Learning to Release Weight with Love and Compassion

Imagine unraveling the deep-rooted cause of your weight struggles and addressing it with the same love and compassion you would a child in need. Well, Vicki Griffith, the founder of At Breakthrough and author of 'Stucked Up' and 'You Can Be Right About Everything and Still Have Nothing' shows us how to do just that. Vicki shares her journey of overcoming childhood weight issues and how it led her to establish a coaching business that emphasizes the power of a 'mental diet' in sustainable weight loss. We explore the importance of understanding what's causing your pain and how to heal it. Plus, Vicki reveals her secrets on how to lose weight without giving up chocolate and how to stop sabotaging your own weight loss efforts.

A piece of wisdom from Vicki is releasing weight isn't about being harsh or judgmental towards oneself. It's about embracing the power of the 'mental diet' - transforming the thoughts we feed ourselves daily. Her candid conversation reveals how we can be kinder to ourselves, in our thoughts and words, and how this change in mindset can lead to incredible transformations. As a token of our appreciation to all the listeners and supporters, we introduce Dr. Craig Curtis from K2 in the Villages, who will share insightful Alzheimer's tips weekly, adding another layer of value to our future episodes. Learn, grow, and transform with us as we continue to bring you more inspiring guests and powerful insights.

Transcript

Emily: 0:11

Welcome to the Open Forum in the Villages, florida podcast. In this show we talk to leaders in the community, leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live here in the villages to give perspectives of what is happening here in the villages. We hope to add a new episode most Fridays at 9am. We are a listener supported podcast. You can become a supporter for as little as $3 per month or you can choose to pay more. To become a supporter, go to openforminthevillagescom and click on support in the black box. There will be shoutouts for supporters in episodes.

Emily: 0:41

In season 4, we have made some dramatic improvements and changes. First is a clarification of the podcast's title. It is open forum in the villages, florida. To make clear that this is a regional show, independently produced for folks who live in central Florida and the villages areas. It is a dramatic increase in the use of AI in the creation of each episode. These include a transcript of each show. Please understand that there may be errors inserted by the AI that may not be caught before the transcript is published. However, this is a dramatic step forward. We will now include chapter markers for each show. The show description text will be AI generated. In fact, the show's announcers are now all AI voices, including me, emily. Hope you enjoy.

Mike Roth: 1:22

This is Mike Roth on Open Forum in the Villages. I'm here today with Vicki Griffith. Vicki is the founder of At Breakthrough. She teaches a process of losing weight without dieting, drop dead workouts or giving up chocolate. I love chocolate to me. She will teach you how to lose weight, keep it off without anxiety and stop sabotaging your efforts. She's also an author. She's written two books. The first one is Stuck Up A Breakthrough Path to Unstuck, and her second book is you Can Be Right About Everything and Still have Nothing. Vicki is a professional speaker, a licensed minister and a certified hypnotherapist. Thanks for joining me today, vicki.

Vickie Griffith: 2:00

Thank you for the invitation. I'm excited to be here.

Mike Roth: 2:02

I've been told that you have infectious enthusiasm and a deceptively low-key casual speaking approach.

Vickie Griffith: 2:09

That was someone in the audience that I spoke with, and I am honored that she felt that way.

Mike Roth: 2:15

Great, so you took audience feedback.

Vickie Griffith: 2:17

I did?

Mike Roth: 2:18

Vicki? Let me start by asking you a question of what led you to this coaching business.

Vickie Griffith: 2:23

Well, it all started at my birth and you should see Mike's face about right now, you know. The truth of the matter is I was always fat. I was a fat toddler which is really cute until you're about three and I grew up being that chubby husky, chubby, chubby, chubby, chubby, chubby, chubby, chubby, chubby, chubby child that was never asked to play with other children. I was the shy, reserved middle schooler and high schooler because I always felt out of sync with everyone else because of my weight problem so that's how it all started was the self-esteem issues that I had, and I went on diets even at the age of 10. I was drinking diet soda and I still wasn't losing weight, and I would go on a fat diet and lose a ton of weight and gain it all back. And I started the yo-yo principle of on and off again and lose 20, 30 pounds, bring it back on.

Vickie Griffith: 3:18

And it wasn't until I was about 16 that I came across the hypnotist for weight loss. Now here's what's fascinating about that. The hypnosis was all around the diet, and this was a long time ago, and it was actually the keto diet, but it wasn't called that. Then, however, the hypnosis started bringing out a little more absurdiveness in me. I would start raising my hand in class and my teachers are like where have you been? I've always been here. I always knew the answer, but I was too shy to raise my hand. My teachers were just astounded at the change in my personality, as I was, and that's what started me on the method of what's really the way we change in anything in our life, including releasing weight. Now it took me many more years and into adulthood and having a child to finally get what I needed to do to release the weight and keep it off permanently, and I can tell you I never gave up chocolate ever.

Mike Roth: 4:13

Well, that's good. I like to have chocolate around Me too. So, vicki, it sounds like you were a chubby child.

Vickie Griffith: 4:19

I was a very that's very polite to say I was chubby child.

Mike Roth: 4:22

I went from being a chubby child to being a way too thin teenager. Oh, I remember drinking drinks that my mom would buy that were labeled, you know, to put weight on drink this.

Vickie Griffith: 4:35

That's interesting.

Mike Roth: 4:36

It didn't work, so I stopped drinking them.

Vickie Griffith: 4:40

Oh.

Mike Roth: 4:41

And now I have to watch my weight. So, vicki, what's the biggest challenge that your clients bring to you?

Vickie Griffith: 4:48

Well, typically my clients will come to me for a couple reasons. I am known as a weight loss coach, so they will come to me to lose weight and that, they believe, is a challenge. But I know that from my own experience that wasn't. Putting myself on a diet wasn't the answer. Exercising wasn't the answer. It's a part of the equation, but it wasn't the true answer. And so that's what they're coming to me for. Is there's something going on in their lives that's causing pain, that they're eating, and whatever that is needs to be uncovered and discovered so that we can eliminate that, heal that piece of it, and then eating healthy isn't a chore anymore. And you can still have chocolate, but not just. I don't know I could eat a pound or two of chocolate at a time when I was in those modes. You know the family size bags of potato chips.

Mike Roth: 5:40

Yeah.

Vickie Griffith: 5:40

I could eat those in one sitting. I consider that a single serving at one point in my life.

Mike Roth: 5:45

Wow, I eat four potato chips.

Vickie Griffith: 5:48

Do you?

Mike Roth: 5:49

And I say man, that's too much for me. Oh, my goodness, I want to cut my portion, so I can oh my goodness yeah, what you're saying to me sounds like you're addressing problems that the inner child has.

Vickie Griffith: 6:05

That's very perceptive and thank you for bringing it up. That's part of it. Yes, so a lot of our hurt, a lot of our discomfort, comes from inner child work. You can have the most perfect life. I actually had clients. They come to me and say I had amazing parents. They loved me, they supported me, they gave me all the encouragement I could ever need, they gave me all the love and hugs I could ever want. But there's something wrong with me and most of us think that that's. The issue is that we had dysfunctional families. Most of us did or do still.

Mike Roth: 6:42

I think that's going to be a perpetual thing dysfunctional families, but the damage that maybe you should define inner child for our audience.

Vickie Griffith: 6:50

When we have some incident in our lives could be good or bad, could be happier or sad it gets imprinted in us at that age. So let's say, for an example this actually happened to me was running in a pasture with three other children and the grass was about waist high to all of us. And we're running down the two track field that the tractor had made and all of a sudden a six to eight foot black snake went across our path. Now one of us had a total meltdown and was frightened from snakes forever and ever for the rest of her life. The other two were curious, didn't go run aftering it, they were kind of they're okay with it. And then the fourth one was like I know big deal, they could pat it if they wanted to, but they just like, yeah, no big deal. So that type of experience imprints on us at that age and we relive it throughout our entire lives until we address the trauma.

Vickie Griffith: 7:46

And that's loosely in air quotes you can see me, because everyone has a different definition of trauma. That and that creates the trauma in ourselves that we reenact throughout our entire life.

Mike Roth: 7:57

Right, it's my belief. You have to address that trauma and, so to speak, kill it it can be dissolved.

Vickie Griffith: 8:03

That sounds like it's a very painful. I don't want to kill anything, Well dissolve a better word. Yeah, dissolve it for sure.

Mike Roth: 8:11

Yeah.

Vickie Griffith: 8:11

Okay.

Mike Roth: 8:12

Good. So don't address these early childhood traumas which they carry around in their subconscious mind the rest of their life.

Vickie Griffith: 8:20

Well, they'll keep reliving the same experience over and over again. So for my weight loss clients and, by the way, talking about the subconscious mind, when you're trying to let go of weight, that's how you say it you either let go of it or release it. We don't want to lose anything because the subconscious mind goes oh wait, a minute, I just lost something, I need to go find it and freaks out a little bit. Okay, so we don't use weight loss, but I use it for marketing purposes, because that's what people are saying. So what happens if they don't? Let's say, for a person who's wanting to release some weight, if they don't address these traumas, then the behavior and the habit will continue to kind of rev it's evil head until you do something about it. So in other words, somebody who is eating a lot maybe they're eating a lot of ice cream and they're not really sure why and they eat it at a certain time at night and they eat a pint or more. Okay, that issue really resolves in trying to comfort that inner child from something that's happened decades maybe it could be 15, 20, 30, 40 years or even 60 years and because they've never addressed that, now some people also say I don't know what that would be, and that's okay.

Vickie Griffith: 9:35

I just have a subconscious mind, knows, and it's kept it very safe and tucked away for you and we don't have to know what it was or what it could be. We can still help you dissolve the trauma around it and realize trauma. It sounds like it's huge, a huge thing that might have happened in your life. Trauma can come from someone saying something negative to you as a child You're too stupid, what's wrong with you? How come you never get this right? You're too slow, You're too fast, you're too fat, you're too old All those things. Those can create that trauma that we're talking about.

Mike Roth: 10:09

When someone is six years old, something very simple that said or happens can cause a trauma and it gets hidden. For many years I trained salespeople and I would run into the occasional salesperson who was untrainable and I would send them out for EMDR therapy. I moved into desensitization and reprocessing and for about 90% of the people you cure the problem in two sessions, which was amazingly fast.

Vickie Griffith: 10:35

It is amazingly fast. I love the techniques because they are quick and fast and they're not painful.

Mike Roth: 10:42

You don't have to sob for hours.

Vickie Griffith: 10:43

Crowl up in a small ball, that type of thing.

Mike Roth: 10:45

You don't want to do two years of psychotherapy to find something you could find in two hours of EMDR or hypnotism. And the EMDR and hypnotism are two different things. Maybe you can talk about a common myth that needs to be debunked about weight loss.

Vickie Griffith: 11:02

Absolutely, and here is the most common experience for someone who decides that Monday morning is their diet day, and that's why I call it the national diet day. Every Monday is national diet day. Everyone starts a diet on Monday and they think that they need to start with a food plan and an exercise plan. So sweat as much as you can and eat only celery. That's typically what a dieter will do.

Mike Roth: 11:33

Eat less, exercise more.

Vickie Griffith: 11:35

Right and that's kind of and there's truth to that.

Mike Roth: 11:38

There is truth to that, but it's not 100%.

Vickie Griffith: 11:40

It's not 100%, because you're eating outside of a food plan for a reason.

Mike Roth: 11:46

Right, we're going to take a short break here and listen to an Alzheimer's tip from Dr Craig Curtis. And here's the diagnostic process to split the difference between someone who has Alzheimer's and someone who has a different form of dementia.

Dr Craig Curtis: 12:01

That's a great question, mike. So Alzheimer's disease in the past was a clinical diagnosis and we would talk to the patient and the family and they would tell us about this progressive memory loss and maybe other symptoms that had been occurring over the past three to five years and we would simply test their memory and maybe wait another year or two and retest their memory to look for decline. Nowadays it's completely different. As a matter of fact, now our diagnostic process involves actually looking for amyloid in the brain, which we now know causes Alzheimer's disease. How do you see amyloid in the brain? We can see amyloid in the brain using PET scans, which is the most common way, and now we're working on using blood tests, which are going to be coming out in the next few years. In fact, there's already one blood test that is FDA cleared to detect amyloid in the blood which is reflecting amyloid in the brain.

Mike Roth: 12:59

And that would be the differential between another type of dementia and Alzheimer's.

Warren: 13:04

With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr Curtis's goal is to educate the village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life. To learn more, visit his website craigcurtismdcom, or call 352-500-5252 to attend a free seminar. And we're back here with Vicki.

Mike Roth: 13:22

Griffith. Vicki, what do you wish you would have known at the beginning of the weight loss journey that you didn't know?

Vickie Griffith: 13:29

That's a really interesting question because I've learned a lot throughout the journey and I guess what I was just talking about. The biggest myth knowing that that wasn't the way to be successful on any food plan to help release weight was number one. But number two was I needed to go on a mental diet first before I could be successful keeping off the 70 pounds I have for 20 years.

Mike Roth: 13:50

What do you mean by a mental diet?

Vickie Griffith: 13:52

For myself and many of my clients. Most of us are so self-critical and self-judging that that had to stop first. And, as we talked about, many of it comes from. Many of that self-taught comes from childhood someone else telling you about you. That's not true. But the mental diet was about saying no to that criticism and judgment. Every time I heard myself thinking it or saying it. And I can tell you the first week was just excruciating because I hadn't realized how negatively I talked to myself in my thoughts or even in my words.

Mike Roth: 14:28

So you had negative self-taught that you didn't know about.

Vickie Griffith: 14:32

I wasn't listening. But it was going on in your head, it was going on in my head, and that again is that in our child saying hello, I need some help here, I need support. But I wasn't listening. And how many of us would turn away a three or four year old that came running up to you in the grocery store just beside themselves, because they're afraid you would pick them up and you?

Vickie Griffith: 14:52

would comfort them. We don't do that to ourselves, so that's one of the things I wish I would have known is self-love to that inner child and go on a mental diet first.

Mike Roth: 15:02

A mental diet.

Vickie Griffith: 15:03

A mental diet, the criticism and judgment that we say to ourselves and start dissolving it and replace it with well at first.

Vickie Griffith: 15:11

you don't replace it with anything First, all you have to do is just deny it. Nope, not going to go there. I got to the point where I started using it and I'm unwilling to move further in this conversation because I know what the results would be. And the results would be I'd be eating that family size bag of a dinner gym. So I got to that point where I was kind of stern as well with myself. But the first part of it was just saying no. And that's what was excruciating, because I was saying no it seemed like every three or four seconds and I just hadn't realized. I was so negative to myself.

Mike Roth: 15:44

Didn't know you could say it. No, you saw three or four times a second. Yeah, okay. Well, I always like to add a joke into the show, lighten up the mood a little bit for my grandson, evan Vicki. Why can't you tell a joke around the glass?

Vickie Griffith: 15:59

I'm curious why can't you tell a joke around the glass?

Mike Roth: 16:02

It would break up.

Vickie Griffith: 16:06

I'm sure he's going to love that one. That was cute.

Mike Roth: 16:10

Okay, I've been accused of that. Okay, vicki, can you tell us a little bit about the two books that you wrote and how they're available today?

Vickie Griffith: 16:19

Absolutely. We're both available on Amazon, so you just look up Vicki Griffith and look up Stucked Up, or you can be right about everything. The first book was written kind of about my journey. It's very, very personal.

Mike Roth: 16:32

So it's biographical.

Vickie Griffith: 16:34

So yes. However, I had a really good friend who had written like nine books and she said this is about you. You need to, you want to help people, correct? I'm like, yes, so it does have exercises for people based on my stories. The reason it got published is I always intended to publish it, but I put it off for about three years.

Mike Roth: 16:52

So is it a hardcover or a soulful they're both paperback or you can get them on Kindle.

Vickie Griffith: 16:58

And I put it off for three years and I had a really good friend who ministered to the women in prison and I gave her a copy, the manuscript, and I said please read this for me and let me know if you think this will help people. And she took it and read the first chapter to the women that she was ministering and she came back to me and she said you have to publish this book. She goes, people were crying, they were laughing, they were like having a haze about this, did you have to? And so, with her encouragement as well, is how I published it.

Mike Roth: 17:29

How many years ago was that?

Vickie Griffith: 17:30

2012.

Mike Roth: 17:31

Okay.

Vickie Griffith: 17:33

And then the last book you can be right about everything and still have nothing as based on a girlfriend. And we were sitting in the car having a great day. We were getting ready to go into another store, we were shopping, going out for lunch Kind of a girl's day, just having fun and then all of a sudden, before we got out of the car, she said to me he did it again and I was rather confused about what we were talking about.

Mike Roth: 17:56

Change in subject there.

Vickie Griffith: 17:58

She said it again. He did it again. What? Yeah, I went in to wash some clothes and the washing machine was on cold, and I don't wash things on cold. He was to turn it on cold, but he wouldn't admit. He put it.

Vickie Griffith: 18:09

I mean, she was just going on and on and on and I'm like, okay, that was pretty intense about how unhappy she was because of this little scenario about the cold water washer and him not admitting it, and took her home. A few hours later I get this call. I'm heading to the hospital. Will you meet me there? I'm having a heart attack.

Mike Roth: 18:29

From the same lady.

Vickie Griffith: 18:30

The same lady and I stood in the hospital while they're doing all their tests and I'm watching her in the room with her, and I was just floored by how she was so willing to be right. She was willing to die for her opinion over a cold water washing knob on the washing machine. So that's where that came from. You can be right about everything and still have nothing, but what it's really about is it's not about those little petty things that happen in our lives. It's about our belief systems that we keep proving right although they're not serving us, and that is where that book came from. So you keep trying to be right in these belief systems that are oh so wrong and causing you to overeat.

Mike Roth: 19:13

They're archaic from the old inner trial Right. Is that what's happening?

Vickie Griffith: 19:18

Exactly, but yet your mind keeps trying to prove it right, because that's what it knows, that's the habit it is in, and so that's what the book's about is how to dissolve those so that you can create new habits that will actually serve in the purpose that you have for your health, for your family, for relationships, for money and finances.

Mike Roth: 19:38

Now is that book also available on Amazon.

Vickie Griffith: 19:40

It is.

Mike Roth: 19:41

Also a soft cover.

Vickie Griffith: 19:42

It is also a soft cover on Kindle.

Mike Roth: 19:45

Are the books available as an audio book yet?

Vickie Griffith: 19:47

Oh no.

Mike Roth: 19:48

We'll have to talk about turning this into an audio book.

Vickie Griffith: 19:51

We'll talk about that.

Mike Roth: 19:52

Okay. Do you have a gift to share with our audience?

Vickie Griffith: 19:55

I do and I'm so excited about it. So thanks for asking. I created a five series of videos that are about a couple minutes long and it shows a technique that I still use today, but it's a one that helped me kind of bridge over that needing to eat, that craving. Does it sound like you have many food cravings? But, coming from the food background and the weight background that I've come cravings for potato chips or chocolate, chocolate peanuts are one of my favorite. Peanuts dip in chocolate is my favorite.

Vickie Griffith: 20:26

I used to love those Chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake, anything. Chocolate is kind of my deal.

Mike Roth: 20:32

But you're not alone.

Vickie Griffith: 20:33

I got to know.

Mike Roth: 20:35

A lot of people, you know. My wife knows. If we go into a restaurant and they have a delicious looking chocolate cake, I'm going to save her all the dessert.

Vickie Griffith: 20:43

I love it. I love it. So that's it, that experience of lack of control. It gets to the point where it feels like you just can't control it anymore. I created this video series. It's called Crush Cravings. You can go to CrushCravingscom it's absolutely free. Put in your name and your email address and you'll start getting the series of videos to watch. You can crush your cravings in 30 seconds or less and it is true, it really works.

Mike Roth: 21:08

Now the CrushCravingscom, so it's not a YouTube video.

Vickie Griffith: 21:13

It is not a YouTube video. It is you opt in and they are videos. They are housed on YouTube, but it's not a YouTube link.

Mike Roth: 21:21

Okay, and how many of them are there Believe?

Vickie Griffith: 21:23

it or not, there's five, so it takes you through different steps on how to do it.

Mike Roth: 21:27

And over what period of time should someone listen to each one of the five?

Vickie Griffith: 21:31

Well, you can listen to them back to back as long as you're following, along with videos, so you can pause and do the step. You could do one at a time and then in a couple of days do the second one. So there's no real process or procedure. It's whatever works for you. Some people they like to binge watch, right, my husband and I, we binge watch a lot of TV shows.

Mike Roth: 21:56

That became a habit, really.

Vickie Griffith: 21:57

Yeah, that pandemic, or you can, so you can do them all at once. Like I said, they're like a minute to five minutes long each. And there's five of them.

Mike Roth: 22:06

So how many people have actually listened to them?

Vickie Griffith: 22:09

Thousands. At this point I've kind of lost count.

Mike Roth: 22:12

Okay.

Vickie Griffith: 22:12

Yeah, thousands.

Mike Roth: 22:13

That sounds like a good thing, so give our listeners the name to go to on the web.

Vickie Griffith: 22:19

It's crushcravingscom.

Mike Roth: 22:22

And after they've listened to it and followed the procedures, their cravings for chocolate will be gone.

Vickie Griffith: 22:29

It can be. I've actually given many demonstrations in the villages in the area, in a lot of the clubs, and people have come, contacted me 10 years later and said I want you to know I gave up chocolate. My first response is I don't know if I should say congratulations or apologize. So please let me know how I'm supposed to respond to this. And most of them will say things like no, you don't understand. I was eating a pound of Hershey Kishes a day, or I just couldn't stop thinking about it. And now the thought process around it is gone and it's freeing when you stop that feeling of being out of control. It's so freeing to feel like you're in control.

Mike Roth: 23:11

Are there some prerequisites that people have to be in a certain state of mind for your work and methodology to work?

Vickie Griffith: 23:19

My first response is no, but we've been conditioned to think that everything has to be a process. So the only process is really to have an open mind, to go into it with curiosity, to try it and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, that's fine, but otherwise it's actually a fabulous technique that you can use in other areas in your life and it is one of the techniques I use with my clients to help relieve some of this childhood trauma or experiences. It's not always childhood, sometimes it's in our 20s or 30s or 40s something that happened, to relieve that so that they can move forward in their lives. And it's very fascinating and it happens quickly.

Mike Roth: 24:03

I've noticed that there's a syndrome with people who've lost their spouses here in the villages where they've been married for 30 or more years and all of a sudden, the spouse is gone a year after a two-year illness that they have a recovery period.

Vickie Griffith: 24:17

Yeah, there are five stages of grieving and I can come back for a whole other show on that.

Vickie Griffith: 24:21

Okay, let's not do that one today, but yeah there is a transition time and it's good for people to know that and honor it. These techniques can help people move through it much quicker and faster if they choose to. Some people don't think that's appropriate, and that's okay. That's her belief system. I'm working with a client right now who has pain in her back and her hip. It's so very severe that she's going for shots here soon, but yet with one session she could actually stand up out of her chair without pain in that moment in time. So it can help. I'm not saying that she's not going to go further with the doctors that she's seeing and perhaps even a shot. That wasn't our objective. Our objective was to give her some relief and it all came from grief.

Mike Roth: 25:02

Vicki, if some of our listeners want to get ahold of you after they've heard this podcast, how should they do that?

Vickie Griffith: 25:08

You're welcome to go to vickigriffithcom and there is plenty of spaces there where you can contact me and even set up an appointment with me, so it fits your calendar.

Mike Roth: 25:18

Good, and where is your office for an appointment?

Vickie Griffith: 25:21

Well, I actually work on Zoom and to the phone, so I work with people all over the country and even in Canada.

Mike Roth: 25:27

So anyone who's hearing this- any place in the world can ask for an appointment electronically with you, correct, and you guys can work out a specific time to get together on the web.

Vickie Griffith: 25:39

Exactly.

Mike Roth: 25:40

Great hey. Thanks for being with us today, vicki.

Vickie Griffith: 25:42

Well, thank you for having me.

Emily: 25:43

I really enjoyed it. Thanks.

Emily: 25:45

Remember our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 am. Should you want to become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mikeatrothvoicecom. This is a shout out for supporters Greg Panjian, tweet Coleman, dan Capellan, ed Williams, alvin Stenzel and major supporter Dr Craig Curtis at K2 in the villages. We will be hearing more from Dr Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mikeatrothvoicecom. We thank everyone for listening to the show. The content of the show is copyrighted by Rothvoice 2023, all rights reserved.