Rita Black: Often the decision to lose weight comes from a place of self-loathing rather than self loving, but in order to have true success, long-term we need to start from a place of self-love. Why and how? All will be revealed in today's podcast, thin thinking hacks for loving yourself down the scale.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn't start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That's right, the key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi, there I'm Rita black. I'm a clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, best-selling 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.

Rita Black: Hello, welcome. Come on in. I hope you're having a nice week. I am super excited about our podcast. Episode number five, these episodes have been just flying by for me, it's been so exciting and super fun. And by the way, stay tuned to the end of today's podcast because I am going to offer you a chance to get a seat in my upcoming free masterclass. So stay tuned in for more about that. It's going to be coming up on April 21st and it's called How to Break Through to Consistent Long Term Weight Loss. So stay tuned.

: So as I've been thinking about this week's episode and thinking about all of my students that I've had over the years, one student really sticks out the most to me. You know how you go to think about something and then that one person just kind of lingers in your mind? Well, the person that lingers in my mind when it comes to loving yourself down the scale is my old student named Monica. And she was in my shift process a few years ago, and very much a successful woman, you know, very highly regarded in her community. Beautiful. She has her own successful business, a super loving, amazing husband, highly functioning kids. This woman had it all. But Monica was so unhappy with herself and her weight very, very much. So she told me that she had spent tens of thousands of dollars on weight loss plans, spas, fat camps, you name it just everything. And she could lose the weight. She was an expert at losing weight. She said that was never, ever the issue. She said to me, I have the willpower in the short term. If you told me, eat dog food and drink this yucky drink, you know, for six weeks I would do it.

Rita Black: If you convinced me that it would help me lose weight, I would do anything, not to feel fat and feel like a pathetic beached whale. But then once the diet was over, all my weight would come back. Almost immediately read it. It's like the second that skill hits that magic number. I head for the fridge and it's embarrassing because I'm a very public person. And my whole community has seen me go up and down between size four and size 14 over all the years, I've been in my community. I am such a failure at this and it really makes me depressed. It makes me want to hide. And I really think I'm hopeless. Even though I have this great life on the outside, I spend most of my waking hours beating myself up about my weight and hating myself for being so weak. So Monica had to learn to start from the same point that I'm going to walk you through today, starting from a point of self-belief self-respect and self-trust even when she felt overweight, rather than self-hate distrust and disrespect.

Rita Black: Why? Because unless we start from a place of self-belief self-respect and self empathy, you will always be chasing your own tail. When it comes to weight here is that fat thinking, dieting illusion given to us by our culture and the dieting industry, go on a diet, get thin, and then you will have been a very good girl or a very good boy. You will have attained your weight and you will finally finally be able to give yourself permission to love yourself after all you will have earned it. It sounds so crazy, but isn't this what we believe when we are struggling with our weight, we do not let ourselves love ourselves. We are overweight. That is not lovable. We are out of control disdain. Obviously we cannot be trusted.

Rita Black: We are lazy. We're good for nothing and completely and totally hopeless who would love us. Honestly, this is a painful place to be, but usually it is where we are at. When we struggle with weight and believe me, we just want to escape the pain of self hate by pulling it together and focusing on getting the weight off as quickly as possible. Even if it means eating the dog food diet that Monica was joking about. So the short term solution we are thrown to is to pull it together because the moment that we are on a diet or a plan or a regime, all of a sudden we feel in control. We feel good. See I'm not so bad. As long as I'm behaving and getting this weight off. And then I will really love myself. The self love will flow naturally somewhere over that weight loss, rainbow.

Rita Black: What is the problem with this? The illusion is that when we lose the weight, we will love ourselves. But now we won't, the same monsters still exist in our head. Once we reach our skinny weight and what will happen, we will get to our skinny weight and realize, huh, life hasn't really changed that much. And we'll get discouraged and eat or think that we have to keep going and keep releasing weight because we don't love ourselves yet. And five more pounds. Yeah. Then I'll love myself. Or we still hate our body and getting thin. Didn't make our legs any longer. Are our belly any flatter or we make getting thin mean that we will finally give ourselves the permission to do everything that we've always dreamed and have put off until we lose the weight. Maybe we'll find the job we love or allow ourselves to date.

Rita Black: And so if we don't love ourselves or trust ourselves, the closer we get to our ideal weight, well, the fear of actually having to take action on our dreams scares the living crap out of us. So when we self-sabotage, or if we lose the weight, sometimes a smaller us means we feel more vulnerable because the weight was a buffer. And in a way, it gave us power, the power to keep people away and the power to not be seen and the power to not be held accountable. If we start from a place of hating ourselves, when we start releasing weight. So consciously, we are still harboring self hate feelings about ourselves underneath the gloss of the dieting success and the laser focus on the diet and being good on it is not training our brain to really learn how to really feed ourselves in a way that is sustainable and doable for when we get to our ideal weight, it isn't retraining us to problem solve when those challenge challenges pose themselves, or we go through a stressful time. We are just focusing on getting the weight off so that we can accept ourselves.

Rita Black: I have so many students in my Shift Weight Mastery Process, like Monica, who have spent tens of thousands of dollars who have had liposuction and surgery, or have done very drastic things or taken products that aren't regulated. And they got to the right weight. But subconsciously because they still didn't trust themselves, they still didn't love themselves. They were disappointed that their ideal weight didn't change that that their lives didn't magically change. In fact, they were very much the same and because they hadn't learned to feed themselves in a sustainable way that they loved that allowed them to live their life. At this new weight, they began gaining it back and all the distrust and lack of self-respect came flooding back from that subconscious things quickly returned to the same old, frustrating place. I know this myself from it happening to me, hundreds of times, over the two decades of struggling up and down the scale 40 pounds, this is a horrible feeling and it is a hauntingly familiar place. So now I want to walk through some ways that we can begin to turn this around some thin thinking ways that we can start our journey of weight mastery from a place of self-love. So the number UNO, UNO, numero, numero UNO, thing that I will like you to do, and I will ask you to do, and I have all my students do. So this is something everybody does. Is I'm going to ask you to forgive yourself.

Rita Black: Why? Because when we struggle with our weight, we have a lot of self resentment. We resent ourselves because of our health issues that come from weight. We resent ourselves because of the emotional issues. We resent ourselves because we feel like we are out of control, but we need to have self empathy. And again, for those of you who have been listening to this podcast, know what I'm probably going to say is no, this is not a California woo thing, but this actually hasn't been proven by science, that self empathy connects you to yourself and allows you your brain to work more effectively with you, gives you more consistency. It gives you more focus because you aren't so distracted. So I'm going to ask you to forgive yourself, for many reasons, but because you deserve to, you deserve to be you're on your own team.

Rita Black: You and you really, really need to this isn't you duking it out with yourself and controlling yourself and beating yourself down into submission and being good. This is, I trust you. We're smart. We can figure this out. And we are going on this journey for the last time. And this journey is a journey of self realization of self-love. And we are going to figure this out. You gotta be on your own team. So let's start by just saying, taking a nice deep breath in closing your eyes and just saying, I forgive myself. Go ahead. Just, just say it just for the hell of it. Just say it and take a deep breath and let it in and let that ice around your heart and the area of weight management begin to melt a little. I love yourself now.

: Number two, start forgiving your body and start owning it where it is right now. Oh yeah. That's a hard one. Right? But you know, if you, we don't love our body and own it. Look, your body has gotten you to where you are in life now. And it has given you many things, many experiences. Our body is the vessel with which we live our lives. It's an awesome thing. No matter what shape it is, no matter what, what clothes it fits into our body is amazing. And we need to forgive it. We can start by forgiving it because we also not only do we resent ourselves, we resent our bodies. We resent them. I know when I struggled with my weight, I resented every aspect of my body, but especially my butt and my thighs. Oh, did they discussed me now? Here's the thing. And the irony of it all is that when we release weight, you know, when we release weight, our body shape pretty much remains the same.

Rita Black: You know, like I was always shocked and horrified because my sister is gorgeous. You know, I was the dark haired, lumpy one, I mean, we're both tall ladies. But my sister had long legs. She looked like a model. You know, she was blonde, blue eyed, perfect, beautiful figure. Perfect. And I was the lumpy one, the pear shaped one, with short stubby legs, even though I was tall, I had stubby legs. Somehow that worked out and I always believed, I always believed, I don't know how, where this came from, but again, dieting culture. I looked at magazines. I thought, well, when I lose weight, my legs are going to grow long and they are going to still, you know, they're going to be these long things. Like my sisters, when I released my weight, my body shape was pretty much the same, except my legs were leaner.

Rita Black: My butt was slimmer, but I was still the same shape. Now, when I worked out that alters your shape a bit, but your body shape is your body shape, so start loving it. You know, my arms are shaped the way that they're always going to be shaped. And you know, when I started owning my thighs and my butt, my life changed, you know, it started to be a proud of how I, and it's a whole other podcast, but we're going to talk about really taking ownership of our body, but just for the moment, forgive your body and say, okay, body, we are going on a beautiful journey together. And I'm loving you right now, unconditionally where we're at. And I'm going to continue to love and take care of you because you got to take care of your body. As you're loving yourself down the scale.

Rita Black: Think of all those times that we ate the horrible foods or maybe took those drugs, that might've hurt our body in the name of the scale being down, but really not thinking it through and really harming ourselves on the way we want to show our beautiful body love and self care and really nourish our bodies. Love our bodies, worship our bodies down the scale, no matter where they're at. And you know, what is so great that nowadays there are so many great role models of women and men out there doing that saying my body is powerful, no matter what it's shaped, no matter what I love where the world is going with that, it still has a ways to go. But you know, when I was growing up in the seventies, eighties, you know, and into the early nineties, it was, you know, it was a lot different than it is now.

Rita Black: My daughter, who just turned 19, she and her friends had it different viewpoint in high school about their bodies than me and my friends in high school. So, and I was so glad that was true. Listen, girls still freak out about their bodies. And I'm not saying that all of that girl stuff, isn't still there. It is unfortunately, but there are a lot of leaders and there is a lot more conversation about this. That's powerful and I'm really, really excited and happy that the conversation is turning, but we for ourselves need to just take ownership and begin a different conversation with ourselves. And that's what I hope that, that you begin to do. Okay. And now I want you to think of this, this, this journey that you're going on as a journey, it's, it's, it's a lifelong journey that you are traveling on rather than a diet, which is a very, short-term thinking modality.

Rita Black: A journey is a hero's journey. And, you know, I work in Hollywood. I know a lot of screenwriters and, you know, you think of a Hollywood film. Our hero's journey in Hollywood scripts are based on the hero's journey. And, you know, the hero decides to usually in a Hollywood movie, any Hollywood movie, the protagonist is going to within the first 30 minutes, decide to go on whatever adventure, whatever that movie is about. And then immediately the hero is thrown obstacles. And that's what makes up the story is all the different obstacles that hero has to overcome. And within that journey, that hero is growing, learning, becoming a more expanded individual, stronger, a stronger minded. And, you know, usually towards the climax of the story, the hero, you know, has to really confront the biggest fears, the biggest obstacles.

Rita Black: But by that time, the hero has become so strong from all the other obstacles that they've overcome, that they are able to slay the dragon or to jump over the shark tank or whatever the thing is, and come through that, that journey of transformation, and this is a journey of transformation that you are on. There will be obstacles that you have to overcome, but each obstacle will build and build you as a person. And I want you to see that you are a hero on your own journey and as such a journey of self realization and transformation. So act like it, and not like you're all ashamed and on some diet that you're super focused on. And, you know, you'll love yourself when you lose 10 pounds, um, something more. And, you know, now we see people who are on these transformational journeys, and it's really exciting to see people who have, have started something that's a little different, and a lot more effective in the long-term.

Rita Black: I'm going to ask you to do another thing, which is to start to communicate with yourself more powerfully. The way I like to introduce us to people is to start seeing that you have an inner coach within you. We know you have an inner critic. We know you have an inner rebel. They have been doing just fine with you, right? They've been beating you up and then seducing you to go eat food that they know their jobs really well. They're very loud voices within your head. I know because they were super loud within mine. They still exist. Mine still exists, believe me, but I've turned down the volume on them quite a bit, because I have another voice in my head, which is the voice of my inner coach. And believe me, it's okay to have lots of voices in your head.

Rita Black: It's perfectly normal. So, you know, enjoy. But that inner coach in you is the part of you that is wise nurturing, motivational inspirational. And you want to start to communicate with yourself in this way. Hey, I know we can figure this out. Hey, stupider people than me have figured this out, you know, like talking to your itself, like, Hey, you know, you're your own best friend. Put your arm around yourself. Hey kid, I got it. We're going to go on this and we're going to make this happen. And you know, twenty-five years ago, when I sort of made my shift at my turning point, you know, I sat down with myself and I said, Hey, you know, we can do this. You know, there's another way. And anyone to be your own best friend, you want to be on your own team.

Rita Black: And you start to think of that, you know? And if you need to cultivate that voice within you think of maybe a mentor in your life, or maybe a therapist that you worked with, or maybe you're one of your parents or an aunt or an uncle or somebody who is just very nurturing and very mentoring of you, or maybe yourself and the way you are with other people. Maybe you are a leader in other areas of your life. Think of the way that you communicate with other people, think of the way you communicate with your friends. That's the way you want to start to communicate with yourself, because it often is not. We usually are very cruel and very high expectations with ourselves. We have expectations of ourselves that we'd never put on other people, but we do on ourselves. So start creating that inner coach and speaking of expectations, start creating realistic expectations that you can follow through.

Rita Black: Often when we are stuck in the weight struggle, our expectations of what we need to deliver on are crazy. You know, I have people coming to see me or in my processes who expect to lose crazy amounts of weight per week and not doable at all. And certainly not sustainable crazy amounts of exercise when they haven't been exercising in. God knows how long, like these expectations come out of nowhere. I mean like, why would you expect to work out an hour and a half a day, seven days a week when you haven't worked out in two years? You know, why would you do that to yourself? Because what happens when you don't do what you say you're going to do? You don't believe in yourself, you start to distrust yourself. You start to have a lack of respect for yourself. You start to see yourself as a failure.

Rita Black: You start to see yourself as somebody who doesn't do what they say they're gonna do. So guess what do what you're saying? You were going to do, you know, have a plan for the day that is doable. Even if it seems a lot smaller than what you would think would be, you know, right. Create doable plans for yourself, especially at the beginning and with doable goals in mind, because actually research shows a slower weight release actually is more associated with long-term success than a fast one. You know, if you're speeding down the scale, how are you going to learn how to sustain that? You aren't going to be able to sustain that. Not at all. So what you want to do is create those expectations and goals. You want to do what you say you're going to do. So make it doable and you'll do it.

Rita Black: And I go, wow, I did that. I followed through. And guess what? You stay connected to yourself. You show up for yourself. When you set these huge unrealistic expectations, you are not showing up for yourself. You're disconnecting from yourself. It's, it's like you're putting yourself through some crazy obstacle course and saying, go and do it knowing you are going to fail. Why would you do that to yourself? You love yourself. Be good to yourself, set something that you know, we're going to get a win here, have a consultation with your inner coach. Can we do this? Does this feel realistic? Good. Okay. Let's go. But make sure you're checking in with yourself and saying, is this realistic? Can I feel like I can get a win here? We want to go for the wins. And the small wins are awesome. They're as good as the big wins.

Rita Black: Just one little win at a time adds up to a big long-term weight release. Believe me, mark my words. I've seen it hundreds and thousands of times. Just trust. Now, if things don't go right, forgive yourself. What did I learn? Learn when you lose, don't lose the lesson. You know? So forgive yourself. Oh, I did that. Oh, I ate the cookies that my boss left and I wasn't going to, I did that. How human I did that own it. Forgive yourself. What did I learn here? What did I learn? Well, maybe you needed to you take those cookies and just throw them away or give them away as soon as they're on their desk, or as soon as they landed on your desk. I don't know the answer to that because everybody is different. And what they need to do in different situations is different.

Rita Black: I can't tell you what to do, but I can say that, you know, nobody is in your head 24/seven, seven days a week, except for you. So when you cultivate that powerful inner coach within you, you are a long way forward in your success journey because you've got a free coach working with you. That's awesome. And forgive yourself. What did I learn? That's what your coach is going to start to ask you. What did we learn here? How can we make this better next time? How can we improve on this? Set yourself up for success? That's the next thing I can't tell you how many people wake up and hope the day works for them. You know what I mean? Like if you don't have a plan, the world has a plan for you. And it isn't a slimming one.

Rita Black: If you know what I mean, we step out the door and there are food signals and food signs and food messages all over. We walk into a store, there's a big array of food. We go to the grocery store, right? They've positioned everything so that your eye hits it just at the right place too. So that your impulse control completely goes out the window. And you grabbed that product and you buy it. The world is not set up for you to win. Let me just be really blunt and honest with you. And I think, you know what I'm talking about. So you, my friend have got to set yourself up for success and you need to set your environment, at least your environment and keep your environment like a mama bear. Right? And if you're going into the grocery store, know what you're going to get and get the hell out.

Rita Black: Get the foods that work for you. Get the hell out and have a plan and have a list. You're going out, have a plan in mind and know how you want to feel leaving. You know, if you don't have a plan, the world has one for you. So set yourself up for success, your environment, and the people in it. Meaning, you know, let people know how you want them to treat you. Now that you are treating yourself differently, you got to, you know, get people enrolled in supporting you. It's a huge part of weight mastery. You have to have the team, right. You know, the Olympic athletes, they got the team, you know, the movie stars, they got the team. You're a star. You're a weight mastery star and get your support team.

Rita Black: I tell you how many people I have on my team. So my husband, my kids, my friends, I have friends who, different friends every day of the week, I'm working out with them. I'm hanging out with them. It's a beautiful thing, and they've got me trained to believe me. We're all working for each other. And we're all working to be healthy and have fulfilling lives. I mean, isn't that great when you're in it for someone else and they're in it for you. There's nothing better than that. When you're both like wanting transformation and awesome life for each other, then it doesn't get any better than that. Does it? So you might have to train your friends a little. You might have to engage them in getting healthy, and if they don't want to go along for the ride, that's cool.

Rita Black: You know, that's, that's them. And, and, and you know, you work on your plan and they'll see you and they'll see your transformation and believe me, they're gonna want a piece of that action. And you can be their leader. You can let them let you know, you can show them the way you can model that awesome behavior for them. But it's got to start with you loving yourself down the scale, because that is irresistible. So make yourself and your health a priority above other people. So I cannot tell you that you should be doing this enough. And, especially for you moms out there, especially all moms put themselves at the bottom of the totem pole. It just drives me crazy. And yes, I am sometimes guilty of doing that myself, but I worked very hard to let everybody know my children and my husband.

Rita Black: If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. So mama's self care comes first because then when I'm taking care of, guess what? Everybody gets taken care of, I will take beautiful care of you. When I take care of myself, when I'm not taking care of myself, guess what? I become resentful. I become a victim. I become a martyr and martyrs and victims. They're not fun to hang out with. So don't be a martyr. Don't be a victim. Take care of yourself first and get your family enrolled in supporting you too, because you support them. So get them to support you. Here's another one practice saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you. No, thank you. Oh, that looks great. But no, thank you. And when I say practice that, I mean, practice that before you're in the situations where you actually have to say no, create some boundaries, boundaries are very slimming.

Rita Black: You know, don't say yes to everything say, Oh, I will think about that. And let me get back to you and then say now, um, you know, uh, when somebody offers you something, you know, often our impulses to say, Oh, thank you and take it because we will want to be liked. We all want, we don't want to upset anybody. We don't want to rock the rock, the boat. But most of the time, uh, what we're doing is really hurting us by saying yes. So say no, say no. You know that I, I, when I started my business, you know, somebody said the Mark of a successful business owner as a business owner that says no, and I didn't really get that in the beginning, but I get it now because you get so many offers, you get so many people coming at you asking you to do things.

Rita Black: I think that, you know, and you want to stay focused on what you need to do for you to serve your people the best. And the best way is to stay focused. And if we're saying yes to everything else, we get very distracted. So when we're saying yes to everything out in our weight lives, we get distracted and we get overworked and we get overwhelmed and we get spread out too thin. And that is fattening. So say no, no thank you, nada. However you say it in whatever language you say, learn how to say it and practicing it. Another one don't put garbage in your body. I have a word. I didn't make it up, but I have taken ownership of this word. And this word is GAC and GAC kind of signifies like that kind of super refined sugary carby food.

Rita Black: It doesn't need to be sugary necessarily, but super refined carby food that has no nutritive value, that is, you know, just absolutely you eat it. And it takes away from your body rather than giving to it. I call it GAC. Now, you know, sometimes if you buys a GAC is, can be lovely and everything, but, often when we are overeating often when we are bingeing, we will put any sort of GAC in our mouth, any sort of in our mouth, just for the sake of like eating. And we want to start to be selective. You know, we want to start to be a snob about food, but let's just put the, a plus food in our body. And I don't mean, um, just, you know, the fruits and vegetables and lean proteins. Obviously those are the A-plus foods and healthy fats, but I just mean any food that you're going to put in.

Rita Black: You're going to own it in. So you're going to love it, you know, enjoy it, eat a few bites of it. Um, we are going to talk about, you know, food a lot more in later podcasts because I want to get the mind stuff right first, but, um, just, you know, put the eighth you're, you're an a plus person put the frickin A-plus stuff in your body and leave all the other on the side. Excuse my French. But I'm getting protective of you. I'm being the mama bear here. Like you don't deserve to put that other crap in your body that GAC in your body, put the good stuff in and leave the bad stuff on the side. All right. And then, uh, respect yourself care enough to learn what doesn't work and correct. It don't stand for traps that own, you don't get into situations that, you know, you're going to struggle with.

Rita Black: You know, like I said, protect yourself like a mama bear. You're going to start to recognize the vulnerable times while protect yourself. You know, like you would one of your kids, or you would your best friend. You wouldn't let your best friend go into a bad situation. You wouldn't let your best friend date a crappy guy, but you know, that's often what we'll let ourselves do is we'll just let ourselves go blind into a situation. We know we're going to get railroaded through, stop doing that, you know, show up for yourself, respect yourself, you know, respect the food you put in your mouth own it and respect the situations you put in yourself into. And don't put yourself in situations where, you know, you're going to fail, you know, are ours or think it through so that, you know, you can make it work, but, you know, stop letting yourself get into those situations where you get into trouble.

Rita Black: You don't, you don't need to do it, respect yourself, start respecting yourself from that fierce place of, like I said, mama bear. And you know, a mama bear can be ferocious and we want to start to come with that self-love and that for ferociousness for ourselves, or we own it. Okay. And get support, get lots of support. Um, get lots of love from your friends, from your family, from groups. And, um, keep coming to this podcast. I'm here for you. I believe in you. And I know I'm speaking to you, like I know you're on your journey of weight mastery. I have no doubt in my mind. So get the support where you need it. And lastly, start living your dreams today. Today don't wait for tomorrow. Don't wait until you get skinny to start living your dreams. Love yourself now, and start living those dreams so that they aren't so scary.

Rita Black: I see a lot of people release weight and they get to their ideal weight. And it's so loaded with all these things they're going to start doing when they get thin that they self-sabotage, because they're super freaked out on subconscious level. Don't do that. Start be loving. You know, like if you want to go back to school, go now make that part of your weight mastery journey. You know, I started becoming a hypnotherapist when I was on my weight mastery journey. I wanted that, you know, I stopped smoking with hypnosis. I got my weight journey going with hypnosis. Hypnosis was a big thing. And I was like, wow, I really want to help people in this way, too. It's so powerful. I want that for myself. I didn't wait till I was, you know, super, you know, at my ideal weight, I started because it was part of my vision, part of my dream.

Rita Black: And, you know, I've had clients who, you know, took this on board and it's like, it just makes me cry. It's so such a beautiful thing. When somebody really starts showing up for themselves and living their dreams before they release all their weight, I've had people go back to school, get divorced, get married, find the love of their lives. Even though they were 50 pounds up the scale, you know, they found somebody and, and, you know, and they loved them 50 pounds above the scale at their ideal weight, you know, people buy homes, you know, move across the planet, leave a bad job and get a better job, start their own business. You know what I mean? Like, this is what I'm talking about. Yeah. Like this is your life. It isn't just about weight is about you showing up for you and you starting to really engage in your life on a different level, having a powerful vision and going for it.

Rita Black: And, and so think about that. Think about like, what if I've been holding myself back from, and what could I just begin? You know, you don't have to, it doesn't have to happen all at once. What can you start to get curious about what you can, you begin to surround yourself with what could be that first step that you take with living your dreams today? So Monica started loving her and itself down the scale. She started employing a lot of these sin thinking strategies we have been talking about today and a funny thing happened, you know what? She no longer felt shame around releasing weight. And she started sharing it with her friends instead of the secret thing that she was doing in order to, you know, get back into her size four dress. She started saying, Hey, I struggled with my weight. And now I'm on my journey.

Rita Black: And you guys come with me. And she started enrolling other people in her community and inviting them to get healthy with her. Instead of seeing herself as a failure. She started to see herself as a leader and she started inspiring others, and they all love themselves down the skill too. And she released 50 pounds and she's kept it off for seven years. She got into exercise. She got other people into exercise. I think she's got like a running squad or a walking squad of friends now that she still goes and exercises every week with it's a beautiful thing, but she created that from a different place. So you can too now for this week, thin thinking, I would like to do a little repetition. What I like to call cognitive coaching. If you're driving your car, you can actually do this with me. It's um, another, uh, term that you would use is called a direct drive technique.

Rita Black: It's just a repetition. I'm going to say the same suggestion over and over three times. And what you're going to do is just repeated powerfully to yourself inside your own mind. And it's just to start to break up the, some of those subconscious, uh, you know, disbelief. So limiting beliefs inside your deeper mind. Um, so just play along, uh, you don't need to say it out loud, just mentally repeat it. And I'm going to do that three times with each suggestion. All right. So here's number one. I forgive myself for struggling with my weight. Good. And again, I forgive myself for struggling with my weight.

Rita Black: And again, I forgive myself for struggling with my weight. I forgive my body for not living up to what I thought it should be. Okay. I forgive my body for not living up to what I thought it should be. I forgive my body for not living up to what I thought it should be. Yeah. I'm open to loving my body right now for all it is right now. I'm open to loving my body right now for all it is right now. I am open to loving my body right now for all it is right now, I'm moving in the direction of believing in myself down the scale. I am moving in the direction of believing myself down the scale. I'm moving in the direction of believing myself down the scale. Last one, I am moving in the direction of loving myself down the scale. I am moving in the direction of loving myself down the scale.

Rita Black: I am moving in the direction of loving myself down the scale. Excellent. Good job. Take a nice deep breath in and just bring that all in as sort of your inner blueprint for the week.

: Now, before I go, I am super excited to announce that I am offering a free new masterclass coming up on April 21st. So that's next week, next Wednesday, if you're listening to this before April 21st, 2021, if you're listening to it afterwards, well, it's not coming up anymore. So sorry. But check my website. I've probably got something else going on, but this masterclass is called How to Beakthrough to Consistent Long-term Weight Release. And in the 75 minute masterclass, I'm going to guide you through a powerful process, including a light hypnosis session where you will learn the three most common weight loss mistakes that keep you stuck and struggling.

Rita Black: These are the foundational ones, the ones that really trip us up, the three doable mental shifts that you can make to remove the subconscious resistance and roadblocks and start losing weight for good. And my four part shift process that has helped thousands of people release weight long-term by using mind power over willpower. And, we're going to do a light hypnosis session in this masterclass. So you're going to leave getting clear on what you need to do to release weight permanently. You're going to be motivated because you have a roadmap that breaks you out of the frustrating off again on again, weight struggle cycle and into the ability to be consistent. And you're going to be excited because, you know, you can be successful. And one more thing, we will start on time.

Rita Black: So come early and, this masterclass does have limited seating. I want you to understand that. So there will be people who probably aren't going to get in or to be able to be in on the live masterclass. So make sure you sign up and get in. And we're offering two classes, one in the morning and one in the evening, because in the past, the demand has been so high. So the link is in the show notes. So sign up now, get in and have an amazing week. Love yourself down the scale of this week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of weight struggle is inside of you. So keep listening and find it. Have an amazing week, love yourself down the scale and enjoy doing it.

Rita Black: Do you want to dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release? Head on over to 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.