you. Yeah. I mean, I know that this part of you exists for other people in your life. And I bet because you’re, you know, there are parts of your life that probably work for you that you are, this part of you exists in other parts of your life, but in the area of weight management, I don’t know, we’ve gotta pull this part in.

Rita Black: And this is the inner advocate. This is your inner coach, and this is, and we wanna really create a powerful inner weight mastery coach that is your partner on your weight mastery journey. This is so important. This is the key to your success because this is the part of you that is going to advocate for you and against that critic. But this is also your partner. This is the part of you that is gonna nurture you, inspire you, guide you, because you guys, nobody, you know, look, I don’t think I could hire a personal trainer. I don’t have, I’m not a millionaire. I don’t you know, like I don’t have the money to hire somebody to follow me around 24 7 telling me what to eat and what to do. I don’t know. You don’t probably either, right? I, I’m assuming maybe you do.

Rita Black: That’s super cool. I know. Oh my gosh, I do, I think I wrote about this in my book. I did have back when we lived in London, my husband worked for this man who had a wife, who had a man who like followed her around and helped her quit smoking by just telling her not to whenever she wanted to. And then he told her, you know, then she gained weight and he did the same with food. But you know, we’re not like that. We don’t have all the money in the world. We aren’t like an investment banker in London, nor if you are awesome. But even so, I, we need to develop that powerful free inner coach that is, can be with us for 24 7, helping us make those powerful choices and helping guide us. And, you know, we’re gonna get deep into the inner coach and a lot of different podcasts because this is the, the most important relationship with yourself, your inner communication system.

Rita Black: I want you to start to develop this way you speak to yourself. And, and again, if you’ve been harsh with yourself, maybe you’re like, well, Rita, I don’t know where to begin. So where you wanna begin is this take a moment and, and just do this little exercise with me. And I’m gonna call it your inner coach exercise. And if you’re driving in your car, ’cause I’m gonna have you close your eyes for a moment, please don’t do that. Or pull over to the side of the road and follow along. But please do not listen to this while you’re driving, or if you do, please don’t really listen to it. Okay? So take a moment and, and close your eyes, or if, or if you can’t close your eyes, don’t close your eyes. But I think it would be good for you to close your eyes and think about when you were being loving or nurturing to someone in your life.

Rita Black: Maybe it was a child maybe it was, you know, a loved one maybe it was a coworker that you were helping out or a really good friend. And I just want you to, to listen to the way that you are communicating with that person. The tone of your voice, the soothing sounds you’re making, the empathetic way that you are probably communicating with them or coaching them and being powerful, being inspirational, being motivational. Just spend some time thinking about the way you are with other people. Now if this is hard for you, maybe you wanna think about somebody else in your life who is, you know, a therapist or an aunt or an uncle or a grandmother or a parent who’s just very loving and, and, and you can and adapt to their voice until you can come up with your own. But you know, start, start to start to do this for yourself. But, but right now just think about the way that you, you know, looked at that person. And just imagine now that you are stepping outside of yourself and looking at the, you listening to me and look at yourself as you were looking at that child or that friend, or that loved one with so much admiration and admiration and respect, love, empathy.

Rita Black: And now in that loving voice, I want you to say to yourself, I believe in you. I believe in you. And we can release weight for good and it’s gonna take commitment and it’s gonna take patience and it’s gonna take focus. But we can do this and just feel that for a moment. We can, can do this. Say that to yourself and take a deep breath in and bring that inner coach energy within you. Let it kind of crack open a little place in your heart and insert there like a seed. Good. And then let it go and open your eyes. Alright, so we’ve given birth to this inner coach, and if you have worked with me or or are already on a journey with me, I hope you found that helpful to, to even beef up your inner coach’s voice even more. So now here’s the thing that you wanna start to do.

Rita Black: You’re gonna still hear your inner critic’s voice and you wanna start to question what your inner coach is saying with your coach. You, sorry, you wanna question that inner critic with your coach, you wanna start to question your own fat thinking or limiting beliefs limiting weight management beliefs, okay? You wanna poke holes in what your beliefs are with your inner coach. For instance, if you get conscious to saying to yourself, I am a lazy pig, I want you to say, says, who says who? You’re a lazy pig. My culture, does my culture say I’m a lazy pig? Does my family say I’m a lazy pig? Am I really a lazy pig? Am I a pig? Really? Now if I look in the mirror, I don’t see a barnyard animal, I see a human being.

Rita Black: Am I lazy? Get really curious. Am I lazy? Really I’m lazy. Hmm. I didn’t look that lazy yesterday when I woke up and I went to work and I did all that stuff that I was doing at work. And then I, I came home and I took the kids to practice and then I made dinner and then I cleaned up and then I put did the laundry. That I don’t think that that’s really a lazy pig. So that’s what we wanna do. We really wanna start to really poke holes in those limiting beliefs. So you wanna get conscious to them and then you wanna start really questioning them. So, so it will, it will mean you and your inner coach are gonna be tuning in and then questioning things. And believe me, this is is where the magic begins. And the next thing you wanna do is you wanna start to put new positive beliefs in that weight mastery folder.

Rita Black: There is such a thing as what we call cognitive distortion. And it’s like we amplify what is wrong and we diminish the positives with our mind. And there are a lot of behaviors right now that probably are aligned already. You know, you’re probably doing a lot of behaviors on a daily basis that are aligned with your releasing weight for good. But now with your inner coach, you’re gonna observe these habits and behaviors that you already have and you’re gonna put them into that. I believe I can achieve weight mastery file. So, you know, maybe you eat a healthy breakfast, well go ahead and put that in the file. Maybe you are in the habit of ordering a salad instead of fries. Well that sounds pretty good. Put that in the file. Maybe you take a walk every day with your coworkers at lunch, put that back in the file and you’ll start to see things emerge once you are looking at them with that filter, you’re starting to look at them from a, I believe in myself, filter and just put them in the file.

Rita Black: And why this is important is not only are we building up that folder, but we’re really building up that positive communication muscle with ourself. We’re really starting to create and connect with ourselves and, and we’re starting to respect and believe in ourself because when we struggle with our weight, there’s very little self-respect and there’s very little belief. And we really have to start from here, ground one, ground zero, whatever that is, okay? The last thing that will help you really build up that belief file is to start doing what you say you’re gonna do. Now what do I mean by that? Well, often we set such high expectations for ourselves with our weight loss attempts. They become impossible to do, just impossible. Like back in my summer in Seattle when, you know, I was trying to lose 20 pounds in one week. Well, that was impossible.

Rita Black: I can’t tell you how many clients have said to me, like when I say, well, how, where do you wanna start with exercise? And they’ll say, well, I think about seven days a week, an hour and a half a day sounds good. And I’m just like, oh, okay, well have you been exercising already that much? And they’re like, oh no, I haven’t exercised in 20 years. And I was like, and you’re gonna exercise seven days a week, an hour and a half a day, you know? But that’s what we do. We set these really high impossible expectations with that inner critic in our head. Like, that’s what you should be doing and you should be eating the chicken and broccoli perfectly every day. You should be being good. That’s what it looks like. And and then it’s hard to live up to that.

Rita Black: And then we fail and then we reinforce that negative belief. So we wanna just start to set the bar a little lower. You know, I have a joke. I’ve been married to my husband for now, almost 32 years. 30 19 89. When was that? That was, yeah, that was like 31, 32 years. You know, it gets to a certain point, you stop. Okay, anyway, long time. And and people will say, oh my gosh, what’s the key? And I was like, low expectations, . I was like, yeah, two words, low, lower expectations. You, you know, when I lowered my expi, I got happy. It was really good. And you know, I think weight mastery journey is we wanna expect, we, we have, you know, we have goals, we have focus, we have vision, which we will be talking about in future podcasts, but the, those expectations, we wanna be able to do what we say we’re gonna do, and we wanna start to do that on a daily basis.

Rita Black: So we wanna be realistic with ourselves. And that’s something that your inner coach can work with you on, is to say, okay, well what, maybe we’re not gonna exercise seven days a week, an hour and a half a day. Maybe we are going to do 10 minutes a day. Could we do that? Just like start 10 minutes, five days a week going, walking around the block, you know? And, and that might be super low for some of you guys. Obviously you might be super fit and fitness experts and all of that stuff. But, but that’s just sort of an example of like, you wanna have a little conversation with yourself is like, well you know do I want to eat three meals today? Do I wanna eat two? Do I want to eat you know, five snacks and does that feel doable?

Rita Black: Can I do that? You know, and you write it out. Have a plan. Create a food plan for your day. You know, if you don’t have a plan, let me tell you, the world has one for you. And it is not a healthy one, . So at least in the beginning, when you are rebuilding trust with yourself I really, I really do. Because here’s the thing, your brain is kind of wired to do what it’s gonna do, and what it’s gonna do isn’t getting you weight mastery, right? So we wanna start to create realistic plans that you can follow through on. And I’ll tell you something else. You wanna practice the plan. You wanna think that plan through, through, through for the day, at the beginning of the day when your willpower is high, because when we wake up, our mind is fresh.

Rita Black: And if we can visualize how we wanna feel by the end of our day and say, okay, you know, this is what I’m gonna do for breakfast. This is what I’m gonna do midday and, and dinner’s gonna look like this and, and I know I can do this and, and I’m gonna walk around the block a couple of times, or I’m gonna go for my run, or whatever it is that you do. And you see yourself getting into bed and, and what you’re doing is sort of creating an imprint, a blueprint for your day ag and the beginning of the day, because change, you can’t hope to come to a habit area in your life. Like if you’re hardwired to come home and eat and cheese and crackers without having practiced, you know, like athletes don’t go onto the field without having practiced the play.

Rita Black: And, and your inner coach is there to get in a huddle with you in the morning and go, let’s practice the play. What are we gonna do? And how is it gonna work out? Oh, when the husband brings in those cheese fries tonight, because he does that every Thursday night why don’t we practice yours saying, Hey, no, thank you, honey. I appreciate the offer, but I’m going to eat this. Or, oh, well, you know, or practice taking three the cheese fries because that will work for you. And and eating your healthy dinner and having a little bit of the cheese fries, but you finish ’em and they feel good. You did it and you, you, you got through feeling light like you took care of yourself, right? So, so you’re working with this aspect of yourself, this inner coach, and you’re thinking it through and you’re getting those wins, and you’re putting them in that belief folder.

Rita Black: And this is how you start to connect with yourself. You start to, what I call, show up for yourself on a consistent basis. Because let me tell you, weight struggle. We, we, we jump ship. We’re like, I’m outta here. I blew it, so screw it, I don’t care. We’ll start again tomorrow, you know, and we get in the habit of doing that, and that’s a whole other thing altogether. So create that realistic food plan for the day what you know is doable and stick to it, and you reconnect and build that trust and you practice that ahead of time. And this is, like I said, I call this like the morning huddle. And I’m gonna be honest with you, I’ve been doing my morning huddle for 25 years. That’s right. And it’s one of the biggest keys to my success is because I think it through I know in my week where I’m vulnerable if I know social events are coming up, I think those through.

Rita Black: That’s what I’m saying you guys, it’s not like just lose the weight and live happily ever after. I’ve been working with myself and my inner coach for a really long time. And I will tell you, it’s the most amazing relationship that I have. I mean, this ability to connect with myself and think my life through and really ask me why do I wanna create this week? I mean, it really is a creative journey. And, and when you’re working from this place, I’ll tell you, your life will change. I mean, many people go through the shift weight mastery process, and they, it’s not just about the weight, it’s wow, look at how much power I have, and I’ve taken back my power. And I, I, you know, I, it’s not just the area of weight, it’s my relationships. It’s my, because when we start connecting with ourselves and believing in ourselves, our lives change.

Rita Black: And I wouldn’t give that up for the world. So I have to meet with my coach every morning. I kind of like him, and I kind of like being able to create my life instead of living this life where I show up and I hope things work. You know? I, I am not, I want to be in a creative active out there you know, making the world work and, and, and loving my life. And I’m telling you this relationship with this inner coach, it’s it’s, it’s the start of it. So let me just say that one more time. I, you know, start advocating for yourself and start this week. Go out and practice, practice using that powerful voice with yourself. And I hope you are beginning to see that you are not a failure. And the challenge is the way our mind is designed and wired and this crazy diet culture.

Rita Black: But when you start stepping into that powerful new identity as an apprentice of weight mastery, and you’re immediately removing yourself from being a victim and start being a powerful learner learner, you know, you’re learning and you’re gaining knowledge, you’re gaining self knowledge and changing things, and you are developing this powerful relationship with your inner coach, you’re turning down the volume on that inner critic, breaking up all those old beliefs in that file folder, and, and starting to put powerful beliefs in yourself in that new file folder in your subconscious mind. And you can do this. Well, I hope that instilled some belief in your ability to finally put all you know about weight loss to use. And to take it a step further, please, please join me for my free online masterclass coming up soon, starting September 24th, 2024. And the link is in the show notes.

Rita Black: Go check it out, or you can find the link on www.shiftweightmastery.com. And I will look forward to seeing you in class. 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. I will look forward to seeing you here next week.

Rita Black: Thanks for listening to The Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that episode go by way too fast for you? If so, and 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, and to learn how to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode.

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