Rita Black: Do we ever wake up one day and feel like we have finally arrived? The world of dieting sets us up to think, be good on a diet, suffer in the short term, lose the weight. And if you're really good, then you get the prize. You are done, thin, ideal weight, and you can jog off into the sunset through the crashing waves. And the story fades to black. And the final message on the screen is, and she lived happily and skin ever after. Hey, that would be nice. But the road to lasting weight success is less about the short-term deprivation and being good and more about you getting on your own team and playing the long game of lasting success. And once you come at it from a mindset of transformation rather than deprivation, you will see that you can break free from the self-sabotage and self-abuse that usually comes with trying for the short-term diet fixes. So today in the Thin Thinking Podcast, we are going to explore how changing the mindset game of weight management from the short-term self punishing quick fix, to the long-term journey of self-lead into lasting results can make all the difference in your weight and your life. So put your player on the board, and let's get started.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn't start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That's right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I'm Rita Black. I'm a clinical hypnotherapist weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift 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 friends and welcome. Come on in, put your feet up, turn the air conditioner on, and let's settle in and take a nice deep breath. Whew! I hope you had amazing long weekend. Those of you here in the United States, nice long Memorial Day weekend and are ready for the summer. Many of you probably remember that you remember back in the day, that you weren't allowed to wear white shoes before Memorial Day. Do you remember that? Like Memorial Day was the kickoff to wearing white shoes, white sandals, you know, anything white? That just cracks me up. I think that has come and gone out the door. But I hope you're looking forward to your summer. And to help you manage yourself and your weight this summer, please grab my Shift Outta Sugar Cravings Hypnosis Session for free. It's in the show notes. Go and grab it and get relaxed and shift out of those sugar cravings.

Rita Black: So my daughter, my darling daughter, has now been home a couple of weeks. Officially home. You know, she was away for four years and now she's home. And I can see that postgraduate thing settling in the anxiety about now school is over. You know? I thought it was gonna be great to be done, but now I just feel anxious. You know? She's kind of done all the things you're supposed to do when you graduate, slept in a few days, watched tv, lounged around, and now it's all hitting her. Holy crap. What is next? Where am I? Who am I? What am I? You know? School may be hard, but it provides structure and an identity. And without it, I just see so many kids getting out of the educational system and having such a hard time that first year out.

Rita Black: My daughter, I'm so proud of her, she did so well. She was always a straight A student, you know, very focused with her studies. You know, she wrote her thesis. She turned it in one minute before. It was, you know, the deadline. But she got it in and she learned a lot. She went and did research. She's really, I'm so proud of her. But it really just didn't prepare her. And I don't think many kids are prepared for this in-between place. You know? I think about college and they prepare you so well in so many things, but they don't prepare you for life after school. I remember this too. I mean, I was so focused on my studies and then all of a sudden, nothing, not a, you know, I wasn't a student. Well, who was I? I felt like the ground beneath me gave away and I was free falling without identity and without a structure.

Rita Black: And of course, you know where I'm going with this, because diets are the same way. They keep us focused and structured, getting straight A's in the short term, but they don't really teach us how to live our lives and manage our weight in the long term. Sure, if we focus and do really good and we lose the weight, we get to that place where we've lost the weight and then all of a sudden we lose the, I am being good on a diet identity, we lose the structure, and then we're in this other world. Like, I have to maintain this. I haven't really learned anything how to maintain it. I just have learned how to lose it. And then we lose that focus and then we gain the weight back. So obviously not the path we want to be going down. Now, am I right?

Rita Black: Okay, so now let's talk about the long game mindset. I have been noticing an epidemic of smart people because the people who are attracted to, you know, my clients, people, my communities, my students are usually smart people who are very, you know, self-aware, but caught up in a mindset that just isn't working. It's this short term weight loss mindset that really is not their fault, right? It has been given to them by their family, their culture, the media, our friends. I mean, we are immersed in a weight loss culture that has really cognitive distortion and negative thinking and really makes us feel bad about ourselves and trains us to permanently feel bad about ourselves. It really kind of feeds on that. So you know, and there's a mythology. It's like, you know, be good on a diet, you're gonna lose the weight, and you're then you're gonna live happily ever after.

Rita Black: Not a problem, right? So, so we get really stuck in this short term focus and you know, it's incredibly damaging and painful and you know, and it's short term, you know, most diets are offering you a relief, right? They're, they're offering you a relief from the pain of feeling overweight, or they're offering you a relief from the pain of feeling chaotic and unstructured. And and they're saying, this is quick because, and, and we aren't dummies. We aren't like, oh, it's quick, but, but because we're in pain, our brain doesn't think this is short term. So this really doesn't mean, you know, like, if I lose 20 pounds in two weeks, what's gonna happen on week three? We're not thinking there. We're just thinking, great, I can feel lighter and lose some weight, get this weight off me that makes me feel horrible about myself in a short term.

Rita Black: All I have to drink is this drink, or all I have to do is cut this macronutrient group out of my diet. I'm all in, right? And we can do it, we can go at it really with a focus for a short term. Okay? So, so that's first of all, we, we go at it, not because we're stupid, but because, or we go after these short term things because it's so painful the way we feel about ourselves when we're overweight. We don't like ourselves. We have a lot of distrust in ourselves. So diets or weight loss regimes, or all these quick fixes offer an escape to our brain and our dopamine center in our brain, our reward center. It's like, yes, I want that. You know, it's like almost an, it's an addiction. Alright?

Rita Black: So, so secondly, obviously it's self-defeating because when we're focused outside of ourselves on a diet, on a plan it may seem rational at the time, but the problem is when you're focused on like a, you know, do it this way and you only can do it this way, you can't do it any other way. It has to be done this way, which a lot of diets are, you know, like, eat this, eat that, but don't eat this, eat this much, blah, blah, blah. You know, the lure of that is that we are really saying I need to be controlled, you know, because I'm chaotic internally. I can't trust myself, but I can trust something outside of me or a guru outside of me or some sort of structure. So let me do that. And and again, momentarily we get a relief from the self distrust and the self hatred because we're now committed to something, you know, and that can make us feel sort of like a, kind of a false sense of confidence. You know?

Rita Black: And then there is the third thing, which is, you know, the lure of, you're gonna go on this, you're gonna lose the weight, and then it's life is gonna be perfect. You're finally gonna have, you know, it all, you're going to, it's gonna be good. And then you can focus on other things. And again, that the idea that we have to, that we're gonna find this magic cure that is going to, well, you know, take away the fact, you know, our thinking about food, having to manage food, thinking about exercise and all of that stuff, the idea that there's a something out there that's gonna remove all of that from our life. So we finally don't have to think about food anymore and don't have to think about exercise. That is actually, again, a false advertisement. Because even thin people, and I work with a lot of thin people, and I ask them all the time, how do you manage your weight? And they say, yes. I said, did you ever struggle with your weight? No, I just know that, you know, I can't eat certain foods or I'm gonna gain weight.

Rita Black: You know, so, so the idea that, you know, you are, that we live in a world full of food. We live in bodies that, you know, like a full of food that our bodies were not designed to be eating. You know, and again, I'm not going to down that road of like, you know, we gotta go back to our ancestors and eat the way they do. I'm just saying, our bodies weren't designed to eat all this food to have it all around us, and our brains weren't designed to be stimulated by this food all day long, right? So people, even thin people have had to adapt a internal structure for themselves of managing this world of food so that they can maintain their weight. You got it? So I'm not talking about like, so, so the, the, the whole weight loss industry is built on, I don't wanna say lies, and I'm not, it's like a, it's developed in this way that really takes us down a wrong path, you know?

Rita Black: And look, we are never gonna be perfect, and life is never gonna line up for us to do good on a diet, you know, 24 7, 7 days a week, you know, 365 days a year. Look at how many, there's a holiday in every month. You know what I mean? Like, there's always gonna be some reason to go off your diet. There's always gonna be some interruption. There's always gonna be, you know, so we gotta get real, really real, real, real, real, okay? So you know, and I, and I apologize, I, that this is, you know, the way it is, but I think like the 22-year-old, it's like, you know, once you kind of can have acceptance about, like, you know, you aren't going to get that $150,000 job right off the bat, and it's, you know, people aren't going to be paying you to, you know, do all those fun and super creative things that you did in college, but you're gonna have like a low paying job and you're gonna be doing really menial labor in the beginning, you know?

Rita Black: But the sooner you accept it and go, okay, I'm here, you know, like that. And, and I don't mean that that's what you're gonna have to do, but I'm just saying there's a certain freedom in going, okay, let me start from a real place. Let me start from something real with myself and begin something that I'm creating for me. So, because the alternative is to continue to stay stuck in this, looking outside of yourself, finding the next quick fix, you know, doing good on it for a little bit, falling off it, getting off track, going, eating more, going back you know, and then, you know gaining weight, feeling horrible about yourself, feeling you, you know, like over and over and over again, and over and over and over again. And I say this because, you know, like my mother never, ever, you know, like escaped that cycle, you know, to me that is a tragedy, you know, before she passed and went on to hopefully bigger and better things.

Rita Black: But you know, and I see it all the time. I see, you know, clients who have been stuck in this struggle for decades. And so we really need to come back to ourselves and we really need to start to look at ourselves as the answer, not as a problem. So I really came at to this conclusion one day, you know, and those of you who dunno my story, you'll, you know, come to the masterclass, you'll hear it in a little more depth. But, you know, like, I kind of hit my wall and after dieting for 20 years, and yo-yoing up and down the scale, 40 pounds I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't diet it anymore. I really have to come at this from a different way. 'cause I cannot live life anymore like this. Like my life was in ruins.

Rita Black: So in that moment, I really made a decision not gonna do that anymore, and I'm gonna do something different. And something that helped me a lot at the time was this idea of the hero's journey. And the hero's journey is a Joseph Campbell's concept. I believe I'm, you know, like, I'm not a super duper anthropology expert, but my husband is works, you know, has, he doesn't work in the movies anymore, but at the time he was working in the movies and in the, in the movies in Hollywood a lot of screenplays, well, every screenplay really, it follows the, what you would call the story of the hero's journey. Most screenplays, not every single one, but you know, most of those action movies. And most of those the, the, the a the structure of a movie is, you know, most heroes in a movie are reluctant.

Rita Black: They don't wanna go on whatever, you know, in the beginning it's, you know, the guy, he's like like the village wants him to go and slay the monster. And he's like, no, not me. I'm not the guy who can do that. And you guys do that. No, not me, not me. And then, you know, finally he's called into action, or she's called into action by a vision or a need bigger than themselves, but usually it's a, a vision that pulls them forth. And not a vision, vision, but just like something bigger than them. They need to save somebody, they need to save their village or whatever. They get out of their own ego and they, you know, move forward. So, and then, and then the hero's journey continues. Oh, so once the reluctant hero steps in and begins the journey the journey is a series of obstacles, right?

Rita Black: That the hero then has to confront all these obstacles, each obstacle that the hero has to struggle with and find a solution for actually makes the hero stronger. Now, many, many times the hero wants to turn back, I can't do this. It's too hard. Or he gets hurt, or whatever. He, you know, there's many times or times she has, you know, like, just, it's the, oh my God, one more thing. Are you kidding me? You know, you guys have all watched the movies, you know what it's like. And then there's always that like, scene towards the end, the climax of the film where the hero has to slay the dragon and she, you know, has to like, pull together, you know, the, the, and the dragon really is representative of the, the biggest protagonist, the, the, I mean the antagonist, the, the dark force, the, you know, the, the hero's antithesis, you know, the, and coming at them again and again and again.

Rita Black: It's not like they slay them in one stab. It's like they keeps coming back and keeps coming back. But finally the hero perseveres and slays the dragon, they come home and they're, you know, to or to the end of the movie, and they're transformed, right? They are not who they were when they began the journey. So I, there, I was thinking about my weight and, and I was like, I get it. You know, a weight journey is a hero's journey. And the point of the journey isn't about being good or perfect. The point of the journey is finding the solutions and believing in yourself and building yourself as you go along and and slaying the dragon. And you know, I know that I'm speaking in metaphors for a moment, but, but the reason why I say this is because most people stop at the first obstacle, right?

Rita Black: Like, you'll start a diet, and then Friday night, you know, pizza time comes out and there's the first obstacle because life is gonna be full of pizza. You know what I mean? It's not like you go on a diet and pizza evaporates pizza's in your life, and you are, you know, if you're managing your weight, you need to learn to manage pizza on a Friday night. And that might mean eating pizza on a Friday night, but figuring that out for yourself, right? So you know, but most of us get to points in the journey where we wanna turn around and go back, and we do, we go back to the beginning. 'cause It doesn't look perfect. And the reason for that a lot of times isn't that it's too hard, but we don't like looking bad to ourselves. And 'cause there's a lot of self shame within ourselves because one of our biggest dragons within us is our inner critic that's always there to say, you blew it.

Rita Black: You didn't do it right? This is going too hard, this plateau is going on too long. You're blowing it somehow because it's not working for you. Right? And then there's also that other dragon, it's kind of a twin head, a dragon of the, the rebel within us, right? And that rebel is you know, really they're ready to say, oh yeah, this diet sucks, , let's just start again Monday. Everybody else is eating. Why can't we, you know, so there's this, this, this powerful force, you know, talk about obstacles that is always there as we're going. So I wanna just kind of go through the hero's journey as a weight master you know, just briefly to give you a flavor of, you know, really where I feel like we want to start from now. Reluctant hero, let's talk about the reluctant hero. So, you know, I get why diets do so well, because you know, and really a weight loss journey, like I said, like a long-term permanent journey is not about, you know, like, I'm gonna lose 20 pounds in a month and I'm gonna, it's really about like, I am ready to take ownership of myself.

Rita Black: I am ready to step forward and stretch myself past where I've been stretched before, you know, have been stretched before, and I'm willing to go through something because where I am now is so painful and because I also see something better for myself, right? You know, the crazy thing is, I, I don't know where I learned this, but that they did a poll and like 80% of people really live their lives not from, like, if you ask them like, where do you wanna be five years from now? Most people don't know, you know, like, what do you see yourself doing next year? Most people don't know. We know where we don't wanna be. We know where we don't want to happen to us, but we really don't create our future and, and live our life like we're living into it, right? And so the reluctant hero, it, it, you know, we, it is painful being overweight, but it's also familiar and is comfy, you know, on a certain level.

Rita Black: And and the idea of, you know, to our dieting mind going on a weight journey, like a long-term journey, it might seem scary, it might seem fearful, like you know, I have to change really. And, and not only ourselves but we don't wanna be feel deprived because that's the, the diet mind thinks of deprivation. When we think of weight management, it doesn't think of transformation. It doesn't think of self-fulfillment and nourishment and sustaining ourselves in a powerful way. It thinks of, I'm gonna have to eat less, I'm gonna have to exercise more. And that seems really hard to me. And, and we also, and this is kind of crazy but I'm gonna be honest with you, is that we might have to shift our relationships with the other people in our lives. And that is incredibly scary, you know, because we're comfy with the people in our lives, even though they might be, you know, the source of some of our weight.

Rita Black: So we have to be powerful, and I get it. That's why we're reluctant. You know, it's not just because we're you know, don't have willpower. It's, it's really not that. I mean, people who struggle with their weight have tons of willpower. I mean, like, some of the most disciplined people I know are people who struggle with their weight. So I don't think that that's it. There's just a lot more to it. So when we're sitting in this place of, you know, being reluctant I get it. But what you wanna start to do is think about, and this is what I did for myself, was I was like the me here, 40 pounds above where I wanna be, okay? That's me now, unhappy, overweight, you know, things aren't really working out well for me. And the me 40 pounds down the scale, okay?

Rita Black: There's some things going on there too. Like, I am 40 pounds lighter, but I'm also who I need to be to sustain my life. 40 pounds lighter is gonna be, think differently, behave differently, and probably have shifted relationships with the people that I have in my life. Because, you know, we set, you know, we, we teach people how to treat us, right? And so that to me, I was like, you know, I kind of gulped gulp , and I was like, okay, I'm committing to this, you know, just like the reluctant heroes. Like, they're like, okay, I'm gonna do this. But, but I stepped forward and I was excited because I was so ready for transformation and, and, and I, you know, sat down with myself and I kind of had to love myself in the moment and say, okay, I believe in me.

Rita Black: I believe I can do this even though it's uncomfortable. The, the comfort from the, you know, painful and frustrating, familiar weight, you know, I don't want that anymore. I want something new. I'm willing to stretch. I'm willing to be in something unfamiliar, and I'm, I'm also willing not to be perfect. I'm willing to be a student. I'm willing to be a learner because that's what an apprentice is, right? Just like my friend's daughter got that job as an apprentice. It's like you an apprentices. The good news is you get to make mistakes. You get to make mistakes almost immediately. So I started to see myself differently and I started treat myself differently, and I started to feed myself differently and exercise and, you know, use hypnosis and all those things. But the, the thing I want you to understand is that the, I've been doing this for 25 years, you guys, and, and that's a, I'm on still in my long-term permanent weight mastery journey.

Rita Black: So there are many, many, many, many, many phases to a weight mastery journey. And yes, you know, there is a certain point, I think, where you slay your dragons to this, to certain degree, to the most degree. And, you know, in your, in your journey of down the scale. But you know, maintenance, you start another journey. And so I, I want to inspire you about this because in becoming that, in being that hero in, you know, really going through what I call struggle points, which are all the points that you probably have gone on before, like when you've gone on a diet where you've stopped and got off track, were probably your struggle points. And our struggle points. Like we gain weight in the same places, in the same time with the same foods for the most part, right? And we keep banging our heads against the wall thinking somehow it's gonna change this time and it's gonna be different.

Rita Black: No, it's not. But we've gotta figure these out. But the good news is, once you get it, you can do it. And when you do it, you are like, I solved that problem. And that is the joy I have in seeing my clients and students go through and go, that has been bugging me for years, and I slayed that dragon. Woo hoo. I own that. And that my friend is some taste of like, better than any cake, better than any, you know, potato chip. Like, oh my god, that is as good as it gets when you, you go through a struggle point and you, you, you put it to sleep and you move forward. Like people figuring out night eating and putting that to rest, and people managing their stress without, or emotional eating, start to manage their emotions without food, people learning to socialize and having a really good time at restaurants and parties without overeating or over drinking and, and taking ownership for that.

Rita Black: Because these are the things that take us off track again and again and again. So when you start to look at this journey, not from being perfect on a diet, but you really start to look at it as a, a series of transformational steps that you're taking, that every, just like the heroes in the movies where they each step along the way, it, you know, maybe doesn't happen overnight, but they, they, they get that, they get a little more powerful and they get a little more powerful and they get a little more powerful with every step forward. And, and I call it the thin thinking brain. Like we, our, it's like flexing a muscle or thin thinking brain gets stronger and it's stronger and stronger until that's who you are. Or a thin thinker. And that old fat thinking, old habits, beliefs that kept you in that struggle, that part of the brain is dormant and that, you know, and, and slaying.

Rita Black: So here's the thing about the critic and the rebel. You can't slay them, but you can learn to work with them because that part of the brain, you know, and really turn them way down. Like you can turn the volume way, way down. But we are human beings. We are always have our inner critic and rubble, but, but we are developing on our, our weight mastery journey. Our inner coach and our inner coach is the longer we're on, you know, like the more we use our inner coach, the louder that voice gets, the more empowered we become, the more self forgiving, self empathy self-reinforcing, we can figure out this problem. We got this, you know, we start to talk to ourselves differently. And again if, if we reach that struggle point and we turn around and we try to be perfect, oh, well, I didn't do good today.

Rita Black: I am gonna go back and be perfect. You lose that. You lose that ability to build that inner resource, that inner strength within you to develop that inner structure within yourself. Because weight diets, weight regimes are structures that you go on. But really when we're, we're shifting and we're on our weight mastery journey, we are creating the structure from within when us within us. And you don't lose that. You don't ever lose that. You own that. And you get to keep it so that when you get to your ideal weight, guess what? You own that. And that's what happened for me. That's what happened for many of my, you know, students and clients is like that when they get there and get to maintenance, which is a different journey, but they, they, they're not afraid like, oh my God, I'm gonna go all the way back up the scale.

Rita Black: I mean, they might have some insecurity. I'm not saying it's perfect, there is insecurity, but they, they, they're like, I got this. Like I've got the tools. And they start to work that muscle of maintenance and they're like, oh my God, I got this too. Like, this is actually gonna work for me. You know, so, so you know, but along the way there will be boredom, you know, like, I don't think the weight loss industry tells you this, but you know, like people get to places like, I'm bored. There must be something wrong with me. I'm like, no, welcome to a long term permanent weight mastery journey. You will be bored sometimes, but there is something underneath that boredom that you will learn about, and you'll crack that boredom and you'll get through it and you will be stressed out. You'll have times in your life when you're stressed and you might have to tread water or figure some stuff out for yourself, and you will get through it, and there will be plateaus.

Rita Black: And guess what? You will get through your plateaus too if you just keep going. And you'll get off track. And guess what? I invite you to get off track so that you can exercise that muscle of getting back on track. So it's so tight that the second you get off track, you're like, what, what do I do to get back on track? I get right back. And that my friend is the key to consistency. Not super superhuman discipline, not starving yourself, not ex exercising like a maniac, but really finding a way of living your life on your terms, solving those struggle points and developing yourself from the inside out. Transforming yourself from the inside out. You know, I think of my son, you know, he's, he's going to be 17 in, in two months and he started playing piano when he was five.

Rita Black: And I think of him like, you know, not even being able to put, like, his hands were so small he couldn't even like, reach some of the keys. And now he's playing rockman enough, which requires your hands to be like so stretched out that you, because there's so many chords and notes that you have to hit that your hands have to be really spread out. Like so, yeah, he's a young man now and he has those hands and he has that capability of playing you know, incredibly complicated music that you know, but I remember when he started out, and I remember so many struggle points where he wanted to quit. He wanted to just, oh, so many, too many. Where, you know, and in the beginning, I, either me or his father had to sit with him or us both and just say, you gotta, you just take a breath and, and think about, you know, this isn't just about playing the piano, but this is about mastery.

Rita Black: This is about like, life is full of these times where you don't wanna, but you just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And then he would get to the other side of whatever that struggle point was, and he'd have a breakthrough in his playing or who he was as a player. And the beautiful thing is, and I'm gonna cry 'cause it's just so wonderful to see as a mom or, you know, just as a fellow human being, is that he now does it for himself. You know, he gets to those struggle points and he can talk himself through that. And that is what I want for you. That ability to really love yourself enough to sit with yourself and believe in yourself that you can get through those struggle points and solve them so that you own them and you get that breakthrough for you.

Rita Black: So and to slay those dragons and to come home to yourself, you know, to your own inner vi village or our community here, I'd like to think of as a village or then thinking community. But you know, to have that transformation for yourself because it really isn't just about weight. You know, with the clients that I work with, like I said, you know, clients, students, people in the community people in my mastermind it's not just about weight. People get transformed in their life because they really coming home to yourself, really showing up for yourself transforms every single part of your life, not just your weight. So you are the hero.

Rita Black: Alright, so are you clear? You are the hero. I hope this session has served you and grab my free shift outta sugar cravings, hypnosis, and hey, would you do me a favor? Refer a friend or a colleague or a loved one to this podcast, share the shift and pass along a way of living that allows you to love yourself. So have a great week and remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it, and I will see you next week.

Rita Black: You wanna 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.