This week on the Thin Thinking Podcast, we’re diving into even more goodness about maintaining your ideal weight with our amazing guest, Julie Trainer.
As part of our special Autumn Series, my goal is to share the personal journeys of individuals who have successfully maintained their weight, so you not only believe you can get there, but also learn the mindset that will help keep you there.
Julie’s story is truly inspiring! Her weight journey has fueled her confidence and empowered her to take bold risks, like starting her own podcast.
And guess what? She’s now going to be on a TED Talk! (We didn’t talk about that in the episode because it just happened, but how cool is that?)
So, as we enjoy the beautiful month of October, grab your favorite hot cup of tea, settle in, and tune into this empowering conversation. You won’t want to miss it!
Come on in!
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
- One of the reasons why shifters in my community achieve and maintain their weight loss success.
- Julie's struggle with her weight.
- Julie's feelings about entering weight maintenance.
Links Mentioned in this Episode
- Julie’s Hidden Gift of Loss Facebook Group
- Julie’s Podcast On Spotify
- Julie’s Podcast on Apple
- Julie’s Podcast on Castbox
- Reach out to Julie Here
- Join my FREE Masterclass: "How to Stop the "Start Over Tomorrow" Weight Struggle Cycle and Begin Releasing Weight for Good."
- FREE Shift Out of Sugar Cravings Hypnosis Session
- My book, From Fat to Thin Thinking: Unlock Your Mind for Permanent Weight Loss (Includes a 30-day hypnosis process.)
- What would you love to hear about on the podcast? Click here and let me know
- Subscribe to the email list so that you never miss an episode!
- If you're wanting to quit smoking, but worried about weight gain, click here
- Get more thin thinking tools and strategies
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Transcription
Rita Black: This week, we are diving into more maintaining your ideal weight goodness, on the Thin Thinking Podcast with our guest Julie Trainor. My desire with the Autumn Series is to bring you the inner journey of people who have been successfully maintaining so that you not only believe you can get there, but also know the mindset that keeps you there. So, learn how Julie's weight journey has encouraged her to be more confident and to take bolder risks, like starting her own podcast. And now she's gonna be on a TED Talk. We don't talk about that in the episode because that just happened, but how cool is that? So here in the month of October, grab your hot cup of tea and come on in.
Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn't start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That's right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I'm Rita Black. I'm a 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 and welcome everybody, veteran listeners and new listeners alike. Thank you for joining us, and please do me a favor and give us a review. I don't ask that often but I would really love to hear from you and let us know how you're enjoying the show. I really appreciate all of you who have taken the time. It really is a help to let others know about us and also please share with your friends. It is actually, interestingly, the number one way people do find out about us. So share the shift, share something, thinking goodness and spread the love.
Rita Black: Okay, now, I have had many students who have been in maintenance now for a while in my membership. We actually have a special group for them to touch base with each other. And a shout out to all of you, weight maintainers. And people wonder why we have such a high number of people who have had never had success before with weight, being able to reach their ideal weight and then maintain over time. And that is why I have interviewed a number of maintainers to make the whole process seem less unattainable and shrouded in mystery. You'll be hearing from a few more before the new year because maybe you will be achieving your ideal weight soon and need to maintain as well. One of the reasons I think people achieve and maintain success, because with the shift, we are all about mindset. First, focusing on building the skills of weight management and maintenance, not just focused on a number on the scale by eating a strict diet in a certain way and not learning anything in the process. Really, it's an inside out journey. So once people know how to communicate with themselves, with their inner coach, not only are they able to manage their weight, but it also gives them the confidence to break out of the fear of taking risks in their life and be bold and obviously to maintain their weight because they have that ability to figure things out to solve problems.
Rita Black: Because ultimately, long-term permanent weight management isn't about being perfect. We all know that now we know that it is about being consistent and in the moment, being able to coach yourself through those sticky moments where in the past maybe you would've said, oh, screw it. I'm outta here. I'll start over tomorrow and just keep going. This is critical. But also this inner communication system does this really great sort of side effect, which is it bleeds over to other areas of people's lives like their finances and their relationships. But also I've seen so many shifters just take bold risks in their life once they've, you know, kind of broken free from the shackles of all that inner abuse and self disbelief, which, you know, is really comes, is commonplace with struggling with weight.
Rita Black: So that is why you are gonna love my inspiring conversation with Julie Trainor, who's such an awesome person. She's maintained her weight, but taken that next big step and started a podcast about, well, I'll let Julie let you know herself, shall we? But I do wanna let you know that this was recorded before we knew that she got a TEDx talk. So she's gonna be doing a TEDx very soon. And I'm so thrilled for her, what a big leap forward she has taken in her life. So let's talk to Julie.
Rita Black: Hey Julie, welcome to the Thinking Podcast. I should say, welcome back. We have had you on before, but now that you are at your ideal weight and are maintaining, we wanna dig deeper with that. How are you doing?
Julie Trainer: I'm wonderful, Rita! Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here.
Rita Black: Well, it's always a joy to have you on and I just love your story. Would you mind telling everybody just a little bit about your weight release journey before we dive into your maintenance experience?
Julie Trainer: Sure. Yeah. I, well, my whole thing started. Well, I've struggled with my weight forever. You know? When I look back at pictures of me in my twenties, I thought I was overweight and I wasn't. But then, you know, you have a baby, you get in a bad marriage, you pack it on, right? So I had kind of resolved myself to just you know what, this is me, I'm just gonna be overweight. But I wasn't happy in my body. I didn't feel good in my body. And when my friend invited me to her 60th birthday trip in Key West, she said, we'll need to get wetsuits. And my brain said, oh my gosh, no, this body is not going in a wetsuit. So I had this, like, I had that, I feel like that was like this transformational moment in my brain, and I joined this weird bootcamp thing, but when it ended, I felt like, well, what am I gonna do now?
Julie Trainer: You know? And that's when I was late night scrolling on Facebook and I saw you and you spoke to exactly the thoughts I was having, which was that start over mentality. I was literally sitting on my couch thinking, oh, well, I'm just going to eat this bad thing today and I'm gonna start over on Monday. And those were like literally your words. And I said, this woman, she's the real deal. She knows. So I signed up for Shift and since then I've released a total of 40 pounds and I've kept it off. I reached my ideal weight around April, may this year. So it's been almost a year, and I released 20 pounds more than I thought I was going to release.
Rita Black: I love that. You what, why was that you just didn't believe your body could release that weight?
Julie Trainer: No, and I, and I did that start and stop. I'd have days where I was like, oh, you were good. You know, you were good today. But then it was the, it was that night eating that would get me. And another thing you said is that we gained most of our weight in the same place with the same people pretty much at the same time even. And for me it was that escape into late night eating and maybe watching TV and just being tired, that kind of thing. Yeah. And, and that's probably where most of it got put on.
Rita Black: Yeah. More, more than likely. You're so right that we are little target spots, and when we can really problem solve them then they don't become problems anymore. Isn't that amazing?
Julie Trainer: It's amazing. Yes.
Rita Black: So now we are talking about maintenance, and I wanna hear like, as you were approaching your ideal weight, 'cause you know it's an approach. How, how were you feeling about this idea of maintaining your weight? Like, did you believe you could, were you afraid of, you know, what were kind of thoughts that were going through your mind?
Julie Trainer: I was kind of afraid, actually. Because, you know, I was so strict with my tracking and I was at this calorie budget, and then when I reached maintenance, you know, and I recalculated it so I could, I could have more calories. And I, and I was a little afraid to have more calories. I've gotten over that though. But yeah, I had set a goal of 20 pounds and then I didn't, but I wasn't sure what is my ideal weight because my, the weight I'm at now was beyond my wildest dreams. It wasn't a weight that I, it's below my high school weight, and it's not a weight goal that I ever would've set, but I was able to keep doing it because it wasn't hard. You know? I had made the shift in my mind and in my relationship to food, and I thought, well, what if I just keep going and, and then I hit, and then my body kind of let me know this is where I wanna be.
Julie Trainer: This is, this is our, our our ideal weight. And I feel like what's happened for me now, or I would even say what is still happening for me is that I've, in, I've internalized the shift and I have a sense of how much I can eat. I feel much safer if I log my food, but I have to, I have to admit that there have been some days when my daughter visits. There have been some days where I gotten a little bit off with my tracking. But that's the great thing about the shift is that you can always get back on and I haven't gained weight, so even if I missed my logging, I think that I'm, I am starting to really trust myself.
Rita Black: Right. Yeah. I mean, I, I wanna talk about that because I do think that we do use tracking with shift, but the what, why we do it isn't like, you know, counting calories on a diet, it's more for what you're talking about is like getting cognitively correct about like how much your body really needs. And when you have the data, when you can look at it and go, oh, okay, this is what I need, then you can start to, once you get to a place of confidence, you can, you, your brain and body kind of know, oh, okay, this is about the right amount, but it's because you've taken that data, you've kind of internalized it, but you have to sort of get there first because just intuitively eating doesn't work because you, you, you, we can wildly overeat what our body needs intuitively eating, but this is sort of like a synthesis or an integration of intuitive eating, but also like just cognitively using the brain in a correct way.
Rita Black: So the brain is like, oh, okay, I get it. This is what we need and this is, and then once you get to where you're, you're saying that place where you're like, I'm good, this is good. This is a good weight, you can kind of lock in and have that just right amount and yeah, because I mean, I'm the same Julie, and, and, and I think most people who are on their maintenance journey aren't logging every day for sure. They'll go for periods of time where they aren't logging. But what, what we use logging for is like when you said, like, when you feel like, oh, I've gotten off track, and, or maybe you see the scale go up or you feel like you're eating a little more out of control or whatever, when you bring back the logging, it pulls the brain back into that rational thinking mode.
Rita Black: And then you, you know, you, you can then kind of re-lock in what you're doing for a while and get your, you know, reset your weight or you, you said you didn't gain weight, which is great, but just to kind of like get good, get aligned, and then so you, you that will be what the landscape of, you know, maintenance looks like for most people. It will be not, I think we work very diligently to get to our, where we want to, and, and that does take cracking and getting cognitively correct. But once you're there, you can, you can let off the, the, the diligence and, and ease into what you're talking about, which is sort of this integration of.
Julie Trainer: Yeah, it's, you've got the data, you've got the science now, and it takes the emotion out of it. It's like, oh, okay. It's like, I love your gas tank analogy. You, you wouldn't overfill your gas tank that, you know, you. Right. It's, it's, I don't think I had that sense before of this. This is, this is what my body needs to function. It, it doesn't need more than that. And I'm satisfied with the amounts. I, I don't like feeling over full. I don't think I ever did, but I felt outta control before, and now I'm like, oh, this is, I listen to my body and say, oh, okay, this is where you stop. Yeah. I didn't you, that was a gift from shift. I didn't have that before. I didn't have an off switch.
Rita Black: Yeah. That's amazing. Well, and you probably are more in tune with trigger foods and foods that also kind of set off the part of the brain that says, I don't care if you're full, I'm gonna keep eating. You know, and I think that's also a big piece of it. So what are some, like if you were gonna say, as you head into continuing to maintain, what was it like to, 'cause I think this is a big thing for a lot of people get on the scale and be, it's not about releasing weight anymore. Like what, how did you change your vision to match your, like to incentivize yourself? Because I think a lot of people might get to their ideal weight and either have imposter syndrome, like, I shouldn't be here, I don't really know what to do. And I mean, with shift, you know what to do. So that's the good news. But, but also just this whole idea of being a lighter person and, and then resetting that vision to like where you're going, because I know you've, you've stepped into a lot of stuff too, like you've changed the vision. So maybe can you speak to that a little bit?
Julie Trainer: Yeah, I, I do weigh every morning, or at least every other at the same time, and it's just, it's a little check-in, you know, just to make sure that, you know, things are Yeah. Where they need to be. And my vision yeah, it has changed. And, well, one of the things I had to do, I, I literally had to buy a whole new wardrobe, which was really fun,
Julie Trainer: Oh. Oh, I was in a store yesterday and I, I, I have the, I love shopping the Kohl's clearance racks, you know, and I saw the really cute pair of white Capris, and they were a 14, and I tried 'em on, and they were just way too big. Was like, well, I guess I need a 12 now. So Yeah, that's fantastic. Twelves, you know, which is like, I was an 18, so Yeah. So my vision is that I li like, is that I wanna stay, I wanna stay here, and I trust that I can stay here. So, you know, when the shift we talk about your, i your, your like, sort of future vision, you know, and, and, and I had that vision of me and looking really good in this wetsuit, and that really carried me a long way. And now my, my vision is really just that I kind of like, I like this and I wanna stay here, and I, I, I'm not giving this up for anything. You know,
Rita Black: That's, that's a really good point. And I think a lot of people carry a lot of what they consider their failure story around with them. And then, but what you're talking, speaking to is the fact that when you, most people who have like, what you have, they've released weight and now they're in a good place, and they, they've owned their ideal weight. They can look back at all those, what they used to see as failure stories as part of their success story.
Julie Trainer: Yeah. Yeah.
Rita Black: It's a whole reframe of what, seeing the past in a more powerful way, like all of those lessons that you learned and all of the readiness that took you to this point of stepping into yourself. Now, Julie, tell us about your big adventure that, like, part of your journey has been well, you, well tell us about, I know this shift helped a little bit, but tell us about like, what you're up to, because I think this is so exciting that you stepped into this identity and part of your identity was opening up a whole new door for your future.
Julie Trainer: Yeah, yeah, it really was. And, and a hundred percent, I don't think that I would've done what I'm doing now if I hadn't found the shift. So just a quick background. You know, I, I was a psychology major. I've always been interested in how the mind works. I was a theater kid, and I, and I'm a writer, and I soon to, I will be published, I'm not published yet, but I will be published, all those things wrapped up together a after, well, so my parents died, my mom in 2020, my dad in 2021. So it was during Covid and all that. And after sort of my year of like my grieving process, I had this idea that I wanted to start a podcast and talk about loss, but I also didn't have the confidence to do it. And after I, after I found the shift and started to release weight I met, I met another a woman who was really supportive and helping people do the thing is what she calls it, but whatever the thing is.
Julie Trainer: And my thing was, I wanna have a podcast, and it's called The Hidden Gifts of Loss. And it's, it's really starting to take off. And I, I did have imposter syndrome and everything, but now when I do sometimes I do them as video. And when I see myself, like right now, I see myself, I don't see an overweight person. So I have that confidence to be seen. Right. I feel like when we're overweight, we're, we're kind of hiding, you know? I think a lot of deep psychological reasons why people gain weight is like a protection and a, like, you know, I, I just wanna be invisible, so if I, if I hide behind this wall, I'm not gonna put myself out there in the world. So it's, you pulled yourself back. So after shedding that, I did, I started this podcast and it is so much fun. And sometimes I look at, I'm like, wow, I think I always had this, like, I wanted to put myself out there because of all those things in my background, but yeah, I just couldn't do it. And it was, shift was huge, huge, huge in getting me past that and able to go out into the world and do this thing that I love.
Rita Black: Oh, so good. I love that. And I'm so proud of you. Thank you. So if somebody's listening to you, what advice would you give anyone heading into their, like, like maybe their 10 pounds above their ideal weight, or as they're heading into, like what, what kind of advice would you give to them about the journey ahead?
Julie Trainer: Okay, so the thing that this shift really gave me was consistency because of the hypnosis and the meditation, you know, it really got in my head, you know, and I, and I, I hear those things still like, yeah, when you, when you're full, you're full or just, there's just so much gold in what you, in what you give us. And so I had never been able to do anything long enough to get the result that I wanted. And the thing is, if, even if you're, even if you're 10 pounds away, or even if you're 50 pounds away, the thing is, if you, if you stay with it, you're going to get the weight release that you want. It. It's, I think that that's key. And one of the key things with that is we're all gonna get off track. This is, this is who we've been our whole lives.
Julie Trainer: So those certain foods are gonna call to us, and it's gonna happen. I mean, it's happened a bunch of times to me, but the thing is, when it happens, I don't, I don't beat myself up and I don't see it as a failure. It's, you've taken like, the emotion out of it. It's like, oh, I got off track. Okay. That used to be permission to stay off track, and I could stay off track for two years. You know, I mean, like, like when I was going through the death of my parents, you know, I, yeah, comfort. Just give me comfort, you know, and what's my first comfort it was gonna be food? And yeah. So I would say consistency. That would be my advice is just don't give up, just stay with it. You have all the support that you need. So trust the process. If you get off track and you can always reach out for help there's so much support in the shift. And so yeah, just don't give up, just stick with it and you'll get there.
Rita Black: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been such a pleasure to have you back. And we, and if you wanna catch Julie on her podcast, hidden Gifts of Loss. Is that correct?
Julie Trainer: Yes. That's it.
Rita Black: And we'll have you back on to plug your book when it's ready. And it's gonna be, and it's gonna be called The Hidden Gifts of Loss as well, but I, what's the subhead? Because I it's so good.
Julie Trainer: Oh, it's how I lost my parents and found myself.
Rita Black: Ugh. So good. Number one bestseller. I see it.
Julie Trainer: Oh My gosh, thank you.
Rita Black: Well thank you Julie.
Rita Black: All right. You guys remember that we're all here together. Alone we diet, together we shift. Have an amazing, and remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door, the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it. Thanks for listening to The Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that episode go by way too fast for you? If so, and you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www.shiftweight mastery.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, and to learn how to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode.
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