Speaker 1: Did you know that our struggle with weight, doesn't start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym?

: 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That's right! The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind.

: Hi, there I'm Rita black. I'm a clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery, I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict, and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years.

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

: Hello and welcome. And thank you for being here for our first episode of the Thin Thinking Podcast, where we are going to dive deeper underneath the surface of diets and weight loss, and really explore our thinking and how it keeps us struggling with weight and how we can change that. And literally rewire our minds and create a new mindset. A more powerful way of thinking that allows us not only to release weight for the last time, but keep it off for good, what I like to call long-term permanent weight mastery. Now, if you have tried to lose weight at any point in your life, you have probably noticed that there are hundreds and thousands of diets, regimes, and plans out there that give you directions on how to lose weight. And if you follow any of these recipes for weight loss, that deal primarily with food and exercise, you do lose weight, maybe a lot of weight, maybe a little weight, maybe no weight, but here is the challenge...

Speaker 2: Very few of these weight loss plans help you to change your inner beliefs, wired habits, emotions, and the way you communicate with yourself, both consciously and subconsciously about food, exercise, weight loss, your body, and most importantly, yourself and your belief in your ability to lose the weight for good. Because let's face it, as successful as we may be in other areas of our lives, when it comes to weight, we have little to no faith in our ability to release weight and keep it off for good. And those subconscious beliefs and habits and inner communications are what needs to be changed and shifted as much, or if not more, than what's going on on your plate or at the gym. You see, at the end of the day, diets and regimes are external structures that we follow and try to be perfect on. But what happens when we reach our goal or have a bad day and binge or go on vacation, that structure quickly crumbles.

Speaker 2: And we are left with the very same thinking that kept us struggling with our weight in the first place. And the more diets that we go on and fall off of, the less we believe in ourselves and deepen the weight struggle wiring that keeps us feeling like a failure. Long-term success is about creating a change from inside of you, a powerful, thin thinking mindset that not only allows you to believe in yourself and respect yourself, it helps you to confidently create a way of living that allows you to live your life at your ideal weight. And most importantly, love living it.

: This podcast is for you if you are 5 pounds or 500 pounds from your ideal healthy weight. This podcast is for you, no matter what diet plan or program that you are on currently. This podcast is for you if you're successfully releasing weight, but are concerned about what will happen once you reach your goal. And this podcast is for you if you're just starting out releasing weight beneath the confidence that you can really take it off and keep it off. This podcast is also for you if you're currently struggling, meaning you're waking up and wondering, why did I do that last night? Why did I overeat? I promised I would be good and then beating yourself up and feeling stuck and in a rut. And this podcast is for you if you're just feeling too hopeless to even start trying. Because it is my mission to help people who've struggled with weight like I did. Yo-yoing up and down the scale 40 pounds for over two decades, feeling hopeless and frustrated.

: You know why? I know it's not just about knowing about food. My mother majored in nutrition at Berkeley university. My mom was smart and she knew everything there was to know about food and macros and nutrients. And my mom struggled desperately with her weight. At her heaviest she was over 75 pounds overweight and all of her knowledge about health and nutrients and macros didn't do her one bit of good. And as a kid, it was so painful to hear her say to herself, I know what I should be doing. Why am I not doing it? I learned emotional eating from my mother. Our house was full of comfort foods, and I loved them. I was overweight from an early age and I was a carbolic before I knew what a carb or an oholick was. I remember coming home from school and making cookie dough and eating the whole batch and then napping, like for three hours in a sugar induced coma, waking up and swearing. That was the last time I was going to do that. Well, you know, and I know it wasn't.

: I hated being overweight. I felt like an outcast. I always felt like the big awkward husky girl next to my super skinny stick thin friends at school. I would look at my thighs hanging over my chair. But all of my friends thighs, they would fit perfectly within theirs. And by the time I was in high school, I had the nickname thunder thighs. It was so painful. I would put myself on these punishing diets that weren't even sustainable, but I just wanted to fit in and be normal. So I'd stick with it. And I lost the weight and the pain would go away and I forgot how horrible it felt. And I would go back right to my old habits and gain even more weight over time. I became stuck in my personal weight struggle hell of endless Monday mornings, where I would promise to be good, depriving myself all week and existing on some crazy diet regime only to relax and reward myself Friday by saying, Oh, I'll be good tomorrow.

Speaker 2: But tomorrow turned into a carb eating fest all weekend. So that Sunday morning I would be laying in bed reading another diet book to start on Monday while shoveling cinnamon rolls in my mouth. Yes, all of my diet books were covered in Pillsbury cinnamon roll frosting. And because each diet held the promise of me living happily ever after I was going to be perfect come Monday. So my thinking was, wow, I might as well squeeze in all the bad foods that I could in on Sunday. It seems funny and ironic to me now, but believe me, it wasn't so funny on that Sunday night after eating crap all day, laying in bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling so full that I could burst and worse than that, just being so scared because I felt like it was always going to be this, that I was forever going to be stuck in this good or bad, all or nothing, fat thinking head and never be able to live a normal life.

: This went on through high school, through college and up until my early thirties, when my shift finally happened. So one morning in my early thirties, I was actually on the scale after having lost some weight on yet another crazy diet. But instead of being happy, I was so deeply sad because I knew deep down, I wasn't going to keep this weight off. And I felt so lost. So sad and alone. And even though I had a husband and friends and family and a life, I felt so alone in this weight struggle prison of my own making. I knew I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't go on another diet. I couldn't go on living in this head. And I just sat there on that scale in my bathroom in Santa Monica, California, and I cried and I cried and I cried for a really long time.

Speaker 2: And you know those moments where all of a sudden, it's like, you have this ultra sense about you? And I heard this voice within me and this voice within me wasn't that critical voice that was always beating me up or the rebellious voice that was always trying to seduce me, but this voice within me was different. And it said, Rita, you can find another way. There is a better way and you never need to diet again. So after my moment of truth, on the scale, I stopped dieting and I started to address things, not from the outside in like I had been doing all my life, but from the inside out, because skinny or fat, I realized I had to change this horrible hate-based relationship with myself around my weight. And I really had to change my thinking. And I turned all that negative energy into let's figure this out energy.

Speaker 2: I got really curious about long-term weight loss. Like what was it really about if it wasn't being perfect on a diet? Well, what the hell did it take to achieve it? I started talking to people who had lost weight and kept it off for good. They exist, you know, and there are a lot of them. And I started studying them. I started doing research on the studies of long-term success and it started to dawn on me that what long term success called for, and it wasn't about being perfect, but it was about creating. It's about creating a new way of thinking around how I took care of myself, creating new beliefs and habits and repeatable systems around food and exercise and weight that worked for me. This was all coming from a different place, not from self-loathing, but from self loving. And I don't mean that in a California woo woo way. You guys, even though I live in LA, I mean, coming from self empathy and self-respect actually makes your brain perform better and gets you better results.

: I started working on my subconscious with tools like hypnosis neuro-linguistic programming, meditations, and other cognitive behavioral tools that helped bust up old and more deeply rooted subconscious fat thinking habits and beliefs. And instead wiring new thin thinking ones. And for the first time in my life, I lost weight without dieting, but by creating a way of living my life that allowed me to achieve my ideal weight. And I have kept it off for 25 years. And that is through the pregnancies and births of my two kids, the deaths of both my wonderful parents, starting my practice, menopause, raising teenagers and beyond that. For me is a fricking miracle. And for the last 20 years, I have been guiding clients with my hypnosis based Shift Weight Mastery Process.

Speaker 2: I have been in the trenches guiding clients and students through the triumphs and tears and breakthroughs of the hero's journey that I call weight mastery. And it really is a hero's journey of self realization. It's not just about weight, it's about your life. So now I am going to share a secret with you. You see, I have had the honor of working with all different types of people from all different walks of life and from all over the globe. And just between us, the struggle with weight is the same for everyone. It cuts across all socio economic boundaries and really levels the playing field. Seriously, because my practice is in Hollywood and I have clients in my practice and students in my programs from all over the world. I've had clients ranging from famous actors and musical artists. You know, the kind with one name. Royalty owners of top level, fortune 500 companies, scientists, thought leaders, and some of the richest people in the world, as well as normal people.

Speaker 2: You know, people like you and me who actually have to get up in the morning and go to work and walk the dog and grocery shop and feed their kids and help their parents and pull up weeds in the garden. People like retirees, nurses, teachers, bus drivers, social workers, therapists, surfers, students, you name it. And to be honest with you, I even have people come to me who are diet gurus and former Olympic athletes. All of these people, no matter what their title or how much they had in their bank account, or how many awards they had on the mantel, felt horrible about themselves. Because in this one area of their life, they felt like a failure. And their struggle with weight had made them feel incompetent and kept them from living their best life. See, when it comes to the struggle with weight, you are not alone.

Speaker 2: You have amazing company. And I am here to assure you that you are not broken and that you can and will achieve success when your powerful, thin thinking mind is aligned with you. And here's the thing, long-term weight mastery is a mastery journey. You don't start off perfect. It's a learning journey. And it's a journey of self-love. In fact, I have a saying, you are going to love yourself and not hate yourself down the scale. And again, I don't mean that in a California, woo woo way, I mean learning a way of communicating with yourself in this area of your life, that is full of self empathy and self-respect and self-leadership. And when you start loving yourself down the scale, not only will you change your weight, but you will change your life.

: So here is my first thin thinking coaching for you to start getting your deeper mind excited about going on your journey of weight mastery, grab a paper and put at the top, "What is my why for going on my weight mastery journey?" Chances are you probably have a lot of whys to lose weight. They are usually what I call the painful whys. They are reasons that come from the pain of struggling with weight. Why do I want to lose weight? Well, I don't fit in my clothes. I hate feeling like a failure. I'm too embarrassed to go out to the beach or to be social. My joints hurt all the time. I have high blood pressure. My weight keeps me from trying to get a job I love. So do me a favor and write out all the painful whys first, just get them out of your system. Just write whatever pops into your mind and just write it down, it's called a brain dump. If you don't know what a brain dump is, it's just dumping whatever is in your brain on the paper. So just think about opening up your brain and dumping it all out. Don't sensor or edit yourself because we want the subconscious to talk. And what gets the subconscious to talk is when we stop editing and being critical of what we are writing down, just let it all come up, as weird as it may sound or as awkward as it may sound. Just hit pause and do that now.

Speaker 2: Okay, good. Did you get that all out? Well done. I'm glad that you got that all off your chest and out of your head and onto the paper. And if you scan that sheet, there is probably a lot of pain there and a lot of struggle. Now, have you heard of the saying the pain pushes until the vision pulls? It's one of my favorite sayings because it's true. You see, most of the time we make the decision to lose weight because we feel bad about ourselves, or we're worried about our health and weight. And we make our whys about getting out of that pain that we feel like we are in. It's a great motivator for awhile, but guess what happens when we lose the weight? We get out of pain. But guess what happens when we get out of pain? For instance, we lose 10 pounds and suddenly we fit into our pants and it doesn't seem so bad.

: Or our doctor tells us that we're out of the pre-diabetic zone and all of a sudden that pain, it just goes away. And the brain says, well, we're out of the danger zone, let's get back to business as usual. And we lose that motivation and slowly or quickly, we go back to the same old habits and the same old weight. Hey, it's just what the brain does. The brain always wants to get back to what it knows and keep doing it. So pain as a motivator will only get you so far. So now I want you to do something completely different. I want you to turn that paper over and start with a clean, fresh page and write "My really why for my journey of weight mastery or my true why for my journey of weight mastery, or my inspirational why for my journey to weight mastery", and imagine this is your new thin thinking mind, this blank page.

Speaker 2: And you're going to start thin thinking and filling this in, not from pain, but from vision. Because you see, our imagination lives in our subconscious mind. And we now want to create a vision of the, you that you are already becoming, the you not just at your healthy ideal weight, but the you who has been living their life at their ideal weight for three years. So just go with me, you know, take a moment, take a nice deep breath in and close your eyes, except if you are driving. So if you are a driving, either pull over to the side of the road to do this exercise, it will only take a few minutes or hit pause on this podcast and wait until you get home. With this vision work and with what we do with our thin thinking exercises, when you're driving, I'm all for driving and listening to podcasts, but you want to drive safely. So let's be careful. For those of you who can, go ahead and take a nice deep breath in, and as you exhale, close your eyes and just tune in, tune into your body, tune into your breath and just get present with your breath for a moment.

Speaker 2: Good. And now we're going to begin to imagine. We want to go out into your future and hallucinate you out in the future at your healthy, loving, ideal weight. And in your imagination, you have not only released the weight, but you have kept it off for three years. So not only do you look great, which is usually what we focus on in these types of visions, and that's fine. Let's just take a moment and look at how great you look, take a moment to look at what you look like, what your body looks like three years having stayed at your ideal weight, what you're wearing, what kind of colors you wear, what kind of outfit you wear, just get a real good vision of that. And if you can't get that vision quite yet, that's okay. Keep trying, keep coming back to this. Cause you eventually will.

: And if you can't, then we want to go for how you feel. So that's the next part of this. So you look really great. You look really great in this vision. Now I want you to, in your imagination, to step into this vision of yourself and be inside of yourself. So from the inside out, notice how you feel about yourself, having maintained your ideal weight. How does it feel to be in your body? How do the clothes feel pressing against your lighter body? Notice how the clothes hang on. How does that feel? And where are you in this scenario? Imagine where you are and imagine where you would be in this scenario. What would you be doing, who would be in your life when your future looks like it looks?

Speaker 3: Where would you be living, who would be in your life, get a sense of that feeling of freedom and power and what is possible for you when you start from thin thinking versus struggle thinking. Because when we're engaging the mind in this higher level way, when we're using vision in creating our future, we're engaging our mind from a different place. The mind gets excited and it pulls us forward into the future. Over challenges, over struggles and into success. Your mind can work better for you when it's engaged at a higher level, but most of the time we're stuck. We're stuck in the struggle. We're stuck trying not to be overweight, but not creating that future where we want to be and using our mind from that place. And here's a piece of good news. The subconscious mind, can't separate fantasy from reality. So allow these visions to create a powerful, positive emotion within you as if it's already happening.

Speaker 2: Our mind can't create new neural wires in stress, but it can create them in positive emotion. By your creating visions of who you are becoming and focusing on them, you are now creating a new weight mastery vision that can excite your mind and keep you pulling forward on your journey of weight mastery. So now just take a deep breath in and pull this vision within you as a blueprint, planting seeds in your subconscious, engaging you in a deeper way. Good. And now take another deep breath in and open your eyes and write down on that paper what you saw in your vision, what is possible for you in this future that you are starting to create today. How it felt to be weight masterful, how did it feel to be free, powerful?

Speaker 2: What you were wearing, how you looked, was that inspiring? What about your health? How were you feeling? What were you doing in this vision, write about that. Maybe you were playing with your kids or grandkids and running faster than them, or you were at a party and dancing and having a ball and not even caring what was on the buffet table. Maybe you were getting a degree or an advanced degree because you now felt confident enough to do that. Maybe you were walking along the beach and you were pain free because your joints are feeling better now that you were lighter. Maybe you started your own business because you felt courageous and unstoppable, or maybe you're in a relationship with someone who respects you as much as you now respect yourself. And maybe you are making a difference in your community or in the world.

Speaker 2: And if you didn't get a clear vision quite yet, keep practicing, keep practicing, keep at it, keep engaging your mind in this way. These are the visions that are pulling you into your new weight mastery future that you are creating, not from the past limiting beliefs about your weight and struggle self, but from what you are now creating in your thin thinking mind. For me at the beginning of my weight mastery journey, I knew the me struggling 40 pounds above my ideal weight and the me living my life 40 pounds down the scale at my ideal weight, there was going to be some shifts in my thinking and my behaviors and the way I lived my life. And it all started with a vision and it became a bright light in my subconscious mind that I could get inspired by and keep in front of me as I continued on my journey. So keep your piece of paper with your vision somewhere handy and look at it a couple of times this week.

: Okay. All right. Great work today. Thanks for taking the time to do that. I am so excited that I'm finally doing this podcast. I've been thinking about it for a long time and it finally was like, yes, it's go time. And I am looking forward to future episodes where I'm going to be sharing more thin thinking mind strategies along with inspirational interviews with my former Shift Weight Mastery Process graduates and other experts in the areas of weight, health, and mindset. I want to thank you dear listener for tuning in to this first of many podcasts to come, have an amazing 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.

: Thanks for listening to the Thin Thinking Podcast. If you want to dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com, that's www.shiftweightmastery.com, where you'll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release, tips, strategies, and more. And be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book From Fat to Thin Thinking: Unlock Your Mind For Permanent Weight Loss.