Transcript

Kylie: Hello everyone. And welcome back to the hormone hub. It is my absolute pleasure to have a very special guest here with me today, [00:01:00] Rita Black. Now Rita and I met, I think, on a, one of the summits that we did together. 

Rita: Yes. I think the, Diets don’t work, or this is the wrong way to diet. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Kylie: But we, something like that. We connected, we hit it off and we have just discovered that we are actually Doppelgangers more so in the way our brains work, both have a scant relationship with tech, a love/hate relationship with, you know, all the things that go with the tech. So. So welcome Rita.

It is great to have you. 

Rita: Oh, I’m so happy to be here with you. Oh, well, I’m happy to be here with you. 

Kylie: Yeah. Now Rita has the thin thinking podcast and I’ve been, you know, speaking on your podcast. 

Rita: You have been a glamorous post. You were, people loved your episode. So if you get a chance to listen to Kylie on that. 

Kylie: Yes, it was really fun.

So, Rita, would you like to [00:02:00] introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do? 

Rita: Okay. Sure. Hey everybody, I’m really happy to be here. I am a clinical hypnotherapist and I’m really somebody who helps people primarily stop smoking or lose weight with the help of hypnosis. I just, so you have a quick idea of why it got into this, like, cause I think people think of hypnosis first of all, as like magic or voodoo or this wave of the wand. Yeah. But it’s, it really is a technique where you can engage your subconscious mind to make changes much more rapidly than you could in the conscious state. And, and I’ll, I’ll talk about that a little more later, but, but how I got into it was I was somebody who was a pack and a half day smoker.

I was, and I, and I quit smoking with hypnosis in one session. I was like, wow. At the time I was like a, I live in LA and I had a completely [00:03:00] different career. I worked in Hollywood, and I was a writer and I, but I was not happy. It was the nineties. It wasn’t a great time to be in Hollywood and , I, I was like this thing that was so miraculous that I stopped in one session and it wasn’t, it wasn’t magic, but I felt a change like on a deep level. I was like, okay. So, okay. 

Kylie: Sorry. How long had you been smoking for? 

Rita: Oh, I had been smoking since I was like 17 and that was my early thirties. So it was, it was a significant amount of time. Uh, and then, and then what happened after that, I was like, wow.

Hypnosis was so helpful for me with stopping smoking. I wonder if I could use it because I was a chronic dieter, yoyo dieter, binge eater, and struggled up and down the scale, like 40 pounds. And since I was 12, yeah. And I took off 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis and I’ve kept it off for now 27 years through, you know, [00:04:00] having children and menopause and stuff like that.

So, I mean, so hypnosis has been incredibly helpful for me, but so how I primarily focused. I didn’t focus on like past life progression and I didn’t focus on phobias. I just wanted to help people stop smoking or manage their, and for me, I use hypnosis with weight management, really, primarily to change the mindset and the inner communication.

Yeah, because for most of us, I know cause you work in it as well as so much of what our challenge is, is the way we communicate with ourselves, the way we speak to ourselves, we’re very hyper critical or hyper rebellious. And we were just talking about this before you turned on the recording. It’s like, yeah you know, like with smoking and with weight management, you know, we could be know everything there is to know about losing weight. We can know everything there is to know like how bad smoking is for you, but. You know, that that’s really only our conscious mind, which is only about [00:05:00] 12%. The other 88% of our mind, our subconscious mind really wants to do exactly what we’re doing.

You know, like pretty much keeps things the same. So that’s why, you know, if you have a habit that you’ve gotten into, whether it’s, you know, weight management or, or drinking or, or, you know, just the way you, I don’t know, drive your car, all of those things you might consciously go, why am I not doing that?

There’s something wrong with me. Uh, there isn’t anything wrong with you. It’s just that the brain is designed in this way, primitively, you know, to protect us and to make life easier for us because most habits are wired in. We’re like computers and we get coded. And once we’re coded, it’s very hard to change the coding.

So what hypnosis does is it allows you to go in and kind of change the coding. And, and what I help people do is learn to [00:06:00] use their minds more effectively to make changes in their life. Basically. 

Kylie: Yeah, no, that’s great. And that’s the thing. And we were talking about, you know, like we all know that smoking isn’t good for us.

We all know what we should be eating. And, you know, the women that I, you know, work with, like they’re all sort of really intelligent women. So yes, on a logical level we all know that it’s, it’s not the right thing to be doing, but yet there’s that, that self sabotaging that just kind of takes over, you know, and it really is that, you know, that unconscious sort of behavior and, you know, I’m sort of, obviously not a psychologist, but I don’t know like that it’s so deep rooted. 

Rita: Yeah. And there’s such a, you know, it, it is, it it’s like with smoking and with weight, both, people get very, they think they, they focus on the things that they think, like with smoking, it’s very interesting, but [00:07:00] smoking is pattern, you know, it’s like our, the dopamine center in our brain expects that this thing is supposed to happen like that.

We’re supposed to go out after breakfast and have a cigarette and it will bug you for it. That agitated feeling, people interpret as the need for nicotine. It’s not. Yeah. It’s. And, and so, but what they’ll do is they’ll go out and smoke a cigarette. And that agitation will stop and they go, oh, that cigarette relaxed me, but it didn’t, it like stimulated their central nervous system and it elevated their heart rate, but their brain goes, oh, see smoking relaxes me.

And the same thing with like pattern, like night eating, we get into a pattern typically with eating after dinner and the brain will agitate you. So if you’re sitting down watching television and you’re like, I’m not gonna snack, I’m not gonna snack. But there’s this little part of your brain that’s saying you gotta go to the cupboard and go get that thing, go get that thing or make the popcorn, make your popcorn.

Yeah. It won’t let you alone until you go make the [00:08:00] popcorn and then you eat a few bites of the popcorn and you eat the first bites and you experience it. But then after that, it’s sort of, totally unconscious and go, why did I do that? You know? 

Kylie: Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. And you could substitute chocolate, you could substitute alcohol, you could, you know, like put any of those things, anything in that, that story.

Cause that’s it, you know, there’s no, yeah. And I think the more we tell ourselves to not have it, or I’m not having that today, the more our brain like thinks about it, you know? 

Rita: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I don’t know if you know this Kylie but the brain doesn’t even process negative. So when we say don’t eat chocolate, it just hears eat chocolate, eat chocolate.

Kylie: Yeah. exactly, exactly. That’s why like with my clients, when I work with them, you know, I’m all about what you can eat because you know, for that very reason, it’s sort of like, you can eat so many foods that are available to us. And I think the diet industry has [00:09:00] conditioned us to be restrictive and we should not eat this.

And we shouldn’t, there’s this big list of, you know, don’t eat the carbs, don’t eat the chocolate, don’t drink the wine, don’t eat this, don’t eat that, you know, but don’t like some women like don’t eat the fruit. I’m just like, what, what point did we get to. Fruit is bad? 

Rita: You know, all of your micronutrients.

Kylie: Yes. Yeah, you do that but it’s just, you know, and it’s, whereas I sort of try and flip that around and go, you know what? We can have all these beautiful foods and, you know, you can have, you literally can have your cake and lose weight too, because it’s all about sit down, be conscious and very mindful. Enjoy what you’re eating, slow down and just also too, giving yourself permission to enjoy whatever it is and then let it go. Yeah. And then that kind of helps with that stopping that wanting. Because you’ve given yourself permission. 

Rita: Right. And you’ve also, I think, and I think what you’re about [00:10:00] too is you’ve respected yourself. Like you’ve given the, the way that you, when you’re being mindful, you are saying I’m worth it. I can sit down. I can enjoy this. There’s no, sort of what I call under the radar eating where we’re just sneakily, trying to get it in away from that inner critic, you know, before it beats us up. Yeah. So being mindful and saying, I give myself permission to eat this piece of cake, but I’m, you know, I don’t need to eat a ton of it, but I can just eat enough to enjoy it and really savor it.

Kylie: And my other thing is too, is go for the best quality damn cake you can find, so if you go into habit, make sure it’s a bloody good one. 

Rita: Right. Only A+ foods, right? 

Kylie: Yeah, definitely. Definitely love. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, you know, we were sort of chatting about, you know, what do people do, where where’s a good place to start if they want to change a habit. [00:11:00] 

Rita: Great question. So, so I think the way that we try to change a habit is typically like what Kylie and I were saying is that we try not to do something versus, really mindfully, it’s a process, right? That making any habit change. I think you wanna make it, if it’s a big thing, like after dinner eating or, feeling like you, you know, come home and pour glass of wine or two before dinner and that’s sabotaging you. If you wanna look at any behavior, I don’t think you, it’s easier to pinpoint one behavior then to do a bunch at one time, cause you don’t wanna overwhelm the brain.

The brain can as you and I were talking about, we, we have so much in our brains right now. Like don’t give me one more thing to do. Right. But you can, you can say, okay, I’m gonna do this thing, but it’s, it’s really, you start with what I would consider a vision. Right. And I think a vision is sort of, if you wanna go back to this idea of the brain as a computer and your [00:12:00] subconscious mind in your subconscious mind are a lot of things like your beliefs, your habits, all of your memories are there.

Even if you don’t have access to them, they are actually there. There are hypnotherapist who help people retrieve memories, you know, for, people have called my office and said, my wife can’t remember where she left her wedding ring. Can you help me? And I was like, I don’t, I’m not a specialist in that, but there is somebody who can help you, you know, there are hypnotherapists who work for the police department that help people retrieve memories about crimes, you know, who had trauma and can’t remember, and they’ll help people access those memories.

So, so the brain is like a computer and in one of the big things in our, our brain, everyone is our subconscious mind is our imagination. So one thing that you can really do a tool that you can really do is imagine, create what I would call a vision of what you wanna create, because so much of the time when we’re trying not to do something, we’re looking at [00:13:00] not doing it.

Like we were saying don’t, or I’m not gonna eat the chocolate. I’m not gonna eat the chocolate, but what would chocolate free or what would wine free or only drinking one glass of wine at night look like for you? Like what would, what is the outcome you wanna create? And. And secondly, I’m gonna couple that with who is the you you wanna be?

 I don’t know if any, anyone has read the book atomic habits by James clear. It’s a really great book. It been on the New York times. Yes. Okay, good. So, you know, how he talks in the very beginning of the book about that the key to changing any habit, the first step is changing the identity of who you wanna be, you know, like, so people start from the inside out, versus the outside in, and he said that, you know, and, and most of like when I work with a smoker, our main job is to create them as a non-smoker.

You know, when I work with weight strugglers, I, I help them become, you know, [00:14:00] weight masters. So we’re, we’re, we’re shifting how we see ourselves, because once you say, okay, I’m a person who only drinks one glass of wine at night, I’m a person who can go to a party and, I’m using wine as an example.

But you know, I’m a person who fasts after dinner rather than, you know, night snacking, right? Yeah. Like, so, so you, you create a very clear vision of what you want the outcome to be. And then you create the who, who you you wanna be in that particular situation, or if you’re somebody who screams at your kids, maybe I’m one of those people, no, I don’t.

I’m very good. I’m very calm and collected around my children. 

Kylie: I’m pending stuff as they move to get in the car, out the door that in the morning. 

Rita: Yeah, like, so you see yourself being very calm and collected with your children when they’re procrastinating and not getting out the door in the morning. So, whatever the change is, the [00:15:00] you, you wanna be in that situation really helps turn your brain on, your subconscious mind on, so you’re working now with a hundred percent of your mind versus just the 12%, which is like, I should drink less or I should be nicer to my kids or I should eat less at night.

Okay. So, so those, so create that vision and create the you you wanna be and, and, and focus on exactly what Kylie said is like, what is, is, are you doing, not, not doing, so if you wanna abstain from eating after dinner, instead of trying not to eat, trying not to snack, fast, because fasting is something that you do, not try not to do, you follow? So it, and it has also a powerful connotation. It’s when I fast, I see myself in a more self respecting light than I do when I’m trying not to eat. Because then that makes me think I’m somebody who can’t be controlled and I have to control myself. 

Kylie: Yeah. And if, if it doesn’t work, you’re a failure and then you get the guilt and then the shame and all [00:16:00] of that.

Rita: Yeah. Yeah. It just reinforces the negative identity versus, oh, I’m trying on this positive identity and I’m gonna keep working towards that. Okay. 

Kylie: Yeah. I love that. 

Rita: And then, and then, then you want to mentally practice what you’re going to do. So not just like, well, I hope, but you wanna visualize yourself and, and, and this is something that athletes do before they go out to perform they’ll know the play, they’ll know exactly the strategy that I’m gonna go from point a to point B to point C.

So maybe it will be like, I’m gonna clean up the kitchen. I’m abstaining from the, you know, I can visualize myself. I might even visualize myself wanting to eat that little piece of leftover, but leaving it on the plate, like really look at where you are vulnerable in that particular trajectory. Whether it’s when you come home, you know, like, oh, I come home and I go straight to the kitchen and pour that glass of wine.

It’s like, okay, well, then what are you going to do when you come through the door? [00:17:00] Because your brain is probably gonna say, you know, there is gonna be that agitated feeling like, go get the wine, go get the wine. But in that moment, you’re like, no, I’m a person who comes home. And I abstain from drinking until I, uh, eat dinner.

I’m gonna go upstairs and I’m gonna put my shoes on and go for a walk or, or something different. You know, you’re doing an alternative behavior, I’m gonna pour myself a glass of water or whatever it is that you choose. You are seeing yourself doing it. And even seeing and feeling the self talk that you might need to do in that particular moment, because once you’re in that moment, once you’re walking through the door, the train is left the station, there is no changing the behavior then. You have to do it mentally first, and the best time to do this is in the morning when you wake up, because you’re already in a hypnotic trance, you’re already sort of semiconscious and your subconscious mind is much more open than, than again, at the end of the day, when you’ve walked through the door, you’ve made all these decisions.

[00:18:00] Our, you know, we, our willpower, which is our 12% conscious mind, that resource is limited. And you know, this Kylie I’m sure with what you teach as well, that after making decisions all day, our impulse control, you know, plummets. I say, you know, if we all went to bed at five o’clock, we would all be thin, we wouldn’t have any problems.

We wouldn’t be smoking. We wouldn’t be drinking. We wouldn’t be, you know, like our lives would be perfect. So I hear what thinking, 

Kylie: We get that decision fatigue. We’ve been making choices and decisions, all day. So you come home and kind of go in autopilot. 

Rita: Exactly. So best time to make that behavioral change is in the morning when you’re waking up.

And so one thing that I help, I, so, so one little self hypnosis technique is just to run that scene through a couple of times in your mind. Now, what you can do is just lay in your bed, you know, maybe get on your back, close your [00:19:00] eyes. And just be in your body, you know, and you could do a progressive relaxation, just relax my feet, relax with my calves, relax, and just allow your body.

But you’ll probably be pretty relaxed if it’s the morning. And then you could just imagine, okay, today I’m gonna get up. I’m gonna live my life and then I’m gonna get home. And okay. Now I see myself and you’re visualizing yourself. Like you were watching yourself on a, a, this is called the movie theater technique.

So yeah you just watch yourself come through the door, go into the kitchen, get a glass of water. Go into the living room, sit down and relax or go upstairs. Put your shoes on, go outside for a walk, you’re and then you’re gonna hit rewind, and you’re gonna do it again. And then you’re gonna hit rewind, and you’re gonna do it again.

And then you’re gonna step into your body and be, so it’s kind of like you’ve gone from watching yourself to being in your body, in your mind, going through the same thing. And again, you can, at those points where you’re vulnerable, [00:20:00] like maybe while you’re opening the fridge and maybe you see the bottle of wine, or maybe when you, you visualize sitting at the television and knowing like, oh, this is the time I would normally go get the popcorn, you know, what am I gonna do?

Am I gonna get up? Maybe I’ll make a cup of herbal tea. Maybe I’ll do some stretches. Maybe I’ll just sit and take a breath and be in my body and just be really grateful that I’m fasting. Yeah. You know, like, but you, and, and, and something that also can help is have a mantra. Like I have a mantra, I used to be a huge night eater and I have a mantra that I use with myself, food free in front of the TV.

So, so that’s just my little.. 

Kylie: But that’s the danger spot too. 

Rita: Yeah. Oh for sure. And it’s so mindless. I mean, how many empty calories do we eat? Just like, you know, we don’t even. Aren’t even aware of it. So yeah. So having a little mantra or like one and done for a glass of wine, like having a mantra [00:21:00] also is self hypnotic because it’s reminding you who you are, reminding you what you’re doing.

 And because it becomes such a rhythmic thing within your own mind, it’s like self coding, self coding. You’re really stretching neural pathways. So the, the other thing, and this is a little more advanced, but it’s pretty easy to do is to do a recording of being like, let’s say you wanted to change one of these habits that you could visualize yourself at the end of the month, having made that habit change, like, and then to do a gratitude list of why you’re grateful.

Like, oh, I’m so grateful I’m coming home and exercising instead of having a glass of wine, I’m so grateful that I feel healthier and stronger in my body. I feel so grateful that I’m sleeping better because I’m making better choices. Right. Whatever it is, you don’t have to do a lot, just, you know, five, six, seven, and you can also be grateful for other things in your life.

That’s [00:22:00] what I, I do this every morning. So I, I, I listen to recordings of my gratitude for the month, you know, and I say, I’m grateful that my family is healthy and I’m grateful that, you know, I have a roof over my head, you know, just things that remind me that, you know, whatever my negative or crazy mind that wants to think ahead and think how bad things are.

It’s just like, bring me to myself and bring me to my, like what I have and what I’m grateful for. It’s it’s a really, actually lovely thing to do in the morning. And so I’ll write this down. I’ll hit record on my phone and I’ll just put on some it’s so, like you and I, like we were saying tech, we’re not the greatest tech people in the world, but you know, all I have to do is put YouTube on my computer, have my phone and I put on a meditation music, you know, basic 1 0 1, right.

I’ll hit that. I’ll read my list really slowly and in a very gentle, nurturing voice. Right. 

Kylie: So good for your nervous system just to slow, too? 

Rita: [00:23:00] Exactly and I’ll and I’ll, and then I will listen to that. Now I have clients who are doing this here. You think, well, you’re a hypnotherapist, of course it’s gonna be easy for you.

But it was very weird for me to listen to my own voice at first, for myself talking to myself, it makes you feel little weird at first, but once you get used to it, I’ve had many clients say to me, oh, it’s so comforting. It’s like being my own mom. So, so it really does. Yeah, it is. It’s very, it’s very lovely because we don’t usually talk to ourselves like that.

Yeah. So, so you know what I mean? So it’s a really easy user friendly way to, you know, make a, make a change in your life. So, and, and keep at it. Don’t give up if it doesn’t work out the first couple of times, sometimes things are deeply wired, so, but you know, just keep encouraging yourself.

You, you can, you can do it, you can get it, but you just, you, you just have to go for it with a gusto, [00:24:00] like this is a project and everything is figureoutable so do it. 

Kylie: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. That’s beautiful. I, I actually really like that because, you know, it’s, it’s something that we can all do. You know, like it’s not like, you know, this big, abstract thing that we’ve gotta go and sit and meditate for hours at a, at a time, or it’s not.

And I think a lot of women also feel that there’s something fundamentally wrong with them as well. Yes. But it’s actually not it’s those brain patterns that are wired in, but, yeah, it’s changed those neural pathways by visualizing. That’s really powerful. 

Rita: And thank you Kylie, but also I wanted to say with what you’re saying is our brain, our primitive brain, you know, we have such a primitive brain and our primitive brain has been wired to anticipate things coming around the corner, like lions or tigers and bears. And I think, yeah, [00:25:00] in the morning when we wake up is when those fears come in, when that negative self-talk patterns come in, that’s like, I, I knew for me, like I came up with this idea because I was like, well, if I had to change the way I communicate with myself, like where fundamentally in my day is gonna be the most powerful it’s gonna be when I wake up in the morning.

Yeah. Because a lot of us wake up into knee jerk reaction, like, oh, I gotta get outta bed and I gotta respond to the kids or I’ve gotta do something. Or we lay in bed and get into negative self talk or, oh God, what, you know, like what’s gonna happen with the recession, what’s gonna happen. 

Kylie: Or I should have got up and gone for a walk and I didn’t and you know, and yeah.

Rita: Yeah. Why, why did you eat all that stuff last night? You know, like that negative stuff. So this helps intercept that and move your brain in a different direction. It just focuses your brain on something that is powerful and something you can do. [00:26:00] Because you, you can’t be in two place. You can’t be in negative self-talk and positive self-talk at the same time.

That’s one good news about our brain. So yeah. Yeah. Just keep it into the positive place. Yeah. You’ll be a lot better off. 

Kylie: I love that. Thank you. And I know that that’s gonna be really helpful for a lot of the, for a lot of our listeners as well. And ladies, if you are recording yourself talking, just know that every week when I record this podcast and I listen back to it, it still feels weird, but you do it anyway. Okay. so, you know yeah, you do. 

Rita: Yeah, you do. And don’t please don’t listen to that while driving. That’s what I always say about hypnosis. I like don’t listen to this while you’re driving, so don’t listen to yourself then, but you, I mean, you can listen to it while you’re making breakfast, if you want, but the best time is in bed. 

Kylie: In bed or I find in the shower too, because it’s sort of, you know, it’s, I dunno. Well, it does happen that people come in and talk to me while I’m in the shower.[00:27:00] 

It’s usually something that their father could have helped them with and he’s out there. Yes. But yeah, it just, yeah, in bed I think is, is a beautiful time and, and what a beautiful way to start the day with just feeling positive about yourself and, you know, and liking, loving yourself a bit. Yeah. So, yeah, for sure.

All right. So now you have a very exciting webinar coming up in, so on the 28th of September. 

Rita: Yeah. And that’s the year 2022. If you’re listening to this in 2023, I’ll send Kylie another link for another freebie, but right now I am offering a free master class and it’s called how to break through the weight struggle cycle so that you can lose weight consistently and permanently.

And really in that I’m going to discuss three major mind shifts that you can make. If you [00:28:00] are struggling with weight, if you are one of those people, you know, you know what to do, you could probably write your own weight loss book and have people lose weight, or it could be on the New York times best seller list, but it’s just that what happens is you’ll get going, but then you’ll lose steam and, you know, start over again on Monday and start over again.

And, and that you, this negative self sabotage that we’re talking about, the limiting beliefs. So we’re really gonna look at how to melt through those barriers, those self sabotaging subconscious barriers that keep you struggling. And I’m gonna give you three really powerful mental shifts that so you can get more consistency really.

That’s ultimately at the end of the day. 

Kylie: Fantastic. So, you know, if this is something that you are struggling with, and I know, you know, there’s a big portion of the community that is, you know, Rita is an absolute expert in her field. And you know, I’m [00:29:00] in no doubt that this will be, you know, hugely beneficial.

So check out the link in our show notes. And that’s the link to register for the webinar. And we’ll also pop Rita’s website details in there. Or how to find you on socials so you can connect as well. All right, Rita. Well, thank you so much for having, for coming on the show. I always love connecting with you.

We, yeah, it’s fun.

Rita: Well, thank you for having me. I am honored and I always forget like, cause it’s right now it’s my afternoon. I forget that you are in the morning. That’s so wild to me. So yes. And it’s the next day? 

Kylie: That’s a good point. So the webinar will be Wednesday, the 28th of September for anyone listening in the Northern hemisphere.

And then for us Aussies and Kiwis, it will be Thursday the 29th. 

Rita: [00:30:00] Yeah. But if you go in and register, it will tell you in your timeframe. Yeah. Cause I do easy webinar as well. It will tell you what time to show up. So it will be right. 

Kylie: And that’s why we both use the tech that does all that stuff for us. Well, thanks so much Rita. And you know, I have no doubt that we will have you on the show in, you know, at some point down the track. 

Rita: Oh, well, I would love to come back. Thank you so much for having me and have a great day, everybody. 

Kylie: Yeah. Thank you. Bye Rita. Bye everyone. Thanks for listening.