Shift Weekly: White Shoes and Thin Thoughts this Summer

Hi Shifters,

As my daughter counts down the days, minutes and hours of her last week of school, I take a deep Shift breath and think about the months of BBQs, beach days, vacations and all of the fun times and challenges of the summer ahead.

I remember when I was the kid, you could only wear white shoes between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  That tradition may have become a little less important with time, but just because it’s summer and the living is easy—I would like to review something I do deem important this summer-- the fundamental differences between Fat thinking and Thin thinking.  Even though a lot of people start with great plans to get “healthy” for summer, summer often poses more challenges because our time is not as structured and we spend more time out and about socializing and that means more food and drink.  So here is Fat Thinking and Thin Thinking defined—with my hopes that your thoughts are thin ones in these coming months.

REMINDER THE NEXT SHIFT WEIGHT MASTERY PROCESS BEGINS JUNE 12th.

A few spaces are left!  There is still time to enroll.

 Come sign up and have your metabolism tested! Call 323 988 4574 or email me. For more information on what is included in the process,check the website @ www.ShiftWeightMastery.com

You can also RE-Shift June 12th. 

There are a few spaces left for former Shifters who wish to RE -FOCUS.

Making the Shift

When we talk about “Shifting” or “making the Shift," we really mean Shifting from one way of thinking to another.   We are making the Shift out of an ineffective dysfunctional mindset that throws your brain into cognitive error--over emotional, distorted perceptions, all or nothing thinking, overwhelm--unproductive thoughts that cause us to feel out of control, chaotic and to act in ways which are not in line with our best intentions.  We make the Shift  into a cognitively correct way of thinking--where our thinking is based on perceptions that allow us to feel like we have choices, that sooth us, that allow us to feel powerful and engage us in problem solving and solution seeking.  This Shift in our brain allows it to present information to us  in a way that keeps us out of overwhelm and distortion and keeps us focused on the facts—moving towards our vision in doable and productive ways.

With regards to making the Shift towards weight mastery, we are making the Shift from “Fat thinking” to “Thin thinking”.

Fat Thinking

So let’s look at Fat thinking a little more closely.  Fat thinking is the "all or nothing," "good or bad," "on or off"  thinking that develops when we struggle to control our weight.  How does fat thinking develop?  It develops over time as we try to lose weight again and again and again.  I call this perpetual cycle the diet cycle.  Most of us get started in the diet cycle at some point in our life when we decide to lose weight because we don’t like the way we look or feel or someone else is unhappy with our weight—our doctor or spouse or parents.  So we decide to do something about it in order to fix the problem—to get away from the pain.  At this point, the pain or frustration from being overweight or unhealthy is strong enough that we are willing to do anything to get away from it—so we go on a diet or a regime and we try to get healthy.  Now the good news about a diet is that when we are in the brain upset of feeling out of control with food and exercise and our health—diets offer a quick solution, a temporary relief from all the upset our brain is in, because diets offer a structure or a plan.  That structure or plan temporarily organizes our brain and we exit the bad feeling.   We feel organized and hopeful—we have found the answer!  Woo hoo!  Relief!   But the problem is that we are now focused on a structure outside of ourselves rather than within ourselves—so no true or lasting change is really taking place from within—just a temporary fix on the outside.  I had a dear client tell me that if you told me to eat a pail of dirt a day and drink water and that was it she would have done it if you told her it was going to make her lose weight.  Now that may sound extreme—but isn’t that what we kind of do—when we are in the weight struggle which is such a painful place—we are pretty much willing to do anything to not be in that place of overweight and feeling out of control—so we will pop pills that we know might be dangerous, undergo crazy procedures, drink coffee and eat grapefruit—yadayadayada—you get where I am going with this right? 


Okay, so the beginning of the of diet cycle is we feel bad—"I am fat or unhealthy and  I don’t want to be and I am going to take action and fix myself" (creating immediate cognitive error because you now feel like you cannot be trusted and therefore need to be controlled).

Next step in the cycle?--we find a plan of action—a diet or regime or pill and we begin doing it.  Because weight loss is something you do, right?  Or a diet is something you go on.  Doing implies stopping and "going on" implies "going off" at some point—so here we enter more cognitive error—we are applying this structure to control ourselves with the idea that when we are fixed the structure will end and we will be perfect—cognitive error?—yup that’s right—you are getting good at this!

Okay –here in the next part of the cycle now we are on the diet and feel good-“hey we’re losing weight and the dirt and water—hey they aren’t so bad cause the scale is moving down every day and my pants are getting loser—if only dirt came in vanilla and chocolate flavors to right? “Oh well, we eat the dirt and get down 10, 20, 30 lbs and people are now noticing—“hey you’re looking great!” and our doctor is happy—“good job”—we buy some skinny jeans.  We have a few more pounds to go or maybe we reach our goal—maybe quite a few left, but “hey, they said I was thinner”—and then what happens??   I am kind of losing my drive here!

Now we find ourselves at the next part—the bottom of the cycle—the pain of overweight has gone away—that dirt does not taste so good, especially after that amazing chocolate chip cookie I treated myself to for doing so well.  That’s right in the diet cycle there comes a time when the pain we are running from lessens and the drive to keep going end—we loosen our grip on the dirt and water regime and get on the scale and it went up a pound.

All of a sudden fear and panic rushes in—“yikes! I got to get back to dirt and water dirt and water dirt and water”—but guess what—that dirt and water are not so tasty anymore—in fact dirt and water is the last thing you want to eat when you are so stressed you want comfort food—here we are at the bottom of the cycle the point where we have lost the weight but now the structure falls apart and we realize that since none of the change happened within us—and the chaotic feeling as the next part in the cycle begins, because  as to our horror the scale begins to creep back up as we stress eat from the fact we can’t seem to get it together or we just decide to go off the dirt and water for the weekend—swearing that Monday morning we will be back to only dirt and only water—we are going to be so perfect on dirt and water just you see we are going to be perfect on dirt and water for the rest of our lives---on Monday that is after one final binge—but Monday comes and goes and the dirt stays in the pail, the diet drink stays on the shelf and we are out buying another diet book or checking in with another program because our pants are too tight the scale is up and we, here back at the beginning of the diet cycle feel like a failure are back in the same old struggle.

Wow good times huh—can you see how the diet cycle perpetuates thinking that takes our power away from us??

It starts with the bad idea we cannot be trusted—it then has us looking outside ourselves for the solution.  We embark upon the solution that exists outside of ourselves looking for quick results and a temporary fix we feel good because the scale is going down in spite of the fact we are not really learning much in the process.

We get bored and begin making deals with ourselves—I’ll go off the diet for the weekend but then get on and be perfect.


And then it’s all cognitive error from here on out:

I blew it I better start again tomorrow—all or nothing thinking

I am not doing this right—good or bad thinking

I’ll never be thin—I give up—all or nothing thinking

Not too fun right—this is definitely a way of thinking and a cycle of behaving that we want to exit out of right? 

Thin Thinking

Okay so let’s look at Thin Thinking.  Thin thinking is based on a mastery mindset.  Thin thinking engages you in using your brain in a more effective way—by using your own inner resources to problem solve, solution seek, and strategize your way down the scale in a way that honors you, your taste preferences, your movement preferences and your lifestyle and will allow you long term permanent weight release because you are using a foundation that you built within yourself with learning the skills weight mastery.


Shifting into Thin Thinking is what this The Shift Weight Mastery Process is all about.  Thin Thinking allows you to exit forever the old diet cycle and enter the weight mastery journey.  So let’s take a look at the journey to weight mastery.


Now you may be starting at a similar feeling place to the diet cycle—you are in pain, feel overweight or unhealthy and you want to change.  Good, but instead of running away from the pain, a mastery journey begins with a vision.  A vision of where you want to go—what you want to create—not just a number on a scale or a smaller pants size—but you want to create a relationship with yourself that allows you a permanently shifted and powerful relationship with food, exercise and how you take care of yourself in the long term. 


Now, the next part starts when you begin embarking upon your apprenticeship of Shifting from Fat thinking  to Thin Thinking by beginning to learn the 9 skills of Weight Mastery and to practice those skills in your day to day life.  Not expecting perfection, but consistency—this keep us out of cognitive error.  Most lessons in life are learned from making mistakes or confronting challenges head on—this is what we learn to do as masters of weight release.  When we diet, we expect perfection and when we make a mistake we go back to the beginning—we lose the lesson about ourselves.  What a loss. 


Next, as we hone the skills of weight mastery we incorporate all we learn about ourselves and our behaviors and how we relate to food and the world and begin to change it as we go.  I like to call this process  a loving inner science project because we are now creating a way of living that allows us to feel content within the size of our bodies energy needs, with our own taste preferences and lifestyles-what a fu project to embark upon—and because life keeps gong and we keep changing our science project never ends even on the day you reach you ideal weight—there is no panicky—about how to sustain the loss because you know exactly how you got here and are willing to maintain this lifestyle because it’s yours—you created it—we get to keep honing our mastery for the rest of our lives—and that my friend is good news—because it means that you get the honor and privilege of showing up for yourself every day of your life and creating a life for yourself that allows you health, vibrancy and a powerful mindset that can keep you feeling in line with your vision at all times. And that, my friends, is Thin thinking.

So old Shifters—I hope you have enjoyed our little review session and are currently finding yourself engaging in your vision as you take your Shift Breath and allowing the 9 skills of Weight Mastery to be your compass as you continue your journey to Long Term Permanent Weight Release.

And for those of you just curious about what this “Shifting” thing is all about I hope you understand a bit more what the difference between Fat Thinking and Thin Thinking is.

I wish everyone a Thin thinking head as we enter into SUMMER!


Happy Shifting and dig out those white shoes!

oxox Rita

Shift Weekly: Plateau Busting - Part 3: Environment

Last Shift Before September--Spread the Word!

Sunday, June 12th

Information/Registration: www.ShiftWeightMastery.com

or call Rita @ 877-221-7251

Greetings Shifters!

Welcome to week three of the plateau buster series.  Plateaus have a nasty reputation in the dieting world.  In the dieting world a weight loss plateau is hated, feared and cursed because it represents a stopping of success, the glamorous loss on the scale.  It means that your weight loss is stagnant and that you are unsuccessful.  In the dieting world, plateaus often lead to us give up on our plan and gain the weight back.   Sorry plateaus-- that’s a tough gig over there in the dieting world. 

When we make the Shift and learn how to use our minds more effectively—to think, strategize and assess, as a weight release master, we can have a much more powerful relationship with a weight plateau—in fact, often plateaus are opportunities to learn more about ourselves and our relationships to ourselves; our thought processes, our eating patterns and our environments.  When we Shift, we take back our power from just needing to see the loss on the scale and learn that long term permanent weight release is more about cultivating a powerful and lasting foundation within ourselves where the number on the scale is only one indicator of the progress we are making.  When we Shift, we can see a plateau not as a scary force, but a natural part of a weight release journey—therefore we can Shift and create, not only on the scale, but in our relationship to ourselves.

Over this three week series we have explored the nature of weight loss plateaus.  Week 1 focused on the mental game of mastering and busting a plateau—because once your mind can SHIFT around and through a plateau your body will follow. (read here)  Last week I explored the physical part of mastering and busting a plateau.  (read here)  This last week I will focus on how our environment may be contributing to our weight plateau and I will ask your Inner Coach some leading questions that may help you to drill down and find some en”light”ening answers.

ARE YOU EATING UNDER THE RADAR?

Often, when we begin a weight release journey, we are focused and our vision is strong.  We easily track our foods, tune into portions amounts and are very clear on what is going into our mouths.  But over time, as we get further down our journey and further down the scale, it is easy to lose the focus that we had in the beginning.  Sometimes not every calorie gets written down.  Am I right? 

Let’s face it--we often forget what we eat 15 minutes after eating it.  There have been days when I have not been on top of my tracking and I will get to the end of my day and my calories seem a bit low and then I will realize that I had conveniently forgotten half a cookie or a drink that I had consumed.  Sometimes, if I have not been on top of it, I could have consumed up to 300 calories more than what I had written down.  I call this "under the radar eating" and this is often what is going on when someone is experiencing a plateau.  Brian Wansink, in his book “Mindless Eating” discusses the fact that most overweight people underestimate the amount of food they eat by up to 100%.  If you are not writing it down, chances are you are making yourself a victim of distorted, under the radar thinking.

“But I am not eating anything!” my client will say.  But when I have them write down EVERY lick, bite and nibble the light bulb will go off, “Ooooohhh now I get it” and they see that those extra little “bits and bobs” can add up fast and fill in any sort of deficit hole that they may have thinking they were creating.

I recently had a new client who was eating only about 900 calories a day in “real food” and was baffled by why she had been gaining weight.  However, she admitted to eating a little chocolate here and there over her work day. “How many calories are in the chocolate” I asked  “I am not sure but it can’t be much”.  She called me the next day having checked the chocolate wrapper and said she had been eating about 650 calories a day in chocolate!!!  She was shocked and relieved at the same time—because now she had her answer.  We had done her metacheck and given her low metabolism we discovered her “eating nothing” was actually taking her about 250 calories a day over her body’s needs.  Mystery solved and plateau—broken!!  She still eats chocolate every day BTW, but just a lot less!!

Question for your Inner Coach: Are you absolutely clear on the number of calories you think that you are eating per day??

WHEN YOU ASSUME YOUR ASS COULD GET BIGGER!!

Another environmental issue is that as we lose focus, we also start assuming calories on portions.  This is fine—I don’t think you need to weigh and measure everything that goes in your mouth your whole life—that would be a little excessive.  This point is, if you are experiencing a plateau you could be under assuming the calories in the portions you are serving yourself.  Once a month I get out my Kitrics Scale and weightportions of chicken, vegetables and fruit—just to keep my eyes honest.  I crack up at how, even though I have been maintaining my weight for fifteen years, my estimates of what 150 calories of chicken is grows to about 250 calories every month!!!

Question for your Inner Coach:  Are you sure that the energy values of the foods you are putting in your mouth are really what you are assuming that they are??

ARE THERE FOODS IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT THAT SHOULD NOT BE THERE??

As I say again and again, and again and again, and even again—weight management is 80% stimulus control.  Having helped thousands of people release weight and seen many weight release journeys, the main thing I hear over and over when trouble start brewing is—oh yeah that “thing” appeared on my plate or my desk or in my fridge and I just had to eat it.  The other one is “well I thought I could have it in my house” or “I just bought it for the kids."  If you are stuck on a weight release plateau, it is time to take charge of your environments and get rid of any foods that may lead you to taking those extra bites, licks and nibbles.

Restaurant eating is also a plateau creator because we are really not on top of the butter that the crazy ego maniac chef in the back wants to put on our food so that we will think it taste yummy and declare him a god.  When eating out, we could assume that salad is 350 calories and it is really over 1000!!  That is what happened to a client of mine who was stuck on a plateau for 2 months until she discovered his innocent salad at lunch was 850 calories—no wonder the spin classes weren’t allowing her to release weight!  If you eat out a lot and are experiencing a plateau—the best thing to do is find out calories from the internet ahead of time or to order foods prepared simply so that you know how many calories are in them.  This doesn’t have to be forever—just until you break through your plateau.

Question for Your Inner Coach: Are you allowing disempowering foods to enter your environment and sabotage your weight release efforts?  Why?  How can you Shift those foods out of your life for now?

If you are a Shifter who has been releasing weight and now are in a plateau, you may consider coming to the June 12^th RE-Shift.  Sometimes a 30 day focused and supported environment is just what you need to get the scale moving downward again.    Many Shifters have used a Re-Shift to break through a weight plateau.   If you are interested, please call or contact Rita to find out more about this affordable and motivational option.

I hope you have enjoyed this series on plateaus as much as I have.  Here is the exercise we have been focusing on over the last few weeks.  Now you can create a powerful vision using all of the mental, physical, and environmental components that we discussed in order to create an amazing breakthrough on the scale and with yourself.

EXERCISE FOR PLATEAU BUSTING

1)      Create a vivid representation of the way you are right now in your plateau (your present state) with all of the challenges the plateau represents.

2)      See yourself the way you would want to be when you get through all of the challenges.  Be clear on the specifics—how you would be behaving, how much would you be eating and exercising, what do you look like, how do you feel??

3)      Place one image in each of your hands outstretched in front of you with a space separating them.  This space represents the unexplored territory and unspecified steps that lie between the plateau state and the plateau busted state.

4)      Begin to make a series of images or movies of the logical steps from one state to another, adjusting each frame until each is a fully representational stage of the process of change.

5)      When you have between 5-8 stages in front of you, begin slowly to close your hands, collapsing all of the stages into a single process.

6)      Bring your clasped hands toward your body and pull the new state into your body, making a new feeling that represents action and success—PLATEAU BUSTING!

7)      Spin that feeling faster and faster. Intensifying it and allowing it to spread throughout your body so that it saturated every muscle, every organ, every nerve, every cell.  As you do this, look at what you need to do (or think) first. Then see yourself taking the second step and then the third etc. and keep spinning and intensifying that feeling until you feel excited and energized and ready to make the mental and/or physical adjustments and go bust that plateau!

Have a great breakthrough week!!

oxox Rita

Shift Weekly: Plateau Buster –Part 2

Last Shift Before September--Spread the Word!

Sunday, June 12th

Information/Registration: www.ShiftWeightMastery.com

or call Rita @ 877-221-7251

Greetings Shifters!

Welcome to week two of the plateau buster series.  Let’s face it--weight loss plateau can be a frustrating and formidable challenge.  When we are focused on releasing weight and the scale isn’t moving, we can feel a whole gamut of emotions:  disappointed, angry, sad, bored, frustrated and powerless.  The emotions we can rest assured that we will not be feeling are:   happy, excited, giddy, and powerful—or can we?  As Shifters we want to look at a weight release plateau in a way that gives us power rather than takes it away from us.  We want to see a plateau as an opportunity for deepening our mastery of long-term permanent weight release. 

 Over this three week series, we are exploring the nature of weight loss plateaus and I am offering some coaching on how to master them.  Last week I focused on the mental game of mastering and busting a plateau—because once your mind can SHIFT around and through a plateau your body will follow. Read more on this here.  This week I will explore the physical part of mastering and busting a plateau.

 A PLATEAU IS OUR ULTIMATE GOAL

 We cannot explore the physical aspects of a plateau without looking at how the mind interacts with them. 

 The Oxford Study, a cognitive behavioral approach to weight loss in England, has subjects stop dieting and maintain their weight for three to six month after starting.  You can imagine this self-imposed “plateau” is met with protests.  Their reasoning for this extended time of no weight loss is a good one—“practicing maintenance”.

 What most dieters neglect to see in their haste to go down the scale is that, at some point, they will want to stop the focus on losing weight and begin the focus on maintaining their weight.  If you have never practiced maintaining your weight ,this can actually be a challenge—especially when the only positive feedback you give yourself is when the scale is showing a loss.

 Ultimately, what we all strive for in a journey to long term permanent weight release is a lifelong plateau that will occur at our ideal weight.  This plateau may be called maintenance, but mark my words, it is a plateau none the less.  So any plateau that occurs during your journey that is not at your ideal weight can be embraced as a practice session!!!  Yippeeeeee!

 Another way to view a plateau is that it is a resting spot along the journey—a place where you actually may need to tread water and let go of the focus of releasing for a short while.  Research shows that most successful masters of weight release experiences one or more plateaus along the way.

 THE FOCUS OF RELEASING WEIGHT

 Releasing weight requires some focus.  The physical requirement for the body to burn excess stored energy (aka “fat”) tunes us into paying attention to how much energy in coming in and going out.  We are also tuning into our hunger and making sure our food choices will not only nourish our bodies but allow enough of a deficit for us to achieve a weekly weight release.

 What is happening when the scale refuses to show the release?  A number of things could be going on:

 1)      You owe the scale weight from a previous water loss or big drop.

There is a lot to be learned still about how the body actually stores and releases fat.  It still takes 3500 burned calories for the body to release fat.  If you lose water weight up front the body will catch up on the scale eventually.  If you are not aware of how much energy you have officially burned and how weight release actually happens it is easy to get on the scale and think the lack of loss is a plateau—it isn’t—your body is actually catching up to the scale. 

Remedy: track your calorie intake and expenditure and to know what your daily calorie budget for weight release actually is—this way you empower yourself to at least know where you truly stand with the scale.  When you do the Shift you get this number with the Metacheck machine.  You can also get a good estimate on the weight release calculator. Click here

2)      You may need to eat less or exercise more or a combination of the two.

When we release weight, eventually our metabolism does slow down simply because there is less of us to move around and the body has to work less—how wonderful!!  The down side is—that if the scale stops showing a loss after three weeks or so, this may be what is happening and you may need to adjust your food intake and exercise to match your new lower metabolism OR just expect to release less quickly (which is definitely a viable shifted option). 

Remedy: Taking your calories lower or getting more of a workout in may be a no brainer—if so, great!  Make the adjustment, but make sure to check that you are not depriving yourself or pushing yourself too hard.  Like I said, there are options like just expecting to release less per week on the scale.  If you want to keep releasing at the same pace, but aren’t quite ready, it is also okay to take an official “rest” for a few weeks from releasing before you take your calories lower or up your exercise.  Official breaks are a healthy part of any Shifted weight release journey.  Remember, this is a love story with yourself and not a punishment.  Love yourself and honor your own instincts with keeping your eye on the winning skills of weight release—this is what mastery is about. 

3)      You are underestimating (or your calorie counter or body bug or heart rate monitor)the amount of calories that you are eating or over estimating the amount of calories that your exercise is burning.

We wildly underestimate the amount of calories that we eat.  Most of the time, in my clinical practice, this is the cause of a plateau.  We can easily start “guestimating” that a 200 calorie piece of bread or meat is “just a 100 calories”.  Also, I have seen body bugs, heart rate monitors, and exercise machines that overestimate how many calories are burned during a typical workout.  

Remedy:  Return to tracking and weighing your food more closely.  Also recognize that food manufacturers will undercut the amount of calories that list on a package (up to 25% by law) and therefore if you eat a lot of packaged food—bear this in mind.  Many Shifters overestimate their food calories a bit to make up for this.  If you hit a plateau you may want to add a 200 calorie “handicap” or what I call “contractor calories” to your day before you start to make up for the discrepancies in the  calorie amounts. 

4)      You are doing everything right, but your body just may need to re-adjust what you are eating or how much water you are drinking.

Sometimes you can be doing everything right, but your body just is taking its sweet old time letting that weight go.  One client encountered a nearly three month plateau and then dropped 10 pounds in a few weeks.  Fortunately that client had a good Shift Head on and knew if she kept plugging away that the weight would come off eventually.

Remedy:  Keep your Shift Head on by focusing on the other aspects of your weight release journey—eating healthy foods, exercising, keeping yourself a priority, Shifting out of limiting and Fat Thinking.  Sometimes drinking more water helps, as does upping your protein intake and decreasing the amount of starchy carbs that may be causing insulin spikes and causing your body to store any excess calories as fat. 

Most importantly during a plateau—recognize that you keep your power when you stay focused on problem solving and solution seeking rather than feeling sorry for yourself or victimized by that cold piece of metal.  Stay connected to your Inner Coach and keep on Shifting.  Ask others for help and help others on their journey—often you may see yourself in them and create a breakthrough where you were sure that none existed.  And above all—KEEP ON SHIFTING!!! 

We will explore more how the mental and physical and environmental aspects of a plateau work together next week. 

Last week I presented this mental exercise for plateau busting.  This week you can now add some of the physical elements to the visual part of this exercise. 

MENTAL EXERCISE FOR PLATEAU BUSTING:

1)      Create a vivid representation of the way you are right now in your plateau (your present state) with all of the challenges the plateau represents.

2)      See yourself the way you would want to be when you get through all of the challenges.  Be clear on the specifics—how you would be behaving, how much would you be eating and exercising, what do you look like, how do you feel??

3)      Place one image in each of your hands outstretched in front of you with a space separating them.  This space represents the unexplored territory and unspecified steps that lie between the plateau state and the plateau busted state.

4)      Begin to make a series of images or movies of the logical steps from one state to another, adjusting each frame until each is a fully representational stage of the process of change.

5)      When you have between 5-8 stages in front of you, begin slowly to close your hands, collapsing all of the stages into a single process.

6)      Bring your clasped hands toward your body and pull the new state into your body, making a new feeling that represents action and success—PLATEAU BUSTING!

7)      Spin that feeling faster and faster, intensifying it and allowing it to spread throughout your body so that it saturates every muscle, every organ, every nerve, every cell.  As you do this, look at what you need to do (or think) first. Then see yourself taking the second step and then the third etc. and keep spinning and intensifying that feeling until you feel excited and energized and ready to make the mental and/or physical adjustments and go bust that plateau.

Have a great breakthrough week!!

oxox Rita

Shift Weekly: Plateau Buster–Part 1

Last Shift Before September--Spread the Word!

Sunday, June 12th

Information/Registration:  www.ShiftWeightMastery.com

Greetings Shifters!

Weight loss plateaus, like death, taxes and men leaving dirty socks on the floor (no offense guys—said with love), are pretty much guaranteed.  During the many years of my practice as a clinical hypnotherapist specializing in long term permanent weight “release," and helping thousands of clients in that time period, I can pretty much assure you that most everyone hits a plateau at some point during their journey to their ideal weight.  The difference in who is successful breaking through this perceived barrier and who is not is based entirely upon how the person deals with it mentally, physically and environmentally. 

As Shifters, we want to look at plateaus in a way that gives us power rather than takes it away from us.  We want to see a plateau as an opportunity for deepening our mastery of long-term permanent weight release.  These next three weeks I would like to explore the nature of weight loss plateaus and offer you some coaching on how to master them.  

This week I am going to focus on the mental game of mastering and busting a plateau—because once your mind can SHIFT around and through a plateau, your body will follow.

FAT THINKING ABOUT PLATEAUS

First of all, let’s be clear on what our definition of a weight loss plateau is.

Definition: A weight loss plateau is a period of time where your weight does not change.

Hmm, a period of time where our weight does not change?  Well that seems innocent enough.  So why do those three strike such fear, anger and frustration in the heart of many??? 

Let’s look at our FAT THINKING around weight loss plateaus.

I don’t deserve this (plateau).

This is unfair.

My body is broken.

I will be fat forever.

I am working so hard and nothing is happening.

Nothing works.

Plateaus suck.

Plateaus are hard.

If I was better, smarter, richer, prettier, this wouldn’t be happening.

BTW, “Fat Thinking” is the term we use at Shift to define the all or nothing, good or bad, on or off  diet thinking that we get into when trying to LOSE weight.  Fat Thinking includes the negative beliefs that keep us stuck in our struggle with weight.  When we SHIFT, we are Shifting our mind into “Thin Thinking” which comes from a vision of what we want to achieve, which is not only weight “release” (because we never want to find that weight again), but a vision of finding a way of connecting and communicating with ourselves in this area of our lives that allows us to feel nourished, vibrant and masterful. 

As a dieter stuck in Fat Thinking, we hate and fear plateaus because they keep us from our main dieter goal—seeing results on the scale. 

Diets focus us on the external—the results on the scale—following the diet “plan” perfectly-- but usually never focus us on making the changes internally that keep us struggling with weight in the first place.  So plateaus form a huge threat to a dieter because all the positive feedback they are receiving for restricting themselves on the diet is gone. 

When we start a diet there is a daily loss on the scale.  It’s great!  It’s fun!  It’s glamorous and cool—sexy!!  But what happens when the scale stops dropping and there is no more positive reinforcement on the outside—only the diet plan and restriction with no apparent pay off? 

We start to get upset.  Our inner mindset, which has not been altered at all by the diet ,and which is still stuck in fat thinking, begins to come back full force.  Our Inner Critic who has been lying dormant while the scale dropped now wakes up and begins to analyze the scenario—

“What’s wrong with you?  Why aren’t you losing?  You are doing something wrong!  You picked the wrong diet.  The scale should be lower now.  Your body is broken. Your head is broken.  This plateau equals failure.  You are a failure.”   Yikes—not so fun now –right?

As the days pass and the Inner Critic continues the rant about the flat line scale, we feel another Fat thinking part of us kick in.  Yes—it’s our friend the Inner Rebel.

“Weeeeelll since you aren’t losing any weight maybe you can just eat that cookie.  This diet sucks, obviously.  You worked so hard, let’s just take a break—maybe we can start another diet—the best diet—next week?”

The Inner Critic and the Inner Rebel—those parts of us that drive our Fat Thinking-- love to come out and play during a plateau and usually what happens is we give up.  We become a victim of our limiting beliefs about the plateau, sabotage the diet, abandon the plan, and with no internal Shift having occurred, gain the weight back.

SHIFTING INTO THIN THINKING THROUGH PLATEAUS

When we Shift, we make the decision to begin to use our mind differently about how we approach our weight.  We recognize that the mental thought systems and strategies that we operate from will need to be “Shifted” in order to have lasting, long term permanent weight release.  Success comes not from a diet on the outside but from engaging the Inner Coach within you, (and at Shift we use hypnosis and cognitive techniques to help us) to unravel the faulty wiring that keeps us struggling and to re-wire ourselves with a powerful mental foundation that supports our living our life at our ideal weight.

So a weight release plateau to a Shifter is not so threatening because we understand the physics side of weight release (to be discussed next week) and we also know that a plateau can be an opportunity to connect with our Inner Coach and grow from the experience.  Just because there is no movement on the scale externally, does not mean there can be no movement internally.  Often, many a weight release Master will say that their biggest mental breakthroughs came during their weight release journey plateaus—because they were forced to turn within—to learn to stretch themselves past where their current thinking was stopping them (which was being reflected on the scale).

The best coaches create a powerful vision and ask powerful questions that help keep one focused on moving forward with your power towards mastery, rather than becoming a victim of the perceived plateau on the scale. (We will also explore “perceived plateaus” next week)

If you are experiencing a weight release plateau right now, try engaging your Inner Coach and ask yourself these questions:

-Is my vision of what I want to achieve with my weight release journey as powerful and visceral as it was when I began?  If not, how can I up the stakes and power of what I want to achieve until I feel reinvigorated and engaged again?

-Do I really believe I am going to be successful?  If not, what are the limiting beliefs that keep me from feeling 100% certain?  I can begin to get conscious that these beliefs are a block and need to be Shifted and move towards that—(seek support, hypnosis CDs, reframe the belief in a positive way)

-Do I need to sharpen or focus my efforts externally?  (If the answer to this is yes we will be exploring this in the next 2 weeks)

-Am I at a mental plateau? Do I need to Shift my thoughts more? Are there thoughts that are holding me back such as:

“I am afraid to be seen or be seen as attractive to others”

“I am afraid to feel vulnerable and small”

“I am not willing to exercise more or focus on calories, or write down my food.”

There are many other thoughts or beliefs that may be mentally keeping you at a plateau—can you get curious about them and then begin to get conscious about them and then begin to Shift them?

With the dieter Fat Thinking mindset, when a plateau occurs, we assume something is wrong and this DISCONNECTS YOU FROM YOURSELF and takes your power away.

When you SHIFT and a plateau occurs, you still may feel a bit bummed but you can keep your power and still move forward (even though the scale may not be)—and STAY CONNECTED to yourself by engaging your Inner Coach and turning within.

We will explore more how the mental and physical aspects of a plateau work together next week.

 Please use the following mind exercise to get you Shift forward within.

MENTAL EXERCISES FOR PLATEAU BUSTING

1)      Create a vivid representation of the way you are right now in your plateau (your present state) with all of the challenges the plateau represents.

2)      See yourself the way you want to be when you get through all of the challenges.  Be clear on the specifics—how you would be behaving, how much would you be eating and exercising, what do you look like, how do you feel??

3)      Place the image of you now in one hand and the image of where you want to be in the other. Stretch your hands out in front of you, with a space separating them.  This space represents the unexplored territory and unspecified steps that lie between the plateau state and the plateau busted state.

4)      Begin to make a series of images or movies of the logical steps from one state to another, adjusting each frame until each is a fully representational stage of the process of change.

5)      When you have between 5-8 stages in front of you, begin slowly to close the space between your hands, collapsing all of the stages into a single process.

6)      Bring your clasped hands toward your body and pull the new state into your body, making a new feeling that represents action and success—PLATEAU BUSTING!

7)     Spin that feeling faster and faster. Intensifying it and allowing it to spread throughout your body so that it saturated every muscle, every organ, every nerve, every cell.  As you do this, look at what you need to do (or think) first.  Then, see yourself taking the second step and then the third etc. and keep spinning and intensifying that feeling until you feel excited and energized and ready to make the mental and/or physical adjustments and go bust that plateau!

Have a great breakthrough week!! 

oxox Rita

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Shift Weekly: Lessons my Mom Taught Me

Dear Shifters,

With Mother’s Day coming up this Sunday, I would like to dedicate this newsletter to all the moms out there in the Shift Community, and to the moms of Shifters, and while I am at it—all those Inner Moms that exist within all of us.

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This is a special Sunday Shift Seminar to start the 30 Day Process and the last Shift before Fall. Give your self the give of Shift (or Re-Shift) at the Early Registration rates.

Refer a friend and we'll give you $25 Shift credit for services or product.

Lessons My Mom Taught Me

I always miss my mother on Mother’s Day. She has been gone eight years now but the lessons she taught me I remain grateful for to this day. My mother taught me how to take care of myself and how to not take care of myself, how to show up for myself and how to disconnect from myself, how to hate myself and disown my body and yet how to protect myself and preserve my body all at the same time! How could she do such an amazingly varied job of mothering? Without knowing it she was teaching me at both the conscious and unconscious levels.

My mother was one of a small group of women who graduated from University of California at Berkeley in 1947. She worked hard to put herself through college and was very proud of the BS in Nutrition that she earned. She had dreams of working abroad in Europe and had even landed a job and was literally packing her bags to leave when, as fate would have it, she met my father and stayed in California while he was drafted into the Korean War. She went to work for a bank and never got to use her nutritional expertise in any formal sense. She, however, made sure she ate healthy and balanced meals in those days and recorded her food nutritionals and calories and kept herself slender.

When she had children, she consciously began teaching us all the great lessons of eating right and nutrition.  My earliest memories are of my mom in the kitchen cutting up fruits and vegetables and telling me “spinach has vitamin C and helps your eyes and bananas are a good source of potassium.”  I loved soaking in all the her knowledge about the way food worked in our bodies, but at the same time watched her begin to over eat at meal time and binge on caloric desserts, which she also loved to bake. “I am being bad,” she would say as she cut a second piece of cake and ate it.

My mom was overwhelmed with all the typical stressors of a dysfunctional middle class family. Life hadn’t delivered on the promise of a glamorous career abroad—she was dealing with three kids, my emotionally unstable father, and clipping coupons--so food became her sedative. Soon her food recording tablet, that I also remember seeing on the kitchen counter, disappeared. She was gaining weight (70 lbs. over 3 years) and struggling with herself.  I would watch her weigh herself in the morning and mutter something nasty sounding and get up and go into the kitchen. I would follow. “Drink your orange juice,” she would say to me, “it’s full of vitamin C” and then she would spread extra jam on her toast and eat it.

My mother’s struggle with food and herself made a big impact on me growing up. It made me feel sad, angry and confused. My mother was so smart, so strong, so beautiful—and yet she seemed so powerless and weak when it came to food and taking care of herself.  She would tell me to study, to take care of myself, to protect myself from stupid mistakes and even stupider men, while at the same time, she placed herself on the lowest on her priority list, never exercised or engaged in fun activities.

Little did I know at the time, that my mother was stuck in a power struggle between her Inner Critic and her Inner Rebel.  Her Inner Critic would berate her for being so out of control—“I know how to eat healthfully, I just can’t seem to do it” she would say angrily at herself for being so weak. “I have no willpower, “ she would say, as she sliced off the edge of a layer cake and offered it to me “ so we may as well finish this off this edge.” Her Inner Rebel loved company and that company was me.

Soon I was caught in the same struggle with weight, with food.  And just like my mother, I knew better.  I knew how to eat right, but that didn’t keep me from getting caught up in the negative dieting cycle and the power play between my own Critic and Rebel and the diets and binges.  For years I struggled until I was able to break out of the cycle with the use of hypnosis and connecting to the more powerful voice of my Inner Coach.

I don’t blame my mother. I thank her for all the love and knowledge she passed on. The struggle with weight and food that I unconsciously picked up from her may seem like a nasty legacy to pass along, but it caused me to dig deeper in order to find answers—to harness resources I never would have known I existed had I not needed find a way to take back my power from all of the limiting beliefs and behaviors—the “Fat Thinking".  What hypnosis allowed me to do was to take all of those unconsciously learned lessons that were working against me from my past and reframe and re-wire them into new ways of speaking to myself and showing up for myself that allowed me to create a truly healthy relationship with food, but more importantly a healthy relationship with myself—“Thin Thinking”.  My mom’s negative lessons therefore became positive ones!  My mom helped me to make the Shift!

Now as a mother myself, I strive to pass on the love of understanding food and its nutritive power but also the power of staying present and connected to both my body and my head.  I understand too well that what I say to my children is important, but what I do and how I take care of myself is, in many ways, even more important because that is what they are imprinting on an unconscious level.

Coaching: This week I invite you to tune into your own relationship with yourself, food and your body.  What are the positive traits that you learned from your mom? What are some of the limiting beliefs and behaviors? What can you Shift from negative to positive this week, therefore giving your mother the unconscious gift of having passed on a positive lesson to you (even if you did have to Shift it around a bit first).

Have a great week and Mother’s and Inner Mothers Day!
oxox Rita

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