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