From Fat to Thin Thinking

by Rita Black

  I—Insert Thin Thinking

  Rationally assess the situation. Instead of your Inner Critic judging you for eating the brownie (“You ate a brownie, that wasn’t on your plan—you blew it!”), your Inner Coach can instead acknowledge what happened in a non-judgmental way. (“You ate a brownie, that wasn’t on your plan, we can make it work though, let’s think this through.”)

  This takes you from an emotionally charged, fat thinking reaction to a rational thin thinking mindset.

  F—Forgive Yourself and Find a Solution.

  You now know the importance of forgiveness, so forgive yourself for eating the brownie. This immediately removes the bad feelings and frees your mind to solve the challenge. “I forgive myself for eating the brownie.”

  Now, put you and your Inner Coach’s heads together and solve the problem. The main solution will always be to get back on track immediately. In the Nine Skills section, you and your Inner Coach will learn many ways to get back on track. Often finding the solution will simply be giving yourself some choices as to how to move forward.

  For example, you and your Inner Coach can work the challenge through. “That brownie wasn’t the end of the world or my healthy eating lifestyle. It probably had about 225 calories, and if I keep on track for the rest of the party and adjust my intake the rest of the day, I can still be on track for releasing weight this week.”

  T—Take the Lesson and Move Forward to Mastery.

  There is always a lesson to learn when things don’t go as you wished. When you “start over,” you lose the lesson. When you shift to thin thinking, you take a moment to learn how to avoid doing the same thing next time.

  For example, you and your Inner Coach can observe “I mindlessly said ‘yes’ to that brownie when it was offered. That didn’t work for me. What would work for me next time? Next time, before a party, I will practice saying ‘No thank you’ before leaving home, so it will feel natural and easy when my friend offers me things I don’t really want or need.”

  Don’t worry about “getting” this technique all right now. You will have many chances to review this during your 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice.

  CREATING THE CONNECTION TO YOUR INNER COACH SUM UP: MEET YOUR INNER COACH

  The relationship between your apprentice and Inner Coach is the engine that will drive your journey to weight mastery.

  I have met my Inner Coach who will guide me to weight mastery.

  I understand that I can use my Shift Breath to pause and access my Inner Coach.

  I know the S.H.I.F.T. from Fat to Thin Thinking Technique that I can use with my Inner Coach to intercept the “start over” fat thinking and stay on track with thin thinking.

  Excellent. I hope you are feeling stronger and more confident with your Inner Coach. You are never alone. You will always have someone who cares more about your freedom and health than eating a cupcake. It’s time to connect you both on an even deeper level in your mind with the INNER COACH Hypnosis Session.

  CHAPTER 21

  HYPNOSIS SESSION

  Inner Coach

  You are now ready to dive into the second hypnosis session in the Shift Weight Mastery Process. Listening to Inner Coach Hypnosis Session will help solidify your connection to your Inner Coach.

  Go to www.FromFatToThinThinking.com to access the hypnosis session.

  Listen only while you are in a relaxed position.

  Listen to the Inner Coach hypnosis session with an open mind that is expecting 100 percent success.

  DO NOT LISTEN TO ANY HYPNOSIS SESSION WHILE DRIVING OR OPERATING HEAVY OR COMPLEX MACHINERY.

  Expect to feel relaxed, don’t expect to feel in a trance.

  If you fall asleep, try the session in a less relaxed position next time. However, hypnosis can make an impact while you are asleep.

  Enjoy your hypnosis session, and then we will move to the Nine Skills where you and your Inner Coach begin laying the framework for your weight mastery.

  THE SHIFT

  The Nine Skills Of Weight Mastery

  The secret of change is to focus your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

  —Socrates

  CHAPTER 22

  THE NINE SKILLS

  Tools For Weight Release Success

  Welcome to the next part of your journey. After listening to Inner Coach, the second hypnosis session, you can see that you have embarked on a way of managing your weight from the inside out.

  We have now arrived at the point where you will begin using the Nine Skills of Weight Mastery to build your thin thinking mind. Remember these skills are based on over 200 studies of men and women who achieved long-term, permanent weight release.

  Metaphors are powerful tools for learning. As you’ve noticed, I love using the mental construction of a Weight Mastery Home in the mind to convey how you will apply specific skills layer by layer to achieve weight mastery.

  As I explained earlier, the Nine Skills of Weight Mastery can be thought of in three dimensions: Weight, Environment, and Mind. Thinking of them in these groups will also help you remember them.

  Think of each group of skills as a new floor of your Weight Mastery Home. By the time you’ve completed the Shift Weight Mastery Process, you will have a three-story home of Nine Skills of Weight Mastery.

  The First Floor: Weight Skills.

  These are the most physical skills. They are the basic skills of releasing weight and form the foundation of your Weight Mastery Home.

  Second Floor: Environmental Skills.

  These lifestyle skills keep your weight release and maintenance consistent.

  Top Floor: Mind Skills

  These mental level skills manage your inner communication, the key to Weight Mastery success.

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE NINE SKILLS OF WEIGHT MASTERY

  Each chapter in this section will introduce you to a different skill and teach you how to begin mastering it.

  Read each skill chapter through completely.

  Keep your Inner Coach with you at all times. The skills are for you and your Inner Coach to use as a team. Read from the point of view of both aspects of yourself—the teacher and the learner. This back-and-forth, respectful, learning relationship within you is the heart of the Shift Weight Mastery Process success.

  Beware of fat thinking as you read. Your Inner Critic and Inner Rebel may pop into your mind from time to time to say hello. As I warned at the beginning of this book, beware of the harsh words and clever seductive lines these two characters might say to discourage or seduce you. Stay strong if one of them makes comments like these:“I know this already.” Knowing something and embodying it are two different things. Remind yourself that you are open to learning on a deeper level.

  “I did something like this before and it didn’t work.” Being ready to change is key to success. You may not have been ready in the past, but I bet you are now.

  “This is too hard.” and “This will take too much time.” Remember these popular fat thinking refrains that we discussed before? Struggling with your weight and yourself takes more time and effort than learning to be confident and free. You are worth the investment!

  Complete the exercises: Please complete the exercises in each of the chapters because they will help prepare you for your 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice.

  Okay, Apprentice, take a Shift Breath, harness your Inner Coach, and let’s start building THE THREE WEIGHT SKILLS.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE FIRST LEVEL

  The Three Weight Skills

  Are you ready to release weight? These three skills are about the weight in weight mastery.

  THE WEIGHT SKILLS

  Skill 1 Living your Life within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release and Maintenance. You learn to live life within your Calorie Budget and release weight powerfully and consistently at a ra
te you decide.

  Skill 2 Creating a Consistent Relationship with Exercise. You use exercise as a powerful tool to either speed your rate of weight release or eat more food as you are releasing. You see exercise as an essential part of your Weight Mastery lifestyle.

  Skill 3 Creating a Masterful Relationship with Food. You hone the skills of being able to confidently use food to create a stable, balanced, nourishing way of eating that removes cravings and fake hunger and allows you to cultivate a way of eating that honors you and your life from the inside out.

  First, before embarking upon your first set of skills, take a nice Shift Breath and set your mind for success. Since you are going to begin building your weight release home, you need some protective gear. Instead of a hard hat, though, I am handing you and your Inner Coach lab coats. Will you put them on, please? You are about to delve into the research.

  The fat thinking side of our mind that is wired for weight struggle is full of pain, despair, and limiting beliefs. Our emotions run our fat thinking. That’s why our good-or-bad, on-or-off-a-diet brain is as quick to leap on a diet as it is to fall off one.

  Now, Apprentice, you are going to learn to use the more rational, thin thinking part of your mind to begin to release weight calmly in a straightforward, rational way, as if you are a scientist.

  RESEARCH SHOWS THE BEST DIET IS “YOUR DIET”

  The data from the National Weight Control Registry shows that although about half of Weight Masters may have released weight through diets or weight loss programs, their key to success wasn’t a diet alone, but rather their ability to adapt any diet to their lives and make eating plans or programs their own.

  The data also shows that no matter what diet the average Weight Master followed, his or her weight release was accomplished by reducing caloric intake, eating less fat, and consuming fruits and vegetables, as well as increasing physical activity. In other words, the key to long-term weight success wasn’t any diet, per se, but establishing a healthy and active lifestyle. These same factors also helped sustain long term weight release.

  My own weight breakthrough involved the shift from seeing weight management as the act of staying on a diet to aligning my beliefs and habits with living my life at 140 pounds instead of 180+ pounds. This took more than understanding about healthy eating; it took understanding how to release weight and keep it off.

  Many of my clients know how to eat healthfully before they begin shifting with me. However, they discover when they begin working with me that they did not know how to use their minds to create a specific weight release outcome. I use calories and the physics of weight release to help clients release weight at a rate they decide and take back their power from fad diets.

  I know there are diet programs that assume you can’t handle counting calories. These programs may “dumb it down,” using points, blocks, or color codes of what you can and cannot eat. Or some programs try to make it easy by requiring that you eat their special food and not much else. They don’t show you how to use calories within the Weight Release Equation that will give you the ability to release weight on your own terms.

  When you understand the Weight Release Equation and how to release weight at a rate you decide, you won’t be stuck in the Weight Struggle Cycle. You will not fall victim to unrealistic goals and diets that cause you to throw in the towel before you’ve hardly started. Instead you will learn to live life within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release. You will also learn to partner with exercise and develop a masterful relationship with food so that you become the confident owner of your weight release journey and not some diet structure or set of rules that live outside of you.

  “I chose to go slow, releasing one pound a week. I didn’t want to be on another diet. I wanted a lifestyle I could live with and maintain a healthy weight the rest of my life.” Mary S. (Released 35 pounds, maintaining for 8 years)

  Okay, have you got your lab coat on? Onward to Skill 1 Living your Life within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release and then Maintenance.

  CHAPTER 24

  WEIGHT MASTERY SKILL 1

  Living Your Life Within Your Calorie Budget For Weight Release And Maintenance

  SKILL 1: Living your Life within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release and Maintenance. The skill of creating a Daily Calorie Budget that will allow you to release weight (and then maintain) based at a rate you decide and then living your life within it.

  Fat Thinking And Weight Release

  Fat thinking about weight loss runs deep and often keeps us a victim of our mind’s distorted perceptions:

  I don’t eat anything, and yet I am not losing weight!

  I work out so hard, but my weight stays the same!

  Losing weight is hard, and my body is broken. I don’t think I have a metabolism!

  When struggling with weight, the act of losing weight always carries with it the idea of having to pull it together, suffer through, and be deprived. This feeling doesn’t usually start with you. The world is full of fat thinking images, beliefs, and stories that perpetuate the idea that losing weight is hard. This assumption strengthens your own belief system every time you try to release weight. We feel like we are serving a prison sentence.

  If you are frustrated because you have been trying unsuccessfully to release weight, here are some weight release challenges you may not be conscious of:

  You don’t understand the physics of weight release. You may eat healthfully and exercise regularly, but unless you have accurate data and know how to create specific results, success will elude you.

  You exercise regularly, but you are eating more calories than you burn. Often I have clients who are exercising but not aware of how many calories they are consuming. They are still eating more than they are burning, despite the exercise. I had a client who played tennis for an hour. Afterward he quenched his thirst with a high-calorie juice and refueled with a gluten-free muffin. The calories that he consumed were more than double the calories that he had burned on the court.

  Your perception of how much you are eating is more broken than your metabolism. Research shows that thin people underestimate the amounts of calories they eat by 25 percent. The typical Weight Struggler underestimates the amount of calories he consumes daily by 50 to 100 percent!

  BROKEN METABOLISM OR BROKEN THINKING?

  In the early 1990s, Steven B. Heymsfield, M.D., then deputy director of the New York Obesity Research Center at Columbia University, studied 17 people who felt they couldn’t lose weight because of a faulty metabolism. Researchers monitored the volunteers food intake at intervals over four years. The volunteers recorded their meals over a three-day period in a food journal. Most entries came to about 1200 calories a day. However, when scientific methods were used to more accurately measure calories consumed over 14 days, the researchers found that actual calorie consumption was 2227 calories a day on average. The volunteers were underestimating their caloric intake by about 1200 calories a day! On metabolic tests, only one person was found to have a truly low metabolic rate, possibly due to medications she was taking.

  Next, the volunteers were given controlled amounts of calories and closely monitored. The result of the controlled study? According to Dr. Heymsfield, “Obese subjects were placed into negative energy balance and were invariably shown to lose body weight as predicted by the first law of thermodynamics.” In translation, when they were actually eating 1200 calories a day they released weight at a predictable rate.

  I have in my office a machine that measures your resting metabolic rate. Now I know you are wondering “Why would a hypnotherapist have a machine like that?” The answer is simple. Truth dispels myth.

  Many of my clients initially believe that years of dieting have ruined their metabolism, making them incapable of losing weight. They breathe into the Metacheck machine for ten minutes, and it gives us their resting metabolic rate so we know exactly
how many calories their body is burning on an average day. Though some people have compromised metabolic rates, most peoples’ metabolisms fall in the zone of what is normal for their weight. And I have measured the metabolisms of thousands of people! This often is a shock to many, but when we walk through what they have been eating on a daily basis, they very quickly begin to understand why they have been stuck on a plateau or have been gaining weight.

  Then we go through the steps of how to actually release weight as per the laws of physics (as we are about to do for you), and people begin to get excited. The laws of physics finally begin to make sense. When clients learn to release weight according to the laws of physics, they see that they are perfectly capable of losing weight and can be in control without having to lean on diets, detoxes, or other methods. They take their power back from the weight loss industry. They let go of the old limiting beliefs that made them feel like their body was broken and become confident drivers of their own weight release.

  I call this skill Living Your Life within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release and Maintenance because it’s about learning to live your life within your natural energy needs to release and then maintain at your ideal weight. This skill is about thriving and not about depriving!

  Don’t worry, you don’t need a metabolism machine to find out your metabolism. I will walk you through how to do that for yourself very shortly.

  “When I learned how many calories my body burned each day and that I could decide how to feed myself within my calorie budget for weight release, it was an absolute game changer. I understood what to do for myself, and it felt so liberating and grown-up. I am the one in charge of what I do and how fast I release, not some diet guru or crazy combination of food. Let me just say that science works. Math works. Don’t be afraid. Embrace weight-release science and see how empowering it can be.” Tony G. (Released 38 pounds, maintaining at 2 years)