Rita Black: [00:00:00] Remember those permission slips we needed as kids for a field trip or the approvals we had to wait on at work before we could move a project forward. So many of us are still waiting for that green light only. Now it’s coming from inside our own mind. If you’ve been stuck in the start over cycle with weight, it’s a good chance, a deeper part of you hasn’t granted permission to fully go for long-term success.

Rita Black: So today we are talking about the 10 fundamental self permissions that shift you out of diet thinking and struggle thinking into wave mastery. These are some of the inner agreements that moved me from yo-yoing to stable release, keeping it off for 30 years, and they’re the same ones. My clients used to get off the hamster wheel.

Rita Black: So please join me for this episode. I can’t wait to share it all with you. Come on in.[00:01:00]

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.

Rita Black: 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.

Rita Black: Not only did I release all that weight, I have [00:02:00] 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: Sound good? Let’s get started. Hello? Hello, everybody. Come on in. Come on in. There’s plenty of room around here for everybody. Come on in. I’m happy you are here. And I do wanna thank you. I’m feeling very grateful today and this week. I’m just, you ever have those weeks where you just are feeling grateful and then some weeks you don’t.

Rita Black: This week I happened to feel very grateful and. Especially grateful for you and all the people in my life, but I really do appreciate this thin thinking community [00:03:00] that we have grown. And if you are brand new, I hope you find a comfy place to sit down, either physically or mentally. And if you’re a veteran, have a seat where you usually like to sit.

Rita Black: Isn’t that funny how we always like to sit in the same seat in a room? At least I do. I have been having so many fascinating conversations during our live shift weight mastery process. We’re almost done with it. We’re coming up to the last week now. And it always blows my mind. And I, the, one of the reasons I love doing this process two times a year is I get so much out of it.

Rita Black: I’m selfish. I know. But it’s really fascinating because I’ve been running this process for so long. I literally know where people are psychologically. On every single day of the journey. And some of the coaches who have been with me and helping me lead the shift for six years now, seven years, we all are like, okay, yeah, they’re [00:04:00] on day 10.

Rita Black: Yep. Okay. We know where they’re at. So one of the things that is so interesting, and this is really I promise you, leading to what our topic is today. Is when we start the shift weight mastery process the, whether it’s the self-study or the life people have a hard time really letting go of the old mentality.

Rita Black: Even though, like we’re doing hypnosis and meditation and all these things, which is great. And I’m not saying people don’t transform right away. Often they do. But there’s a part that kind of stays on, and this is this part of being good and being bad, like this black and white. And we talk about it a lot in the, the Thin Thinking podcast.

Rita Black: So if you’re a veteran, you know what I’m talking about that. But we do desperately clinging to that. And it’s understandable because it’s in a way, it’s comfortable, it’s very clear, black and white, being good, being bad. And alongside that [00:05:00] is just this idea of permission. And granting ourselves permission when we’ve been locked in the sort of closet of the struggle of wait master or wait struggle.

Rita Black: It’s self-abusive. It, is a place of not believing in ourselves a lot of disrespect of ourselves. So this idea that we’re opening the door of the closet and saying, you can go out now. You can leave and in fact we want you to, stay, take those first steps and just fly.

Rita Black: Like you can do this. I’m gonna have one of our members on who just was recently she’s been maintaining her ideal weight now for a number of months. And I can’t wait to share her with you because she just went parasailing in Italy, this was a bucket list thing. And, it was one of those things that she had to give herself permission to take a big risk like that.

Rita Black: And having a going through the process and really believing in herself, open that. So we’re gonna, that’s coming up. But I only use that as an [00:06:00] example of, it’s really hard in the beginning. To give yourself that. There’s many things that I find people struggle with giving themselves permission on this journey of weight mastery.

Rita Black: And I certainly know I struggled with that when I struggled with my weight. So I’m bringing back an episode that was incredibly popular a couple of years ago. So it, if, you probably haven’t heard this episode. And even if you have, it always is a great refresh. But these are about the permissions that I feel like are the most important permissions to grant ourselves on the journey.

Rita Black: And so I hope this opens some doors and connects with you deep in your heart. I had a chuckle that you’ll see, I was about to turn 59 and now that I’m 61 I feel so, I think of myself as, when you hear yourself a couple of years ago, you’re like, oh, you had no idea. But no.

Rita Black: Turning 60 was awesome and great and opened a lot of doors there too. I had to give [00:07:00] myself permission to be 60. But I right there, I was like so innocent. 58, turning 59. Oh my gosh. I thought I was, gonna be so old. But now I seem so tender and young. Alright, so enjoy the episode and while you’re at it, while you’re listening.

Rita Black: If you can do two things at once subscribe. We have so many awesome episodes coming up this autumn and into the holiday season. We’ll be, sending really great mindsets your way and also a couple of hypnosis sessions. Hit subscribe so you make sure to get it in your podcast platform every week.

Rita Black: They’re, sitting, waiting for you. And if you wanna go to our episode show notes. There is a place where you can sign up and we send you an email with our podcast every week. Feel free to subscribe there, but let’s hop now into the episode. I hope you enjoy anyhow. I started thinking this year I’m gonna be 59.

Rita Black: And what an interesting year. It is the gateway year [00:08:00] into the sixties. Wow. Wow. I never thought I would be here, but I am. And it’s cool. It’s really cool. But it brings up a lot. It brings up the fact that I’m gonna be an empty nester. What is my future gonna bring? Longevity? How do I get it? How I do I maintain my health?

Rita Black: What do I wanna do and accomplish with my life? And I realized that it is all very scary and also exciting. So thinking about this journey into the sixties that is coming up, it got me thinking about how, when fear and doubt comes up. And my subconscious wants to diminish my dreams and goals.

Rita Black: Usually it’s because there is a subconscious part of me that hasn’t grounded me permission to be bold and big. There is a part of me that says, this isn’t okay, or what would other people think or [00:09:00] that isn’t done. You know what I mean? We diminish those big, bold visions that we have for ourself, and it seems to be subconscious.

Rita Black: So self permission is a wonderful thing. I’ll tell you a little secret. I didn’t have my first child until I was 38, and you know why? Permission. I didn’t think I would be a good mother in my late twenties and early pre-shift thirties. I had a lot to work through and I didn’t really feel ready even though I got married at 24.

Rita Black: So I had been married for a long time and I remember my husband, who had his own reasons for not being quite ready to be a parent yet. We had a lot of fun and we had adventures both in England and here in Los Angeles. But he finally decided he was ready to start [00:10:00] around the age of 40. And he said are you in?

Rita Black: And I said and he said, okay, what’s the hesitation? And I said, I just really don’t think I’m gonna be a good mom. And he said, how about just being a good enough mom? And there was something in that opened up a basement door in my subconscious mind that allowed this big permission slip within me to be signed.

Rita Black: And it said, you can be a mother and I felt aligned trying to get pregnant. That’s gonna have to wait for another podcast ’cause that’s a big saga as well. But if you think about it, miracles occur when we grant ourselves permission around the things we resist and fear. So I have been thinking about the permissions that I had to grant myself along the way.

Rita Black: Of weight mastery. They didn’t always happen at once In my [00:11:00] journey I had to grant permission every step along my 28 year journey. And this is important to know because the journey to weight mastery is layered and subconscious stuff keeps coming up. It’s not just a linear line down the scale. We’re human beings.

Rita Black: We have a lot, we’re very layered. So the weight mastery journey is going to be layered and it helps to know this, and it helps to know that, oh, I’m reaching some resistance here in my journey. Do I need to grant myself more permission for something that I haven’t granted myself permission for?

Rita Black: So as we go through these, I’m gonna prod you to start granting these permissions to yourself as well. And we’re gonna do this with the deep breath in. We’re gonna grant the permission, bring it in. And on the out breath, I’m gonna have you help me blow out the 59 candles on my birthday cake. Okay. And my [00:12:00] birthday cake.

Rita Black: My birthday cake growing up and I’ve carried on the tradition most years. Last year I didn’t even have a birthday cake, but most years, and I don’t even know if I’m going to have one this year, but it has always been cherry chip. Now they don’t really make that cherry chip cake mix anymore, and frankly, I’ve learned to make a really awesome, very low sugar. The using almond flour, cherry chip cake, which and low glycemic cherry chip cake. But I do use Marino cherries because obviously I want that fake red, pink color. And I just love Marino cherries. I do think they’re a trigger food, but mixed in with the cake, eh, it can be okay, but just, I need a security guard around me and the frosting.

Rita Black: So anyway, let’s talk about permission number one. And this was a big one, and it was the first one for me, and this was actually the permission to be thin. Okay? The permission to be thin. And [00:13:00] that might sound vain or that might sound weird, but honestly, think about it, it’s pretty powerful. After dieting and yo-yoing up and down the scale for years, I realized that most of my weight dieting cycle was more of an attempt to escape being fat rather than a real loving permission slip to create a lifestyle that allowed me to be thin and healthy. So think about that. That’s offensive versus defensive.

Rita Black: Mostly, we’re on the defensive. I don’t wanna be fat. Let me do whatever I can to not be fat, rather than I really wanna create this amazing life for myself and be that person who is slim and healthy. That’s different and that needs some permission. I think about I’m a child of the seventies TV era and Gilligan’s Island and Poor Gilligan and the professor of Maryanne and Ginger [00:14:00] and the Skipper and the Howells, Thurston and Levy, they were every episode trying to escape that island.

Rita Black: And it was, they’d almost get there every single episode, but then they’d not get off that damn island. And I felt like that with my weight, I’d be able to lose some weight, but then I never could quite keep it off. So being and focusing on this permission to be healthy, slim, and confident, and I realized that one thing that was really holding me back from giving myself this permission was that I thought of then and healthy people in a negative way.

Rita Black: Do you sometimes, sometimes it’s easy to think of thin or slim people as vain. Come on, let’s face it. Oh, they’re so vain. They’re so focused on themselves and what they look like. We have an attitude and if you really want to dive deep into my take on this and how to get [00:15:00] through it, I have a whole episode called Skinny people Envy, that you can dive deep into this about.

Rita Black: But the main point I’m trying to make is that, ah, gosh, I’m thinking of. Being slim and healthy. And I, it’s not always positive. So I also thought of people as a health nut. Oh, they’re so healthy and they wanna know what ingredients are in the salad dressing and they wanna be, persnickety and picky.

Rita Black: And, I had a bit of an attitude, if you think about it. So I had to reframe. I saw thin and healthy, and I was able to make that shift in my mind because when I saw myself as slim and healthy, it meant confident and it meant powerful. And it meant standing up for myself and what I need and believe in.

Rita Black: So having the identity of [00:16:00] someone who holds health. And a healthy lifestyle as a standard deeply, that has nothing to do with vanity, that has nothing to do with having to be a particular size to be loved. It was nothing to be ashamed of. And if there’s a voice in your head shaming you for wanting to be healthy or slimmer or more confident like you don’t deserve it, maybe there isn’t.

Rita Black: Maybe it’s a voice outside of you, but are you willing to let it go along with all of your thoughts and negative preconceptions of a thin, healthy lifestyle? And also to really own the fact that I really did wanna be lighter and healthier and more confident that was truly important to me. Sometimes I think it was like, oh no, it’s not really that important, or, oh gosh, people should [00:17:00] love me for who I am.

Rita Black: But I wanted to feel lighter and healthier. I didn’t want my joints to ache. And I, at the age of the early thirties I didn’t wanna know what it was gonna feel like 10 years from now, or 20 years from now. So after years of struggling, I finally gave myself that permission and it was like a huge door opened.

Rita Black: How about you? Come on. Can you grant yourself permission to be thin? Just take a nice deep breath in and pull that permission in. Hold it. Grant it and blow out some of the many candles on my birthday cake. Thank you. Okay, now, permission number two or self permission number two starting the journey of weight mastery.

Rita Black: So [00:18:00] after 20 years up and down the scale, hundreds of diets, there was a morning where I got on the scale, and some of you guys know this story. This is the pivotal, what I call the turning point in my life. And I got off this up on the scale and I was actually down. I was, my weight was down, so it wasn’t, my weight was up, but I had been on a diet.

Rita Black: But there was something heartbreaking about it for me because I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to keep the weight off for very long because I was so stuck in this start over struggle cycle and this weight struggle cycle. So in that heartbreaking moment where I cried and literally sat on my scale for a couple of hours and just let it all out, I made a promise never to diet again.

Rita Black: I didn’t know what I was going to do. I did not have a clue, but I knew one thing and it was like, I’m never gonna diet again. Cut to a few months later, [00:19:00] and I was doing hypnosis and meditation and really just learning to feed my body without dieting and really seeking answers, researching long-term permanent weight management, getting mentored along the way.

Rita Black: And I realized that what I was doing, what this thing was, this quest that I was on, was a journey. It wasn’t like this rush down the scale. It wasn’t a, have to have this now, but it was step by step. A journey I was on with myself, and there were many twists and turns in the journey and sometimes were, there were hills I had to climb and sometimes it was easy and sometimes there were plateaus, but it was a journey.

Rita Black: And six months later I still was on that journey and I was lighter. I was almost at my ideal weight, but I hit a [00:20:00] plateau. So again, I had to dig deeper into that journey and commit even more deeply to that journey that I had begun. And then as I got to my ideal weight. I was like, aha. So I see that this journey doesn’t end like I thought it would.

Rita Black: You think in this world of dieting, okay, the diet ends and I can just go back to doing whatever I wanted, but now I’m a skinny person and I’m healed and it’s all good. Rather than the fact that I was still me. I was a lighter version of me, but I had still feelings and emotions. I still had to deal with food and social events and my life.

Rita Black: So I realized I see that I am lighter and more masterful, but I am continuing this journey and still having to be me on this journey. Still learning lessons along the way. And then as time went on, [00:21:00] I had children. And my parents passed and I started my business and all these very big life things came down my path of life as I was on my journey.

Rita Black: And I had to pivot and adjust every step along the way. And sometimes it was harder, sometimes it was easier. Sometimes it felt dark and heavy and sometimes it felt light. But I maintained my weight within, a five pound range. And most people who have maintenance know that there’s like a five pound range that, with a top edge and a bottom edge that you allow and float between as you go through your life and.

Rita Black: Maybe you’re sitting there thinking, oh my God, this journey continues. What are you telling me, Rita, that this is not good news? But look, the, that journey continued for me. I look, I hit menopause and I had to pivot and change and learn [00:22:00] and grow and develop. And then I hit 52, which was a turning point year for me physically, because my body really started to change and I had to adjust and.

Rita Black: Get more focused on different parts of my body and mobility and balance. And then 57 hit, and I don’t know what it was about 57, but man, things then really started to shift. And I was like, woo-hoo. We’re, in this now this whole aging thing and this is serious business and I need to focus more on immunity.

Rita Black: I need to focus more on mobility and agility, and I’m spending more time doing that and as a whole mindset shift. So it isn’t, I think we get into this very rigid idea of weight loss is, or rigid idea of what weight management is. But weight management is incredibly fluid and ever growing and ever changing and ever evolving.

Rita Black: And actually, if you’re sitting there going, oh my God, this sounds [00:23:00] like a horror show. I wanna assure you it’s not, it’s. Invigorating. And it’s challenging and it stretches you, but it gives you this sense of mastery like you have never had in any other part of your life before. And I know as I continue into my sixties and seventies and eighties with the grace of the universe and, willingness from the universe, God willing, who everybody willing as my continue my life through my eighties, nineties, one hundreds, so I can, be alive to see my son turn 60 and have his retirement.

Rita Black: I’d love to see that. And Dan said his 60th birthday in my red dress, as some of as I head into these next chapters of my life at, in an Aging body and maintaining my weight I’m really excited. I went through a few moments this year of oh my gosh, it’s, it is confronting.

Rita Black: But when I granted myself permission to just [00:24:00] age gracefully, believing in my ability to manage my weight and to continue this powerful journey I’ve been on for 28 years, I got really moved. I was like, wow, I’m so blessed and it’s been such a great gift this journey. Are you ready to give yourself permission?

Rita Black: Maybe you’re already on your journey. Maybe you wanna start a journey maybe you’ve got sidetracked off the journey to, into the ditch or into the field. And is one of our shift coaches says over the ditch through the field and into the next town when he got off track. But to get back on that journey, and it’s not that you ever left the journey, but just to refocus and start continuing your journey forward.

Rita Black: So are you ready to give yourself some permission here? Okay. So let’s do it. So go ahead and take a nice deep breath in and bring that [00:25:00] permission to start or be on or continue or really commit to that journey and hold that in. And as you let it go, blow out a few more candles on my birthday cake.

Rita Black: Will you? Okay. Thank you. Okay, self permission. Number three, permission to love and accept yourself as you are. So this was a hard permission, but one that is very powerful and very hard for people to do because I really talk about in the shift Weight Mastery process. And in my membership this month sorry, last month we were working on body love and vulnerability and really, really loving ourselves as we are right now down the scale.

Rita Black: And as I talked about before, our, we are thrown to wanna run away from the pain [00:26:00] of being overweight, right? There’s a lot of pain, there’s a lot of self-criticism. There’s a lot of, this is not okay, and I’m not okay as I am. And so we spend a lot of time focusing on trying not to be fat or not to be overweight.

Rita Black: But we don’t tend to accept ourselves in our bodies as we are. And our body is the only thing you know. This is it. This isn’t the practice body. This is the body you have and you gotta give it some love and accept it regardless of its size or shape, or what your opinion of what beauty or what a, a sex and hot looking body is.

Rita Black: Because accepting your body as it is now will begin to connect you to yourself and accept yourself. Words and [00:27:00] all, and maybe, limiting habits and beliefs and all. So not just your body, but yourself, who you are, where you are right now in your journey. It will help you connect to yourself authentically and it’ll actually help you make for yourself.

Rita Black: You are worth fighting for. You are worth advocating for yourself. You are worth respecting. Cognitive studies have seen see, I know people are like if I love myself as I am, then I’m gonna be complacent. I’m not gonna care. I’m just gonna stay as I am. And ha as I am is not acceptable.

Rita Black: So I’m just not gonna do it. I’m gonna keep beating myself up and telling me this isn’t good enough. You’ve gotta do better and you’ve gotta lose that weight. And y with a really critical negative tone. But when we are compassionate and love ourself, actually cognitive studies have shown [00:28:00] that people are.

Rita Black: Much more compliant, much more willing to follow through on plans that they set for themselves. Isn’t that interesting? So if we’re just blindly losing weight in order to accept ourselves and love ourselves as that, then our version of ourselves we still don’t love ourselves and then we don’t know how to love ourselves even when we get the weight off, because all we’ve been doing is just trying to get thin, but not really creating a self-respecting res relationship with ourself or a way of living that allows us to live at our ideal weight.

Rita Black: We’ve been so focused on weight loss, but we’ve really never learned from the inside out how to be that person that we respect at our ideal weight. So what happens is we lose the weight. But then we get imposter syndrome. We don’t know who we are. It feels [00:29:00] weird. We’re scared. We don’t think we can keep the weight off.

Rita Black: And guess what? We start gaining the weight back and then hating ourselves, and then even deepening that self-hatred wound. So do me a favor for my birthday. Grant yourself permission to love the you here and now loving and caring for yourself. That beautiful you, him or her here and now. And you’ll see the whole new relationship forming with yourself.

Rita Black: Okay, you ready? So take that nice deep breath in. Bring in that permission to love and accept yourself as you are. I know it might be hard. Stretch through that feeling and blow out a few more candles on the cake. All right, now, we’re gonna move on to number four, and this is one that is a little interesting [00:30:00] and some of you, if this is hard for you to hear or it makes you feel triggered, then you may wanna move on to the next one.

Rita Black: I’m just telling you this upfront because the, this one is, number four is self permission to feel safe. And seen in our slimmer body to let go of the buffer. And so if you want to move on, if that triggers you in any way, it may not, so you can stay with me. But I just wanna let you know because sometimes weight is our buddy subconsciously, for a lot of us.

Rita Black: I know it was for me. There’s a number of ways that it’s our buddy. First of all, it makes us invisible in a way, or at least we feel like we’re hiding. Maybe we’re not, we’re certainly not hiding from ourselves. But I was so terribly shy. I was so shy. And I can be still, I know you might find that really [00:31:00] hard to believe, but I do have some social anxiety.

Rita Black: And I can feel awkward and weird. And insecure. But in the fourth grade it was paralyzing. And in fact in the fourth grade, my, I almost held back a year. Not because I didn’t excel in my studies, but because I hardly spoke in class and I hid, and that there were other things that contributed to me wanting to hide.

Rita Black: And weight became something that even though I hated it, there was a payoff. I was scared of attention from boys. I didn’t know what to do. Again, super awkward girl. Nerdy, weird, and weight took me off the shelf in a way. It allowed me to hide from others and also for myself, even though I didn’t hide very well. I’m gonna get. To more of that in a [00:32:00] moment. So how else is weight our buddy subconsciously? It acts as protection. Many of my clients had childhoods for whatever reason they felt unsafe or underwent some trauma or both and weight became a buffer or an armor.

Rita Black: And so for many when they release weight, major fear comes up feeling very vulnerable and small like they were when they were a child. And it is the thing, it’s important to understand now. And this does take a process. It doesn’t happen all the way right away, especially if you’ve had trauma or things that happened where you felt unsafe.

Rita Black: But there’s that little girl or little boy within you that is. Feeling that they’re still there, right then? They are still [00:33:00] there. But now you are the older adult. You are the adult who can love them, protect them, and you as an adult have boundaries and a voice. And here’s the thing, for me, I had to grant myself permission that I wasn’t that scared little fourth grade girl anymore.

Rita Black: I was still scared, but I had a voice and I could yearn, I could use it. And I did things that helped me feel more skilled. I took self defense. I took self-improvement classes. I took an improv class so I could talk more genuinely and off the cuff, and that was so scary. But I challenged myself.

Rita Black: I talked to that scared little girl inside of me and I said, Hey, I’ve got you and we can take care of ourselves. So if [00:34:00] that might be you might begin to ask yourself, how can I make that little child within me feel more safe as I let go of the buffer? And how do I create more powerful boundaries for myself?

Rita Black: And there are ways to do that, but you just have to start by asking yourself that question and acknowledging that there is some permission that needs to be granted to begin to do that. And then also wait acts as a procrastination tool. A lot of us say, Hey, when I get thin, that’s when I’m gonna travel the world, or when I’m gonna get into a relationship, or I’m going to ask for a better job, or go find a better job.

Rita Black: And then getting to our healthy ideal weight becomes so weighted with this I’m gonna have to do this thing. Maybe traveling the world is scary. Maybe getting in a relationship is really confronting, maybe [00:35:00] asking for a better job. So I always encourage people to give themselves permission to start living their lives Now.

Rita Black: Start engaging in those things now and stretching into that now so that you’re not giving, getting thin so much pressure. It’s challenging enough, to continue on your weight mastery journey. Why wait it with all these other expectations? That’s just too much. So here’s the main permission is to grant yourself permission to feel safe and seen within that lighter body.

Rita Black: Can you give yourself that permission or at least be open to the idea? Okay, come with me and let’s take that breath, bringing it in. It might feel a little scary, just be open to the idea and blow out a few more candles. Okay, now my numbers got a little wonky here. [00:36:00] So that was three. That was four.

Rita Black: Sorry, that was five. I renumbered these, so I’m, I’m just, and I’m reading them off obviously. Okay, so here’s a quick one. Permission to set realistic goals. I find that people wildly create huge unattainable goals and then meet themselves up because they don’t attain them. You, it, a lot of people, when they set their goals in the beginning of the shift set really too big of weight release goals.

Rita Black: And I get it again, we’re really thrown in this diet culture and and I’ve seen it over the years in my practice, people are like, exercise goals are, I’m gonna. Work out an hour and a half a day when they haven’t worked out in years or with food goals. I’m not ever going to eat sugar ever again.

Rita Black: Or, I’m going to eat, so much. I’m only [00:37:00] going to eat fruits and vegetables and lean proteins and like we, we set these goals that are really hard to start off with. One thing that I had to make my goals really doable ’cause I fell into the same trap. I, I wanna lose weight fast.

Rita Black: I wanted to think that I could work out, a ton and I wanted to be, super amazing and clean and my eating, but that wasn’t realistic and I had to be real about me and where I was and to set goals that were loving. And the more I made my goals doable, I was able to attain them.

Rita Black: And then it made me feel confident and that Cnce built and I set more goals. Attain those and it built more confidence and I set more guilt. So can you see how that builds upon itself? So can we just all grant ourselves permission really quick just to set doable goals? Alright. So take a nice deep breath in.

Rita Black: Doable goals and let that out. [00:38:00] Okay, that was an easy one. Okay. Number six, permission to make mistakes. ’cause I see this all the time too. I am a huge, I’m a Virgo people, I’m a perfectionist, but I have learned to let it go. And I am not that much of a perfectionist in some areas of my life. The ones that I probably need a little more perfection, but I have standards and a lot of us who struggle with weight have perfection, addiction and we do something right, and we get a dopamine hit.

Rita Black: And losing weight is like the prize. We play a game, it’s like a game. We play on our phone and we get this rush I’m on the diet perfectly and I’m losing weight. And it’s like playing a video game. And then we make a mistake and we lose and we have to go back and start over. You ever watch a teenager gaming and just getting up to the top level and then they lose and they kick [00:39:00] kicked out?

Rita Black: It’s not a pretty sight, right? It’s the same as getting on the scale and having it be up. It’s just oh no. And after having been doing so well and then we get off track and the alarms go off in our head and our head is like, failure. Failure hit eject and we hit eject, and then we just start all over again when we can be perfect.

Rita Black: Here’s the thing, and here’s permission to make mistakes and permission is really necessary here because you are not going to achieve long-term permanent weight management being perfect. You never are. You are have in the areas of your life where you have excelled. You have made mistakes and learned from your mistakes.

Rita Black: And how can you expect to have weight mastery if you don’t allow yourself to make mistakes and learn from them? There is absolutely no way you can do that. None. The brain learns from making mistake. Ai put in front of a chess game, didn’t know chess, set all it made mistake after mistake, and, but [00:40:00] very quickly it was, it had mastered the game, but you have to master the game by making mistakes.

Rita Black: That’s how AI learned. That’s how our brain learned. That’s how you attain weight mastery is allowing yourself to make the mistakes and not beating yourself up over the mistakes, but saying, aha, I made a mistake. Opportunity to learn. You wanna think use your brain like a computer and self correct.

Rita Black: Rather than starting the whole computer program over again. You are self correcting along the way, getting better and better just ai. When. My journey, things didn’t look so good, plateaus doing good, but then bad habits would come back that I had to retrain. I messed up. It was a mess. There was really a lot of messy mess messes on my journey of weight mastery.

Rita Black: A lot of the times it didn’t look good, and I hated that, but I also hated the [00:41:00] idea of not being on my journey. And I stretched through those moments knowing that I would get to the other side and I would feel better and I would’ve learned something. And if I hadn’t done that. I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Rita Black: So look messy. Learn to love the mess. Learn to stretch through that feeling of I gotta be perfect. No, you don’t. You, I want you to make mistakes. I want you to learn from them. Yay. When you make, when you get off track. Awesome. Because the key to long-term consistency is getting back on track and building that muscle of getting back on track.

Rita Black: It ain’t starting over. That is what happened. When I started allowing myself to learn from my mistakes, that’s when I got traction. That’s when I got the success. That’s when my weight mastery really began. Let’s do it. It may feel weird at first, perfectionist, but stretch through it.

Rita Black: Take that deep breath in, permission to make mistakes and let it go. [00:42:00] Okay, now. See this is where I’m not perfect. So now it’s number seven. Permission to prioritize self care. So how many of you really make yourself a priority? Alright, it’s crickets out there. I don’t hear very many of you at all.

Rita Black: If you said, no, I really feel for you. And if you said yes, come on. I doubt that you really make yourself a priority. And if you do, good for you. But we really find it hard. Our kids, our partners, our pets, our community group work, coworkers, we put their needs way before our own. And what, let me ask you, subconscious expectation drove that answer.

Rita Black: You know the answer to say yes, that you put your kids or your partner or your coworkers ahead of you. And better yet, who created the expectation? Because I bet it wasn’t you, it was your [00:43:00] mama or your society or your culture. It was like, oh no, A good person doesn’t let their children sit at home while you go and exercise.

Rita Black: A good person takes care of their children, is always there for them, right? We learned that putting ourselves first is selfish, and then we’re made to feel guilty when we have the guts to do it. Brene Brown those of you who know her, she’s the the woman who coined the term shame resistant, we wanna become guilt resistant. Guilt is one of the most fattening emotions come on, team, let’s get guilt resistant. Taking care of your physical and mental wellbeing is crucial for sustainable weight loss, and it requires you being an advocate for yourself inside your head. Listen to that part of you that says you shouldn’t exercise because that time should go to your kid.

Rita Black: Listen to the part of [00:44:00] you that makes you wanna make the unhealthier dinner because you know it will please your husband that he doesn’t want to eat healthy food. But does it really please you or listen to the part of your head that wants you to stay at work at lunchtime instead of taking a mental break at lunch?

Rita Black: Because when you don’t take that mental break, it causes you to overeat later. Face it. Ignoring yourself and taking care of other people first. Not only wears you down, but also makes you resentful, which by the way, folks, is the second most fattening emotion. Yep. Resentful your kids, your partner, your colleagues will be glad that you’re taking care of yourself first, because the quality of your attention when you do give them time, will be so much better and more authentic and loving.

Rita Black: This is a big ask, but I’m gonna ask you to put your needs at the top of the list and you will be glad you [00:45:00] did all right, everybody, take that nice deep, self permission breath in for that. Prioritizing self care and whew. Few more candles. I can see the smoke rising. Alright, number eight, permission to create your own functional and loving relationship with food.

Rita Black: All righty. So long-term permanent weight release isn’t about restriction or deprivation. We have to grant ourselves permission to create our own way of eating that works for us. And this can be scary and hard. We don’t trust ourselves. We don’t feel safe outside the boundaries of a food plan or a diet that somebody else has created, but we have to start creating a more flexible idea.

Rita Black: Of our life long path of feeding ourselves. You probably know a fair amount of what works for you and doesn’t. Right now you do. You have a [00:46:00] lot of knowledge in you because you’ve done a lot of diets and you’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. You’ve fed yourself a lot of times and you know what works and what doesn’t.

Rita Black: And a lot of our learning has to come from tuning into our bodies and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Not looking out our side of ourselves to some diet or diet plan or cutting out some macronutrient group. Our bodies are highly individual and we need to learn to feed them in a way that makes us feel nourished, stabilized, and aligned.

Rita Black: Everybody is different. There was a study in the National Weight Registry, which is a study of long-term permanent weight management. And the study showed that most people or a lot of the people who achieved long-term permanent weight mastery had done a number of diets in their lifetime.

Rita Black: And that their ultimate, like [00:47:00] long-term plan was cobbled together ideas of maybe some different plans that had worked for them, or they had been on one plan like Weight Watchers or Atkins or whatever. But then they had flexibly adjusted that plan and take taken ownership. Of that for themselves.

Rita Black: Does that make sense? So the point I’m making is there’s a lot of diets out there, and I’m sure you’ve been on a lot. You know a lot about what works for you and what doesn’t, what hooks you, what doesn’t. And so your long-term plan isn’t gonna look like a perfect diet outside of you that’s all neat and tidy.

Rita Black: It is gonna look like you creating a way of eating, a structure of eating times of eating, ways of feeding yourself. That honor you and it that takes some love, that takes some tuning in and that’s takes some self permission to grant yourself permission to say, I know enough now to start, figuring this out for myself.[00:48:00]

Rita Black: You don’t need to read another book. You don’t need to go on another plan. You probably have all the answers pretty much inside of you if you grant yourself permission to start to be an expert on you and feeding yourself. So just give yourself permission to trust that you can do this. Just take the baby steps knowing that the answer is within you and not outside of you.

Rita Black: Let’s just start here. So take a nice deep breath in and very good. Alright, so I am. Okay. Looking through here, and I apologize, I’ve got a few more permissions left and I have a feeling you guys are gonna get an extra permission. ‘Cause I said that was 8, 9, 10. Oh no, that’s, oh yeah, 10. I think we’re doing nine, but anyway, now we’re doing 10.

Rita Black: Okay. Yeah, there’s a bonus one. Okay. So [00:49:00] number nine is permission to be resilient, patient, stretch, flexible, and celebrate small victories. We rarely celebrate those small victories on our way of weight mastery. And way how we get resilient is by celebrating and looking at what’s going well for ourselves.

Rita Black: Our brain is negativity biased. And what that means is that we’re always on the alert for the next bad thing or scary thing or thing that is gonna put us in danger. So haven’t you ever noticed that you can’t wait to achieve something or experience something? And the moment that you do, the moment that you get the raise, or the moment that you win the award, or the moment that amazing thing happens, your mind immediately moves on to the next thing and worrying about something else.

Rita Black: You win the lotto and it’s oh shoot, I’m gonna have to pay taxes. [00:50:00] Oh, I wonder if my neighbor’s gonna find out and want money from me. There’s never that moment of really sitting and being present with. How amazing that thing is. We don’t stop and really celebrate or gives ourselves credit.

Rita Black: And now how does this take away from our weight mastery? You probably do a lot of things well, but you don’t look at that. You’re only looking at the negative stuff. In my membership meetings, we celebrate not just weight release, but all the little breakthroughs that go along the way on the ma weight journey, for instance, I ordered french fries and I just ate 10 and I didn’t even want anymore. Or I told my husband to start buying more vegetables and he did. And I got up and I wrote gratitude in my journal. So those little things along the way matter, but we don’t acknowledge them. And when we do, we start to build more confidence and trust in ourself.

Rita Black: Okay, are we gonna notice the small stuff along [00:51:00] the way and celebrate it? Because if we don’t we’re just gonna keep looking for that next negative thing and give up the next time we get off track and start over. Rather than going, what did I learn? Oh, but look at what I did well there and this is how learning happens.

Rita Black: So take that nice deep breath in. Self permission to notice the small victories and, okay. Last but not least, okay, permission. My friends to be a maverick to reject societal standards, both for your body image but also for your social group if they are unhealthy. You don’t have to live by anyone’s rules.

Rita Black: You are a leader if you grant yourself permission to be. And you know of all the permissions before this one. I hope that they all add up to this, that leading [00:52:00] yourself on this journey and opening the permission doors to your weight journey is a leadership journey. And when I say that. You are creating your life and you are creating your reality.

Rita Black: You are not the victim of your life, and you are not the victim of your weight, struggle, or reality. You are creating your weight mastery reality. You create it, it begins in your mind, and you are the maverick visualizing it first and living into it. You create your own norms of what is beautiful, what you want to have in your life, what you wanna have in your environment.

Rita Black: You give yourself permission to reject the narrow societal standards of beauty and recognize that everyone’s body is unique and you can challenge the unrealistic expectations set aside by media and the social pressures, by celebrating your diverse body size and [00:53:00] shape and your abilities. And you are also leading others around you into healthier lives because they’re gonna be inspired by you, especially if you take on that leadership role.

Rita Black: I had a client, a dear client who I was on a Zoom meeting with, and she was going away for the weekend and she was concerned that she her two friends were overeaters over drinkers. And she was like, Ugh, I feel like I’m gonna fall into that trap and I’m gonna have one of these weekends and I don’t really want to do it and I don’t wanna overindulge.

Rita Black: And we talked through it and this is somebody who has released a lot of weight and had a lot of experience. And I said to her, and it was a self permission moment where I said, you know what? They might really appreciate you leading them through a healthy weekend.

Rita Black: Who says you have to drink and eat? Because they do. Can’t you go into that situation and say, you know what would be a really [00:54:00] great, I would love it if we could be, make it a healthy weekend, but have a fun weekend as well. We don’t have to not drink, but maybe we’ll just have a little bit to drink.

Rita Black: But we can do these other fun things and we can make healthy meals. We can go to the farmer’s market, we can challenge ourselves, right? And she ended up doing it and having an amazing time. And actually her friends were really happy to have her do that. So we don’t have to settle for others’ beliefs about food or what they find acceptable to put in their bodies.

Rita Black: Be a powerful leader of yourself. Be a powerful leader of yourself, a maverick. Create the future you want to live in your mind. And then lean into it. Offensive versus defensive living. Okay. I hope this served you and that you had a breakthrough in the area of self permission. And I wanna thank you for blowing out all the, oh, wait a minute.

Rita Black: We didn’t do the breath for self [00:55:00] permission. Hold on just a minute. Okay. Last deep breath in taking in all those self permissions that we’ve taken in. One last deep breath in, and let’s finish blowing out the candles on the birthday cake.

Rita Black: Okay, friends, I hope this episode served you. And now come to think about it. I didn’t even have a 61st birthday cake this year. I just realized that. And oh my God, I was so attached to cake every single damn year of my life to think that I came. Turned 61 had a fabulous birthday but I didn’t have cake.

Rita Black: And I don’t even think I blew out a candle. I just blew out my own inner candles like we’ve been doing today. Yeah, there you go. Let’s see what 62 brings. But I wanna thank you for being in the thin thinking community. You are the frosting that tops my life with deep, rich sweetness. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here.

Rita Black: I [00:56:00] truly wish you a happy week. And remember that the key, and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it, and we will be back next week. Thanks for listening to the Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that episode go by way too fast for you?

Rita Black: If so, and do you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release? Head on over to www shift weight mastery.com. That’s www shift weight mastery.com, where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release tips, strategies, and more. And be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book from Fact to thin thinking.

Rita Black: Unlock your mind for permanent weight loss and to learn how to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an [00:57:00] episode.