[00:00:00] Rita Black: In this episode, I sit down with Andrea, a graduate of the Shift Weight Mastery Process, who has not only achieved her ideal weight, but has maintained it for four years. Andrea’s story will resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped in an endless fight with food. Growing up at the tender age of 13, Andrea attended Weight Watchers meetings with her mom, and spent decades wrestling with thoughts about eating and weight that took up far too much of her mental space, but through the shift process and hypnosis, Andrea discovered a whole new way of moving forward. What changed wasn’t just the number on the scale. It was her entire relationship with food and herself. Today, she describes the best part of her transformation, not as being lighter, but finally being free.

[00:00:55] Rita Black: Join us as Andrea shares how she shifted her mind, stopped fighting with food and stepped into a life of lasting freedom. So come on in.

[00:01:12] 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’s struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process.

[00:01:39] Rita Black: And [00:01:40] not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery. I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years.

[00:02:05] Rita Black: Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long-term and live your best life.

[00:02:26] Rita Black: Sound good? Let’s get started. Hello? Hello. Hello. Come on in. I am so happy you are here. If you are here, as this episode is dropping, which many of you are we are just about to head into the Labor Day weekend here in the wonderful United States of America. And labor Day is a very interesting holiday here and often a time where we do a lot of our last minute summer eating before heading into, pulling it all together in the autumn.

[00:03:01] Rita Black: At least that’s what I’ve observed over the many years that I’ve been working with my students and clients. Do you ever get that back to school feeling, although you haven’t been to school in years? I certainly do. There is something just about getting back to the structure of life that [00:03:20] September brings, or maybe just because we start the live fall shift process that feels like you’re heading back to school in a really good way.

[00:03:30] Rita Black: The immersion of the world of weight mastery and beginning that journey, I don’t know, but I always look forward to September and the fall shift. So I’m super excited this year. We started enrollment early so that the doors are already open. We usually don’t open it this early, but we decided, hey, makes sense.

[00:03:52] Rita Black: People need a little beforehand knowledge of the dates of a very immersive process. Even though the process itself only takes about 20 to 40 minutes a day, it’s probably a good idea if people know ahead of time where when this. Live, a live online process is gonna take place.

[00:04:11] Rita Black: So if you are interested in learning more about our hypnosis based 30 day shift weight mastery process, head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com/fall To see what it’s all about. You just click and just read through. There’s all the information, all the dates, our guarantee, all that jazz there for you.

[00:04:36] Rita Black: And or you could just head over to the show notes. The links will also be there. So we are starting just FYI with the first day of our preparation process, which takes a little over a week on September 17th and day one, officially is September 26th. So I am talking to the amazing Andrea who shifted over [00:05:00] in.

[00:05:00] Rita Black: 2020, I wanna say late 2020. I believe Andrea did the fall 2020 shift and has been, she released her weight and has been maintaining her ideal weight since then. And you’re gonna love her story and what she has to say about her journey of releasing and maintaining. And she’s also gonna be a coach at the upcoming shift process.

[00:05:24] Rita Black: And let me tell you something about our coaches. The coaches in the live shift weight mastery process are unbelievable. They are the magical fairy dust of the shift. I am absolutely 100% percent convinced. We’re gonna have. Over 40 coaches and these people are just people who have released weight ha, are further ahead than our participants on their journey.

[00:05:50] Rita Black: Whether it’s a few months or a few years, or even many more years. We have people coaching who have been maintaining their ideal weight for some time now. And we have people who are relatively new but just are closer to the participant’s experience. I believe in having a big breadth of coaches that can coach you from where they’re at, just a few feet ahead of you and coach you from the inspirational point of having maintained their weight for a very long time.

[00:06:19] Rita Black: There’s just something very subconscious going on in a group. They have said studies have shown that people who are in group weight experiences release weight more quickly and keep it off longer, and I really believe in the power of the group, let me repeat that one more time. [00:06:40] Alright, so enough said about that and really that with all of that support, but also the power of the process, it just creates this rocket blast propelling people into their amazing journey and freedom from the struggle with the wait and some.

[00:06:55] Rita Black: So go ahead and check it out, www.shiftweightmastery.com/fall. And now let’s meet Andrea welcome Andrea to the Then Thinking Podcast. It’s been a while and you look amazing and it’s great to have you here.

[00:07:11] Andrea: Thank you. And you always bring such I don’t know. Immediately, you’re positive.

[00:07:16] Andrea: I love it. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:07:19] Rita Black: I have to divulge what I said how much time do you have this for this interview? And you were like, I’ve actually gotta go home and exercise. So we’re gonna have have her until she has to go home and exercise. And we’ll all respect your time.

[00:07:37] Rita Black: So I love that. But it’s been a while and and it’s been, it’s really great to see you. I wanted to bring you on though, because I wanted you to tell us your story because I think your story is inspirational. It’s, and you’ve been in maintenance for a while now. I think our listeners would find that your journey within that and though, ’cause we’re really looking deep into the mindset of maintenance, what insights we can dig up.

[00:08:06] Rita Black: For people to hold onto, but I’d love for you to share your story. From the start of when did you know that you were struggling with weight or when did you think you had a weight struggle?

[00:08:17] Andrea: So having had the opportunity [00:08:20] to engage with so many other people in your network. I don’t think mine is all that much different.

[00:08:26] Andrea: It started pretty young, Rita, and I did come from a family that was very weight conscious and so I can remember my mom asking me to go to Weight Watchers when I was 13 years old

[00:08:41] Rita Black: with her,

[00:08:41] Andrea: or,

[00:08:42] Rita Black: yes. Okay. So it was a mom daughter thing.

[00:08:45] Andrea: It was a mom daughter thing. And the last time I wanna say that she never talked about it, but I think it was leading up to every time I was putting food in my mouth, I got that look from my parents.

[00:08:56] Andrea: Oh

[00:08:56] Rita Black: yeah.

[00:08:56] Andrea: Do you know the look? I know the look. Okay. Yeah.

[00:09:00] Rita Black: Yeah, because my mom struggled with her weight. She didn’t buy into Weight Watchers ’cause she was a nutritionist, but she, I went to Weight Watchers, yeah. And so it’s interesting. There’s a lot of mom daughter Weight Watchers.

[00:09:12] Rita Black: It could be a mom daughter, like from our age group. There was, that was a big thing. A mom. Yeah. It was

[00:09:18] Andrea: I think, my age today, I’m 62 years old at the time when I was 13, then my mother would’ve been 33. And hard to be a mom at 33 years old.

[00:09:31] Rita Black: Yeah. Not

[00:09:31] Andrea: without a lot of direction from, family or anything like that.

[00:09:36] Andrea: But I think there was a little bit of my mother wanting to protect me, which was thin people life works out better for. And Yes. And just as an FYI, my mom was a working woman. After she had us, she went back and finished her college degree, eventually got a master’s. ’cause she was a very [00:10:00] successful very smart woman.

[00:10:02] Andrea: But it might have really been true back then. I don’t even know that it’s not true today to some degree. But yeah. I think life felt a little easier and accessible. Especially in those Twiggy d Okay. ’cause that’s what we were talking about.

[00:10:18] Rita Black: Oh yeah. I think, are you, I think I’ve talked to some other people I’ve interviewed, we’ve talked about that our it, because it was so tied into worth your weight was, as a woman was part of your worthiness if you were thin, that there was a protective thing from, it was, you could see it as, it’s a two-sided.

[00:10:42] Rita Black: Two-edged sword, isn’t it? It was like, I wanna make sure you’re good in this world. So you better look good. It’s was a weird, strange time for messaging to young women, but yeah, like I’m not

[00:10:54] Andrea: mad at my mom for it. Yeah. It wasn’t, even though she’s not alive today, I think it was her way.

[00:10:59] Andrea: But I would like to break the chain, if and

[00:11:02] Rita Black: yes. Maybe

[00:11:03] Andrea: we’ll get a chance to talk about that, but I’d love to break that chain.

[00:11:07] Rita Black: Yeah. I know you have a daughter and have worked at that. I know. I have a daughter and I’ve worked at that and it’s interesting to see things that come up.

[00:11:18] Rita Black: How old is your daughter?

[00:11:20] Andrea: She’s 31. Okay. She’s 31.

[00:11:24] Rita Black: Yeah. So she’s almost 10 years older than my daughter. It’s interesting. I think that there was a huge jump in. And beliefs and worthiness and all of that. Even with my daughter, because my daughter doesn’t really have weight issues. She’s [00:11:40] very body love, body happy.

[00:11:44] Rita Black: And she’s not skinny, she’s, but she’s very, she’s healthy and she’s strong, so it’s interesting she didn’t have that. I

[00:11:51] Andrea: feel the same about my daughter. She’s like that. Although she doesn’t, she suffers a bit. Does she? She does. Yeah. And just to let you know, she married a guy that he has to go on weight gain programs, but very mentally conscious, meaning he wanted to build muscle mass, so he had to go on these massive protein,

[00:12:18] Rita Black: massive

[00:12:19] Andrea: weight gain, but the only way to truly build muscle according to his.

[00:12:24] Andrea: Support that he had was you just gotta also gain the weight and then he has to lose it. And he’s so motivated by a goal. I can’t describe it. It’s very unusual as I now know. But he can gain it then lose what, and that’s what releases the fat and keeps the muscle and interesting. So just to live with that ’cause when we talk about what the environment, how important the environment is, I now as an empty nester.

[00:12:54] Andrea: ’cause my husband doesn’t, he’s a lifelong, he has to monitor his, what he eats and everything else. We’re such a great partnership, and I have plenty of other things to talk about that I think make my everyone so much happier. I don’t hate eating anymore. That’s so great. We would go out to dinner and everybody be afraid, where are we gonna go with mom?

[00:13:19] Andrea: [00:13:20] Because she’s gonna be like, why did I eat that? Like we are, we are just so much, all happier as a family and, and I’ve come to accept, healthy is more important than skinny. Yeah. Healthy. Yeah. Okay. I don’t mean to jump so far ahead.

[00:13:38] Rita Black: No. We I took you off track. I so yeah.

[00:13:42] Rita Black: So you were going to Weight Watchers meetings with your mom. And you were 13? Yeah,

[00:13:46] Andrea: I was 13. And Oh, it worked until it didn’t work. And then I was at the, this behavioral therapist, which might be a little bit similar to this, that worked until, I’ll never forget the binge, I’ll never, ever forget it.

[00:14:04] Andrea: I literally was 102 pounds in high school. But I didn’t know this terrible scoliosis that I had. And what it did was it created like a little bit of a blob on my left and nothing on my right. But no matter what I was losing, I was 102 pounds. And I remember going on a college visit and eating, I think they were called Fry Ha for cookies.

[00:14:29] Rita Black: Oh, wow.

[00:14:30] Andrea: I don’t know if you remember these. They were like in a box they were called for I hear for cookie. And I ate the whole damp box.

[00:14:38] Rita Black: Wow.

[00:14:38] Andrea: The whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I never knew how to stop that. I, and it became perfect to, what we now know is rebel. Yeah.

[00:14:50] Rita Black: Coming

[00:14:50] Andrea: out with all sorts of, and I was a rebel rouser for a very long time.

[00:14:56] Andrea: But that’s my story, passed down from a [00:15:00] generation. Really not understanding why I was doing the things that I was doing, not understanding that willpower wasn’t the answer I thought it was. To me it was like you just can’t do this. Not that it can’t be done.

[00:15:18] Rita Black: I think it’s too, because you are a high achiever, you, you have set a high bar for yourself and I think a lot of women who do that will are baffled because it’s like I can use willpower in pretty much everything else I’m doing or I can will it to be. Yeah.

[00:15:36] Andrea: I’d say on the positive side, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this from other people, you did talk about I’m a professional woman, I’m an executive at a fairly large global organization.

[00:15:46] Andrea: And I started on Wall Street and it was not a favorable time to be a woman on Wall Street, let alone. Five feet tall, up and down in my weight, all those other things. And in some ways it always pushed me to deliver, oh, you gotta

[00:16:05] Rita Black: deliver.

[00:16:06] Andrea: Oh, you gotta deliver. I’m not gonna be recognized for anything other than delivering amazing results.

[00:16:13] Andrea: In some ways, I guess it led to some good things for me. I don’t wanna say, all bad, but yeah. I had to lean into my brain, out my body, and I did that, my brain and my hard work

[00:16:25] Rita Black: yeah. Oh, I don’t know that. Yeah. There was anything wrong with that

[00:16:29] Andrea: at

[00:16:29] Rita Black: all. Yeah. But I just think, I think that mindset and that determination sometimes then baffles really high, [00:16:40] highly successful people.

[00:16:41] Rita Black: Why it can’t be applied to weight management

[00:16:43] Andrea: all the time. Yeah. It all the. Just like you can’t be successful at work all the time. You gotta fail here sometimes.

[00:16:51] Rita Black: Yeah. We

[00:16:52] Andrea: have a work expression these days, fail forward, right? Yes. Fail forward. Now, somebody once said to me the funniest thing, they’re like, oh, great, now you’re not even just allowed to fail.

[00:17:02] Andrea: You gotta fail forward. It’s like, all right. It’s okay. It’s okay.

[00:17:07] Rita Black: So at what point did you, so here you were a professional woman and at what point when you had children, did that impact your weight or was not a factor in your weight story?

[00:17:22] Andrea: It was a fa was it a factor? For, with my first child, I probably gained so much weight, just so that, I had only a few discs left in my back and I herniated one of them, so that, that wasn’t so good.

[00:17:35] Andrea: So then with my second child. I really watched what I ate and I remember being five months pregnant and someone saying to me, oh, you thought you look so great. You lost all that baby weight. And I went home and I started crying because I was five months pregnant and I was like, I’m just gonna gain it all back, just gonna be, I guess people had noticed that I was pregnant and, whatever.

[00:17:59] Andrea: And I was like, oh my God. So I really didn’t gain that much weight with my second child. And I don’t know, like it was just the standard up and down. I think just as an FYI, like the ups and downs were bigger when I was younger, they, [00:18:20] I still had the ups and downs when I was a bit older, but they were a little bit less.

[00:18:26] Andrea: And I think maybe it was because I wasn’t trying to get down so low. If that makes sense.

[00:18:32] Rita Black: Yes.

[00:18:33] Andrea: But they, it didn’t matter. The amount of weight that I would gain in my journey didn’t matter what it did to my brain and my head and my confidence and my, it was the same, it was the scene. And so I think when I met you, and I don’t know if you remember, but we met through a friend from your smoking program.

[00:18:59] Rita Black: That’s correct. That’s right. I don’t

[00:19:00] Andrea: know if you remember And she had said this to me and after I spoke to you, ’cause we actually spoke on the phone. I You were, that’s right. You were literally starting this journey. I’m a learning professional. So you were starting the journey onto kajobi, I think it was and and and I was like, oh, you’re on a learning management system. And you’re like, what is that? What happened was after we talked and I was, and I didn’t go into the program right away. I went online and I downloaded some things, and all of a sudden it hit me. It really did hit me. I am so tired of this.

[00:19:38] Andrea: I’m I’m wasting all my brain on what I’m eating when I’m eating what the scale says. Why’d you do it? Why didn’t you do it? What? I, okay. I don’t know if you ever remember the Seinfeld episode where they all decide to abstine

[00:19:58] Rita Black: Yes.

[00:19:59] Andrea: From sex, [00:20:00] and all of a sudden George becomes super smart. Do you remember?

[00:20:03] Andrea: Because his brain is free from having to think about that all day, and I was like, I want that. I want that I am so tired of 50% of my brain being attached to what I put in my mouth. Yeah. And I will tell you, my kids were sick of it. My, they didn’t wanna go out to dinner with me because every time I ate something, they, it was like the joke, where are we gonna go to dinner with mom?

[00:20:37] Andrea: Because all she’s gonna say is, why’d you let me eat that? I can’t believe I ate that. And I was like, I, it’s gotta stop.

[00:20:47] Rita Black: Yeah.

[00:20:47] Andrea: And I think without the pressure, to be honest, I’m not saying that you can’t do this with children. Of course you can. I think if I would’ve done this earlier, I would’ve been successful.

[00:20:59] Andrea: But there was also like a little bit more freedom as an empty nester. Yeah. To be, like, to take the time. It’s without me.

[00:21:09] Rita Black: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s, it is a great time to refocus on you and obviously you not only have your children or had your children, but you had your career, so you had a lot going on.

[00:21:23] Andrea: I had a lot going on, an hour and a half commute every day to New York City, it was tough. Yeah. Yeah, it was tough. But so when we met, I think by the time that I got there, maybe I was like, I was not, I was about 15 pounds, but I was like, [00:21:40] okay, if I’m gonna do this, I’d never want to see them again.

[00:21:44] Rita Black: It wasn’t my weight I forget the words that we use. Wait, weight release, my weight release journey. Okay. And was not as long as some others, but remember, just so many people. I know I did like the starvation diets, the HCG, the, I did everything not healthy and I was like, okay, I’m done.

[00:22:15] Rita Black: I think the point I’d like to make, and I think you’re making it, is that 15 pounds can feel like 50 when you are just cycling through them again and again. It doesn’t matter. It’s the pain. The pain at that point can be as great as the pain of carrying extra weight, and most people who are on, who have released weight, whether or not they have 10 pounds, 2050 to release those last 10 to 15 can be the toughest because they require, I think, an extra level of.

[00:22:56] Rita Black: Self-love because you can get comfortable 10 to 15 pounds above your ideal weight. And and if you really want to get to that next place it takes that extra why

[00:23:10] Andrea: I think that’s, does that make sense? Really true. Oh my God. Yeah. I relate to that so much. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but there is something about that last [00:23:20] part of your journey of is it good enough?

[00:23:21] Andrea: Am I comfortable now? Do I, what is right for me? And but the reality is it’s the maintenance that you never learn.

[00:23:32] Rita Black: It’s the

[00:23:32] Andrea: maintenance that you never learn. And it’s that concept. And I, I, we’ve talked about it. You talk about it a lot, which is learning to love yourself down the scale you can.

[00:23:44] Andrea: I get there and say, okay, now I love myself. Like you have to be learning in this journey down the scale, not just learning how to eat, but learning how to appreciate your health, who you are, and and that you’re, that you should feel confident that you know how to do this. You know how to deal with a couple of pounds, a gain or a little, a binge.

[00:24:18] Andrea: I know how to deal with this so that it doesn’t consume me. And you can’t do that unless I think you’re learning it down the scale.

[00:24:28] Rita Black: Yeah, and I think you also take on that ownership and self-advocacy of your journey, like your journey is important to you and. You have ownership, like you said, I can have a binge and I can own the binge and I can keep going because it’s not something outside of me.

[00:24:47] Rita Black: It’s something, an internal process. Now that I have some agency over, I can look and see why did I have that binge and be forgive myself because, I wanna keep going and I wanna protect myself and yeah. [00:25:00] Keep myself going. So when you have that ownership, it that inner communication, the outcome is different because you’re not self shaming and then just shutting it down and then starting over.

[00:25:15] Andrea: And there’s this mild difference. ’cause this not starting over. The forgiveness comes from. Getting back on track the minute that you realize it versus let me finish this up first and then get back. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Like it really depends on how you look at that.

[00:25:34] Andrea: Get back on track. And our brains are pretty sneaky. They’re so sneaky, oh my God, they’re

[00:25:39] Rita Black: so sneaky.

[00:25:40] Andrea: It’s so sneaky. So the forgiveness, as soon as you forgive yourself and you realize my forgiveness looks like this is what I say to myself that I forgive myself. I’m like, oh my God, in life I have made some big mistakes.

[00:25:57] Andrea: I say something not nice to somebody, or that hurt somebody’s feelings, or I say, or I do something. I don’t follow up like with somebody at work and it costs me something, whatever that is. Those things you can never take back. They’re done. I’m like, but eating a bagel on, whatever. I don’t eat that much.

[00:26:21] Andrea: It’s like you can so easily correct that as though it, you don’t have to wait till tomorrow. You don’t have to. You just don’t. And if you start looking at it like, is this so unfixable? There are things that we do in [00:26:40] life that aren’t fixable. This is fixable. Anything that you put in your mouth is fixable.

[00:26:47] Andrea: And that’s how I say to myself, that’s how I forgive myself. Oh, come on, this is fixable. Maybe it’s, I love that extra out. Maybe it’s a week long. The fixable, it’s like I’ve been adding carbs a little bit here to it. Fixable. So and so much stuff isn’t.

[00:27:07] Rita Black: Do you find now maintaining.

[00:27:10] Rita Black: Is it three plus years or almost three years? Where are we in this? I think it’s

[00:27:13] Andrea: closer to four years

[00:27:15] Rita Black: actually. Okay. That’s amazing. I think it’s almost

[00:27:16] Andrea: closer to four years. Okay.

[00:27:18] Rita Black: Okay, wait a minute. I think I got ahead of myself again, the hypnosis part, because this is a hypnosis program.

[00:27:27] Rita Black: And we were talking about hypnosis a little earlier. How was that? Had you done hypnosis before? Remind me. And how was that helpful? I did

[00:27:35] Andrea: when I was very young, my mother took me to a behavioral therapist and if I would have remembered, it was like this, but not really.

[00:27:43] Andrea: And I was like 15.

[00:27:44] Rita Black: Okay.

[00:27:45] Andrea: Alright. And so as an adult it’s so much different. But I’d love to talk about the hypnosis because I still use it four years later. And I think. You have to be suspect. Is this really gonna work? You have, if you’re not a little suspect. I don’t know.

[00:28:10] Andrea: I just can’t imagine being a little suspect. I think though the commitment to visualization is what stuck with [00:28:20] me so much. And the consistency of no matter what you read, no matter where you go, there’s nothing bad about waking up in the morning and doing a little meditation. And if my meditation focuses around what my day is gonna look like, and since a lot of it in it, I’m thinking about my actions outside of work.

[00:28:46] Andrea: If it’s eating, if it’s working out, if it’s planning, whatever that is. That’s good. That is good for you no matter what. But for some reason it definitely changed where my brain goes first.

[00:29:07] Rita Black: It

[00:29:07] Andrea: has, I think it’s changed it perhaps forever, meaning I can still see myself, oh, I know I was having a crazy day.

[00:29:19] Andrea: I got really worried with something today. Very worried. I thought something was gonna happen at work, but at the same time, I have a shoulder indu injury and I was gonna go to the chiropractor during the middle of the day and it all got a little late. It all got a little late. And as I’m driving back to the office and it’s like lunchtime, I can hear myself going, oh, maybe today I’m just gonna grab blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:29:43] Andrea: And then I was like, why are you doing that? And I literally will say to myself, is there a coach in there? Is there a coach in there? You’ll laugh, that’s four years later. If I didn’t still use hypnosis, I still [00:30:00] didn’t use the meditations. And I still go back to the standard ones a lot of the times.

[00:30:08] Andrea: I don’t know that would come front of mind. I don’t know that I would be that present with what is going on. So it was meaningful for me.

[00:30:20] Rita Black: Yeah. And I think our brains so don’t want, we’re not and again, being a successful business person, your. You use your brain well, but we don’t mark progress.

[00:30:35] Rita Black: Our brains aren’t good at saying, you did that and you’ve come this far. They’re much better at saying you haven’t done this, and you have this far, much further to go. So I think for some people, and this is so when you reached your ideal weight, what, tell us a little bit about that piece of the journey.

[00:30:56] Rita Black: So you were doing hypnosis, you were releasing weight and I know you said you had 15 pounds release but that was 15 pounds. And so you’re releasing weight, you get there and I think because we’ve had this ongoing conversation in the Thin Thinking podcast about ideal weight, like where the, just the word ideal weight.

[00:31:14] Rita Black: Yeah. And what does that mean? I’ve re, I’ve come to think maybe ideal weight is the wrong word, but it’s more like what is my sustainable, long-term loving weight goal? Yeah. Meaning, goal that I can sustain that feels good and that’s loving.

[00:31:33] Andrea: I don’t wanna turn your thinking upside down, but I might just a little bit because please,

[00:31:39] Rita Black: this is not [00:31:40] when I’m

[00:31:40] Andrea: visualizing, five years from now when I was in the program, like at the beginning part of the wait

[00:31:46] Rita Black: police

[00:31:46] Andrea: program.

[00:31:47] Andrea: I could not visualize myself in a different weight group. I couldn’t see myself. Okay. I could never see myself. And by the way, it might be weird, but I stare at myself in the mirror a lot. God knows these zoom calls at work. You’re constantly like in a mirror all day. But, what the, I, what I learned to visualize for me was a feeling of freedom, like a dancing system, a laughing freedom.

[00:32:19] Andrea: I visualized me being room, I am gregarious. I do like to be around other people. I’m an extrovert. I see myself telling a joke and everybody’s laughing because I’m confident enough to be a center of attention, if that makes any sense. I feel my vision is the way I’m feeling. Yeah.

[00:32:41] Andrea: Not a hundred percent the way that I’m looking. And it took me until I got to maintenance to realize, look at that. I couldn’t do it. I don’t know when, at what point in the monthly journey program where I was like, oh. I don’t even really see myself in my vi I didn’t notice it at first. Came later, and then I was like, so what are you visualizing?

[00:33:03] Andrea: And I realized it was a feeling, it was a freedom. It was smiles and connectedness and

[00:33:12] Rita Black: confidence. I don’t think that turns what I said on his head at all, because I think, and I think this is what [00:33:20] you’re saying will be helpful for a lot of people who can’t visualize, like there are a lot of people who can’t see themselves.

[00:33:26] Rita Black: And that’s, I always am saying, that’s okay. We really wanna go for that feeling, because the feeling brain is where transformation takes place, not in the visual brain. So I feel the same thing. I have a vision and I can see myself when I’m a hundred. ’cause every, like I talk about that being a hundred and dancing at my son’s retirement party, but, and I can see that.

[00:33:52] Rita Black: The feeling of freedom is what drives my behavior all the time, because I’m like, if I eat that, I’m not gonna feel free. Or if I, and that is what my driving internal driving force is,

[00:34:05] Andrea: right? And then I remember the next big milestone for me, I don’t know if you remember this, but I think I talked to you about it at one point on, one of the monthly things was, I think it was about two years ago, my daughter got married and, but it was three years of planning.

[00:34:21] Andrea: So I was a year in the program, right? And then it’s three years you start planning. And I remember going, oh my God, I don’t have to lose weight for my daughter’s wedding. I don’t have to struggle between now and then. And that became, I, granted, I used it as an anchoring of my, where I wanted to be.

[00:34:48] Andrea: In that following year. But what I realized is as it got closer, I was like, I can’t wait to wear my dress at her wedding. I would be like, I can’t buy a [00:35:00] dress. I don’t do all that stuff. Yeah, of course. And I was like excited to wear my dress and I didn’t have to suffer getting to her wedding.

[00:35:11] Andrea: And do you know how much better that made it for my daughter?

[00:35:14] Rita Black: Oh,

[00:35:16] Andrea: how much better. It made it for my whole family. Yeah. It was incredible. And that feeling that still guides me. I’m like that feeling of you’re about to go to something and you don’t have this journey before you go to something you can instead.

[00:35:39] Andrea: Go shopping, girl. I don’t know, spend money. But yeah, that was a very big part because I was already in maintenance and planning for her wedding. I did not use this to get there. Not, I didn’t use the wait release part.

[00:35:54] Rita Black: Yeah.

[00:35:55] Andrea: I had to focus on maintenance all the way up until that day.

[00:36:01] Rita Black: That is so great.

[00:36:02] Rita Black: And I know what you mean about just not having to worry about that part of it. That, that, I think that is one of the easy, the coolest. I, there’s lots of great things about maintaining your ideal weight, but, and as we’re gonna talk about, I just wanna ask you about maintenance itself and Yeah.

[00:36:22] Rita Black: What, what feels easy and what doesn’t feel easy, and to look at the frame of mind around it, because I don’t think you ever are like. Huh? I used to struggle with my weight. You’re, it’s always omnipresent, but I do think that I remember I tell this story, I the [00:36:40] pandemic, we were all in our sweatpants and nobody was having to get dressed or go out or, and do anything.

[00:36:46] Rita Black: And I remember the first event that I went to that was a, a, dinner out or something that we had to get dressed up for, and I walked right into my closet. I picked out a pair of pants and I put them on and they fit. It wasn’t like, are these going to fit? Would, because that would’ve been my story.

[00:37:06] Rita Black: Yeah. I had six different sizes of clothes in my closet, so it would be like which one of these is gonna fit? Not like just grabbing the pants I wore, two years previously pre pandemic and, they just fit the same.

[00:37:21] Andrea: It’s so true. And, but think about like, when I think about all the special events, sometimes even a Saturday night out with friends.

[00:37:29] Rita Black: Yeah.

[00:37:29] Andrea: Sometimes I would dread it.

[00:37:31] Rita Black: Yeah.

[00:37:33] Andrea: Oh yeah. It’s, you’re going to the biggest celebrations and all the fun things in life and you’re like, what am I gonna wear? And I’m dreading it. So that comes back again to the visualization. That’s what I’m visualizing. Just that freedom. So to go to maintenance, and I don’t wanna sound boring to people that have, listened to you before, but tracking your food is just the most freeing thing that a person can do.

[00:38:08] Andrea: And with all the new tools. It can, it can be fun. I just got the, the AA ring. I don’t know how many Oh, how’s that going? That, oh, that’s PREA ring. It does not connect with, [00:38:20] of course, ’cause I got the fancy one. I, not the gold one. But it doesn’t link with LinkedIn or MyFitnessPal.

[00:38:29] Andrea: It has a different way and I haven’t used it yet ’cause I still use Lose it.

[00:38:33] Rita Black: And

[00:38:34] Andrea: so this part feels antiquated, but it does pick it up a little bit through the apple. But I do, I love some of the new insights because I have like new expectations of my health now. I have time to focus on things like pre-diabetes.

[00:38:52] Andrea: Even though I am thin by most people’s standards, like I feel thin, I feel good. I feel like I can wear. Pretty much anything I want. Now I’m like, wow. But I still have high blood pressure. ’cause it’s genetic. It’s genetic. I still have high cholesterol. My father had his first heart attack at 38.

[00:39:12] Andrea: Wow. I have to watch my glucose levels. So now I’m like, oh. But I can focus on that in different ways of eating that I’m hoping this might give me some insights into. Yeah. But I love my tracking. I’ve to let not to get so far I, it’s so freeing. I also, at least once a month go back to weighing my food.

[00:39:43] Andrea: Good for you. Like usually at the beginning of the month, I look at that yogurt and I’m like, what is a half a cup of yogurt? I go back. I just do it every once in a while. I just weigh it. Sometimes at dinner I’m like, how much salmon am I eating? Let me just weigh it. [00:40:00] And then I’m like oh, interesting.

[00:40:02] Andrea: Oh,

[00:40:03] Rita Black: yeah, our, for those listening to her talk about this, it’s just our eyes will quickly, three ounces or four ounces or five ounces of salmon quickly becomes eight ounces of salmon. It’s so

[00:40:16] Andrea: easy. So easy. And you’re like, why am I so full tonight going to bed? All I ate was salmon.

[00:40:23] Andrea: And you’re like, so I have these habits, so I still write down my food. I’ve learned in a really big way ’cause I dine out. I, we, my husband and I don’t love to do it a lot because he is my partner in the environment of good eating, and we have different trigger foods, so they’re all in the basement, completely different.

[00:40:48] Andrea: I cannot be around a pita chip. They cannot exist in my life. And and I’m like, so that doesn’t bother him at all. And he can’t stop ice cream and it’s not that important to me. So yeah, it’s all in the basement, and he knows if he opens up that bag, like I, if it’s not open, I’ll never open it.

[00:41:11] Andrea: But once it’s open, like I can’t see it, like he’ll move it around, he’ll move it around for me. So the environment is like a really big thing. And I have him as a partner in this. Yeah. Which is phenomenal.

[00:41:24] Rita Black: That is great. And I think what you’re talking about for, new listeners, we’re, in, in our process we really focus on skills of weight mastery that you have been studied.

[00:41:36] Rita Black: And environmental control is surprisingly, for a [00:41:40] lot of people are, the biggest support for us and the biggest downfall. Whenever somebody is struggling, one of the first questions I will say, what came into your environment that wasn’t there before? And there’s always an answer.

[00:41:56] Rita Black: There’s never it doesn’t surprise you. There’s nothing that came in. It’s oh yeah, that thing came into my environment. And

[00:42:03] Andrea: so what maintenance in life is. It’s a level of confidence. It’s a level of understanding for who you are and it’s, like, how would I say this?

[00:42:23] Andrea: It’s the art, and I know I keep using your words, but there is a little bit of the art of never starting over. And just being like, food is not a mistake, that can’t be corrected. It’s just not, there are a lot of other mistakes I make in life. I can’t go back and change them. Yeah. It, or it can take a really long time.

[00:42:52] Andrea: But, eating a few pita chips and going, and even if it leads to more than that. It’s pretty non-sustainable if you just go, oh, there’s a few things at my disposal. Sometimes it’s, I can work out more. Sometimes it’s I usually have a snack after between work and going home. ’cause I love, I do love to [00:43:20] work out.

[00:43:20] Andrea: And that’s never been something that I haven’t done. So when I get home, I like to work out after work. So I know that usually I have to eat something at three or four o’clock, but if something happened at the office, I go, do you have to do that today? And there are just so many techniques, and then the other thing, and I golf a lot and at the club that we go to, there’s food everywhere. Oh really? Oh my God. Everywhere. Jars of jelly beans, crackers. It doesn’t end. It’s on the golf course, it’s in the club. It’s everywhere. And it’s free supposedly. Yeah. But I always go like this with free food.

[00:44:06] Andrea: Okay. You get on an airplane, I don’t know, you’re in the air for an hour and they’re handing out some crappy thing of pretzels. Why that looks so good? I don’t understand. I just ate breakfast. I’m not hungry. They give you things when you’re not even hungry or it’s not mealtime and you feel compelled to eat it.

[00:44:27] Andrea: And I’m like the obsession with eating something that’s free. And I’m like, what would you pay right now? I have five pounds, God. And I’d be like 5,000 bucks. And I’m like, so why are you eating a free bag of stupid pretzels? So I say stuff like that to me, which is probably like a nice good coach inside going, how much money would you spend to lose weight?

[00:44:54] Andrea: And yet you’re eating, you don’t even like jelly beans that much because they’re free [00:45:00] and they’re there. That is just ridiculous. Yeah. So there’s a little bit of stopping and thinking, but free food’s a weird one.

[00:45:08] Rita Black: Get it. It’s hard. It’s a hard one for people to negotiate. I should do a podcast on free food.

[00:45:15] Rita Black: Everybody’s gotta hang up about free food,

[00:45:17] Andrea: everybody. I

[00:45:18] Rita Black: know it doesn’t,

[00:45:19] Andrea: it’s, but that’s what I say to myself every time and that’s just a coaching technique of what are you doing right now?

[00:45:26] Rita Black: Yeah.

[00:45:26] Andrea: It’s breath my preaching technique of saying, how much money would you spend right now to lose five pounds?

[00:45:33] Andrea: Not even that. I need five pounds to lose right now. But

[00:45:35] Rita Black: yeah,

[00:45:36] Andrea: that’s what I say to myself and I’m like, oh wait, stop. Yeah, I’d spend a lot more than that. Food is worth there and it lets me move on. I still listen to the hypnosis. Yeah. So you’re never far away, are you Far away. Love it. That me, it does.

[00:45:55] Andrea: You’re always adding new and interesting things like the bridge program, like I started that and for everybody, now I’m getting used to, for everybody that’s listening, it’s a new introduction when you’re heading from the 30 day program into our monthly

[00:46:11] Rita Black: group. Yeah. Membership.

[00:46:12] Rita Black: Yeah.

[00:46:13] Andrea: And it offers me some little insight. I still listen to some of the coaching sessions. I think I don’t do every single thing every single day.

[00:46:23] Rita Black: I don’t think anybody does. I don’t think you do. Yeah.

[00:46:26] Andrea: Do you, so

[00:46:26] Rita Black: let me ask you a

[00:46:27] Andrea: question. Do you still listen to hypnosis?

[00:46:30] Rita Black: Interestingly, I do.

[00:46:33] Rita Black: I listen, I make my own and I have, I’ve done this in my membership, taught people how to [00:46:40] do their own make their own self-hypnosis recording. Because I will do I’ll do a summary self-hypnosis, and it’s not on, it will be. Like you focus on health goals focus on like I’m very into resistance training right now because I turned 60 and I wanted muscle retention and balance, and I have osteoporosis.

[00:47:01] Rita Black: So I’m working on that. And then I, but I work on life goals and I work on, I’ll remind myself the vision of connecting with my kids in a powerful way and, all of that stuff. I, ’cause your mind left, unintended will always go back. To the old world, it, it can easily get, I do these drawings on the board for those of you who, haven’t worked with me, where it’s just here’s your new brain that we’re making our, healthy brain or our thin thinking brain and it is wired and it’s vibrant, but it can start to, wane and that old brain can start to get stronger and stronger.

[00:47:41] Rita Black: Yeah. You’ve gotta keep, and that’s why the hypnosis, meditation, all of that is helpful. And you, I’m sure it’s the same in your successful business career. It’s just like you, your focus has to be, you can’t get distracted. You have to focus on what is meaningful for you at that time. Your priorities.

[00:47:59] Rita Black: What’s your priorities?

[00:48:00] Andrea: We always talk about in the world of, learning and coaching and leadership. You know what. What parts of you can never change and who you are and certain strengths and you know they are who you are. You can be an extrovert, but that doesn’t mean that you always have to be the center of attention, right?[00:48:20]

[00:48:20] Andrea: So you can do different things, but sometimes you are who you are and if you get tired, when you don’t sleep well. Hence the aing when you are under deep stress, it’s much easier to connect with the part of you that is who you are. It’s not always healthy for you. Yes. So that’s okay.

[00:48:45] Andrea: That’s why this understanding that life is about getting back on track, I don’t think everybody goes to work every day and works the same amount. Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Thursday, Friday.

[00:48:57] Rita Black: No,

[00:48:57] Andrea: sometimes you drift. Sometimes you did and you gotta get back on track at work and you’re like, whoops, I got a deadline.

[00:49:03] Rita Black: Yeah.

[00:49:04] Andrea: Okay. I think it works with a lot of things and some things you have to prep, morph. How would I say this? When things go bad at work and I have to give, feedback to people that work for me, if I do it in the moment without any preparation, that might, that conversation might not go so well.

[00:49:20] Andrea: So I have to prep myself. It’s the same thing. Yeah. When things aren’t going well, you gotta stop and prep and go, hold on a second. I call, sometimes I call it constructive procrastination. Don’t address that right now, but put it on your task list. Your brain is much more attuned to tasks.

[00:49:43] Andrea: There’s actually some study about this, I can’t remember what it’s called, how, open tasks consume so much more of your brain, and oh yeah, I’ll have to find it for you. I just read it. It’s incredible. But an open task, something that’s on your task list will [00:50:00] consume more of your brain than something that you’ve completed.

[00:50:03] Andrea: So you complete something, there’s completion satisfaction, and then a week later you forgot, you completed. Think about all the successful things that are behind you. You don’t remember them, but the task brain is very present and very in the front of your brain. So I think the hypnosis, and I think the practice of writing food down keeps the task of what you’re trying to do present.

[00:50:33] Andrea: It keeps it present. So that’s, maintenance for me. And I think I had once shared with you once before. Year three is actually for me, not easier than year one in maintenance, year one in maintenance. All that learning was still present in the brain. All the tasks, all the things very present.

[00:50:58] Andrea: And then as you live your life and you don’t need everything every day, it’s not as present. And so it might take longer to go. I think I’m off track, hence why I start weighing my food.

[00:51:10] Rita Black: Every

[00:51:10] Andrea: once in a while. ’cause it just gets bigger and bigger. I don’t think that happened in year one.

[00:51:14] Andrea: Yeah. That happens more in year three.

[00:51:19] Rita Black: Yeah. It happens in your 30 as well.

[00:51:25] Rita Black: I hope to get there, my friend. I hope to get there. But because it is the brain will drift. And you and I can laugh at it because it’s easier to have a sense of humor about it when you’re like, yeah, that’s what you [00:51:40] do. Instead of, it’s oh my God, I’m broken.

[00:51:42] Rita Black: I’m insane. And it’s never fixable. I’m a horrible person. I’m just like, oh, yeah, you’re right. My eye, my eyes adjusted that three ounce, thought that was three ounces of chicken when it was really six, six ounces or, whatever. The, or I. I was, I’ve told, I, I think a lot of our listeners will know I went away to Spain and to see my daughter this urine.

[00:52:07] Rita Black: We we ate bread every day and I, I measured amounts like measured, not like I measured it out, but measured meaning like I would only eat one piece because, because I know if I eat another one, then it will then lead my little carb zombie to start hypnotizing me towards other things, right?

[00:52:27] Rita Black: And but just doing that for a week success so consecutively, oh, then it was, oh, I’ll just have some of that, and, oh, why not some of this. And then I was like, okay, let’s get a little check in here. But there was no. Oh, look at you. Yeah. If I was on a vacation struggling with my weight, look at you might as well just do, eat everything.

[00:52:52] Rita Black: And then when you get home, you’re really gonna have to

[00:52:54] Andrea: Yeah.

[00:52:55] Rita Black: Pull it together.

[00:52:57] Andrea: I remember years ago, ’cause I didn’t come from a family that was confident in their weight. Never. No one and my brother, I’m five feet, my brother’s six feet tall, but he still has, weight issues.

[00:53:08] Rita Black: Yeah. And I remember

[00:53:08] Andrea: one, one day he says to me, he goes, he goes starting a diet every Monday. All it really has ever done is made me eat more on Sunday.

[00:53:18] Rita Black: Yeah, exactly. [00:53:20]

[00:53:22] Andrea: And it was like, that would make me laugh. And it’s, but it’s so true. And when you can break that,

[00:53:29] Rita Black: yeah. It’s fabulous.

[00:53:32] Rita Black: It’s what you said it’s freeing. You’re free. It’s free. It’s free. Yeah. Yeah. If you had, this has been so great and I know I wanna get you home exercising. But if you had one thing to say to somebody who was struggling and what would be that first step for them that you would, thinking back to where you were and what would that be?

[00:54:01] Andrea: I knowing everything that I know now, it really would be that moment of can you visualize something different in the future? It really would be that deep hypnosis meditation part that says,

[00:54:22] Andrea: what do I and doing it with consistency, because I do believe this when you’re struggling. It’s a trauma. Yeah, it’s a trauma. It’s a tr I feel that way. I think, I don’t think it’s like ptsd. People might think this sounds super dramatic, like I used to think about every single thing I put in my mouth and it was, but and that was, I look back now and I’m like, that was deep trauma that I was going through self abuse.

[00:54:50] Andrea: And when you’re self abuse in trauma, when you’re truly in trauma, it is very difficult to visualize something positive. It’s [00:55:00] not easy. So I’m not asking people to do something that’s easy, or I’m not recommending that people do something that’s easy. It’s deeply hard to imagine something better when you’re feeling pain right now.

[00:55:16] Andrea: It’s if you lose your job. It is very difficult to be like, I’m just gonna get a better job. Everyone goes, oh, it’s meant to happen. And your internal brain goes, no it wasn’t. No it wasn’t. It’s when traumas happen and they happen to us all the time, little mini ones, some of them bigger, some of them irreparable.

[00:55:38] Andrea: It’s very difficult to visualize a positive event in the future. That’s the place to get started. Wow. Can I see that success? Yeah. Then I can get there.

[00:55:55] Rita Black: Yeah.

[00:55:55] Andrea: And this really helped me with that. This really helped me with that.

[00:56:01] Rita Black: I love that. Because one of the first things we do is, we opened that door forward, the failing forward?

[00:56:08] Rita Black: No, but the, and it is a, because when you’re stuck in that trauma and it’s a loop, right? It is a cognitive loop that you just get it spun around and all the time, it’s hard to exit that loop if, especially because when you’re struggling, you think the answer is in being better or being, it’s about and that just keeps you in more of the same, rather than stepping out and going, no, I need to go to a different world.

[00:56:37] Rita Black: I need to leave the house of abuse. And when you [00:56:40] live in a house of abuse, if you leave the house and you have nowhere else to go because you don’t know, then you’ll go right back. So the vision helps you have this new place to go live. And it helps your brain ’cause your, so much change happens in your imagination, in your in imagination is in your subconscious.

[00:57:00] Rita Black: So I love that. I love that. That’s a really great step forward. This has been so amazing and it’s so amazing to catch up with you. Like I said, you look amazing. You look so healthy and happy, and I’m glad to hear great things are happening in your life. And I hope they continue to do

[00:57:18] Andrea: oh, I hope the same for you and I’m honored that you would have me here.

[00:57:21] Andrea: Thank you so much.

[00:57:23] Rita Black: Thank you. Thank you so much. And we will have to have you back when you’re, let’s keep dancing. Okay, let’s do it. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, Andrea. It was so great of you to come on and you listeners, for coming and being here today. And again, if you wanna dive into that special fall process where you can get all the power of hypnosis, meditation, and coaching, please come and join us, www.shiftweightmastery.com/fall to get all the deal details, all the dates, all the stuff that you need to see if this is a really good fit for you.

[00:58:04] Rita Black: Don’t put off your transformation any longer. This is an amazing journey. We are very dedicated to our participants. It is an amazing process, so go check it out. And have a great week, and remember that the key and [00:58:20] probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it.

[00:58:28] Rita Black: I will look forward to being here again with you next week. Do you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term?