I have good news for you!

There are dietary steps you can take to prevent cancer.

In episode 30 of Thin Thinking podcast, my guest, oncological nurse practitioner and weight loss coach, Mary Welch, will give us the skinny on how to help prevent cancer–by the way you eat and will also reinforce how weight management is a powerful step towards cancer prevention.

And if you are a cancer survivor, you will learn how losing weight is going to make an impact with staying cancer-free.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

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Transcription

Rita Black (00:00): Good news! There are dietary steps you can take to prevent cancer. And in today’s Thin Thinking podcast, my guest oncological nurse practitioner and weight loss coach, Mary Welch will give us the skinny on to help prevent cancer, by the way you eat and will also reinforce how weight management is a powerful step towards cancer prevention--stay tuned!

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 everyone and welcome. I'm excited to share today's episode with you. I met my guest Mary Welch when she had invited me to participate in her "Winning with Weight Loss Series" back a couple of years ago. And I was excited to find out that she was an oncological nurse practitioner. Ovarian and uterine cancer run in my family as well as breast cancer. And I, you know, so I have always, always been very sensitive and, both my mother and my grandmother passed from ovarian uterine cancers. And so I've been always very proactive in trying to eat a diet that's healthy and preventative. And so this subject is near and dear to my heart. My, so, and it's a great honor to introduce my guest, Mary, to the Thin Thinking Podcast.

Rita Black: Mary is an oncological nurse practitioner who released 80 pounds using a whole food anti-inflammatory diet combined with intermittent fasting. She was inspired to lose weight after learning that her elevated BMI quadrupled her risk of uterine cancer, the very cancer that she treats in her practice. She is now helping clients achieve their weight loss goals through her six-month coaching program. And she enjoys sharing the message with cancer survivors that weight loss will decrease inflammation and may help reduce the return of cancer and prolong survival. Mary lives in Seal Beach, California, with her husband and son. So excited to welcome you, Mary.

Rita Black: Hey everyone. So now I have Mary Welch here in the flesh and I'm so excited to talk to her. I have so many things to ask her because I find, the top, it will... There's just so much. We've got, I want to talk to her about our 80-pound weight release and how she made that happen, but we also want to talk about cancer prevention and how like, if you are a cancer survivor, how losing weight is going to make an impact with you. And Mary is really just so, such an expert of this. So welcome, Mary. It's so great to have you on.

Mary Welch: Thank you for having me Rita. I'm really just so honored to be here and thank you for giving me a chance to get the word out about the link between obesity and cancer. I think it's such an important message.

Rita Black: Oh, well, it's my honor. And I have to tell everybody, so I met Mary, with her own series "Winning at Weight Loss Series", which is a phenomenal series. So if you haven't checked it out, can they check it out online at any time? Is it hosted somewhere or was it just, it was a series, right?

Mary Welch: It was a series, but ...

Rita Black: You'll be doing another one.

Mary Welch: I'll be doing one.

Rita Black: And you'll be hearing about it. Okay. So you are an oncological nurse practitioner, and I have a feeling, some people know what that is, but I have a feeling, some people don't. So can you tell us what you do?

Mary Welch: Oh, sure. So I, my population currently is the GYN oncology population. So I deal specifically with female cancers below the belt or below the breast. So it excludes breast cancer. However, much of my career, I did deal with breast cancer as well. So mainly I help women as they go through surgery and chemotherapy and radiation for ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, vaginal cancer, endometrial, or uterine cancer. Those are the main ones. So I meet them from the time they're diagnosed and many times they stay with me and on treatment or often on treatment until either they're cured or until their disease progresses and they end up on hospice and out end of life. So it's, it's a pretty comprehensive relationship where you get to know patients well.

Rita Black: Yeah. And, and at what point did you kind of have your aha moment with your own link to concerns about cancer? Because at one point you were 80 pounds heavier than you are now.

Mary Welch: Yeah, it was very eye-opening for me, honestly, I have been a yo-yo dieter most of my life. I mean, I can remember trying to lose weight in high school to qualify for a ROTC scholarship 'cause they want you to be a certain weight. And so I was working for that and then you have to weigh in and I remember sitting in the sauna, so I would lose enough weight to be like, make the weight. So I don't think I was really obese, but you know, I wasn't petite. Let's put it that way. And then over the years I would gain some weight, lose some weight and always with, using different types of gimmicks that weren't sustainable. It was a very low calorie diet or a liquid protein shake type of diet where I could lose a lot of weight in 12 weeks or 18 weeks. And then once that ended, I went back to my old ways of eating and surprisingly gained the weight back. So at the time when I really hit my all time high, it was a period of time with a lot of stress. I was dealing with my mom who had dementia and I didn't realize it at the time, but emotional eating was a big component. So I was eating and, you know, not dealing with the loss and grief of, you know, a mom that's there, but not there. And I would see her at the memory care facility and that on the way home I'd be going through Wienerschnitzel's drive through getting a chili cheese dog. And it had a tasty freeze attached, like ice cream. It was like total comfort food. But yeah, so I got up to 236 pounds. For me on five seven, that makes me a BMI of 36 at that point. I was not comfortable or happy at all. I knew it wasn't healthy for me. I had lost weight before about 55 or 60 pounds in 2014, but had gained it all back by 2016. So I felt very hopeless in a way that it wasn't possible for me. And I started thinking about just embracing my oversized body and you know, just buying big clothes that fit and, you know, look good at any size because they do put that out there. But then I just tipped down, knew that it wasn't very healthy. And thank goodness I went to this oncology lecture.

Mary Welch: It was, I can remember September 2018 and the speaker was doing a talk about obesity and cancer. And Anne Katz is her name. So I was listening to this and I was like, how come I did not know this? And she was rattling off statistics that 13 different cancer that were increased in incidence because of obesity. One of them was endometrial cancer. One that I take care of labs that risk quadrupled with the elevated BMI. So I said, wow, that's really shocking. And then the next thing she said really gave me some hope. She said, that's a modifiable risk factor, modifiable risk factor. So that means that it's something you can change. So we do have some risk factors. We can't change. You know, sometimes it's age, sometimes it's your gender. Sometimes it's your ethnicity, or maybe you have a genetic predisposition, but things like smoking, that's a risk factor that you can stop smoking and lower your risk for lung cancer. So I never smoked 'cause I knew I didn't want lung cancer. So suddenly the switch flipped in my head that I don't want to keep eating and being obese. If that's going to quadruple the risk for endometrial cancer.

Rita Black: Can I interrupt and ask you, did, does that increase the risk factor for breast cancer as well?

Mary Welch: Yes. So the top three, you know, ones that are impacted by weight are breast cancer, esophageal cancer, and endometrial cancer.

Rita Black: Interesting. You know, it's, it is interesting. This is such a close to my heart because my mother was obese and so is my grandmother. And both of them passed from ovarian or ovarian type cancers. My mother had uterine cancer that then progressing to peritoneum cancer. And anyway, I know we've discussed this, but, did, I am curious Mary, why you as a nurse practitioner, is that just not common knowledge passed about in the medical community, that the risk factors from increased BMI and cancer like those female cancers?

Mary Welch: I think it's starting to increase awareness, but actually they did a poll. One of the, American society of clinical oncology just pulled the population to see what they understood and less than 50% of people could identify excess weight as a risk factor. You know, people were able like 70 or 75% recognize the sun is a risk factor for skin cancer. They recognize smoking very well as a risk factor for lung cancer, but weight seems to be acceptable. And, I think we need to do a better job about educating people that having that extra weight, which, you know, I was thinking, well, maybe it's not so big a deal, but in fact it, it isn't just a vanity. It can impact things.

Mary Welch: And one of the things that, you know, then I started getting curious as to why does having this extra weight make cancer risk higher. And as I started looking at the information that's out there that is a metabolically active board, it doesn't just hang there like a muffin top. And actually it really explains why once you get heavy, it's hard to lose weight or it's harder to break the cycle because the fat is signaling things. So it's pre producing hormones. One of them can increase estrogen. So that's why estrogen driven cancers like breast cancer and endometrial cancer can be at higher rates because the more fat you have, the higher estrogen levels you have, and that's just gonna drive the cancer. Many breast cancers are estrogen receptor positive. One of the treatments would be to put someone on the estrogen blocking medicine to shut that pathway down. So if you have excess fat, you have extra estrogen, that's sending signals that also produces growth factors like insulin, like growth factors that cause cells to grow divided, multiply.

Mary Welch: Well, the problem with cancer is that you have cell growth, that's abnormal and out of control. So if you have more growth factors that are being produced in the fat, you're going to have more opportunity for cancer cells to grow, right. Then you may outgrow your blood supply. And, then the inner part of the cells, they, after fear die off and then the cells, the macrophages part of your immune system are trying to clean up the dead cells and that causes inflammation. So the inflammation can trigger more problems. So as you have more fat, you're more inflamed. You have more hormones, you have more growth factor coming around. So unless you break that cycle, it's really tough to get out of it.

Rita Black: Right. Wow. So, what for you, like, how did you start your weight journey then? I know you said you started researching and eating more an anti-inflammatory diet. Can you tell us a little bit about.

Mary Welch: Sure. I, you know, I've always been interested in weight loss. I mean, it's a pastime. I could tell you. I always thought I shouldn't have this problem cause I, I know a lot, but it wasn't being applied. But, ...

Rita Black: And can I just say, it's so curious because a lot of, we weight strugglers, weight, you know, like weight loss is a hobby. It is a, even though, you know, like I always joke and say, people who struggle with weight often could write their own book on weight loss cause very informed. But anyway.

Mary Welch: Yeah. And I, and I think that goes to show, like I always said, I didn't have a knowledge deficit. I had a doing deficit,

Rita Black: Very good. I like that Mary.

Mary Welch: And, that's why I think your work is so important. And honestly, you know, I knew there was something with my brain and mindset and changing my bots. And that was part of it that really helped me this time. But some of the books that I had read before I even heard this lecture, it started making sense. One was the plant paradox by Dr. Steven Gundry. And he talks about interesting how certain foods can cause inflammation, historian himself was pretty interesting. He was a cardiothoracic surgeon who ran marathons. He had carried around 70 to 80 extra pounds. He had this gentleman come into his office who had really clogged arteries and he wanted to do a four vessel bypass. And the guy was like, doc, I don't want to have surgery please. You know, give me a chance. And I I'm going to change my ways. So he said fine, and you have three or four months. So the guy left and came back, had lost a bunch of weight. And when he repeated his tests, the arteries were wide open and he's all, what have you done? So this guy said, you know, I eliminated gluten. I eliminated lectin. I went on this anti-inflammatory diet. So then Dr. Gundry's like, interesting, I'm gonna try it. So he started trying this diet himself and he eliminated things like bread, inflammatory things like certain seeds and plants can cause inflammation. So tomatoes, although they're very good, the seeds or the skin could be inflammatory, certain nuts like peanuts and cashews and even soybeans can be inflammatory. So certain things I was eating and I was snacking on cashews. I was snacking on peanuts. And he would just have little shifts, like instead of having that, you can have, walnuts and pecans and pistachios and macadamia nuts and avoid inflammatory oils.

Mary Welch: And I'm like, who knew there was inflammatory oils? So it's oils like olive oil or avocado oil are very good, but things like canola oil are very inflammatory, so. And just shifting. So anyway, he started doing this and he finally was able to lose this 70 pounds that he had. So now he has two practices. One I believe is in Palm Springs and the other is in Santa Barbara. And he has story after story of people that are reversing a lot of these auto-immune or inflammatory type diseases based just on diet. So as you read his book, he talks about people that have improved from Crohn's disease, people that have improved migraine headaches, people who have taken care of skin conditions simply by changing their diet and getting food out of there that causes inflammation. One of them would be sugar, which was my huge downfall. You know, I probably gained my 80 pounds just by eating all the goodies here at a, now the co-op is ...

Speaker 1: Isn't it crazy hot, medical offices. Like I, I do work with so many nurses, doctors, people, you know, they're like, you don't know what's in our staff room. It's doctors have the worst diets in the world, you know?

Mary Welch: Yeah. It's true. And you know, grateful patients, there's always somebody getting their last chemo and they're grateful. So they bring in oh, bagel, that would be the healthier option or they have donuts or Portos pastries or see's candy at the holidays. Yeah. It's an unlimited card Fest if you work at office.

Rita Black: Yeah. It's interesting too. I had a, I had breast cancer client who said that they had doughnuts available for the chemo patients. And I just thought that that, because I knew about, at that point, my mom had passed from a cancer and I had gotten very, very interested in the connection between diet and cancer and having, and I had, you know, my weight journey started for, you know, to lose weight, but you know, I've kept off a number of pounds for, you know, 25 years. And I will say that in the last decade or since my mom passed, definitely my weight management has also been cancer management. Like, you know, I do see the way I eat as prevention, disease prevention.

Mary Welch: Yeah. And you're right. As I became more aware and look at the snacks and things we have for patients, it's Lorna Doone cookies, Oreo cookies, Graham crackers, apple juice, everything's kind of sugary. Even these top cup of noodle soups. I mean, there's nothing very healthy here for patients stuff like bring your own food.

Rita Black: Yeah.

Mary Welch: You don't want what we out for you.

Mary Welch: And so when you, you changed diet and so, and then, and you also, where did you start doing more the, I'm having a brain, but you know, the intermittent fasting?

Mary Welch: Oh, sure. So that's another book that I had read before I even started. So I had done, so I read the Dr. Gundry button. I thought that's interesting. The plant paradox, I didn't even know about inflammatory food. Then I, um, found Dr. Jason Fung and he has a book called the Obesity Code and it's F U N G. That's a really interesting read. It's kind of sciency. But before I was doing oncology, I worked in a diabetic treatment unit. So I was, you know, I'm interested in diabetes and there's been a lot of advances as far as medications go over the years to where he talked about being able to reverse diabetes. And I thought, wait a minute, I always thought of diabetes, especially type two diabetes as a chronic disease. Once people have it, they just go on different medicines and you have to increase them and increase them. Eventually they end up on insulin and it's a lifelong thing. And you know, they have the late effects of diabetes, which could be poor circulation that leads to blindness, kidney problems, dialysis, amputations, using tows, that sort of thing. So when you said you could reverse it, I'm like how, and he's all. Well, part of the reason people are diabetic is because they have what's called insulin resistance. So, and that's often triggered by extra weight and eating too much sugar. So your body is protecting itself, your brain and your body only want a certain amount of sugar circulating. So you eat sugar. Your pancreas is going to make some more insulin to bring out blood sugar down. At some point you may not respond as well to insulin. So your pancreas has to secrete more of it. So the more insulin you have, as he described this insulin is a storage hormone. So it's storing the sugar and converting it to fat. So if your insulin levels are high, you're in fat storage mode, which means you're not in fat burning mode. So even if you have a body full of fat, like I did, you can't tap into it for energy because you're not burning fat, you're storing fat. And that's why people that have a bunch of weight, if you're eating carbs, like I was, you can have a donut or a bagel at eight o'clock. And by 10 o'clock you're hungry again because your blood sugar went down and now it's like, gosh, I need to eat that. It would be this constant need for food. The three o'clock dip where you need another snack.

Mary Welch: So what he found is that if you actually stopped eating and you, weren't giving your body food, you stopped supporting insulin. And as your insulin levels were down, you could actually start burning some of that stored fuel or stored fat on your body for energy. So I thought interesting. I have plenty of fuel. I don't need to eat all the time. This is convenient. And I just started trying it. And it wasn't like, you have to go days without eating. It was like, you know, don't eat breakfast. I'm like, what we're told breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So, you know, I'm not always hungry at breakfast. Maybe I'll just have some black coffee and drink some water and see when I get hungry. And I'm like, well, I made it to lunch and I'm not even hungry. So then, you know, I would have my first meal around lunchtime and then have dinner at home. So you could eat from maybe 12 to six, 12 to seven. And then the rest of the time right there, you've done a 17 or 18 hour fast. And it's pretty easy.

Rita Black: Did you find that fasting, cause I think fasting, you know, cause I, I work with the brain. Right. And I mean the using language is so powerful. So this idea of not eating after dinner versus fasting after dinner, I think it's a lot easier that idea of fasting because it's much more active and you're actually doing something like you are in your mind, your, like you said, decreasing the insulin that's circulating in your body. There's like an activity to that versus not eating, which is very blinked to deprivation. So I think that idea that you're doing something powerful, Right?

Mary Welch: Yeah. There's definitely ways to think about it. One for sure is, wow. If I eat, I'm going to secrete insulin and I'm going to go from fat burning to fat storing, well, I want to burn fat. So I don't want that snack right now. So that's one. The other is that digestion for our bodies takes a tremendous amount of energy. So as we're digesting food, we're not doing other things. So if you actually give your digestive track a rest, your body can focus on other areas. So they've found some benefits for fasting to even lowering some dementia risks possibly because then your body has chances to go after the plaques and tangles that develop in dementia. When you do fasting, there's a thing called autophagy.

Rita Black: I was going to ask you about that. Yeah.

Mary Welch: Which is kind of eating itself, which sounds weird. But you know, basically even with cancer, you have an abnormal collection of extra cells. And if your body's busy digesting all the time, it's not doing housekeeping, working on getting rid of the extra skin tags or extra things that you don't need. But when you're fasting, it can do that. And it might even hunt around and say, well, we can use this as fuel, so we're going to use this. And so there are some benefits. And the thing is it doesn't have to feel stressful. I remember thinking I'm on this fasting window, but you know what, if you get very hungry, you can just eat, break your fast earlier that day. So it's like.

Rita Black: Right. Yeah. Well that's so your weight release journey, how long did it take you to release 80 pounds?

Mary Welch: Yeah, so initially I would say the first 60 came off pretty fast within the first really six months. It felt like it made such a huge difference, but then again, my diet wasn't great. So as I got rid of all the processed carbs and sugary treats and shifted to more vegetables and healthy protein, it was just like, I think a lot of that may have been some weight initially too. But, you know, you could definitely tell inflammation went way down. Before I started, I had some abnormal kidney blood work and joint pain. And as I changed my way of eating my kidney function went back to normal, the aches and pains in my ankles and joints went away and, you know, for every pound of weight you carry it's about a four pound impact on your knees and ankles. So, um,...

Rita Black: I didn't know that. That's amazing.

Mary Welch: Yeah. And you know, I went on a hike this past weekend. We were in Utah and it was like a pretty uphill to this waterfall. And I thought to myself, no, I don't think I would be able to do this if I still was carrying around 80 more pounds. And I felt very grateful that I was able to get it off. And I'm almost at the three-year mark now. And I really feel that it's staying off this time because it's just a way of life and a lifestyle.

Rita Black: Right. That's amazing. Yeah. I can tell that you've really made this part of who you are, not something that you're just doing. Tell us a little bit, so you now work with women who are, women and men are, primarily women who have come out of cancer and help them lose weight so that they can keep their cancer themselves cancer free for the most part. Tell us a little bit about it.

Mary Welch: Yes. So mostly I have female clients and, honestly I've done workshops here at my cancer center, just educating the cancer survivors about nutrition and obesity and cancer links. And, you know, it's just very fun to do. But as far as my clients, some are cancer survivors and some are just people that know me that are like, wait, how did you lose this weight? Well, you help me. So, that's a lot of fun. And people are having great results. So basically I, you'll find out what they've been doing and then look to see how they can tweak stuff. Some people don't have tons of weight to lose, but they might be stuck and it could be that they just need to modify their diet a little bit or, you know, get the inflammation down. Believe it or not, some people can over exercise and have inflammation from too much exercise or cortisol levels and just cutting down on that can help. Just real basic stuff, making sure they're drinking water and making sure they're getting enough sleep, making sure they're eating good quality foods. I think there's a lot of weight loss food out there. That's not very good for you.

Rita Black: Right.

Mary Welch: You know, when I was doing weight Watchers, there was a lot of two point food, one point food. But when you look at the ingredients, there's a lot of fake food. So I think trying to go for real food that isn't super processed. So keeping it simple if you got lots of vegetables, I think if you can load up with a bunch of vegetables, healthy, lean proteins that are raised well. So kind of grasped fed hormone free, happy cows and happy chickens and organic type of stuff without a lot of pesticides because our toxins, you know, we can, we're all exposed to toxins through our environment and breathing the air. So if you can lower your toxic load based on making better choices with your food and cookware and other things, it can help as well and lower inflammation.

Speaker 1: Right. Well, if somebody wants to work with you, how would they go about doing that? I know I'm going to post, well, those of you who are interested, I am going to post Mary's information in the show notes. And would it be like they would have a conversation with you or is there they can go to the website and read about you?

Mary Welch: Yeah, I'm working on a website, so I don't have one just yet,

Rita Black: But they can call you or ...

Mary Welch: They can call me. And honestly I, yeah, there's, you could email me and then have a link to my calendar and hop on a call and then we'll see where you're at, you know, where you are, where you want to go. And if I think I can help you, the people I do work with tend to be one-on-one support, but then we also have a small group on Facebook and then group coaching about twice a month, which I think is pretty powerful because there's some good sharing from other people that are on the journey that they may find products that work. Yeah. And just, you know, you're not alone and there's this little degree of accountability. So, so yeah, I would love to talk to anybody. No strings attached, even if you just want to talk and get a couple of ideas.

Rita Black: Well, would you say, just is the, you know, in your journey to weight mastery, I'm sorry I interrupted you. Was there something else you wanted to say about, I just like, as we're finishing up, I just wanted to ask you, like, on your journey of weight mastery, I know you, you had to focus on weight release in the beginning and what was, you know, what would you say the one thing was for you mindset wise that was the most powerful for you in the beginning?

Mary Welch: Well, I think the biggest thing for me on this journey was actually working with a coach. And I feel like they just made me run into the scout or a Fantio, who's actually a nurse practitioner. And I had done a five-day challenge that was free, but I liked everything she said. So I got on a free phone call with her. And after I talked to her, I knew I had to work with her. So we connected every two weeks. And I think having that support and accountability was very crucial for me because in the past I would start something and then stop. And when I'm like, wait, I'm supposed to have these goals and I need to report back in two weeks to let her know how it's going. I better like go to the yoga four times. Like I said, I would. And, you know, and it's surprising as a people pleaser, I was worried about being a good student and like making my coach happy then if I was trying to do it on my own.

Mary Welch: So, and then I think she also broke stuff down. I think if you try to do everything at once, it's overwhelming, but she was able to pace me and guide me. Like, I think one of the first things was looking for hidden sugars in your pantry. And I was surprised, salad dressing, you think you're having a healthy salad? And if you look at the ingredients and sugar right there in the salad dressing or sugar in your barbecue sauce and little things like that, it's like, okay, well, I, I can make my own salad dressing here. I can change it up. So I'm just not dumping sugar on my vegetables. Right. So there were helpful tips that just layered on. And if I felt stuck and there was a time where the scale didn't move for about a month and I remember feeling so frustrated and her tip was, don't weigh yourself with the scale away, just keep sticking with it. And, you know, in the past I would've gotten mad and probably started eating that. Of course the scale's not gonna boop. So, so I think having that support really helped and...

Rita Black: Yes. I think that having support as part of a group, and you know, and in my, in my, my belief system and my, with the shift, we talked about cultivating your own inner coach too, so that your conversations with yourself up-level as you progress. And it sounds like you have a very powerful inner coach, Mary.

Mary Welch: Yeah. And I feel like I've developed that by listening to podcasts. So I'm so glad that you have a podcast. You probably won't know how many people are impacted by it, but

Rita Black: Yeah. And I'm glad, and I love having a podcast too, because I get to talk with people like you about powerful subjects. I mean, I think this has been a really, I mean, there is so much you could get dive into with regards to cancer and weight management and health. And, no, we just, we just touched the tip of the iceberg, but it's been, it's great that you have not only your nurse practitioner background in oncology, but that you've gone on that journey yourself. I think that makes you a powerful leader in this area, which is super exciting. And I'm looking forward to having you on again and, and diving deeper into the subject. And definitely if you are interested in cancer prevention or weight loss, what Mary's said made sense to you, please get in touch with her. She's, she really is such a powerful person and incredibly caring. And these summits, she puts together. If you get a chance to come and listen to her "Winning at Weight Loss Series", she gets really great people, too. You're really, you really do. You, you, how does it, you fight the fight and you walk the walk.

Mary Welch: Those summits are so fun to do, because just like you with the podcast. I mean, I feel like I get to curate and talk to the people that I want to talk to. You know, there's so much out there and there's new stuff all the time and hearing from people that are willing to share their knowledge. And even if there's just one or two tips that you can take away, it's very, very valuable.

Rita Black: Right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and, good luck with all that you're up to, I know you're up to a lot and thanks again for making a difference with people.

Mary Welch: Oh my pleasure. Thanks so much, Rita. This was a lot of fun. Bye everybody. Bye.

Rita Black: Okay. And that wraps up another episode of the Thin Thinking Podcast, make sure to check out Mary's information in the show notes, to learn more about the way that she helps people with weight and health management with her coaching program. And as always, it's wonderful spending this time with you have a healthy and vibrant 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 thank you for being here. I will see you next week.

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.