From Fat to Thin Thinking

by Rita Black

  Weekly Planning Huddle once weekly on the same day.

  Morning Huddle every morning.

  Afternoon Refocus Huddle every afternoon.

  Evening Review Huddle every evening.

  Shift Breath Huddles as needed throughout the day.

  30-Day Thin Thinking Practice Sample Day

  Here is an outline of how your daily Thin Thinking Practice is structured to flow through your day. You can see that you stay in communication with your Inner Coach throughout the day to set yourself up for success and follow through.

  Morning

  Morning Huddle. Wake up and listen to the ten-minute Daily Vision Meditation. Take a moment to think about your day and plan for any challenges you expect.

  Read your daily coaching either online or in the email you received.

  Weigh yourself weekly or daily in the morning before eating.

  During the Day

  Track your food and exercise. (See recommendations for setting up tracking in Chapter 37)

  Several times a day—hourly if possible—take a Shift Breath and check in with yourself.

  Do your Afternoon (pre-evening) Refocus Huddle to evaluate your day and plan for your evening.

  Evening

  Evening Review Huddle. Review your day. What worked? What didn’t? (You can use the Evening Review questions as a guide—see example Chart Y and see worksheet in Index.)

  Plan your food and exercise for the next day. (You can use the Planned Food Journal in the Index or print the PDF in the Online Resource Center.)

  Listen to your hypnosis session. For many people, the evening is the best time to listen to hypnosis but if you have time earlier in the day—that works just as well.

  Here is an example of the kind of reflecting you might do during the Evening Review Huddle (Chart BB). You can use the Evening Review page in the Index as a guide or print and use the Daily Journal provided in the Online Resource Center.

  Chart BB: Evening Review Huddle

  There will be days when you cannot fit all the steps of your daily practice in—do not fret! The idea of the 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice is to try everything I’ve outlined and figure out what works for you and your weight mastery. Please do your best to at least listen to the morning meditation, track your food and exercise, and listen to one hypnosis session each day.

  Now, Apprentice, you have your practice, let’s get set up for it in DAY 0—Setting Up for Success.

  CHAPTER 37

  DAY 0

  Setting Up For Success

  There is always a bustle of excitement at the end of a Shift Weight Mastery Process seminar. The participants are chomping at the bit, ready to begin their 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice. We spend the last hour talking about how they are going to make the most of the next 30 days, release weight at a rate they decide, and begin the Weight Mastery Journey.

  You are going to do the same thing now. I call this Day 0 because it’s the time you are taking to get everything set up to shift into your weight mastery. There will be two parts to Day 0:

  Part 1: Setting up your 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice

  Part 2: Your first Weekly Planning Huddle with your Inner Coach

  I highly recommend that you prepare for your week on Sunday and consider it Day 0. Otherwise choose whichever day works best for you.

  As you are getting started, there is one other thing I will invite you to do for yourself today…

  Remove the “T” and Begin your Mastery

  When beginning a diet, our mindset is focused outwardly on the structure of the diet and wondering “Will it work for me?” Now that you are no longer dieting but are an apprentice of weight mastery, I’d like to SHIFT that idea of “will it work for me?” and remove the “T” from the equation and make it “Will I work for me?”

  When you shift that one word, it shifts your life. You are now on a journey of shifting from the inside out. As you can see, this process is going to take some stretching, some work, and some rethinking of who you are. Are you willing to work for you? Are you willing to work for your health, your self-esteem, and your freedom?

  I am going to remind you that you promised me you were ready to shift from fat to thin thinking, and now, as your coach working with both you and your Inner Coach, I will be asking you to continue to shift toward what you want.

  Step up to the plate with me and don’t half-heartedly “do” this process—BE ALL IN TO WIN—work for yourself. “Be the shift,” and I promise you will never want to go back.

  SETTING UP YOUR 30-DAY THIN THINKING PRACTICE

  Okay, Apprentice, let’s get you ready to go. Follow these steps to prepare yourself for the next 30 days:

  Step 1 Access your 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice Resources

  Go to www.FromFatToThinThinking.com. The Online Resource Center has everything necessary to successfully start and complete your 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice. In addition to the meditation and hypnosis sessions, you can access the 30 days of daily coaching (online or as daily emails) support materials, and journal printouts. I urge you to take full advantage of this Online Resource Center for your best experience.

  Step 2 Choose Your Food and Exercise-Tracking System

  Over the next 30 days and on into your long-term weight release, I highly recommend that you track your food, exercise, and weight. I went into this in detail in Chapter 28. Let me just remind you of a few benefits that tracking your food and exercise will bring:

  Allow you to see that you are staying within your Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release so you learn how to release weight at a rate you decide.

  Provide accurate data for you and your Inner Coach to rationally correct your course without going into “start over tomorrow” mode if you get off track or go over your Daily Calorie Budget.

  Teach you the calorie content and nutritional values (carbohydrates and proteins) of the foods you are eating and which ones nourish and stabilize your body best.

  More reasons to track your food, exercise, and weight can be found in Chapter 28, Skill 4 Self-Monitoring.

  My Experience with Tracking Manually

  I have tracked my data in a journal for years. I write down my plan for the day’s food on my to-do list in the morning and rewrite it as I eat during the day. I record my totals for exercise and food on the same weekly chart we use for your Weekly Weight Release Planner. (I print out many of these charts and keep an ongoing notebook of them.)

  Tracking my daily food and exercise is such a part of what I do and who I am that I don’t think twice about it. Like brushing my teeth, it’s just something that I do, because it works. I treasure both my teeth and my weight mastery, so I have simply surrendered to taking the extra steps needed to attend to both.

  Keep Tabs on Yourself

  Monitor the following when you are tracking:

  Calories consumed. Keep it within your Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release.

  Food. Become aware of the types of foods you eat and guide yourself toward nourishing and stabilizing foods.

  Staying in the Mastery Zone. I also recommend tracking the grams of carbohydrates and proteins in the foods you eat for at least 30 days. (The tracking apps I recommend will track fat, protein and carbohydrate grams automatically). This will allow you to make adjustments and feel free of the Carb Zombie! (Protein: at least 72 to 80 grams per day with calorie budgets under 1,600; for calorie budgets over 1,600, multiply your weight in pounds by 0.5 to determine the number of grams. Carbohydrates under 125 grams.)

  Exercise. Monitor how many calories you burn each day with exercise (the tracking apps will do this for you as well).

  Daily and/or weekly weight. Recording your weight will allow you to monitor your weight release and use the data to make adjustments and corrections in your food intake and ex
ercise as you go along (provided in the tracking app). It is also very motivational!

  Choose your tracking method. Consider two ways of tracking your food, calories, carbohydrates, exercise, and weight with either of the following methods that works best for you.

  Track Manually

  Track Digitally Online and/or with an app

  You can track manually in several ways, including using the following:

  A daily food journal. I have provided both Planned and Actual Daily Food Journal pages to record your food and exercise (Index and Online Resource Center). Copy and/or print 30 of these journal pages and put them in a binder. You can also use the Weekly Weight Release Planner (In the Index and Online Resource Center) to track your ongoing data for the week.

  A spiral notebook. This is a super low-tech way of journaling. You simply record your food, the amount you ate, calories, protein grams, carbohydrate grams, and exercise in your notebook. You can also track the exercise you do and the length of time you did it for as well as the calories burned. Add these totals up each day to make sure you are staying within your calorie budget. Keep a running total of the net calories you have burned for the week, so you can stay on top of how much weight you are releasing.

  A pre-printed food and exercise-tracking journal. These are available for purchase at an online store, such as Amazon. Many of my clients have had success with these journals.

  Pros: Many people find tracking their food and exercise manually in a journal comforting. One of the advantages of tracking by hand is that you can do it any place and any time. Obviously, it’s also the first choice of people who don’t like or use digital technology. Recording your food manually helps you become more familiar with the calorie counts and protein and carbohydrate contents of food, rather than relying on a database to do it for you. You’ll quickly become well-versed in the calorie contents of the foods you eat regularly.

  Cons: In the first few days to weeks of your practice, before you are familiar with the amounts of calories in foods you eat, you have to look each one up, which is time consuming.

  NOTE: You’ll find calorie contents on nutritional labels, online, and in nutritional tracking books, such as Calorie King. You can also find information on calories burned in exercise in apps, online, and in books. You can even ask your digital assistant, Siri or Alexa, to tell you how many calories are in an item! There are also devices that track your exercise calories.

  You can track online or using a mobile app. This method of tracking is efficient if you are comfortable in the digital world. Thanks to technology, tracking is now as easy (sometimes) as a tap of your finger. There are now apps and websites that allow you to monitor and track your food, exercise, and weight. The two most popular apps available in the Shift Weight Mastery Process Community are Lose It and My Fitness Pal. You can find these free apps on your smartphone or access their websites.

  Here are the steps to get started tracking digitally:

  Sign up for the service. You begin by entering your basic information, such as your weight, height, gender, and age, and your weekly weight-release goals. Lose It! or My Fitness Pal will then give you the calorie budget their algorithm indicates will achieve your goal.

  Adjust your Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release in the app. The calculators for both the Lose It! and My Fitness Pal apps tend to give you a higher Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release than the Shift Weight Release Calculator at FromFatToThinThinking.com. I find that the Shift Calculator gives you a more accurate Calorie Budget for Weight Release and will yield you more accurate results.

  Go to FromFatToThinThinking.com and access the Shift Weight Release Calculator. Put in your weight release information. The calculator will give you your accurate Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release.

  Adjust your Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release that was calculated in your Lose It! or My Fitness Pal account to the Daily Calorie Budget that you got in the Shift Weight Release Calculator.

  To Adjust your Daily Calorie Budget in Lose It!

  Click the “Goals” icon at the bottom of the interface

  Click the scale graphic on next page

  Click “Edit” on the upper right of the next page

  Scroll down to find “Daily Calorie Budget” and adjust to the number given on the Shift Weight Release Page calculator

  To Adjust your Daily Calorie Budget in My Fitness Pal

  Click the “More” icon at the bottom

  Click the “Goals” button on next page

  Click “Calories” and adjust to the Daily Calorie Budget given on the Shift Weight Release Page calculator

  Now you can start tracking your food and exercise! The database searches for the foods you input, presents serving size options, and provides the calories for the serving size you select. Most apps keep running tabs of your foods and meals so that the foods you typically eat appear quickly, and a tap of your finger records it. You track your exercise in the same way. The app keeps a running total of your daily data and shows you where you are within your Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release. You can begin tracking your weight in the app, too. An app presents the data on a graph that shows your progress. This visual can be very motivating. Track your weekly progress, too. An app will also show your week in review, putting all your weight release data at your fingertips.

  Pros: Many people find that using calorie-tracking databases make recording their food, calories, protein, carbohydrates, exercise, and weight seamless and easy. Many have said that recording becomes like a fun game they play on their phone. I also find it is easy to review past days to see what worked or didn’t work and examine why.

  Cons: If you aren’t facile with your smartphone or don’t have one or are not often online, you may find it inconvenient to track.

  Tracking do’s and don’ts. Regardless of whether you track manually or digitally, keep these do’s and don’ts in mind:

  Do record everything as accurately as possible, using measuring devices, such as a food scale and cups and tablespoon measurers. Measuring accurately is especially important at the beginning of your 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice when you’re training your eyes for estimating.

  Do track immediately what you have eaten. (People often forget what they have eaten 15 minutes later.) Here’s another system: Write what you plan to eat the day before. Then track as you go, changing amounts if you need to.

  Don’t stop tracking because you went over your Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release. Keep tracking as it will help you know exactly how much you went over. Love yourself, and keep tracking even if you go over your budget; chances are you can still maintain or even deficit some calories for that day.

  STEP 3 Get Ready to Track Your Weight

  Remember part of this process will be making the scale your friend by using it to help you and your Inner Coach track your progress. It’s not all about the number on the scale, but accurate data is helpful in noting your progress.

  Make sure you have a scale that works.

  Weigh yourself in the morning.

  Be prepared to record your weight in your journal or on your app’s weight chart.

  If you are recording manually print and use the Weight Release Tracker PDF available in the Online Resource Center.

  STEP 4 Prepare to Exercise

  Take the time to set yourself up for an active lifestyle. If you are already active, great. If not, think the following strategies through.

  Make sure you have the proper exercise equipment and workout clothes for your exercise plans.

  Join a gym, a dance class, a Sierra Club hiking group, or whatever active group meets regularly. (Check out www.meetup.com for groups meeting locally to exercise or play sports.)

  Get an exercise buddy, friend, or trainer lined up to work out with you.

  Plan w
alking routes around your home, work, or a nearby park.

  Check out apps and wearable tracking devices that record the calories you burn or steps you take. Information about them is in the Online Resource Center.

  STEP 5 Prepare for Your Weight Release Eating Structure

  Creating a healthy way of eating takes a bit of time and patience. Don’t expect things to be perfect from the get go, but do expect to evolve a way of eating that honors you and allows you to release weight at the same time. You might want to review Chapter 26, “Skill 3 Creating a Masterful Relationship with Food.” There you will find several strategies to get yourself started.

  THE FOOD MASTERY ZONE

  When you start eating in the Food Mastery Zone and getting adequate protein (Four 3-oz servings, at least 72 to 80 grams per day), fiber and nourishment from vegetables and fruit, and keeping your carbohydrate intake to a minimum (75 to 125 grams per day depending on your carb sensitivity) you will quickly be hibernating the Carb Zombie. The cravings and false hunger prompted by overeating refined foods will diminish, too.

  NOTE: For the first three days of eating in this way, you may experience some mild feelings of blood sugar adjustment, such as a sensation that feels like hunger pangs or lightheadedness. If you are in good health otherwise, these sensations are your blood sugar insulin levels adjusting. That is a good thing. Think of these feelings as indications that you are putting the Carb Zombie in the Weight Struggle Prison. If you ignore him, the Carb Zombie will be forced to fall into a deep sleep, leaving you alone to enjoy eating more healthfully. Make sure you drink water and eat a form of healthy protein every few hours during this time.