by Rita Black
Become adept at censoring negative self-talk.
Develop strategies to bypass impulsive cravings.
Break the “I blew it, so screw it!” Weight Struggle Cycle.
These are the thin thinking skills that I extracted from the Weight Masters research:
Communicating with your Inner Coach
Managing your Inner Critic
Managing your Inner Rebel
I realized on my journey that unlike diets that few people can sustain, the Weight Mastery skills work better and better with practice. Occasionally mistakes happen, but the Weight Master has learned to keep going forward. There is no starting over with mastery—just learning and practicing without the fear of shame or failure.
I practiced these Nine Skills daily, using hypnosis to help my mind ingrain these new habits and behaviors so they became a part of me. This was a huge step forward on my journey to Weight Mastery! As I began my clinical hypnosis practice and started helping others, I also incorporated the idea of Weight Mastery and skill building into my practice with clients.
WEIGHT MASTERY SUM UP: The Nine Skills
The Nine Skills are the core common practices and habits of Weight Masters—taken from research studies such as The National Weight Control Registry, the National Institutes of Health’s evidence-based guidelines, as well as my clinical observations of what has consistently yielded long-term success for my clients on the Weight Mastery journey.
The Nine Skills of Weight Mastery:
Living your Life within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release and Maintenance
Building a Consistent Relationship with Exercise
Creating a Masterful Relationship with Food
Self-Monitoring
Stimulus Control
Creating and Maintaining your Weight Management Support Team
Communicating with your Inner Coach
Managing your Inner Critic
Managing your Inner RebelWeight mastery comes from focusing on building these skills within yourself and engaging the brain in a different way. When you think of weight mastery as an ongoing learning process, the way you approach weight management changes.
Hypnosis helps open up your change-resistant subconscious mind. It helps replace old useless patterns with wiring for new healthy ones.
Meditation helps create mindfulness of our current thoughts and an ability to shift the focus of your thinking toward a vision of the Weight Master that you are becoming.
MAKING YOUR SHIFT In The Nine Skills section of this book you will learn about these mastery skills and be given strategies to apply them to your daily life. The 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice part of the process is designed to allow you to incorporate these practices into your life and have them become an easy and habitual part of you and your life.
Good news! You will never have to be perfect on a diet again in order to release weight permanently. Weight success is about embodying skills and practicing them over time. This practice will build your confidence, grant you independence, and instill a feeling of accomplishment. Isn’t it about time you feel good about your ability to manage yourself in this area of your life? Don’t you deserve to be the boss of your own healthy, fit body and the life that supports it? I know this was the shift for me that finally made the difference and it can now be the same for you.
“I found that the Shift Weight Mastery Process not only gave me the skills to release weight but also to keep it off permanently. Eating regular foods, I was able to release 8 pounds during the 30 days even though I was on vacation for eight of them.” Veronica L. (Released 78 pounds, maintaining for 2 years.)
Now it’s time to move forward and put all the pieces of weight mastery together and look at THE WEIGHT MASTERY JOURNEY.
CHAPTER 12
FROM FAT TO THIN THINKING
The Weight Mastery Journey
Are you beginning to see that the path to having a slim and healthy body is an inside job? That the steps to weight mastery begin inside your mind and not outside of you in a diet?
Unlike the Weight Struggle Cycle that keeps you in the un-merry-go round-feeling of yo-yoing from good or bad, on or off, all or nothing, the steps of weight mastery form a long-term journey forward for the rest of your life.
The Weight Mastery Journey
The following list of steps is in the order with which you begin your journey.
Step 1 The Weight Struggle Cycle.
At the beginning of the journey, you are typically starting in the prison of your own fat thinking, limiting beliefs and habits—stuck in the Weight Struggle Cycle. At this point, your mind is wired to keep things playing out in this frustrating all-or-nothing, good-or-bad, yo-yo weight pattern.
Step 2 Start the Journey.
Now you make the powerful decision to leave your victim-based, Weight Struggler mindset behind and take control of your weight mastery. By making four mental SHIFTS (Forgive, Decide, Vision, 100% Belief) in this process, you begin breaking up the old fat thinking wiring that has kept you stuck by changing your mental focus and seeing yourself in a new light. You take yourself out of your Weight Struggler Cycle prison and start out on the road to weight mastery as an open-minded and open-hearted apprentice.
Step 3 Meet Your Inner Coach.
Now that you are beginning your journey from fat to thin thinking, you need a guide, an inner voice of reason and wisdom that can inspire you and lead you through releasing your weight and achieving your ideal weight and weight mastery. This new way of communicating with yourself is focused on problem-solving, learning and adjusting, and improving old fattening behaviors. This new rational, self-respecting, strategizing, and solution-thinking way of interacting with yourself gives you consistency and long-term staying power. So that even in those moments when you want to give up and say, “I blew it, so screw it,” this part of you can “show up” and help you keep going and staying consistent.
Your Inner Coach has been with you all along, but its voice has been masked by the louder voices of your Inner Critic and Rebel. This step in the Weight Mastery Journey allows you to hear that voice, connecting you to your Inner Coach to create a new inner communication system that will guide you to success.
Step 4 Practicing the Nine Skills of Weight Mastery.
During the Shift Weight Mastery Process, practicing the Nine Skills builds a foundation for thin thinking. Remember, these skills are the behaviors and mental processes of people who have achieved significant weight releases and have maintained their weight for more than a year.
Consistently practicing Weight Mastery skills may sound overwhelming, but think of all the skills involved in, say, driving a car. With practice, those driving skills become automatic, and you barely think of them consciously. The same is true of the Nine Skills of Weight Mastery. They evolve from something you have to think about specifically to becoming a part of who you are.
When you become masterful at anything in life, you use the skills involved in that activity continually to maintain them. Likewise, no matter how long a Weight Master has been maintaining a healthy, ideal weight, the Weight Master continues to use and hone the Nine Skills.
Step 5 The 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice.
It takes about 21 to 30 days to create the roots of new habits and beliefs. The 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice was designed to give you the support and structure to begin shifting from fat to thin thinking. Once you begin to think of yourself as the Apprentice, with your Inner Coach as your guide, you will begin to use your Nine Skills within the 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice and begin “building your Weight Mastery Home.” This is the foundational network of thin thinking wires—the new habits, beliefs, and systems that will support your weight release, help you achieve your ideal weight and maintain it.
During these 30 days you will use daily meditation and hypnosis to program these changes into y
our deeper mind so that they become permanent. By the end of the 30 days you will:
Be releasing weight at a rate you decide.
Feel free of the cravings and fake hunger of out-of-balance eating.
Have begun breaking the Weight Struggle Cycle..
Be engaged in daily habits and self-supportive communication that allows you to stay consistent on your continuing journey forward.
Research shows that when you reinforce new healthy behaviors, the less prominent the neurological pathways of bad habits will become. By day 30, your new thin thinking wires will be established and getting stronger as the old, fat thinking wires weaken and fade.
Step 6 Continue Releasing Weight, Reach Your Ideal Weight, and Maintain a Healthy Weight.
This step is pretty straightforward. So why has releasing weight and maintaining the loss been so hard in the past? Because when you diet, you usually focus solely on losing weight and not on establishing the mastery habits and communication skills that allow you to be successful in the long run. By embarking upon a journey to weight mastery you are changing the lens with which you see yourself. You are no longer one who struggles but one who is consistently mastering a healthy, slim, and confident lifestyle that allows you to live life at your ideal weight and be your best you.
Chart C: The Weight Mastery Journey
Never Stopping, Never “Starting Over”
So there you have the Weight Mastery Journey! You can see that it is quite different from the Weight Struggle Cycle. There is no stopping and starting over as with the Weight Struggle Cycle. The Weight Mastery Journey keeps you moving forward toward a slim and healthy body and confident thin thinking mind. (Chart C)
Sanity Over Vanity
I like to say “Choose sanity over vanity.” What I mean is that although releasing weight is wonderful, ultimately it is your rational, respectful, and confident relationship with food, exercise, and yourself that is the most thrilling part of weight mastery. Yes, the skinny jeans are great on the outside, but it’s who you have become that is more beautiful and interesting on the inside.
I began my journey over 20 years ago when I made the decision to take back my power and said “No more!” to diets. I saw a vision of what my life could be—slim, healthy, and free. Little did I know that this journey would open the door to a new relationship with myself. Not only was my weight going to change for the better, but everything else in my life would improve as well.
The day I stood on the scale and saw I had reached my goal of 140 pounds, I didn’t celebrate. It was a busy day. My life was full. Indeed, I now had a life! I was training to be a hypnotherapist, knowing that what I wanted to do was help people take back their power and shift into weight mastery.
A few months later, I still weighed 140 pounds. This was a plateau I was enjoying being on! After years of rushing to the scale and hoping that my weight would be down, I was quite at peace with it reading the same weight day after day. Sure, the glamour and thrill of the dramatic weight losses were gone, but so was all the drama and pain.
I will be honest and say that the scale has moved up and down three to five pounds over twenty years. There have been days, weeks, and even months that didn’t look so good, and my eating habits started to swing back to some of my old ways. But because of my relationship to my Inner Coach and my commitment to continuing to practice the Nine Skills, I was always able to stay on my Weight Mastery Journey. I’m 5’ 9” tall, and my weight has ranged from 139 to 144 pounds for two decades.
WEIGHT MASTERY SUM UP: The Weight Mastery Journey
Unlike the Weight Struggle Cycle that keeps you in a frustrating cycle of “on” or “off” behavior, the Weight Mastery Journey is focused on continually honing the weight, environment, and mind skills that allow you to release weight and keep it off long-term.
MAKING YOUR SHIFT During your 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice, you will incorporate the Nine Skills into your life and learn to depend on your Inner Coach. Over the 30 days, these new practices and healthy living habits will become second nature. You will lose weight and the old struggle will soften.
The 30-day program of daily writing exercises along with the hypnosis and coaching resources available online will help keep your mind in thin thinking mode as you begin releasing weight and feeling confident in your new emerging weight mastery.
“After years of struggling and feeling like a failure I can finally check this one off my list.” Dina E. (Released 45 pounds, maintaining at 3 years.)
My personal Weight Mastery Story has caught up with the present time. Let’s take a moment in this final chapter of Part I, The Orientation, to be inspired to continue on to Part II of the Shift Weight Mastery Process—START THE JOURNEY. This is where things get exciting, so follow me.
CHAPTER 13
IT’S YOUR TURN
Start Your Shift Weight Mastery Process
You have now heard all about me and my shift. You’ve also learned how your mind works in this area of your life and why you struggle despite knowing what to do to manage your weight. Now you’re ready to start your own journey and step out of the Weight Struggle Cycle. I couldn’t be more excited for you.
You have separated yourself from the pack of Weight Strugglers who keep looking for the fast and easy weight-loss solution. They want the change to happen to them rather than creating a change within themselves. In Part I, The Orientation, you learned that the key to your weight-release success is in your shift from fat to thin thinking. You are now ready to get up from the virtual “comfy chair in my office” and begin unleashing your powerful mind for thin thinking.
Open Your Mind and Heart
The Shift Weight Mastery Process recodes your mind step by step. Don’t worry. It isn’t mind control. You will be doing your own recoding. I’ve written this book to lay everything out for you in a way that makes it easy and fun. I’ve made all the mistakes and taken all the wrong turns so you don’t have to.
The Shift Weight Mastery Process has many graduates who have been living their lives at their ideal weight for years. They made the choice to make this journey and gave it their all. Now they are continuing to reap the rewards day after day, month after month, and year after year.
I’m going to repeat what I said several times in The Orientation.
You have to be all in with this process. If you skim, skip, or leave out sections, I cannot assure you the success I know you can have. Why would you skimp on yourself? Are you ready to leave all of the frustration with your weight behind once and for all? Give yourself a huge gift, the gift of life outside the Weight Struggle Prison. The key is in your hand, and you can unlock the door by giving yourself the chance to SHIFT 100 percent.
Good Stretch Marks
There will be times as you complete the next two parts of this book when you may feel stretched beyond where you normally would stop. There might be times when you feel confused. You may have feelings that are outside your normal realm of experience. You may feel confronted, sad, ecstatic, overjoyed, overwhelmed, and even pissed off. I invite you to not only welcome everything that arises on this journey but to embrace it all.
These stretching points are good! Let me remind you that the mindsets and behaviors that have seemed comfortable to you have also kept you exactly where you are—struggling and frustrated.
Don’t back down when you have uncomfortable feelings. Stretch past them. Be stronger, more courageous, and more determined than you ever have been in your life. You are about to stretch into a new way of thinking and behaving that not only will give you health at a lighter weight but also self-esteem and freedom.
Final Note of Encouragement
I cannot share with you the awe and gratitude I have for my own weight struggle. It opened a door into my life for mastery that I would have never opened if I had been naturally thin.
In the creation of my own wei
ght mastery, I became the person I always felt and dreamed I could be. I consider myself far luckier than all of the naturally skinny people of the world. I wake up every day feeling grateful for the opportunity to become more masterful as I continue this journey.
I respect you so much for opening the door in your heart and stretching it wide to make this powerful journey for yourself. Remember, I am here with you every step of the way. Alone we diet, together we SHIFT!
Let’s move forward and get going with Part II of your process: The Shift. We are going to dive in with START THE JOURNEY.
PART II
THE SHIFT
The Shift Weight Mastery Process
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
—George Bernard Shaw
THE SHIFT
Start The Journey
Happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release.
—Nathanial Hawthorne
CHAPTER 14
BEGIN WITH A BREATH
The Shift Breath
Iwant you to know that you have just crossed your first mental hurdle: You have begun! I know it may seem crazy to shift out of a struggle that may have spanned years or even decades of your life with a 30-day process, but your mind is equipped to adapt very quickly once you put it on a new road.
This part of this process is specifically designed to get you started on the journey of shifting out of the weight struggle into weight mastery. You’re going to make these specific mental shifts.
Forgive Yourself
Make Your Decision
Create your Weight Mastery Vision
Shift to 100 Percent Belief
INSTRUCTIONS: START THE JOURNEY
Grab a journal or notebook and a pen and plan to actually use them! During this part of the process, there will be specific points where you stop to engage in thinking and writing. Please do not pass over these exercises because writing helps your mind process. Give yourself the value of the experience.