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Rita Black: [00:00:00] Emotional eating during the holidays, anyone? If you are concerned with emotional eating or are already caught up in some, please come on in and get my best practices and mindsets for going through the holidays peacefully connected to yourself, and making the best choices for you. So grab that missile toe and leave the peppermint bark at the door.

Rita Black: And come on in.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a [00:01:00] clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process.

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

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.

Rita Black: Sound good? Let’s get started.

Rita Black: Hello? Hello? Hello. And come [00:02:00] on in. It’s nice inside here, but I’m gonna make a special request of you. Leave the peppermint bark at the door and get in here. Be and let me shut the door before the peppermint bark comes in behind you. Sorry peppermint bark. But that is a holiday trigger food you are for me and trigger foods.

Rita Black: Don’t come into my home. It’s just one of the things one of the ways I love myself through the holidays. So what is a trigger? Food? You may ask, you may know, but trigger foods. In my definition, and everybody has their own are foods that once that seal is broken on the bag, on the box on the whatever once you get a nibble or a taste that it.

Rita Black: It ignites that part of your brain [00:03:00] and one bite sip lick is not enough, and we continue to eat that thing in almost an automated fashion. We enjoy the first few bites, but then our brain goes into an overdrive eating mode until the bag is empty, until the box is empty, et cetera, until the peppermint bark container is empty.

Rita Black: It engages what I would call the carb zombie. And if you know me, you know the carb zombie too. We have this carb zombie in our brain and when we’re eating in a particular way, healthfully keeping stabilized, that carb zombie can stay dormant, but. Boy, those holiday trigger foods and trigger foods throughout the year can just wake up that zombie and it’s a quick slippery slope into overdrive.

Rita Black: Overeating, not your fault, it’s just what the brain will do because the brain has been wired in a particular way. [00:04:00] So anyway. I didn’t mean to dive into this episode so quickly, but just saying peppermint bark and pepper, candy canes and certain types of gingerbread and Hershey’s kisses and things like that.

Rita Black: You can just stay outside and I occasionally will, have a little bit outside my house, but inside, no thank you. We think those foods are fun, but that feeling of being bloated and out of control and missing holiday moments because we’re beating ourselves up or obsessing about food or saying, why did I eat that?

Rita Black: And that whole brain game isn’t, is keeping us from being present and enjoying, a lot of the joy of the holidays, not so fun. I am gonna love on you hard right from the start and just say, Hey, keep the trigger foods outside of your house, [00:05:00] preferably outside of your mouth as well.

Rita Black: And especially those big tea trigger foods. The ones that you eat, one bite, like I said, and you plow through the rest, the little trigg foods I would not invite in your house either, but those are maybe ones that you can have. Serving of outside your house and it, doesn’t do anything to your carb zombie that we’ll have our little tea and big tea trigger foods.

Rita Black: Okay, so sorry I came on very strong, but I had a feeling you might need some coaching and that’s why we are downloading some coaching on holiday emotional eating today because my powerful thin thinker friend, as our dear President Lincoln said, Abraham Lincoln said, give me six hours to chop down a tree.

Rita Black: And I will spend the first four hours sharpening the acts. Maybe you’ve heard that before, but I thought that was pretty clever of him to say, and very true to the holiday season. This podcast isn’t gonna be [00:06:00] four hours, but I wanna spend our time together today sharpening your mental acts so that you can be prepared because preparation.

Rita Black: Is key to success over the holidays. So let’s get prepared for the upcoming holiday, joy and stress with all the little tea and big tea foods thrown in there and covered up with candied pecans. Now before I dive in, we do have a holiday special going on and if you are tuning in, around the time that this is dropping and, this holiday special. You can check our show notes. Is my holiday hypnosis self based self-study program, the shift Weight mastery process, 30 day process. But it’s the self-study version. So you can sign up now, you get access for a year. You can begin it any time you like, and you can even repeat it a couple of times.

Rita Black: You have access to it for a year. And right now we are throwing in as a holiday special. [00:07:00] Our social eating, mastering social eating toolkit, which gets into managing holiday over drinking not just holiday, just social over drinking, overeating, food, saboteurs, how to prepare your mind like as you’re in your car.

Rita Black: We have even a car prep session. To that you can listen to, as you’re putting your makeup on or heading even over in the car to your friend’s house to get you prepared and ready for success. People love, love, love this program. It’s worth almost a couple hundred bucks it, we’re throwing it in there.

Rita Black: And you as well, you will get a free live shift in April. When we are beginning the shift weight mastery process live, or, twice a year launch you will get a free ticket to that. So there’s a lot thrown in there for a very low price. Go gift yourself the holiday. Gift that we’ll keep on giving keep you in a powerful mindset of long-term permanent weight mastery, give you the [00:08:00] skills that you need so you never have to start over on January again.

Rita Black: Now let’s get into the healthy holiday spirit with some emotional eating strategies. I have been managing my weight, as I mentioned earlier. For a, taking off 40 pounds for 30 years, and that is a lot of holidays. My long-term permanent weight mastery is now a middle aged child. So let’s just get clear on what emotional eating is.

Rita Black: And ’cause it’s just a, we say, oh, I’m an emotional eater. I eat over my emotions. But I’m gonna break that down a little more. What emotional eating is a habitual response set in a pattern. Okay. So most of what we do is set in patterns. If you notice most of our life is a series of patterns and most of the things that are [00:09:00] habits at least are pattern.

Rita Black: And a lot of our. Life is in trance. I, we spend a lot of our time just doing things over and over again without having to think about it so much that’s why our mindfulness work is so important to really be present in our lives because we get hijacked by these habitual responses. So it’s emotional eating is actually habitual response set and a pattern, and it starts with a reaction to thoughts that create feelings.

Rita Black: So most feelings are created by thoughts that go on. So the thoughts proceed. The feeling and then the impulse to numb the feeling with food. So we start with the thought that goes to the feeling, and then which, that which brings up the impulse to numb the feelings with food to protect ourselves. And then once we eat the food to numb ourselves or to fill the, pleasure or to primarily to numb ourselves or to push the feeling down then comes.

Rita Black: Another set of feelings, which is remorse guilt, [00:10:00] self-critical, thinking, why do you do that? Why that was stupid. We didn’t need to do that. Following that binge or that overeating. And then typically what will happen at that point is we’ll let ourselves off the hook emotionally by saying, okay, we’ll just be good tomorrow.

Rita Black: We’ll start over tomorrow because then all of a sudden that takes us out of that bad feeling phase and whatever we were thinking about originally that occurred with the original feeling whatever we were thinking about, oh, I’m mad at my husband now I have this feeling. Now we’re all of a sudden mad at ourselves.

Rita Black: But it’s safer than being mad at other people or having those other feelings, right? So it’s a little dance we do, and then we’ll start over again tomorrow, let ourselves off the hook and we’ll be back in control, because tomorrow we’re gonna be perfect, right? So there’s this whole little. Dance around it.

Rita Black: So we wanna what my thought is, and I hope you agree with me, is let’s just avoid that altogether. So let’s set ourselves up for [00:11:00] success. We can do a whole other episode in the new year about. Emotional eating, but I, and we are, and I’m gonna go through a little bit of that, but I really wanna prevent emotional eating because, so there’s emotional eating and that’s pattern, that pattern that I just mentioned.

Rita Black: Now, how do holidays play a role? So we have emotional eating now how do holidays? Play a role in this. Obviously there is more stress around the holidays, even though we think of the holidays as a happy time, there’s so much more stress. Me as a mom and a business owner, I’m getting stuff for my people who help me out.

Rita Black: I’m. Getting stuff for my kids. My kids are more complicated these days to get things for, and they’re a heck of a lot more expensive. Oh my God. And then there’s the relatives and then the damn, pictures, you gotta take that picture and make it into a card and put it in at the, oh my God.

Rita Black: And then I’m running a business and I’m seeing clients and I trying to be a decent human being. It’s what? [00:12:00] And I bet you’re exactly the same as me. So it’s more stressful, even though I love it. It’s stressful and there’s less structure, at least around those couple of weeks where we’re all hanging out and the world seems to shut down, which is nice, but there’s no structure toward our days, which then leads to more.

Rita Black: Chaos, which leads to then more eating. We’re way more tired. We’re staying up later. Maybe we’re drinking more. We’re, it’s just like our bodies are getting run down. A lot of us are traveling, maybe catching colds on planes traveling to different time zones. So we’re more tired that way. And then let’s face it.

Rita Black: Being with our family is wonderful, but they all trigger us, right? They, it’s a big trigger madness, right? Oh, hi everybody. We’re home for the holidays. Oh God, oh man, I forgot how they pissed me off, my what do they say [00:13:00] after three days? People start to, the people are like fish.

Rita Black: They begin to smell. I think around the holidays it’s a two day smell period. Or we’re not around people and we’re lonely, and I definitely remember holidays where I was alone. I remember when I lived in New York City and I didn’t go home some holidays ’cause I couldn’t afford to go home and or my parents even couldn’t afford to send me home.

Rita Black: And I worked, I took advantage of the fact that I could. Cater or I used to have a job where I would go to people’s homes and cook for them and like on Christmas and stuff like that, I was like a, it was, I was a caterer, but I was like a cook. I’d go in and make the Turkey and do the stuff and then serve them Butler style around the table.

Rita Black: And this was while I was going to college. And this was, also in the years after college and when I was trying to pay for college and, yeah. And I remember being so alone without my family and my friends had all gone home for the holidays. So that was a really lonely time. [00:14:00] And so I really feel for people who might, be on their own.

Rita Black: It was a great time too. I love being by myself. I don’t get me wrong, but it was just that we couldn’t be with those that we loved. More. And then the other thing is that’s way more trigger foods with emotional and sentimental attachments, right? So the smells of the cinnamon and the, all the stuff that we associate with our childhood and those, all those memories come flooding back because our smell is our keenest memory trigger, right?

Rita Black: So the smells of the holidays. Bring back so many memories and then we eat the food as a way to access the memory. Isn’t that crazy? But that becomes a big deal. So here we have this emotional pattern, this emotional eating pattern plus. The holidays makes us way more vulnerable. So what we really wanna do is really look at prevention as the first tool, because I [00:15:00] think we think I’ve just gotta be stronger in the moment when I’m feeling that feeling.

Rita Black: Yes. Ultimately it’s not about being stronger in the moment, it’s about learning to manage your thoughts that create the feelings. And that’s, like I said, a whole nother podcast, but we’ll talk about that in a moment a little bit. But the. Best, best thing you can do is prevent getting to that place in the first place, or being prepared for that moment if it comes.

Rita Black: Okay. So there are two things that I’m gonna suggest that we do over the holidays that I think will make a huge difference in your staying away from emotional eating. One is to create a holiday self-care structure, and two is to just employ some. Emotional prevention, emotional eating prevention tools.

Rita Black: So let’s talk about the self-care structure. So I, those of you who know me and work with me, I’m all about the morning [00:16:00] meditation or think through because why is that so important? Because most of our willpower by five o’clock is drained and that think through session creates way more resilience.

Rita Black: In your day. So as you go through your holidays, and this is, I, listen, now, hear me later. I’m talking every day of the holiday. You start with mindfulness in the morning thinking you’re that. Particular day through who you’re gonna see what’s gonna happen. And you can do this in a number of ways.

Rita Black: You could just lay there in bed and do a meditation and think the day through just mentally. You could journal this out and think it through that way, but what you’re doing is having a little pow wow with yourself. I call it your inner coach. You and your inner coach are sitting there going, let’s have a strategy session for today.

Rita Black: That strategy is self-care and taking care of ourselves for the day. So that’s number one part of your self-care structure. [00:17:00] And in that time you’re thinking through the healthy meals, you’re gonna have brain breaks what I call brain breaks every couple of hours, making sure you get.

Rita Black: Decompress yourself because our brains get way overstimulated, especially this time of year and that we reach for food to calm down the stimulation when really what we need is to maybe sit down and close our eyes or go and lay on a bed or go for a walk. We really don’t need to. To decompress with food, but that’s often what we do.

Rita Black: So the more you create I would suggest create a list of five brain breaks that you can do. So you can just, oh, when you’re feeling a little stimulated, go engage in a brain break instead. Make sure you’re exercising. Try to exercise one day, and again, not even for weight management, but for stress management.

Rita Black: Move your body in my monthly mastery group from the 15th of December to January 2nd of every year. We have a exercise challenge. For this reason. We just, every day we [00:18:00] commit to getting out and moving our body, whether it’s walking or even, dancing around the kitchen. That’s, what we are committing to.

Rita Black: So maybe you can commit to that as well and really think about. The end of your day. In the beginning, Stephen Covey, the guy who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He said, begin with the end in mind and the end is getting into bed tonight. Feeling light, feeling lean, feeling like you really took care of yourself, made healthy choices, moved your body every morning think about the night and think about how am I gonna get to that light healthy me tonight? And then put those that into play. Then, so that’s the morning session. And then try to take a mid-morning break, like I said, to have that brain break. Maybe go for a walk, have another afternoon break.

Rita Black: We’re very vulnerable. Very vulnerable in the afternoon because we’re beginning our resilience is getting worn down. Our willpower is beginning to get wor worn down. This is a big time where a lot of people start to overeat. So really have a [00:19:00] plan, like an escape hatch. Oh, maybe I’m gonna.

Rita Black: Get away from the family and go drive and just drive and listen to music and decompress a little. Or I’m gonna go get a cup of coffee and write in my journal. Just have a mind refresh for yourself. The other thing is to walk after dinner. When you walk after a meal, it really lowers the blood sugar impact of that meal right after the meal.

Rita Black: So your muscles are pulling the glucose I believe in. To using them. So it takes it out of your bloodstream and it’s it’s very healthy. This is what they’re associating with. Longevity is taking a walk after dinner. A lot of cultures that walk after dinner or the longevity cultures, the blue zones that is something that’s really critical.

Rita Black: And then, ha, have an evening self-care treat. This is something I love to do. Take a hot bath, have a cup. Cup of hot tea, like a peppermint tea or a [00:20:00] hot cinnamon spice tea and journal or meditate or listen to holiday music or reach out to family via zoom or call them. This is this you’re really coming back to yourself.

Rita Black: You’re coming back to home in the evening. So this is what I would call your holiday self-care structure. And I would say try to do this every day if you can. Especially once you’re, we’re into those two critical weeks around the holidays, but, try to do it ahead of time if you can as well.

Rita Black: It will go a long way to prevent that emotional eating because what you’re doing is really connecting with yourself so much. It gives you the chance to tune into the feelings and process them instead of having to eat over them. Let’s talk now about emotional eating prevention. So one of the things that you can do, and easier said than done, I get it.

Rita Black: But remove that trigger food or the trigger foods from your environment and replace them with healthy treats. Okay? So again, [00:21:00] we fall victim to all of that Hollywood Gak, Hollywood g.

Rita Black: We fall victim to all of that holiday g that comes into our house unwittingly, right? Where people bring us stuff. Our children bring stuff from school, our husbands bring stuff, we get stuff at the office or sent to us by, auntie Bonnie her special fudge, and and all of it just sits out on the counter.

Rita Black: So I get it. Maybe the kids want it or your husband wants it, or. Whatever. If you’re on your own, just get rid of it. But if there’s other people say, I’m gonna put all the holiday food in this place that you don’t have to look at and get rid of any super trigger foods, because even if it’s hidden, you know it’s there.

Rita Black: So if you’re like a. Peppermint bark person, then get it the hell out of your house. Why would you have it there? Tempting you and taking up your brain space. Just get it the heck out of your house and tell your kids [00:22:00] that you’ll take them out and they, and buy them peppermint bark. They can have it outside of the house, but we don’t wanna have it inside the house and check.

Rita Black: In with your feelings as your feelings begin. Okay, so remove the trigger foods and then start checking. Just get in the habit of checking in with your feelings as they begin. And when you start to feel below the line feelings, anxiety, stress, mad, mad resentment vulnerability, sadness, when you’re starting to feel those, immediately go, what are the thoughts that are creating this feeling?

Rita Black: And because what will happen, you might not have that answer right away, but you get in the habit of your brain will come up with the answer. So you can go, oh, okay, I’m feeling sad about my mom. It’s the holidays. Oh, I need some nurturing. So you start to be able to pull yourself back into yourself and care for yourself rather than allowing that.

Rita Black: Feeling just to ruminate within you, and then all of a sudden having to [00:23:00] eat over it. Start to get curious about the feelings and the thoughts that create the feelings and maybe say, oh, yeah, and turn those thoughts around if you can. There’s a saying, am I halt? Am I hungry? Halt. HALT Hungry.

Rita Black: Angry, lonely, tired. Beware of all of those things. Make sure that you’re never too hungry. That’s a big thing I see with a lot of people in the wait space is that, especially over the holidays, literally forget to eat until it’s too late. Then you sit down to you go out to restaurant with friends, or you’re sitting down at the end of the day, or you come home and you’re so hungry.

Rita Black: Then you’re sh. Scarfing food down when if you had stopped and eaten something, maybe just some quality protein a few hours before, you wouldn’t have. Done that. So really keep yourself fed with quality food, nourishing food, not gki food. And if you get angry, if you get lonely and if you get [00:24:00] fatigued, definitely rest.

Rita Black: You wanna keep yourself rested. But if you’re getting angry and lonely manage, start to manage those feelings and thoughts. What we really wanna start doing for this and for weight management in general, is start to change our inner communication instead of being self-critical. Because a lot of feelings and emotions start with that critic, right?

Rita Black: You’re not doing it right. You should be doing more. Oh, they didn’t like what you did, and the rebel, oh you blew it. They’re all eating that. We might as well eat it too. You wanna listen to those voices and start to, to recognize them so that you have some power over them.

Rita Black: And then you wanna start to tune into a more nurturing inner voice. And this voice is curious. This voice is are we going to eat over this feeling like we’re feeling a little sad? Are we going to eat over this? ’cause if we are, let’s take care of this feeling. Let’s have the feeling, let’s process the feeling.

Rita Black: Let’s allow, and to move through. And my key thing, I [00:25:00] think my key piece of advice for you is to really flex that forgiveness muscle, either forgiving others or forgiving yourself. We get a lot of we get, it’s easy to get into resentment, envy. And generally disappointment and pissed offness about, there’s a lot of expectations flying around during the holidays.

Rita Black: Expectations of who you need to be in order to be accepted and loved. What you need to buy, what you expect others to get for you. What holiday behavior. What are the gifts? Then we have expectations, and then we have budgets, right? We’re worried about money. It’s tight this year, so there’s so much going on.

Rita Black: So if we’re going to eat over it, we wanna start to forgive people, not for them, but for ourselves, right? We wanna say, okay, I’m just gonna let it go. My husband didn’t buy me what I wanted, but I’m gonna forgive him. I’m gonna love him. I’m gonna choose to love [00:26:00] him because I love myself and forgive him.

Rita Black: I love myself. And then also really forgive yourself, right? Like you might not be living up to expectations, weird expectations you have in your mind about who you need to be in order for others to accept you. There’s a lot of fricking weird holiday expectations out there, aren’t there? And I don’t know where they come from because they came from.

Rita Black: Not my not our generation, but probably our mom’s generation, our grandmother’s generation. There’s so many traditions, and I’m all for traditions. I love traditions. But when traditions own you, instead of you owning them, that’s the time to start to question them. My daughter’s very into tradition.

Rita Black: Oh, we’re gonna do this year and this, we’re gonna, and I’m like. Okay, let’s pare that down. Okay. Love tradition. I love you. We are not making, what is it? We are not making soap this year. Okay. We did that every year when they were kids. It was [00:27:00] super fun. But I say I have a closet full of soap.

Rita Black: We’ve made, we have not used the soap, so let’s let the soap go this year, shall we? That list of a hundred people you wanna send holiday cards to? Okay. Do they really need to hear from you? Maybe there’s 10 people that, or 20 people that you really love that you really wanna sit down and write a meaningful blurb on your holiday card, ship it off.

Rita Black: Do these, you know what I call outer tier friends and people really need to hear from you. It might be nice, but maybe not. You don’t really, maybe you don’t need to let everybody know. Happy Holidays. Maybe you can send a. A prayer out or a vision out for everybody in the world wishing the world peace.

Rita Black: And that can include all those external tear friends, be good to yourself and start to look at those expectations that are driving the anxiety and ask yourself, do I really need to do this? Whose expectation is this? [00:28:00] Anyway, is this my mom’s? Is this my grandmother’s? Is this American, or whatever culture you’re in, is this our culture?

Rita Black: Is that, driving this feeling within me that isn’t even my own. Start to poke holes in those expectations and you’ll calm right down. So forgive and look at those expectations and start to really question them and start to say, do I really need. To do all this because if I don’t, I think you would really, I know for me, staying mindful through the holidays rather than being pulled, left and center by a bunch of expectations that I don’t really even own anymore.

Rita Black: It seems extraneous. It seems what brings me joy isn’t running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But. It’s really sitting and connecting with people and being mindful. So think about creating more time for that, or [00:29:00] creating time for even being with yourself and thinking about this upcoming year and thinking about the past year and what went well and what worked, what didn’t, and how, things like that are.

Rita Black: So great at the end of the year, but a lot of our running around and trying to find the fruity little things for who this person and that person and when so many people, there’s so much waste anyway, they just start to question like, what is driving that anxiety not in your belly?

Rita Black: Start to and driving the eating that is in response to that and start to question those expectations. And I’m not saying to throw everything out the window, I’m just saying to make them your own and maybe make them kinder and more realistic and more mindful. Another thing would be to reach out to others and to create a healthy holiday group.

Rita Black: There are a lot of people in my community my membership who have created their own little buddy systems and [00:30:00] then. Our, in our membership, like I said, we’re in touch every day because we’re doing this challenge. Find people that you c can connect with and just maybe text each other what are you doing to, are you exercising today?

Rita Black: Are you making healthy choices? Or you call them and here’s something that may seem obvious, but I can’t tell you how many people d. Do not pay attention to this. But do not bake or shop when you’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. It’s just asking for a disaster to happen. Just really just don’t, if you do anything this holiday to avoid emotional eating.

Rita Black: Do not bake or shop when you’re hungry. Angry, lonely, or tired. Okay, just promise me that. And another thing that you can do is practice 5, 5, 5 breathing. A lot of you probably know what that is, and some of you don’t. So let me explain what it is. 5, 5, 5. Breathing is a technique that you take a five, you count for five.

Rita Black: Breathing in, you hold for five. [00:31:00] Four or five, and then you exhale at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You don’t count, but you count internally. And what that does is, one, it forces your brain to count. So it takes it away from whatever thoughts it’s, obsessing about. But you’re also that, that deep breath in hold and exhale, massages your central nervous system and it really does calm you down.

Rita Black: It really, it can be great when you’re trying to go to sleep at night if you’re over strung out. It can be great if you’re having a bit of a panic attack or you’re overwhelmed or somebody’s pissed you off. Do 5, 5, 5 breathing. Often and regularly you’ll love it and you’ll wish that you had always done it.

Rita Black: So if you are tempted. Buy something, if you really have this, oh God, I’ve gotta eat that thing. Think it through. I’m not saying to avoid every single holiday treat. We want to enjoy the holidays, but we wanna be mindful about it. So think through. How [00:32:00] will eating this thing make you feel an hour from now?

Rita Black: Like right now it seems like a really good idea, but it, and you can say to that part of you who wants to eat it, which is the reward center, I’ve gotta eat that thing. I’ve gotta eat that thing. I’ve gotta eat that thing. Say, okay, we could have that, but let’s think this through. How is eating that thing gonna make me feel an hour from now?

Rita Black: And really feel it like what’s that gonna feel like and what’s that gonna feel three hours from now? You probably have enough of a memory, a visceral memory of how overeating something gki and crappy feels in your body. And what this is doing is leveraging your dopamine from excitement to I want that thing.

Rita Black: And impulsive excitement to, oh yeah, that’s not such a good idea. That doesn’t feel good. So you’re really. Re-empowering yourself in that moment by really it’s called thinking it through, bringing your brain and re changing the focus from that impulsive moment. Must have it now to the long game.

Rita Black: And really [00:33:00] honoring the you three hours from now and asking how’s that gonna feel if I don’t eat this thing three hours from now? And I feel healthy and light and really happy that I stood up for myself in that moment. Advocate for yourself for that part of you that is the reward center and is I don’t wanna call it dumb, but it’s very impulsive.

Rita Black: And breathe through the feeling. What I mean by that is often a feeling like anger or sadness or anxiety. Underneath that feeling, that’s the umbrella feeling. There are there’s a multitude of smaller micro feelings underneath that, like under sadness. Might be vulnerable, regret guilt.

Rita Black: Tender heartedness bittersweetness resentment. Okay. And the more you get curious about the feelings under the feelings it starts to interestingly break up the feelings a bit and then open your heart for all those feelings to exist. It’s crazy. I know you’re like, but that’s so many [00:34:00] feelings.

Rita Black: Yeah. But if you open your heart and this. Sounds California woowoo, but it’s not. You open your heart and you’re like, okay, tenderness and vulnerability and bittersweetness and resentment and sadness. I’m gonna open my heart and let you be here for a moment. Like just be here and breathe through it and be with yourself in that moment and allow those feelings to exist.

Rita Black: You’re gonna find that feelings come and grow. They like a wave. They crest. And they fall away and that you sat through them. It’s, I call it crossing the bridge. You’re crossing the bridge with those feelings. You get to the other side of the bridge. You own that moment. You own that. You sat through that feeling and didn’t eat over it.

Rita Black: It’s such a great empowered feeling. So give your gift yourself the gift of breathing through your. Feelings and getting really curious underneath the lifting the lid of that generalized, I’m mad, I’m sad, I’m happy. And get all the feelings [00:35:00] and emotions and then open up your heart to let them all exist.

Rita Black: And you’ll see that they’ll pass through. And you’ll get enlightened like by getting, oh wow. I’m vulnerable. Oh, wow. Yeah. There’s a little bittersweetness to this too. And there’s Oh, and there’s anger under my sadness. And there’s some guilt. It’s so cool. I love it. I hope you do too. Okay, so that’s what to do if you’re tempted.

Rita Black: Now, what if you emotionally eat? What if you do emotionally eat? Okay first thing is honor yourself. If you’ve gotta emotionally eat, sit down, and enjoy it. Don’t. Binge standing at the counter mindlessly and not even enjoying it. I can’t tell you how many times I gained weight and I got on the scale and I was up 10 pounds or whatever I was up and I’d be like, damn it.

Rita Black: I didn’t even enjoy gaining that weight and that. [00:36:00] Was the saddest thing in the world, right? If you’re gonna gain weight, if you’re gonna overeat, be mindful, enjoy, own it. Respect yourself. You know what I mean? And just say, I have to emotionally eat right now. I’m gonna sit down and I’m gonna do that, and maybe do some damage control.

Rita Black: Maybe you don’t need to eat a big thing of cake or. Fruit cake or whatever the thing is. Maybe you’re like I need to emotionally eat, I need to eat something. I need a cramp, but maybe I can have something healthy and emotionally eat that. I’ve done that many times and it works a charm, sometimes I get it.

Rita Black: You gotta eat the whatever, the cake or whatever you have, but give yourself permission to eat. And have a conversation with yourself while you’re doing it, and a really lovely conversation. I don’t mean or snarky. I really see you need to eat over this feeling, like you’re sitting there eating and that other [00:37:00] sort of coach light part of you is ah, got it.

Rita Black: You gotta really eat right now over this anger. Okay. Got it. Okay. And then, and get curious. Say okay. So how is that working for you? And I don’t mean in a snarky way, I just mean genuinely is that working, is eating? And it might, the answer might be, yep, it’s working. Or it might be like, yeah, no, it’s not really working.

Rita Black: It’s not really doing what I thought. Okay yep, it’s working. Oh, okay. Cool. How much more do you think you need to eat for it to really be the thing to work for you? And listen for the response or, you know how much or if it’s not working out for you, oh okay, got it. It’s not really working out, so how much more do you need to eat to, be done, like just to be beef done with eating, and maybe we need to move on to something else.

Rita Black: And you’ll be surprised at how being present to yourself and really hearing that part of you that’s acting out, that childlike part that’s I need to eat over this. I need to eat over this. I need to numb myself. When you pay [00:38:00] attention to it and go, I hear you. You’re feeling sad, food is the only thing that’s gonna take care of this right now.

Rita Black: When you give yourself that space. There’s a part of you that calms right down and feels heard. And often, I’m not saying all the time, but often it’s easy to say, yeah, I just need three more Oreos, and then I’ll be done. And you curtail a, a big, huge binge just by recognizing and getting present to the fact like, is this really helping me right now?

Rita Black: Because the unconscious subconscious part of you the primitive view is eating. Because it thinks it needs to do to survive when you start to calm down and meet yourself. See, when we’re acting out when we’re acting out, when we’re stressed, the, our conscious brain sort of shuts off for a moment and we’re just impulsively doing stuff but if we [00:39:00] take a breath.

Rita Black: As we start to eat and calm down ’cause we start to calm down when we begin eating an interesting opening happens for you to have a conscious relationship with yourself and to say, okay, I see you, we’re needing eat. Because usually what we’ll do is oh my God, I’m overeating.

Rita Black: We’ll get mad at ourselves. And and then we’ll just say I might as well just keep eating and I’ve blown it. And we’ll just eat a ton and. Numb ourselves completely out, feel horrible and awful, and start again tomorrow. But if we mute ourselves in the moment, really tenderly with a lot of respect and go, I get it, you had to eat.

Rita Black: Okay, fine. Is that working for you? How much do you need to eat? How much more do you need to eat? Often we calm right down. And then so when you do that. Please don’t judge yourself. Be compassionate and forgiving. I know we think if we do that, we’re gonna just keep overeating, but no, it’s really quite the opposite.

Rita Black: And don’t start over please. If you have to overeat, do it. [00:40:00] But don’t go, and I’m gonna start over tomorrow, so I’m gonna eat a ton more. No, don’t do that. Just you’re better than that. And let’s break that one habit. If we break that it’s a world of difference for everything, for your weight management.

Rita Black: And another thing you could do is go for a walk if you can. If it’s not the middle of the night, get up and go for a walk. Move your body after you be binge or. Overeat or stress eat or emotionally eat because that just gives you some time to connect your head with your body and then later think it through.

Rita Black: And not in the moment, you’re not gonna learn the lesson in the moment, but after the episode is over and you’ve moved on, say, wow, overeating those Oreos last night, they, it really didn’t work for me. I was feeling sad. It seemed like in the moment that was the only thing.

Rita Black: But what, what could I learn? What? Next time I’m feeling that sadness. How, what could I do that would’ve really taken care of me in that moment and learn that lesson? You’ll come up with some ideas that are not about eating, and [00:41:00] this is how we really begin to heal ourselves, right?

Rita Black: We begin to truly find solutions and come up with true. Ways of taking care of ourselves rather than going to the food in these moments. And what a holiday gift that would be for you to just really create some solutions and to prevent the holiday eating in the first place. If you have one gift for yourself, I know for me I used to overeat stress, eat the holidays for me was just like a food fog that I really didn’t really appreciate my.

Rita Black: All the beauty and mystery and spirit of the season, which there’s so much of that going on amongst all the other craziness, of course. When we slowed down, when we really. Have that inner communication with ourselves, respect ourselves then we get access to that true holiday.

Rita Black: And [00:42:00] it just is, becomes so much more magical. And that’s what I wish for you. My friends, I hope our episode today served you. I wish you and your loved ones. A happy, healthy, emotional eating free holiday coming up. I am really grateful for you and the time we have spent together this year.

Rita Black: And if you are a new friend, I am, I’m looking forward to getting to know you better. And to spend more time with you here in the Thin Thinking Podcast in the upcoming year. So have a great week and remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you.

Rita Black: So keep listening and find it happy. Happy holidays. I will see you here. Next week. Thanks for listening to the Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that [00:43:00] episode go by way too fast for you? If so, and you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www shift weight mastery.com.

Rita Black: 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 Fat to Thin Thinking. Unlock your mind for permanent weight loss and to learn how to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode.