Mastering Weight Management Through Hypnosis: A Conversation with Rita Black

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  0:04  
Hello, and welcome to Your Health Moment podcast. I'm your host Max Sturdivant better known as Dr. Fitness. On this podcast, I want to give you the tools to start, continue and never give up on your journey towards health. Now, whether you struggle with your weight, eating the right food, hydration, exercise, or even time management, you're in the right place, and I'm here for you. Now, let's dive right into this episode.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Your Health Moment. I'm your host, Dr. Fitness. As always, we will discuss all things holistic, and wellness. And there'll be no different today except we have the pleasure of interviewing Rita Black. And we're going to discuss... get this... using hypnosis to manage your weight. Have you ever thought of that? You know, we do it with smoking. And we do it with a lot of other things that we're familiar with it but now look, wait. Really cool thing. Rita is an author, a speaker, and Director of Shift Hypnosis in Los Angeles. She's an expert in psychology, the psychology of weight management, and an author of the best-selling book, From Fat to Thin Thinking: Unlock Your Mind for Permanent Weight Loss. Now, before Rita was a hypnotherapist, she was a client using hypnosis to stop a pack and a half of smoking a day. That's a huge habit. And we all know that smoking is not the best thing for us, but look Rita knocked it out. In the process, she also released 40 pounds. It's her passion now to help others like you and me to transform her hypnosis-based online course. The Shift Weight Mastery process and the smoke-free 123 have helped 1000s By harnessing the power of their subconscious to shift past beliefs and habit barriers, creating powerful breakthroughs that last. Now we all have those habit barriers, and and few of us actually get to explore them. So I'm really excited that Rita is here. And I appreciate you joining us today Rita Black. Why don't we start with you telling us something about yourself? What do you do?

Rita Black  2:45  
Hey, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. So yeah, so I am a Clinical Hypnotherapist I started over 20 years ago helping people manage their weight and stop smoking only after like you said in my bio, I found hypnosis through stopping a pack and a half a day habit. And I stopped in one session, which blew my mind. I was like what the heck. I always thought hypnosis and I think a lot of people still think of hypnosis is sort of voodoo and magic. And, you know, you think of the guy with the polyester suit and who's waving the, you know, the wash in front of your eyes, and you know, putting you in some sort of crazy trance, and you wake up and you're like, where was I? What I Why am I all of a sudden barking like a dog. But really, hypnosis allows you to use more of your mind because the crazy thing is I have my little if you're watching this, I have this little, very bad diagram of the brain, but you know, only 12% of our mind is our conscious, critical, analytical part of the mind. So when you're trying to make a change, like stop smoking or lose weight, right, like 12% of your mind wants to do that 12% of your mind wants to stop smoking 12% of your mind actually knows how to lose weight wants to lose weight the other 80% That's subconscious our beliefs, our habits, our memory, it wants to stay the same. You know, it's and we is the weird thing is you know, from birth until we're in our 20s Everything gets imprinted on our subconscious and then as we get into our later like our 20s this really amazing thing happens in our brain, which is actually great. It helps us a lot which is we develop a what is called a critical filter Max and it's it's this filtering system because as you know we have 1000s and 1000s of inputs per second into our brain, right like we visually see things we hear them Things, our brain has to sort through so much data basically, that it develops this critical filter system to only align with things that we already know to be true for the most part, you know, like, that's why people don't change religion, every week, or, you know, they kind of get set in, you know, what they call like we

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  5:18  
didn't share, that would be a habit barrier.

Rita Black  5:24  
That would be a habit barrier or a barrier to changing a habit easily, like stopping smoking, you know, a lot of people come to me for smoking cessation or use my online program, and, you know, they know, they've been told for years, it's bad for your health, you know, it's expensive. Now, it's like 12 bucks a pack here in LA, right? Like, there's many, many reasons for people to stop smoking or vaping. But, you know, when they go to try to stop, they get a lot of what they consider withdraw, or cravings, and, and cravings are really the mind attaching to that idea. It's by kind of having a romantic relationship. And so a person could be like, puffing away on a cigarette or eating something that they're like, why am I even eating this? I know, this isn't good for me. I'm not even really tasting or enjoying it, but that there's just this forward momentum with smoking or and then this other part of their mind is because you love it, because you have to have it. So there's this sort of it you know, people often with weight and with smoking, really feel bad about themselves, because they're like, What is wrong with me? Like, why can't I make sense? Like, why can't I stop? I know it's bad for me, or why can't I lose weight? I know what to do. Most people who struggle with their weight, as you know, you know, they know what to do. They find all the diet books they've gone on, probably by the time they hit 5020 diets 25 diets.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  6:59  
I think the average person does Yeah, know what to do. Rita, we're going to hold it right here on you know, the average people kind of know what to do. And when we come back, we're going to talk about strategies to start doing what you know. 

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Welcome back, hey, Rita, it's good to see you again. And we are getting into, you know, people understand they need to change. But now we're going to talk about, you know, and more specifically, what's holding them back. And why is it so difficult for them to change? We know that there's a large part of what they don't understand. It's it's keeping them in place, and only a small part of our operating brain from your last diagram is engaged and wanting to make this change. So how do we get that larger part of the brain to to catch up with the 12% to make the necessary change that we Yeah.

Rita Black  9:07  
Yeah, well, so other than like So hypnosis, just the basic idea behind hypnosis is when you're in a hypnotic state, that critical filter, which was on the other diagram, but it's just like that sort of the line between the 12% and the ADA percent just for you know, use, it becomes relaxed, so you're able to come in and give suggestions to the subconscious mind to make more rapid changes. Like for instance, I, myself became a nonsmoker in one session, not from magic or voodoo, but because I made the decision to be a non smoker from a deeper part of my brain. So this is what hypnosis can offer is rapid change with habits with beliefs by really getting in and making suggestions on a deeper level. however we can and you can today, your audience can start to use their minds more effectively. You know, I feel like my both my children are in college now. And I, my daughter is studying psychology however, I'm like, why are they just not teaching people how to use their mind more effectively to get better results in life? Because like we were talking about just before your commercial break, most people know more about weight loss than their doctors, right? Like, you know, the average listener could probably write their if they're struggling with their weight drugs, write their own diet book and have people lose weight. Like, that's not the challenge. The challenge is getting consistent. And most people don't get consistency because they give up on themselves. So one of the top things that you can do I have my little cheat sheet I can't see

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  10:54  
is the cheat sheet. We can't move you over. I'm sorry for everyone listening. Yeah, I need it. Can you? Chart? Can you see? So if you're listening now, you want to go back and see these charts? Check us out on YouTube, and then you'll be able to see the visual charts as well. Okay.

Rita Black  11:17  
Yeah, you'll love I can love to see it now. So. Okay, good. So so the first thing, so I'm going to tell you three ways you can use your brain today, starting today to totally shift out of what I would call the weight struggle mindset. And the first one is identity, right? Like so for instance, when I was a smoker, I would try to quit smoking, but I still saw myself as a smoker, it's very hard to stop smoking when you see yourself as a smoker right? Now, for those of you out there who are in a committed like a marriage or something like that, the moment you said I do to your husband or wife, you stepped into a new identity of being a spouse or a husband or a wife, right? You weren't trying not to be single, you were being a husband or a wife. The moment I became a nonsmoker, I was like, Okay, I get this i This is who I am being not trying not to smoke, which is deprivation oriented. Now with weight, it's a little different. Because when we struggle with weight, we are in this world of weight struggle, right? We're always trying to be good we're in and we have this self view of we we don't respect ourselves, we think we're a failure, because we've tried so many diets, and it hasn't worked out, you know, so it's a very limited and negative viewpoint we have ourselves. So you can't like shift from what. So what is most important, and you probably are totally on this because you're a teacher as well. The best mindset to be in as a student like to see yourself as a learner, because most of what the weight management journey is about is learning and self correcting. Oh, that

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  13:04  
is a nugget, I think the diet. Can you repeat that again, Rita? Because I think there's someone out there who really must share it again.

Rita Black  13:15  
Yeah, well, I mean, here's the thing is that the diet industry sets us up for failure because there's diets or external structures that you go on, and you're either good on it, or you're bad on it. So we've learned to, you know, see ourselves as strugglers who are always trying to be good on something failing, and starting over again. And that that repeats and deepens our identity as somebody who's struggling, the moment you become a learner, I'm awake learner, I'm self correcting myself, that's when I begin to get some traction because I'm respecting myself because I see myself as a student of something and you kind of you can't fail. When you're learning something right? You're you're you can only progress and get better. And most people know this because the best you know, whatever you're great at in your life, you were never perfect at you just kept trying and self correcting and self correcting right? So you know, weight management and you know, what you teach what we all are teachers of people helping people get better is about shifting out of the self condemnation and and this identity where we hold ourselves in low self esteem, to high self esteem, the moment you start learning, it doesn't matter if you have 300 pounds to lose, or five pounds to lose. You can see yourself in a very positive outlook because you're now progressing.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  14:48  
Now, that makes total sense. Does that make sense? Um, it's that paradigm shift in your head. And in I think we all have to make that shift and we're all made Kindle shifts every day of our lives. We're looking at things in deciding how we're going to view ourselves in this particular struggle. For example, if you're in a car accident, you can be someone who complains about the car accident, or you can be someone who goes, Wow, what lesson that I learned from this? And what can I do better next time to make sure a it doesn't happen again. Or if it does happen, I got the right insurance and this and that, and I'm all set. And, and I think people that they're the people that have that accomplish more, because they're always learners. I think, yeah.

Rita Black  15:43  
And they're in your brain becomes open, right? Like your subconscious mind becomes open, because now it's like scanning for know, what did I learned today? Oh, I just ate three pieces of pizza. Okay, now, if I was on a diet, I'd be like, Okay, I blew it. I'm starting over, I learned one thing from that. But if I'm like, I ate three pieces of pizza, what did I learn from that? Like, maybe I shouldn't start eating pizza when I'm super hungry. Maybe I should need something else for you like, then you're starting to learn something from something that you know, maybe if you don't have a win situation, you're gonna

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  16:23  
know that's perfect. What are you structuring it? Because like we were talking earlier, I love your chart, because I'm a real visual learner. And so some of us can experience things and not get the lessons that we need. Because maybe the lesson wasn't presented in a way that we can really receive it well. So if we're a visual learner, or whether we're an auditory learner, or tactical learner, yeah, me, you want to have the experience so you can embrace it best. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Rita Black  17:06  
Well, I feel like for me, I like when I work with people, I have them see themselves as apprentices of weight mastery, right, so that their brain is always on. And whether that's visual, auditory, kinesthetic. You know, and structurally, I would say, you know, I have people do like a meditation in the morning to think about, like, what am I going to learn today? And I'm going to go through and I'm going to think about, like, what didn't work for me yesterday? Where can I kind of prep my mind to do better today? Like, if we're a night either, or for somebody who snacks in the afternoon, like we you start to see, oh, every day this happens. So in the morning, how can I set myself up for success for this afternoon, this morning, so my mind has time to get the lesson to you know, and if I struggle with it again, maybe I'll I'll learn something a little more. So it's self correct, self correct. And then I'm moving through that I'm getting to the other side. You know, identity sits at the top of our subconscious mind. That's why I think identity is such a critical piece of this. And I don't think a lot of people address this piece, you know, because I think a lot of people like there's the weight drugs out there now that are, you know, making weight loss easy, but I get a lot of these clients who have taken some of these drugs. And now they're either having to go off the drug because their insurance isn't paying for it anymore. Or they have this fear, because they still see themselves as a struggler, who's gone on this drug, who do you know what I mean, and haven't really changed from the inside out. So you know, we have to look at all of these pieces. The mindset piece, as you know, and an identity piece, I think, is critical for any change. And then and then the next piece for me, is what I would call the communication piece, like the inner communication, self talk, because I think a lot of people the self talk, yeah, and maybe max, you address this a lot, too. But there's a lot of, you know, what I call our inner critic, when it comes to dieting and weight management because, again, diets are these external structures that we go on. And we kind of have this value system of like, I'm either being good on it and when we are being good on it, you know, we feel great. You know, there's a lot of dopamine hits we get on the scale the skills down is like woohoo, and you know, it's a dopamine, dopamine genic experience like we get that reward neurotransmitter firing, and it feels great. But the moment we go off track, eat something we weren't supposed to have a long weekend with that got a little crazy, you know, the holidays are coming up right now I, you know, like the or, you know, the any holiday season, there's like a holiday every single month of the year, let's face it, you know, we, the moment we get off track, were bad. And so we'll stop, we'll give up on ourselves. We'll start again on Monday will consume a lot of calories between you know, whenever we give up and and Monday, you know, because let's face it, we're going to get it all in before we start being good again. And so that inner critic really drives this on again, off again, behavior because it's so judgmental, right. And again, there's no learning in that. So I, and I'm sure you probably are on the same lines. With regards to like developing a more powerful inner communication system, what I like to call your inner coach, which again, goes back to the learning piece, which is your inner coach, is that inner voice that saying, Well, okay, that didn't look great. But we got an opportunity here, like, what did we learn? You know, how do we get back on track, you know, the next meal, not next Monday. And that starts to rewire your brain, when you start to come to those moments that we give up on ourselves and those moments where

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  21:33  
we get to decide, genuinely, I think what I hear you saying, we reach those moments where we get to decide if what we did, we're going to look at as a threat or an opportunity. And if we look at as a threat, we're on the decline athlete, but if we look at it as an opportunity, it's another place time to put ourselves in that weight learner side and that persistent coach side. Love that.

Rita Black  22:01  
Exactly. Yeah. And and then the last piece, so we have identity, which sits at the top of the subconscious mind, we have inner communication, because again, our thoughts, create, you know, our behaviors or thoughts create feelings, which then create behaviors and actions. So that inner voice piece is a huge piece of the consistency puzzle. And then the last piece for me, is really our focus. And I'm sure you're you know, with

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  22:35  
short isn't short term, I can't see the on the focus. Yeah. Oh, yeah,

Rita Black  22:40  
sure. Can I? Oh, short term vacation. Yeah. Or

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  22:45  
long term transformation?

Rita Black  22:51  
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, what do we have? All we have is our focus, where are we focusing, and I think where we struggle with our weight, we become very vulnerable, to getting out of the pain, right? Because being struggling with our way creates a lot of internal friction, self abuse. And it's a very painful place to be. So people become very vulnerable to fast, easy, short term solutions that are going to get them out of the pain, which makes total sense on one hand, right, like, you know, I had a client who one time came in, she had spent 10s of 1000s of dollars on, you know, multiple, multiple weight loss programs. And here, she was a very smart, educated, you know, a woman of means, and, and she's, like, if you told me, I could eat a bucket of dirt and drink water and lose 30 pounds this month, I would do it. Right. Like, that's how vulnerable we become we become like, because we, we are looking at like, I feel fat, I don't want to be fat. So we're not looking at who we want to become. We're looking at where we don't want to be. And so when we want to escape as quickly as possible, we become like pills you know, surgery, all those things that that we you know, often end up you know, I have had like hundreds of clients who have had weight loss surgery that maybe they lost weight and and many of them gained a lot of it back I mean, I'm not I'm not against any buddy trying to get healthy and using any means. So I'm not against weight loss surgery. I'm not against current Medicaid. I like I'm not against any I'm really more against people being I mean, for people being empowered and creating a powerful relationship with themselves in this area of their life. irregardless of what's going on, you know, externally, or how they're getting there. But we need to really address the, you know, when when I lost 40 pounds, and I kept it off, and I've kept it off for 28 years. For me, I kind of had to sit down with myself and believe in myself and I had to go girl, you know, you're smart, you can figure this out. But you can't try to get out of it, you've got to believe in the long term use. So I had a vision of me at my ideal weight, like, five years out, and I was like, Who is she being? What is she? What decisions is she making? Who you know, and, and shifting that focus from the short term to like, who am I becoming? And who i Who do I need to be to take care of myself and to eat in a way that allows me to live at my ideal weight, that then shifts my brain's focus to a vision, you know, there's that saying, and you probably know it, it's like, the pain pushes until the vision poles, you know, you need that vision, that of where you're going and who you're becoming. And it's not just about the skinny you, but it's the powerful Yeah, right. Like the you who wakes up in the morning, and it's like, I believe in us, what are we going to do today? And, and how are we going to improve ourselves? I have a lot of clients right now, our students and my programs, you know, for like, you know, it's, there's that idea of this ideal weight down, but there's all the little, like, Oh, I'm a person who pushes my plate away when I've had enough, you know, it's just like, oh, okay, that's who I'm becoming. I'm a person who says no, when Aunt Susie offers me her cheese cake that I don't even like, and you know, I used to eat it because I just want to make her happy for Satan. Thank you. And Susie, that looks amazing, but I'm gonna pass right now, you know, like that, you know that? I think long term permanent weight management, it you're changing your relationship with yourself, you're changing your relationship with your environment, you're changing relationship with food, you're changing relationship with other people, all powerfully, all positively but it's not just like, you know, don't eat this macronutrient or don't, you know, do this it's like, not that it is but it's, it's a becoming this and not a dancer.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  27:27  
And we're going to take a really quick break. And when we come back, I would love to hear about your programs that you're offering online. And if we could share some of the programs that people can do online that would help them to make this transformation. We get to do that when we come back. So do not go anywhere. I promise we're coming right back with Rita Black. 

This episode of Your Health Moment podcast is brought to buy McGowan Spinal Rehabilitation centers. So we're back Rita, thank you so much for everything that you're doing. Can you tell us about or tell the listeners about how they can try your your program on shifting their attitudes about weight management?

Rita Black  28:27  
For sure, I so I have two two, I have a program called the shift weight mastery process it's a 30 day hypnosis based weight management process if you want to check it out, it's shift weight mastery.com I think that will be in the show notes it really helps people get their mindset straight around weight management i However, if you want to just test drive weight hypnosis you can check out my free masterclass that I believe that that link will be in the show notes, the free master classes how to stop the weight struggle the start over tomorrow weight struggle cycle and begin weight releasing weight for good. So that is really addressing that start over habit that our brain gets into when we struggle with weight. It does become an addictive habit actually for a lot of people because there is reward and pain in the habit itself. So I addressed that I talked about it and we do weight hypnosis as well. So we will really look at the way to shift your mind so that you can remove the you know the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling with weight.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  29:43  
Wow. Rita is there one more thing that we may have missed that you think every listener should know?

Rita Black  29:52  
Well, I think it the root of your progress forward and for two really shift your mind is just to start to believe in yourself. You know, if you look at everything that's happened to you, and I think you said it earlier, I can, I could, when I struggled with my weight, I usually looked at all the diets that I had been on and I had been on like 30 diets in my life and failed them all. I could have looked at those as either like evidence of my failure, or I could look at them as steps towards my ultimate success. And I That for me is where I would say for you is like, you can look at your half past history. And you can see that now as you're like when you're telling your story of success, all of that informed you of something and was part of your powerful journey forward.

Max Sturdivant/Dr. Fitness  30:48  
Rita Black. Well, thank you for joining us today. And thank you, listeners for tuning in for another episode of Your Health Moment. I look forward to talking to you again next week. So take care, and bye for now. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of Your Health moment podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can visit our website, yourhealthmoment.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources that we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me on social media to send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes that you've been listening to. And don't be shy about requesting any other show topics that you might like to explore.

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