Rita Black: Holidays and emotions. They seem to go together, don't they? And they're quickly followed by the emotional eating that we do when we're overstressed and over triggered at this time of year. Well my Thin Thinking friends, in today's episode, I walk you through how to set yourself up for success with preventing emotional eating, even starting, as well as how to bounce back quicker than Santa on a hot tin roof if you do overeat, so that you can enjoy the feeling and spirit of the holidays rather than eating over them. So grab some mistletoe and come on in.

New Speaker: 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, hello, everybody. And good seasonal cheer to you, and tiny Tim, too. You know, every family has funny little phrases that are humorous relief to the tension that arises from being together as a family. You know what I mean? One we have my family has is emotions are a little too close to the surface. So when anybody is freaking out or getting tense in a family gathering, one of us invariably says, emotions are a little too close to the surface and it cracks everybody up and it kind of deflates everything really quickly. Another one that we used around the holidays back home in Seattle, especially when my mom was sick and we were just super stressed out, and it was just very bleak, we would say, where's the Chardonnay drip? We were just always, that was how we would crack each other. I was like, oh, it's a three Chardonnay drip day. So that -- it was how we got ourselves through with that kind of chuckle and -- or they bonded us in a way.

Rita Black: So the holidays bring up so many emotions, both good and bad, don't they? And all of that is coupled with the holiday food being around and the stress and the sugar. And it's just like watching a slow train wreck of Almond Roka crashing into another train of peppermint bark and derailing over a cliff of feelings and trigger emotions into the holiday weight gain sea, right? So take a deep breath, actually even deeper than that one, because today I wanna walk you through how to prevent any of this before it happens. But before we dive in, of course, I'm gonna offer you a chance to get a free weight loss download.

Rita Black: Oh, now your ears are perking up. What do you say, Rita? A free weight loss download of a hypnosis download, I should say. Well, right now, we are working on just, you know, having reviews. We would love to hear your reviews. It's the way we get to learn about what you enjoy about our program. But it's also a great way for us to get seen on the platform because the more reviews you have, the more that the platforms promote your show. And we really believe in our Thin Thinking podcast. And we would like to share it with more people this coming year, you know? It's been a great! We're almost into our second year. Can you believe that? So it's so exciting. But we wanna share even more Thin Thinking all over the globe and our -- we do. I wanna thank all of our global friends from the United States to Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines, and Japan, and China, and India and Africa.

Rita Black: We have people in Morocco and Egypt and Lithuania and Kazakhstan and Chile and Brazil. I mean, it's really cool. I love it. So please write us a review anywhere in the world. Let us know. And we will send you-- so write a review, take a picture of it, or copy and paste your review in some way. You have to write the review on the platform, but you can take a picture of the review, or you can copy and paste what you wrote. I think I'm not the most technical person, but you can send whatever to [email protected], Rita, R-I-T-A at Shift Weight mastery, all one word, dot com. Or just go into the show notes and download it there. And thanks for your support. So what will happen is when you do that, we're gonna send you a link to the store with a coupon code, and you can go in there and download any old hypnosis session that you want. Okay? All right.

Rita Black: So let's shift emotional eating at the holidays, shall we? And shift it into powerful Thin Thinking and being. So let's just get clear on what emotional eating is. And I mean, because it's just a, you know, we say, oh, I'm an emotional eater. I eat over my emotions. But I wanna break that down a little more. What emotional eating is a habitual response set in a pattern. Okay? So most of what we do is set in patterns. If you notice, most of our life is a series of patterns. And most of the things that are habits at least are pattern. And a lot of our life is in trance. We spend a lot of our time just doing things over and over again without having to think about it so much that that's why our mindfulness work is so important to really be present in our lives because we get hijacked by these habitual responses.

Rita Black: So it's emotional eating is actually habitual response set and a pattern. And it starts with a reaction to thoughts that create feelings. So most feelings are created by thoughts that go on. So the thoughts proceed the feeling. And then the impulse to numb the feeling with food. So we start with the thought that goes to the feeling, and then which brings up the impulse to numb the feelings with food to protect ourselves. And then once we eat the food to numb ourselves or to fill the, you know, pleasure or to primarily to numb ourselves or to push the feeling down, then comes another set of feelings, which is remorse, guilt, self-critical, you know, thinking, why do you do that? Why do -- that was stupid. We didn't need to do that following that binge or that overeating. And then typically what will happen at that point is we'll let ourselves off the hook emotionally by saying, okay, well, we'll just be good tomorrow.

Rita Black: We'll start over tomorrow, because then all of a sudden that takes us out of that bad feeling phase. And whatever we were thinking about originally that occurred with the original feeling, right? Whatever we were thinking about, oh, I'm mad at my husband, now I have this feeling. Now we're all of a sudden mad at ourselves, right? But it's safer than being mad at other people or having those other feelings, right? So it's a little dance we do. And then we'll start over again tomorrow, let ourselves off the hook and we'll be back in control, because tomorrow we're gonna be perfect, right? So there's this whole little dance around it. So we wanna kind of, what my thought is, and I hope you agree with me, is let's just avoid that all together. So let's set ourselves up for success. We can do a whole other episode in the near about emotional eating, but I, and we are-- and I'm gonna go through a little bit of that, but I really wanna prevent emotional eating because, so there's emotional eating, and that's pattern, that pattern that I just mentioned.

Rita Black: Now, how do holidays play a role? So we have emotional eating. Now how do holidays play a role in this? So obviously, there is more stress around the holidays, even though we think of the holidays as a happy time, there's so much more stress. I mean, me as a mom and a business owner, I'm getting stuff for my people who help me out. I'm getting stuff for my kids. My kids are more complicated these days to get things for, and they're heck a lot more expensive. Oh my God. And then there's the relatives and then the, you know, pictures, you gotta take that picture and make it into a card and put it in at the, you know, like, oh my God. And then I'm running a business and I'm seeing clients and I, trying to be a decent human being, you know, it's like, what? You know?

Rita Black: And I bet you're exactly the same as me. So it's more stressful, even though I love it, it's stressful. And there's less structure, at least around those couple of weeks where we're all hanging out and, you know, the world seems to shut down, which is nice, but there's no structure to our days, which then leads to more chaos, which leads to then more eating. We're way more tired. We're staying up later. Maybe we're drinking more. We're, I mean, it's just like our bodies are getting run down. A lot of us are traveling, maybe catching colds on planes traveling to different time zones. So we're more tired that way. And then, let's face it, being with our family is wonderful, but they all trigger us, right? They -- it's a big trigger madness, right? Like, oh, hi everybody, you know, we're home for the holidays.

Rita Black: Oh God, oh man, I forgot how they piss me off, you know? What do they say after three days? You know? People start to -- people are like fish. They begin to smell, you know, I think around the holidays, it's a two-day smell period. So or we're not around people and we're lonely, you know? And I definitely remember holidays where I was alone. I remember when I lived in New York City, and I didn't go home some holidays because I couldn't afford to go home, and or my parents even couldn't afford to send me home. And I worked. I took advantage of the fact that I could cater or I used to have a job where I would go to people's homes and cook for them. And like on Christmas and stuff like that, I was like a, it was, I was a caterer, but I was like a cook, you know, I'd go in and make the Turkey and do the stuff and then serve them butler style around the table.

Rita Black: And this was while I was going to college. And this was, you know, also in the years after college and when I was trying to pay for college. And so yeah. And I remember being so alone without my family. My friends had all gone home for the holidays. So that was a really lonely time. And so I really feel for people who might, you know, be on their own. It was a great time too. I love being by myself. Don't get me wrong, but it was just that we couldn't be with those that we loved. And then the other thing is that's way more trigger foods with emotional and sentimental attachments, right? So the smells of the cinnamon and the, all the stuff that we associate with our childhood and all those memories come flooding back because our smell is our keenest memory trigger, right?

Rita Black: So the smells of the holidays bring back so many memories, and then we eat the food as a way to access the memory. Isn't that crazy? But that becomes a big deal. So here we have this, this emotional pattern, this emotional eating pattern plus the holidays makes us way more vulnerable. So what we really wanna do is really look at prevention as the first tool, because I think we think I've just gotta be stronger in the moment when I'm feeling that feeling. Well, yes. I mean, ultimately it's not about being stronger in the moment. It's about learning to manage your thoughts that create the feelings. And that's, like I said, a whole another podcast, but we'll talk about that in a moment a little bit. But the best, best thing you can do is prevent getting to that place in the first place, or being prepared for that moment if it comes.

Rita Black: Okay? So there are two things that I'm gonna suggest that we do over the holidays that I think will make a huge difference in your staying away from emotional eating. One is to create a holiday self-care structure, and two is to just employ some emotional prevention, emotional eating prevention tools. So let's talk about the self-care structure. So those of you who know me and work with me, you know, I'm all about the morning meditation or think through, because why is that so important? Because most of our willpower by five o'clock is drained, and that think through session creates way more resilience in your day. So as you go through your holidays, and this is, I, you know, listen now, hear me later. I'm talking every day of the holiday. You start with mindfulness in the morning, thinking you're that particular day through. Who you're gonna see, what's gonna happen, and you can do this in a number of ways. You can just lay there in bed and do a meditation and think the day through just mentally. You could journal this out and think it through that way. But what you're doing is having a little powwow with yourself. I call it your inner coach, you know. You and your inner coach are sitting there going, let's have a strategy session for today. Let's -- that strategy is self care and taking care of ourselves for the day. So that's number one part of your self care structure. And in that time, you're thinking through the healthy meals, you're gonna have brain breaks, what I call brain breaks every couple of hours, making sure you kind of decompress yourself because our brains get way over stimulated, especially this time of year. And that we reach for food to kind of calm down the stimulation when really, what we need is to maybe sit down and close our eyes or go and lay on a bed or go for a walk.

Rita Black: We really don't need to decompress with food. But that's often what we do. So the more you create I would suggest create a list of five brain breaks that you can do. So you can just, oh, when you're feeling a little stimulated, go engage in a brain break instead. Make sure you're exercising. Try to exercise one day, and again, not even for weight management, but for stress management. Move your body. In my monthly mastery group, from the 15th of December to January 2nd of every year, we have a exercise challenge. For this reason, we just, every day we commit to getting out and moving our body, whether it's walking or even, you know, dancing around the kitchen that's, you know, what we are committing to. So maybe you can commit to that as well. And really think about the end of your day.

Rita Black: In the beginning, Stephen Covey, the guy who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he said, you know, begin with the end in mind and the end is getting into bed tonight, feeling light, feeling lean, feeling like you really took care of yourself, made healthy choices, moved your body. So every morning think about the night and think about how am I gonna get to that light healthy me tonight? And then put those that into play. So then that's the morning session. And then try to take a mid-morning break, like I said, to have that brain break. Maybe go for a walk, have another afternoon break. We're very vulnerable, very, very vulnerable in the afternoon because we're, we're beginning -- our resilience is getting worn down. Our willpower is beginning to get worn down. This is a big time where a lot of people start to overeat.

Rita Black: So really have a plan like an escape hatch. Like, oh, maybe I'm gonna get away from the family and go drive and just drive and listen to music and decompress a little. Or I'm gonna go get a cup of coffee and write my journal. Just have a mind refresh for yourself. The other thing is to walk after dinner. When you walk after a meal, it really lowers the blood sugar impact of that meal right after the meal. So your muscles are pulling the glucose, I believe, into using them. So it takes it out of your blood stream and it's very healthy. This is what they're associating with longevity is taking a walk after dinner. A lot of cultures that walk after dinner are, you know, the longevity cultures, the blue zones. That is something that's really critical.

Rita Black: And then, have an evening self-care treat. This is something I love to do. Take a hot bath, have a cup of hot tea, like a peppermint tea or a hot cinnamon spice tea and journal, or meditate or listen to holiday music or reach out to family via zoom or call them. This is, you're really coming back to yourself. You're coming back to home in the evening. So this is what I would call your holiday self-care structure. And I would say try to do this every day if you can, especially once you're, you know, we're into those two critical weeks around the holidays, but, you know, try to do it ahead of time if you can as well. It will go a long way to prevent that emotional eating, because what you're doing is really connecting with yourself so much, it gives you the chance to tune into the feelings and process them instead of having to eat over them.

Rita Black: So let's talk now about emotional eating prevention. So one of the things that you can do, and, you know, easier said than done, I get it, but remove that trigger food or the trigger foods from your environment and replace them with healthy treats. Okay? So again, we fall victim to all of that holiday gack that comes into our house unwittingly, right? People bring us stuff. Our children bring stuff from school. Our husbands bring stuff. We get stuff at the office or sent to us by, you know, auntie Bonnie, you know, her special fudge. And all of it just sits out on the counter. So I get it. Maybe the kids want it or your husband wants it, or you know, whatever. If you're on your own, just get rid of it. But if there's, other people say, I'm gonna put all the holiday food in this place that you don't have to look at and get rid of any super trigger foods, because even if it's hidden, you know it's there. So if you're like a peppermint bark person, then get it the hell out of your house.

Rita Black: Why would you have it there, tempting you and taking up your brain space? Just get it the heck out of your house and tell your kids that you'll take them out and buy them peppermint bark, you know? They can have it outside of the house, but we don't wanna have it inside the house. And check in with your feelings as your feelings begin. Okay? So remove the trigger foods and then start checking. Just get in the habit of checking in with your feelings as they begin. And when you start to feel below the line feelings, you know, anxiety, stress, mad, you know, mad, resentment, vulnerability, sadness, when you're starting to feel those, immediately go, what are the thoughts that are creating this feeling? And, because what will happen, you might not have that answer right away, but you get in the habit of your brain will come up with the answer. So you can go, oh, okay, I'm feeling sad about my mom, it's the holidays. Oh, I need some nurturing. You know? So you start to be able to pull yourself back into yourself and care for yourself rather than allowing that feeling just to ruminate within you. And then all of a sudden having to eat over it. Start to get curious about the feelings and the thoughts that create the feelings. And maybe say, oh, yeah, you know, and turn those thoughts around if you can. There's a saying, am I halt? Am I hungry? Halt, h-a-l-t, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Beware of all of those things. Make sure that you're never too hungry. That's a big thing I see with a lot of people in that.

Rita Black: The weight space is that, especially over the holidays, you literally forget to eat until it's too late. Then you sit down to, you go out to restaurant with friends, or you're sitting down at the end of the day, or you come home and you're so hungry, then you're scarfing food down. When if you had stopped and eaten something, maybe just some quality protein a few hours before, you wouldn't have done that. So really keep yourself fed with quality food, nourishing food, not gakky food. And you know, if you get angry, if you get lonely, and if you get fatigued, definitely rest. You wanna keep yourself rested. But if you're getting angry and lonely, start to manage those feelings and thoughts. What we really wanna start doing for this and for weight management in general, is start to change our inner communication instead of being self-critical. Because a lot of feelings and emotions start with that critic, right?

Rita Black: You're not doing it right. You should be doing more. Oh, they didn't like what you did, you know in the rebel, oh, well you blew it. Well, they're all eating that. We might as well eat it too, you know? You wanna listen to those voices and start to recognize them so that you have some power over them. And then you wanna start to tune into a more nurturing inner voice. And this voice is curious. This voice is like, are we going to eat over this feeling like we're feeling a little sad? Are we going to eat over this? Because if we are, let's take care of this feeling. Let's have the feeling, let's process the feeling. Let's allow it to move through. And my key thing, I think my key piece of advice for you is to really flex that forgiveness muscle. Either forgiving others or forgiving yourself. We get a lot of you know, we get, it's easy to get into resentment, envy and generally disappointment and offness about, you know, there's a lot of expectations flying around during the holidays. Expectations of who you need to be in order to be accepted and loved. What you need to buy, what you expect others to get for you, what, right? Holiday behavior, what are the gifts? Then we have expectations, and then we have budgets, right? We're worried about money. It's tight this year, you know, so there's so much going on. So if we're going to eat over it, you know, we wanna start to forgive people, not for them, but for ourselves, right? We wanna say, okay, I'm just gonna let it go. My husband didn't buy me what I wanted, but I'm gonna forgive him. I'm gonna love him. I'm gonna choose to love him because I love myself and forgive him, I love myself. And then also really forgive yourself, right? Like, you might not be living up to expectations, weird expectations you have in your mind about who you need to be in order for others to accept you.

Rita Black: There's a lot of fricking weird holiday expectations out there, aren't there? And I don't know where they come from because they came from, you know, not my, like, not our generation, but probably our mom's generation, our grandmother's generation. There's like so many traditions, and I'm all for traditions. I love traditions. But when traditions own you, instead of you owning them, that's the time to start to question them, you know? My daughter's very inter traditional, oh, we're gonna do this this year. And I was like, okay, let's pair that down. Okay, love tradition, I love you, but you know, we are not making, what is it? We are not making soap this year. Okay? We did that every year when they were kids. It was super fun. But I say, I have a closet full of soap. We've made, we have not used the soap, so let's let the soap go this year, shall we? That list of a hundred people you wanna send holiday cards to, okay? Do they really need to hear from you? Maybe there's 10 people that, or 20 people that you really love that you really wanna sit down and write a meaningful blurb on your holiday card, ship it off. But, you know, do these, you know, what I call outer tier friends and people really need to hear from you. I mean, it might be nice, but maybe not. You don't really, maybe you don't need to let everybody know Happy holidays, you know?

Rita Black: Maybe you can send a prayer out or a vision out for everybody in the world wishing the world world peace. And that can include all those external tier friends. But, you know, be good to yourself and start to look at those expectations that are driving the anxiety and ask yourself, do I really need to do this? Like, whose expectation is this anyway? Is this my moms? Is this my grandmothers? Is this American, or whatever culture you're in, is this our culture? Is that, you know driving this feeling within me that isn't even my own? Start to poke holes in those expectations and you'll calm right down. So forgive and look at those expectations and start to really question them and start to say, do I really need to do all this? Because if I don't, you know, I think you would really, I know for me, staying mindful through the holidays, rather than being pulled, left, right, and center by a bunch of expectations that I don't really even own anymore, it seems extraneous. It seems what brings me joy isn't running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But it's really sitting and connecting with people and being mindful.

Rita Black: So think about creating more time for that, or creating time for even being with yourself and thinking about this upcoming year and thinking about the past year and what went well and what worked, what didn't, and how, you know, things like that are so great at the end of the year. But a lot of our running around and trying to find the fruity little things for who this person and that person, and you know, when so many people, you know, there's so much waste anyway, you know, they just start to question like, what is driving that anxiety not in your belly? And start to and driving the eating that is in response to that and start to question those expectations. And I'm not saying to throw everything out the window, I'm just saying to make them your own and maybe make them kinder and more realistic and more mindful.

Rita Black: Another thing would be to reach out to others and to create a healthy holiday group. There are a lot of people in my community, my membership, who have created their own little buddy systems and then in our membership, like I said, we're in touch everyday because we're doing this challenge. Find people that you can connect with and just maybe text each other. Like, what are you doing? Are you exercising today? Are you making healthy choices? Or you call them. And here's something that may seem obvious, but I can't tell you how many people do not pay attention to this, nut do not bake or shop when you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired. It's just asking for a disaster to happen. Just really, just don't. You know? If you do anything this holiday to avoid emotional eating, do not bake or shop when you're hungry, angry, lonely or tired, okay? Just promise me that.

Rita Black: And another thing that you can do is practice 5, 5, 5 breathing. A lot of you probably know what that is and some of you don't. So let me explain what it is. So 5, 5, 5 breathing is a technique that you take a five, you count for five, breathing in, you hold for five, four or five, and then you exhale at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You don't count, but you count internally. And what that does is, one, it forces your brain to count. So it takes it away from whatever thoughts it's, you know, obsessing about, but you're also that deep breath in hold and exhale, massages your central nervous system and it really does calm you down. It really, it can be great when you're trying to go to sleep at night. If you're over strung out, it can be great if you're having a bit of a panic attack or you're overwhelmed or somebody's you off, do 555 breathing. Often and regularly you'll love it and you'll wish that you had always done it. So if you are tempted by something, you know, if you really have this, oh God, I've gotta eat that thing, well think it through, you know? I'm not saying to avoid every single holiday treat. I mean, we want to enjoy the holidays, but we wanna be mindful about it.

Rita Black: So think through how will eating this thing make you feel an hour from now? Like right now it seems like a really good idea, but it, you know, and you can say to that part of you who wants to eat it, which is the reward center, I've gotta eat that thing. I've gotta eat that thing. I've gotta eat that thing. Say, okay, well we could have that, but let's think this through, you know? How is eating that thing gonna make me feel an hour from now? And really feel it like, mm, what's that gonna feel like? And what's that gonna feel like three hours from now? You probably have enough of a memory of visceral memory of how overeating something gakky and crappy feels in your body. And what this is doing is leveraging your dopamine from excitement to like, I want that thing impulsive excitement to oh yeah, that's not such a good idea. That doesn't feel good. So you're, you're really re-empowering yourself in that moment by really, it's called thinking it through bringing your brain and re-changing the focus from that impulsive moment must have it now to the long game and really honoring the you three hours from now and asking, well, how's that gonna feel if I don't eat this thing three hours from now and I feel healthy and light and really happy that I stood up for myself in that moment?

Rita Black: Advocate for yourself with that part of you that is the reward center and is kind of, I don't wanna call it dumb, but it's very impulsive and breathe through the feeling. What I mean by that is often a feeling like anger or sadness or anxiety underneath that feeling, that's kind of the umbrella feeling. There's a multitude of smaller micro feelings underneath that. Like, under sadness might be vulnerable, regret, guilt, tenderheartedness, bitters, sweetness resentment. Okay? And the more you get curious about the feelings under the feelings, it starts to interestingly break up the feelings a bit and then open your heart for all those feelings to exist. It's crazy. I know you're like, but that's so many feelings. Yeah. But if you open your heart, and this sounds California woo woo, but it's not you open your heart and you're like, okay, tenderness and vulnerability and bittersweetness and resentment and sadness, I'm gonna open my heart and let you be here for a moment, you know? Like, just be here and breathe through it and be with yourself in that moment and allow those feelings to exist. You're gonna find that feelings come and go. They're like a wave. They crest and they fall away. And that you sat through them. It's, I call it crossing the bridge. You're crossing the bridge with those feelings. You get to the other side of the bridge, you own that moment. You own that. You sat through that feeling and didn't eat over it. It's such a great empowered feeling.

Rita Black: So gift yourself the gift of breathing through your feelings and getting really curious underneath the, you know, lifting the lid of that generalized, I'm mad, I'm sad, I'm happy, and get all the feelings and emotions and then open up your heart to let them all exist. And you'll see that they'll pass through and you'll get enlightened like by getting, oh wow, I'm vulnerable. Oh wow. Yeah, there's a little bitters sweetness to this too. And there's, oh, and there's anger under my sadness and there's some guilt. It's so cool. I love it. I hope you do too.

Rita Black: Okay. So that's what to do if you're tempted. Now, what if you emotionally eat? What if you do emotionally eat? Okay, well, first thing is honor yourself. If you've gotta emotionally eat, sit down, you know, and enjoy it. Don't, you know, binge standing at the calendar mindlessly and not even enjoying it. I can't tell you how many times I gained weight and I got it on the scale and it was up 10 pounds or whatever, I was up and I'd be like, it, I didn't even enjoy gaining that weight. And that was the saddest thing in the world, right? Like, if you're gonna gain weight, if you're gonna overeat, be mindful, enjoy, own it. Respect yourself. You know what I mean? Like, and just say, I have to emotionally eat right now. I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna do that and maybe do some damage control. Maybe you don't need to eat a big thing of cake or fruitcake or whatever the thing is. Maybe you're like, well, I need to emotionally eat, I need to eat something. I need a cra-- but maybe I can have something healthy and emotionally eat that. I've done that many times and it works a charm, but you know, sometimes I get it, you gotta eat the whatever, the cake or whatever you have, but give yourself permission to eat and have a conversation with yourself while you're doing it. And a really lovely conversation. I don't mean mean or snarky. I mean like, I really see you need to eat over this feeling, you know, like you're sitting there eating and that other sort of like coach light part of you is like, ah, got it.

Rita Black: You gotta really eat right now over this anger. Okay, got it, got it, got it. Okay. And then, and get curious. Say, well, okay, so how is that working for you? And I don't mean in a snarky way, I just mean genuinely, like is that working? Is eating it, and it might, the answer might be, yep, it's working. Or it might be like, yeah, no, it's not really working, it's not really doing what I thought. Okay, well, yep, it's working. Oh, okay, cool. How much more do you think you need to eat for it to really be the thing to work for you? You know? And listen for the response or you know, how much or if it's not working out for you, oh well, okay, got it. It's not really working out. So how much more do you need to eat to, you know, be done?

Rita Black: Like, just be kind of be done with eating and maybe we need to move on to something else. And you'll be surprised at how being present to yourself and really hearing that part of you that's sort of acting out, that childlike part that's like, I need to eat over this. I need to eat over this. I need to numb myself. When you kind of pay attention to it and go, I hear you, you're feeling sad, food is the only thing that's gonna take care of this right now. When you give yourself that space, there's a part of you that calms right down and feels heard. And often, I'm not saying all the time, but often it's easy to say, yeah, I just need three more Oreos and then I'll be done. And, and you curtail a, you know, a big huge binge just by recognizing and getting present to the fact like, is this really helping me right now?

Rita Black: Because the unconscious subconscious part of you, the primitive you is eating because it thinks it needs to do to survive when you start to calm down and meet yourself, see, when we're acting out, when we're acting out, when we're stressed, you know, our conscious brain sort of shuts off for a moment and we're sort of just impulsively doing stuff. But, but if we take a breath as we start to eat and kind of calm down because we start to calm down when we begin eating, an interesting opening happens for you to have a conscious relationship with yourself and to say, okay, I see you, you know, we're needing eat. Because usually what we'll do is like, oh my God, I'm overeating. We'll get mad at ourselves. And then we'll just say, well, I might as well just keep eating and I've blown it and we'll just eat a ton and, you know, numb ourselves completely out, feel horrible and awful, and start again tomorrow.

Rita Black: But if we mute ourselves in the moment, really tenderly with a lot of respect and go, I get it, you had to eat. Okay, fine. Is that working for you? How much do you need to eat? How much more do you need to eat? Often we calm right down. And then so when you do that, please don't judge yourself. Be compassionate and forgiving. I know we think if we do that, we're gonna just keep overeating, but no, no, it's really quite the opposite. And don't start over please. If you have to overeat, do it, but don't go and I'm gonna start over tomorrow, so I'm gonna eat a ton more. No, don't do that. Just, you're better than that. And let's break that one habit. If we break that, it's a world of difference for everything, for your weight management.

Rita Black: And another thing you could do is go for a walk if you can. If it's not the middle of the night, you know, get up and go for a walk. Move your body after you binge or overeat or stress eat or emotionally eat because that just gives you some time to connect your head, with your body and then later think it through. And not in the moment. You're not gonna learn the lesson in the moment. But after the episode is over and you've kind of moved on, say, wow, you know, overeating those Oreos last night, it really didn't work for me, you know? I was feeling sad. It seemed like in the moment that was the only thing. But what, what, you know, like, what could I learn? Like what --next time I'm feeling that sadness, what could I do that would've really taken care of me in that moment and learned that lesson?

Rita Black: You'll come up with some ideas that are not about eating, and this is how we really begin to heal ourselves, right? We begin to truly find solutions and come up with true ways of taking care of ourselves rather than going to the food in these moments. And what a holiday gift that would be for you to just really create some solutions and to prevent the holiday eating in the first place. If you have one gift for yourself, I know for me I used to overeat, stress eat. The holidays for me was just like a food fog that I really didn't really appreciate my, you know, all the beauty and mystery and spirit of the season, which there's so much of that going on amongst all the other craziness, of course. But you know, when we slow down, when we really have that intercommunication with ourselves, respect ourselves, then we get access to that true holiday and it just is, becomes so much more magical. And that's what I wish for you.

Rita Black: All right. So I hope that this has been helpful. I hope that you got served by this episode today. And you know, just take it one step at a time and maybe you can re-listen to this episode again if you need some reinforcement over the holidays. I know because I threw a lot at you, but hopefully it made sense. So before we go, I wanna remind you, you can get a free weight loss download. There's so many really good ones in the shift store by reviewing our podcast, taking a picture of it or sending it to me at rita shift weight mastery.com or put it in the show notes where the link is provided. And thanks for your support. We will send you that coupon code to pick up the free download and the link to the store as well. There's downloads on exercising, drinking less, mindless eating, so many things. Your inner coach it's all there for you. So friends, happy holidays, I'll be in the back next week. But for now I'm thinking of you and I know we can all have an amazing holiday season together, thin thinking, being powerful, showing up for ourselves. So have an amazing week.

Rita Black: 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. You wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www shift weight mastery.com. That's www shift weight mastery.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.