[00:00:00] Rita Black: You know the pattern. You do pretty well during the day. Breakfast, fine. Lunch, reasonable.

[00:00:08] Rita Black: Maybe you even have a moment around 3:00 where you think, “Look at me, I’m being so masterful today.” And then the sun starts going down.

[00:00:19] Rita Black: Suddenly, the kitchen starts whispering your name.

[00:00:22] Rita Black: The crackers get chatty, the leftover something or others develops a personality, and before you know it, you’re standing in the pantry thinking, “How did I get here again?”

[00:00:35] Rita Black: If that sounds familiar, you are so not alone.

[00:00:38] Rita Black: Fact, night eating is one of the most common struggles I hear about from my clients and students.

[00:00:44] Rita Black: So today, we are beginning a special two-part series on night eating.

[00:00:50] Rita Black: In this first episode, we are gonna look at why night eating happens, and not from a shamey, just have more willpower place.

[00:00:57] Rita Black: We are gonna look at the real [00:01:00] reasons evening eating can feel so powerful; exhaustion, stress, emotional depletion, habit loops, reward patterns, and the way your brain has learned to associate nighttime with relief.

[00:01:13] Rita Black: Then in part two, we’ll go deeper into how to begin creating a new evening rhythm, one that helps you feel relaxed, cared for, and in the driver’s seat without needing to snack your way to bedtime.

[00:01:26] Rita Black: The goal is to understand your brain, work with yourself instead of against yourself, and begin creating a night that actually restores you.

[00:01:35] Rita Black: So if your cravings tend to go up when the sun goes down, come on in. This episode is for you.

[00:01:49] 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 [00:02:00] mental.

[00:02:01] Rita Black: That’s right, the key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there. I’m Rita Black.

[00:02:09] Rita Black: I’m a clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, best-selling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery process.

[00:02:17] 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.

[00:02:30] Rita Black: And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis.

[00:02:37] Rita Black: Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years.

[00:02:43] Rita Black: Enter the Thin Thinking podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling.

[00:02:51] Rita Black: 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, [00:03:00] but to stay there long-term and live your best life.

[00:03:04] Rita Black: Sound good? Let’s get started.

[00:03:07] Rita Black: Hello, hello, hello, hello. Come on in, sit down, and get cozy and snuggly.

[00:03:13] Rita Black: And yes, today we are having a little slumber party.

[00:03:18] Rita Black: Well, not exactly a slumber party, more like a heading into slumber beautifully party, because we are talking about how to break the night eating cycle.

[00:03:29] Rita Black: And if night eating is something you struggle with, you’re not alone.

[00:03:33] Rita Black: In fact, I hear about night eating a lot from those of you in the Thin Thinking community.

[00:03:39] Rita Black: And so today, I’m bringing back a two-part series I created a couple of years ago on breaking the night eating cycle, and I poured my little heart and soul into these episodes, and they are very popular, which tells me this is something we need to talk about again and again.

[00:03:58] Rita Black: Because breaking the night [00:04:00] eating cycle is not just about having more willpower, it’s not about being better or being good or finally forcing yourself to behave at night, it’s really about going deeper.

[00:04:10] Rita Black: It’s about figuring yourself out, understanding what your brain is actually looking for in the evening,

[00:04:16] Rita Black: looking at what you truly want from your nights, not just what you don’t want,

[00:04:22] Rita Black: and then gently but powerfully beginning to shift the old patterns that simply don’t serve you anymore.

[00:04:30] Rita Black: And I say this as a former night snacker, and yes, sometimes a night binger myself.

[00:04:36] Rita Black: Finding my way out of that pattern became an incredible opportunity to build a more loving, supportive, and masterful relationship with myself.

[00:04:45] Rita Black: So I am very excited to share this with you.

[00:04:48] Rita Black: And before we dive in, I also wanna give you a present just for being you and for being a fabulous member of our Thin Thinking community.

[00:04:57] Rita Black: I have a free five-part [00:05:00] miniseries with hypnosis and coaching to help you begin breaking the night eating habit.

[00:05:05] Rita Black: The link is in the show notes, or you can go to www.shiftweightmastery.com/night.

[00:05:13] Rita Black: That’s www.shiftweightmastery.com/night and just sign up- And the series will begin coming to you.

[00:05:24] Rita Black: Pop your name in, your email, and it will end up in your inbox and absolutely free.

[00:05:32] Rita Black: All right, my friend, now let’s dive into part one of the night.

[00:05:37] Rita Black: So, I have a saying, and that saying is, if we all went to bed at 5:00, we would all be thin.

[00:05:48] Rita Black: So why do we struggle? Why do we do it?

[00:05:52] Rita Black: Well, first of all, I want to assure you, because a lot of people have a lot of guilt and shame around their night eating, that [00:06:00] really a lot of it is not your fault.

[00:06:05] Rita Black: I bet you think it is. I think you…

[00:06:07] Rita Black: I bet you think you don’t have the discipline, that you should just suck it up and stop eating, that you just should overcome this problem and what’s wrong with you because I hear that all the time.

[00:06:19] Rita Black: But I want to assure you that, and by talking about it, just to let you know that this is something that is very widespread, and we’re gonna dive in today about why.

[00:06:29] Rita Black: Why? Why is the eating at night such a struggle for so many people?

[00:06:36] Rita Black: Well, the truth of the matter is we are fighting against a lot of powerful forces.

[00:06:42] Rita Black: So I want you to know that the answers to your night eating challenges or dilemmas isn’t about fixing you.

[00:06:51] Rita Black: There’s nothing wrong with you. But it’s a combination of things.

[00:06:56] Rita Black: It’s really learning to work with yourself, to respect yourself and love [00:07:00] yourself and know, hey, I can figure this out.

[00:07:02] Rita Black: It is figureoutable.

[00:07:05] Rita Black: But also, to understand that there are a lot of layers to this, but once you start to understand what it’s all about, then you can start to address it.

[00:07:15] Rita Black: So today’s episode, I wanna do two things.

[00:07:18] Rita Black: I wanna walk you through what are the main challenges that we face with breaking a night eating pattern, and then two, to start to look at some tools that we can take on before the night happens, because prevention is really one of the best medicines.

[00:07:35] Rita Black: And so we can start to prevent night eating or begin to break it down even before we get into the evening.

[00:07:42] Rita Black: Because I think for most people, once they’re in the pattern of the evening, that force is pretty strong.

[00:07:49] Rita Black: Okay, so why do we eat at night? Why are we so compelled?

[00:07:55] Rita Black: Well, first of all, you must understand the [00:08:00] willpower and impulse control.

[00:08:03] Rita Black: When we wake up in the morning, like I said, I’ve been working for years, 20 years with thousands of people, and when I work with people, whether it’s one-on-one or in my groups or classes, people say, “Rita, I’m great with breakfast.

[00:08:20] Rita Black: Breakfast, I got it nailed. Lunch, pretty good. Most of the days, I am pretty good.

[00:08:26] Rita Black: But what happens, late afternoon or when I get home, that’s when it all falls apart.”

[00:08:32] Rita Black: And that is because when we wake up in the morning, we have the most willpower that we are going to have for that day.

[00:08:42] Rita Black: I want you to think of your willpower as sort of like a finite resource, and what happens is that willpower and our impulse control gets eaten away, basically for lack of a better word.

[00:08:55] Rita Black: Eaten away by things like stress, decision-making.

[00:08:59] Rita Black: Decision-making takes [00:09:00] a lot of our willpower away.

[00:09:02] Rita Black: It’s just like we’re using our brain a lot when we make decisions.

[00:09:05] Rita Black: And whether you work at an office or you’re managing a household or kids or just, going through life.

[00:09:11] Rita Black: Life is so busy, and we have so many decisions to make that often by the time we get to the late afternoon, our impulse control has now really diminished.

[00:09:24] Rita Black: So for most people, we get to the late afternoon, early evening, and we are kaput.

[00:09:31] Rita Black: You know? Like, our ability to say no to things, our ability to go to the grocery store and not grab all of those things that are right by the checkout stand, they go down big time.

[00:09:41] Rita Black: So first of all, you need to understand that by the evening, your willpower is very, very low,

[00:09:47] Rita Black: and we’re gonna look at some of the tools that we can use to elevate and borrow our willpower so we can have some at night,

[00:09:54] Rita Black: but you have to know that your willpower is usually very low at night.

[00:09:59] Rita Black: And [00:10:00] the other thing is usually, now, the last year, maybe not so much so, but our days are far more structured than our evenings as far as external structure.

[00:10:13] Rita Black: We get up, we brush our teeth, we do stuff out in the world or at home,

[00:10:18] Rita Black: but, you know, we do this, then we do that,

[00:10:20] Rita Black: then we do this, and there’s typically a pretty secure structure to our day.

[00:10:27] Rita Black: So when we get home at night, it feels like there i- or at least the workaday,

[00:10:35] Rita Black: the external structure is gone, and it’s just kind of like, ugh, relax in front of the TV, eat, you know, our brain isn’t in as much of a structure.

[00:10:49] Rita Black: We actually do have a pattern to our evening, but the external structure is gone,

[00:10:56] Rita Black: so a lot of people feel a lot more lost or a lot more, [00:11:00] just there isn’t that focus at night because it’s time to relax and it’s time to unwind,

[00:11:06] Rita Black: and that’s where a lot of people feel like their eating goes up and they get a lot more challenged.

[00:11:11] Rita Black: In those times, their feelings start to come to the surface because they’re not at work anymore, they’re not having to push down feelings and emotions because they’ve got stuff to do,

[00:11:20] Rita Black: and they’ve got people to interact with, and they’ve got problems to solve and businesses to tend to.

[00:11:26] Rita Black: And then when we get home, all those feelings from the day also start to burble up, and we’re dealing with those things, we’re dealing with our family.

[00:11:35] Rita Black: Lots of stuff is going on in a much more unstructured way.

[00:11:41] Rita Black: Another reason why we eat at night is we fricking need a reward at the end of the day, right?

[00:11:48] Rita Black: Like, we get to the end of our day, it’s like running a marathon, you know.

[00:11:52] Rita Black: We get in the car, we drive to work, we work our asses off, cure diseases,

[00:11:57] Rita Black: we take care of things, we [00:12:00] make the numbers at the column add up.

[00:12:03] Rita Black: Whatever we’re out there doing, we’re doing it, and we’re giving it our all.

[00:12:07] Rita Black: We get in the car, we get home, or on the bus, we get home, we walk home.

[00:12:11] Rita Black: Whatever we do, we get home, we shut that door, and it’s like, “All right. It’s me time.

[00:12:18] Rita Black: It’s time for me to unplug and just let it all go.”

[00:12:24] Rita Black: And then there are those things at the end of the day that we tend to have in our houses that we might also have in our workplace, but now nobody’s looking or maybe,

[00:12:36] Rita Black: that we’re… again, there’s no willpower, there’s no structure, and now we’re in a kitchen with lots of refined foods or treats sitting in cabinets beckoning us, calling our name.

[00:12:50] Rita Black: “Come and get me.

[00:12:51] Rita Black: I’m here for you and only you.

[00:12:53] Rita Black: Please come and eat me.” And then we also do develop a pattern [00:13:00] typically of how we eat that then wants itself repeated.

[00:13:06] Rita Black: And for a lot of people, especially those that eat after dinner, there’s usually, they eat one thing, then they’ll eat another thing, then they’ll eat another thing, and there’s usually a pattern.

[00:13:16] Rita Black: Like, or we come home, and then we hit the cheese and crackers, and then we hit the maybe we have a little nuts, and then we have a little this before dinner even starts.

[00:13:26] Rita Black: Or we finish dinner, and then we have the popcorn, then we have the sweet thing, and then we have the potato chips.

[00:13:32] Rita Black: Like, whatever, sweet, salt, sweet. But there tends to be patterns, and you might not be eating the same thing every night, but it, you know, the, we, our brain tends to get into these patterns that wants, of eating that then once it’s unconscious, once it’s a habit, just wants to be repeated.

[00:13:51] Rita Black: And then also, it’s a part of our culture, right?

[00:13:55] Rita Black: I mean, it’s our right as people who [00:14:00] work hard to come home and be with our family and sit in front of that dang, as my dad would call it, the boob tube, or in front of our screen or our tablet or what have you, and just zone out.

[00:14:16] Rita Black: It is the way of the world. We deserve it, and it’s our time.

[00:14:23] Rita Black: Maybe it’s our family’s time to do it.

[00:14:25] Rita Black: Maybe it’s our time we do it with our partner or just do it with ourself.

[00:14:29] Rita Black: We come home, we order takeout or something, and then we’re, it’s just chill out.

[00:14:35] Rita Black: So now, usually the way that we try to go about managing night eating, or the way I see people trying to do it, is just try not to do it.

[00:14:44] Rita Black: I mean, most people will say to me, “I know what I gotta do, Rita.

[00:14:48] Rita Black: I just gotta suck it up and stop it,” right?

[00:14:51] Rita Black: And usually- We look at ourselves as the problem. We think of ourselves as this out of control night eating freak who, like, this [00:15:00] vampire of snack foods, who just needs to be locked up. The food needs to be locked up, we need to be locked up, and we just need to suck it up and change, but then we keep doing the same thing over and over again, and then we continue to feel bad and feel worse and then feel even worse.

[00:15:16] Rita Black: So we want to turn this around, and instead of this idea of sucking it up and being good, we wanna look at night, our nights at, from a whole new place.

[00:15:30] Rita Black: And what I mean by that is instead of taking away the food and taking away the patterns, we really want us to start to look at this fresh and to start to look at our evenings as a project where we’re creating something new.

[00:15:45] Rita Black: Because the opportunity here for you with your evenings isn’t about being good, but the opportunity here is to create an evening for you that not only rejuvenates you, relaxes you, but an [00:16:00] evening where you are taking care of yourself and you don’t need to reach for food to take care of yourself, that you’re taking care of yourself in a great way that fulfills you, and you’re setting this up for a lifestyle, right?

[00:16:15] Rita Black: You’re creating a new lifestyle.

[00:16:18] Rita Black: So, you know, we talk often about long-term permanent weight mastery isn’t about being good on a diet, it’s about creating a life that allows you to live your life at your ideal weight.

[00:16:29] Rita Black: And that includes your evenings.

[00:16:31] Rita Black: The evenings are a big part of this.

[00:16:33] Rita Black: The evenings for us as a culture are a time to come home, unplug, and rejuvenate.

[00:16:42] Rita Black: But maybe the way that you’ve, the patterns that you’ve gotten into, your brain obviously has made some choices, like eating in this pattern on one level that your brain at one point said, “This works for me,” but the problem is it’s not working for you.

[00:16:59] Rita Black: Because you end up going [00:17:00] to bed with feeling full or feeling like you’ve eaten too much.

[00:17:04] Rita Black: Maybe you’ve gone off track on what you wanted to eat for the day.

[00:17:09] Rita Black: And again, it makes you feel bad about yourself.

[00:17:11] Rita Black: That little critic in your head or that big critic in your head starts beating you up.

[00:17:15] Rita Black: So ultimately, our pattern isn’t working for us, and we’ve got to look at this with fresh eyes and what I call a reframe.

[00:17:23] Rita Black: Reframe our evenings as what is possible and what is potential for us rather than creating taking everything away and trying to be good and trying to suck it up.

[00:17:35] Rita Black: Because it, the brain just doesn’t work like that, and you’re gonna get just more of the same old behaviors if you keep trying to do that.

[00:17:43] Rita Black: It’s just not gonna work for you, okay?

[00:17:46] Rita Black: So at the heart of this- I would say that this project is a remodel job, right?

[00:17:52] Rita Black: We’re remodeling our evenings, and at the root of this is self-care and self-love.

[00:17:58] Rita Black: You are not the problem to [00:18:00] be fixed, but you wanna create a night that works for you.

[00:18:04] Rita Black: And this is gonna require patience, and it’s gonna require probably not getting it right out of the gate, right?

[00:18:11] Rita Black: It’s not, you most things that you’ve created in your life that work for you now, it was trial and error, including walking, right?

[00:18:19] Rita Black: If you, as a toddler, every time you fell down, somebody was like, “You blew it. You’re never gonna walk,” well, would you have walked?

[00:18:27] Rita Black: Probably not.

[00:18:28] Rita Black: So, but you got up, and you tried to walk again, and you tried to walk again, and pretty soon you were putting a few steps together, and pretty soon you were walking across the floor, and pretty soon you were walking to school and running marathons.

[00:18:39] Rita Black: And you don’t even think about walking anymore. But at some point in your life, that was something you really wanted.

[00:18:44] Rita Black: You made that a project as that little baby.

[00:18:47] Rita Black: I wanna walk. I want this. I remember my husband, worked so hard to get our daughter to walk early, and she walked early.

[00:18:54] Rita Black: She walked at eight or nine months, and I was like, “Why are you teaching our daughter to walk?

[00:18:59] Rita Black: Please [00:19:00] hold that off as long as possible.”

[00:19:02] Rita Black: But anyway, it’s important to understand that this is a project, and it is a love-based project, and you can do this.

[00:19:10] Rita Black: So, what we wanna do is create this from a place of self-loving and not self-loathing.

[00:19:19] Rita Black: One of the things that we’re gonna do, and in this session but also in our next episode, is start to create a vision of what we wanna have at night.

[00:19:29] Rita Black: Like, what our nights wanna be.

[00:19:32] Rita Black: What we want them to be created as for ourselves.

[00:19:36] Rita Black: And this is probably gonna take a little thinking, so between now, this episode, and next episode, I’d like you to start to think about if I could have any night that I wanted that would leave me feeling refreshed, taken care of.

[00:19:50] Rita Black: The… Stephen Covey, I don’t know if you all know that name.

[00:19:55] Rita Black: Probably you do.

[00:19:56] Rita Black: He was the guy who created The Seven [00:20:00] Habits of Highly Effective People, or wrote the book, you know, gazillion bestseller.

[00:20:06] Rita Black: He said one of this, the habits of highly successful people is to begin with the end in mind.

[00:20:13] Rita Black: And I think so often when we go into thinking about night eating, we think about, like, I can’t do this and let’s not do that.

[00:20:20] Rita Black: But why don’t we start from a vision of what we want to do when we go to bed at night?

[00:20:27] Rita Black: How do we want to feel?

[00:20:30] Rita Black: Because our brain is so powerful, and as I have mentioned in earlier podcasts, but if you have not caught one of those, I will say now, our brain is a computer, right?

[00:20:42] Rita Black: And we need to program it with what we want.

[00:20:46] Rita Black: The brain is pretty good at starting to come up with solutions and solves when we start to put in the right code.

[00:20:53] Rita Black: And the right code for solving the night eating challenge is really [00:21:00] getting really clear about what kind of evening do I need to create that’s gonna allow me to go to bed at night feeling light, feeling refreshed, feeling rejuvenated, like I connected with myself and I had a good evening and I got ready for the next day and I was mentally able to let go of today’s day and give myself credit for the things that went well and to think about the things that maybe I can improve on.

[00:21:29] Rita Black: Whatever you wanna think about the you getting into bed at night feeling like, dang, that was a good day.

[00:21:37] Rita Black: I showed up for myself.

[00:21:39] Rita Black: I ate well.

[00:21:40] Rita Black: I exercised, if that was on your thing, to-do list that, or that, what you wanted to create for yourself.

[00:21:47] Rita Black: And, and really think from that place, and then reverse engineer from there.

[00:21:53] Rita Black: And, when you do it this way, your brain will start to come up with some ideas for you.

[00:21:58] Rita Black: You probably already have a lot of ideas [00:22:00] what you’d like to do at night.

[00:22:01] Rita Black: Sometimes I think, sometimes people say, “Well, what I wanna do at night is reorganize all my closets and do all this stuff,” but I caution you to, a lot of times when We have these high ambitious goals, like you have to remember you’re coming home probably from a long day at work, and when we say, “I wanna come home and get my master’s degree and do this,” I mean, like, those are all, and clean the closets, and start my new business and everything.

[00:22:28] Rita Black: Those are all really awesome things, but you also wanna really think about when you come home, you’re exhausted, and probably the first thing you wanna do is unwind in some way, either by exercising and going for a walk and unwinding that way, ’cause exercise is so amazing to do that.

[00:22:45] Rita Black: You know, our problem-solving brain, is the best when we exercise.

[00:22:50] Rita Black: And actually, exercise does rejuvenate us.

[00:22:53] Rita Black: But if that’s not you, if you exercise in the morning or if you’re, you know, like, “Uh-uh, I ain’t there yet,” fine, but [00:23:00] you do wanna be realistic about your goals.

[00:23:02] Rita Black: It’s not like you’re gonna grab the sponge and start mopping the kitchen floor after working all day.

[00:23:09] Rita Black: Because what your brain will do is go, “Uh-uh, that ain’t gonna happen,” and shut down, and then it will just be business as usual for you.

[00:23:16] Rita Black: But so you wanna just start to think of a vision of how you wanna feel at the end of the day, very end of the day, going to bed, and then start to come up with some ideas.

[00:23:25] Rita Black: And we’ll shape this and do more of that in next episode.

[00:23:29] Rita Black: But the next thing I wanna talk about is your morning mind, because your morning mind is the most powerful mind.

[00:23:38] Rita Black: And as I said earlier in this episode, our willpower is the highest in the morning.

[00:23:44] Rita Black: And what happens is when people struggle with night eating, they’ll often just wake up, and they’ll go, “Well, I hope I’m good tonight.

[00:23:52] Rita Black: I’m gonna be good. I’m not gonna eat like I did last night.”

[00:23:56] Rita Black: And they’ll head off into their day.

[00:23:58] Rita Black: And then they get to their [00:24:00] evening, and then they expect- that their evening should roll out differently.

[00:24:05] Rita Black: But the problem is once you’re into a pattern, the bus has already left the station.

[00:24:10] Rita Black: It’s almost impossible to show up to a habit and try to change the habit within the habit because it’s such a powerful force.

[00:24:20] Rita Black: It’s like trying to get off a Six Flags Magic Mountain, what do you call those things? Roller coaster, thank you.

[00:24:27] Rita Black: A roller coaster ride, you know, as it’s already left and is going up the hill, right?

[00:24:32] Rita Black: It’s like once the, the ride has left the terminal, once that, that thing is locked in in front of you, the handrail, there’s no getting out.

[00:24:42] Rita Black: So often you … that’s why we don’t get the behavior change that we want, is we’re showing up way too late to the behavior change.

[00:24:52] Rita Black: We wanna start to think about the behavior change ahead of time, and then we want to start practicing that behavior [00:25:00] change in the morning so that yours, you’re already telling your brain, you’re giving your brain directions.

[00:25:05] Rita Black: You’re saying, “Okay, brain, tonight this is what we’re gonna do.

[00:25:09] Rita Black: We’re gonna come home.

[00:25:11] Rita Black: I’m gonna- Instead of, you know, opening up the door and, heading to the refrigerator to get a glass of wine and to, get some cheese, I am going to go and put my tennis shoes on and go for a walk.

[00:25:25] Rita Black: And you practice that in your mind.

[00:25:27] Rita Black: Practice seeing the going to your closet and getting your tennis shoes.

[00:25:31] Rita Black: Better yet, have your tennis shoes already by the door when you leave in the morning.

[00:25:36] Rita Black: Put them there so you know you’re gonna put them on and get out the door.

[00:25:41] Rita Black: You’re gonna see yourself coming in and instead of going to the fridge, you go to the sink and get a glass of water and drink that glass of water.

[00:25:48] Rita Black: You see yourself doing it ahead of time, and in that vision, imagine how that’s gonna feel.

[00:25:54] Rita Black: Mm, that water’s gonna feel crisp.

[00:25:56] Rita Black: Oh, it’s gonna feel so great to get out on the [00:26:00] street, walking and feeling that wind against your face or the night breeze against your face, right?

[00:26:06] Rita Black: You really wanna b- make it sexy in that vision for your mind, so your mind’s like, “Ooh, that sounds good.

[00:26:12] Rita Black: That sounds better than sitting with a glass of wine on my sofa,” totally numbing out, right?

[00:26:18] Rita Black: Like, you wanna say, “Hey, brain, wouldn’t this be great?”

[00:26:21] Rita Black: So, and you wanna set yourself up for success, have those things ready so that you are in it, and you practice that a couple of times in your mind.

[00:26:29] Rita Black: And I call that, like, a morning meditation.

[00:26:31] Rita Black: You’re, you’re visualizing your day.

[00:26:33] Rita Black: And you can visualize your whole day up until that point, but if this is where the behavioral…

[00:26:38] Rita Black: wherever your vulnerable point is really where you wanna practice the new behavioral change, whatever you, what change you want to do.

[00:26:45] Rita Black: So, You’re borrowing your willpower from the morning, and it’s like you’re inserting it into the evening.

[00:26:52] Rita Black: Does that make sense? It’s like you’re, you’re sending yourself some love and willpower in your morning into your evening ahead of [00:27:00] time by practicing the behavioral changes you wanna make.

[00:27:03] Rita Black: And honestly, you could, if this is something that you wanna add into this, because this is very helpful, is you could do the two scenarios.

[00:27:12] Rita Black: You could follow that let me drink wine, sit at the couch, eat too much cheese, feel full by dinner, eat dinner, kinda numb out in front of the TV, maybe eat a little more.

[00:27:24] Rita Black: How does that feel by the end of the evening?

[00:27:27] Rita Black: Hmm, brain, how did we feel?

[00:27:29] Rita Black: Okay, now let’s reverse.

[00:27:31] Rita Black: Errr. Go all the way back.

[00:27:33] Rita Black: Now let’s play it through to the new evening we have for ourselves.

[00:27:36] Rita Black: Coming home, putting those shoes on, drinking some water, exercising, coming home feeling energized and light, eating a healthy dinner.

[00:27:45] Rita Black: Hmm, maybe we’re relaxing a little bit in front of the TV, getting to bed, reading a book, feeling good, going to bed.

[00:27:52] Rita Black: Ah, what an awesome day, right?

[00:27:53] Rita Black: And you’re getting your brain to turn on its reticular activation system, which is sort of filtering out the negative stuff and going [00:28:00] yes to the good stuff.

[00:28:01] Rita Black: And the more you do this with your brain, the more you practice, the more the brain will help you reinforce this new idea of yourself.

[00:28:09] Rita Black: Because you are also creating a new identity of the lighter, healthier you going through your evening.

[00:28:15] Rita Black: So, so many of these things, just by doing this in the morning, are being activated.

[00:28:20] Rita Black: And so I cannot emphasize enough, begin with the end in mind and think your day through in the morning.

[00:28:27] Rita Black: It can be really easy, folks. Like, you don’t have to sit up in bed.

[00:28:31] Rita Black: I’m talking about hitting the snooze alarm and doing this, imagining this while your eyes are still closed.

[00:28:36] Rita Black: ‘Cause you’re sort of in a semi-hypnotic state in the morning when you wake up.

[00:28:40] Rita Black: You’re kinda half there, half not.

[00:28:42] Rita Black: So if you think things through this way, it’s a really great time, ’cause you’re sort of already in a trance state. It’s almost hy- self-hypnosis.

[00:28:51] Rita Black: I think the other thing that is very helpful when it comes to your morning think through is to really think [00:29:00] of the structure of your evening.

[00:29:02] Rita Black: Regardless of whether or not you think you have a structure, your brain pretty much has some habits that are driven, and those are structures, right?

[00:29:11] Rita Black: Those are patterns that are repeated, and they’re usually driven by dopamine, the reward neurotransmitter.

[00:29:18] Rita Black: That part of the brain will agitate you to go get the popcorn out of the cupboard.

[00:29:22] Rita Black: It will agitate you to get the chocolates out of the cupboard.

[00:29:25] Rita Black: So, what you wanna do instead is give your brain that alternative route and really have a structure where you- Say, okay, I’m gonna come home, then, exercise is gonna happen.

[00:29:37] Rita Black: I’m gonna drink water, I’m gonna have a healthy dinner, I’m gonna watch an hour of TV, and then I’m gonna head to bed, to have that, and read a book or whatever.

[00:29:45] Rita Black: But you wanna have this, then this, then this, then this, just so that your brain…

[00:29:50] Rita Black: again, you wanna think it’s if you’re guiding a child.

[00:29:52] Rita Black: You wanna think as if you’re working with a five or a six-year-old.

[00:29:57] Rita Black: You wanna make it really clear and really easy [00:30:00] and keep it simple.

[00:30:01] Rita Black: But and you wanna work with yourself, and we’re gonna, and we’re gonna get into this more in the next podcast.

[00:30:08] Rita Black: But I wanted you to start to think about starting with the end in mind, and to start to cultivate thinking about your evening in the morning and practicing the behaviors that you wanna create, and having sort of a map through your evening to that end goal, just to keep it aligned with your brain, to get, to make it as simple as possible, to code that brain very, very simply.

[00:30:35] Rita Black: And, don’t make it all work. Include a reward and I would say even if you have a treat at the end of the evening as far as food is concerned, fine, that’s great.

[00:30:48] Rita Black: There’s cognitive behavioral studies that say that having a treat at the end of the day really allows you to forego a lot of the other sort of extraneous eating earlier in the day. So if you have a healthy [00:31:00] dinner and you have a healthy treat after dinner or at a certain set time, my only guidance would be, be mindful about that treat. Don’t eat it mindlessly in front of the television, ’cause often that’s what we do with food and then we don’t even recognize that we’ve eaten it, and then we want more.

[00:31:16] Rita Black: So that is my coaching, and those are some thin thinking tools and strategies to get you going with your night eating.

[00:31:23] Rita Black: That’s it for part one. I hope this served you, and please, please come back for part two next week, where we’re really gonna look at setting up a powerful evening for yourself. And don’t forget that if you want that free series, the five-part series on night eating, please go to www.shiftweightmastery.com/night and sign up.

[00:31:50] Rita Black: That’s it.

[00:31:51] Rita Black: So have an amazing week, and remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside [00:32:00] you.

[00:32:00] Rita Black: So keep listening and find it, and I will be here with you next week for part two of the night eating series.

[00:32:09] Rita Black: Do you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release?

[00:32:13] Rita Black: Head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com.

[00:32:23] Rita Black: That’s www.shiftweightmastery.com, where you will find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release, tips, strategies, and more.

[00:32:33] Rita Black: 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 [00:33:00] Loss.