Rita Black: Welcome to this year’s Thin Thinking podcast annual healthy baking episode. Yep! We are here to mix up some mindful baking strategies that keep your health goals intact without losing an ounce of the joy of creating holiday memories in the kitchen. So feeling the pull of the flour and sugar and those sprinkles and festive frosting. Don’t worry, I have got you covered in this episode, I’m serving tips to help create a weight conscious baking mindset without losing the joy of the season. In fact, you will have even more pleasure because we’re unlocking the secrets to celebrating the season without letting your waistline take a hit.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery. I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long term and live your best life. Sound good? Let’s get started.

Rita Black: Well hello, my lovely, lovely friends! Come on in! The oven is hot, and I have got an apron with your name on it, right here, waiting for you. Go ahead. Put it on. Even if you are just here to watch, put it on. It’s our Annual Bake Off Thin Thinking style. And every year I get so many requests from my listeners, from students, from people in my membership for our holiday baking episode. I swear it gets played as many times as the Nutcracker Sweet and why everyone loves to bake over the holidays. Even Benon Bakers.

Rita Black: Speaking of an non-holiday Bakers, I was telling my members this the other day. My husband came home the other day and he says, look at what I’ve got. I got it on sale. And do you have a loved one that does that? Like they go and buy everything that’s on the half off rack? Well, that’s my husband. It doesn’t even matter if he likes the thing. He just loves getting that bargain. And it drives me crazy because he brings home all of this crap that we never end up using. It’s just a waste. But anyway, he, the stores see him coming. Anyway, he brings home this gingerbread home assembly kit and I, maybe I’m not, I’m not putting this down. So maybe you’ve gotten one and you think is better than sliced bread or what have you. But this particular kit, because it was half off, it was sad, you know, that I opened it up and the gingerbread was, first of all, it was stale. It was kind of gross. It was probably from last year.

Rita Black: And the frosting, like they give you this tube of frosting that it’s all like, kind of separated and then the sprinkles looks, I mean, the whole thing was a little sad. But anyway, I just have to laugh so hard at the food industry ’cause they really do have it down. You know, they’ve sat down in their boardrooms and they’re like, how do we just even get the non-banking person buying our products during the holiday season? Well, let’s, you know, assemble a gingerbread house kit and let’s get those pre-sliced sugar cookies. And ah, I think, how about pre-sliced gingerbread men? You know? So I have to admit, you know, like I said, the gingerbread house was probably a good idea. Because I have, have you ever tried to make a gingerbread house? I mean, maybe you’re better than me, and I’m an impatient person sometimes when it comes to baking.

Rita Black: But I remember many years trying to make a gingerbread house and it just ended up being a mess. You know, the sides caved in. And it was horrible. And I end up eating it all right, because it’s there. And I even remember one year trying to make, did you ever try to do this? Make a stained glass window for your ginger bread house? Well, I had this bright idea. I think I got out of a craft book. You cut the hole for the window, you know, and you lay the gingerbread cookie mix or you know, the gingerbread dough down that you’ve rolled out. And then you put lifesavers in the window, you know, blue or red or green, and then the heat of the oven melts it. You put on wax paper and heat of the oven melts it.

Rita Black: Well, my lifesaver didn’t bake at the same rate as the gingerbread and it burned. It was so sad. It was just a huge miss. And I ended up eating all the lifesavers too, of course. And, and, and as usual, every baking episode, pre shifting myself, I ended up in a sugar coma. And every holiday, baking, just two memories. One being super excited about getting ready to holiday bake and anticipating eating the dough and the baked goods in limited amounts. Because every year I promised to be good this holiday and I thought I could handle baking without overdoing it. And then every year overeating the dough and the baked goods and feeling horrible. And then the second memory was feeling horrible, ending up in that sugar coma. And like, so you’re in the sugar haze, but then you’re yelling at yourself. So it’s horrible. You’re in this like self-induced coma, but also yelling at yourself and then just continuing to eat my way through the holidays.

Rita Black: So having said all this, if you haven’t joined me for my free online masterclass with weight hypnosis don’t wait till after the holidays. Get it now. Like go and join. It’s free, it’s online. You can sign up. It’s so easy. And get your mindset in a good place for the holidays and beyond. Don’t put it off until New Years because you’re gonna feel like crap again. Don’t do that to yourself. Break those subconscious overindulging patterns that can really spoil the holiday buzz and the links. It link is in the show notes. And now let’s dive into this episode. And I dedicate this episode both to the holiday bakers and the holiday non bakers alike. Let’s create a magical holiday where we are mindfully baking and enjoying the best of the season.

Rita Black: As someone who has kept 40 pounds off for 28 years, and I’ve changed my approach to holiday baking to be more mindful and healthy so I can enjoy baking as well, but just not end up on the couch in a hypoglycemic state or gaining 10 to 25 pounds over the season like I so easily used to do. So for all of you wanting to create those wonderful memories and enjoy your combo of sugar, fat, and flour are an addictive trio, it must be handled with care. So I have my holiday baking coaching session here for you, and I want you just to listen to it with the love and care that you give to your holiday baking. But now you’re gonna give yourself the love and care of preparing a little before, a little, during a little after. And it’s gonna get you to help to get you your mindset right around the baking before you even get started or any time of the year if sugar is, you know, a nemesis for you. So let’s get going on our thin bake off special.

Rita Black: So what you wanna do really, and, and, and all my approach is all through how you use your mind effectively. Because when you’re mentally prepared for things, then they always go better. You know? If you don’t have a plan, the world has one for you. And the holiday baking world, it is not a slimming plan. So you wanna be prepared before you head into your holiday baking. First of all what I do say is to eat before you you, you know, get all the flour, sugar and baking ingredients together and start putting stuff together. Because if you go into your holiday baking hungry, chances are you might start picking at the dough, spike your blood sugar that crashes, you feel hungry, you start eating more dough or start eating the frosting or just start. And then it’s like, oh, screw it. Well, I ate some of that, then I might as well eat it all. And, oh, screw that. I’ll just start my diet over January 1st.

Rita Black: So don’t do that. But just start with eating some protein before you head into it. Protein’s amazing ’cause it just really stabilizes your blood sugar insulin levels, you know, whether it’s eating just some yogurt or it’s some a piece of cheese or, or if you’re vegan making a nice vegan shake that you can just sip through your holiday baking your holiday baking. Now also, if you mentally prepare, you wanna know how much, and what I mean by that is you wanna know how much you are going to, oh, sorry, I’m gonna move that up there. You wanna know how much you, you are going to allow yourself to eat. I, I’m always one for not like sitting through the whole holiday baking and saying, I’m not going to eat anything. I just, I prepare ahead of time. I think, okay, I like eating dough.

Rita Black: I mean, I know that’s a no-no, there’s eggs, eggs and some dough. But you know, like I always am like, well, screw it. I like eating dough, but I am only gonna let myself, I’m going to be fed first. And then, you know, if I, I really like a little piece of gingerbread dough, I’m gonna allow myself to eat it, but I’m going to be aware of that ahead of time. Like I’m gonna have a boundary around that. So again, I don’t go into it thinking, well, I’m gonna be good and then start putting stuff in my mouth and then have it go off. Because if our mind is prepared ahead of time, if we have a vision and a plan, chances are we are gonna follow through on that much, much more. If we go into it thinking I’m going to be good, eat something and then go, well, screw it, you know, it’s all out the window anyway.

Rita Black: That’s what the mind likes to do. It will is. It’s that all or nothing attitude. And we don’t wanna go into this with an all or nothing attitude. Also, you wanna kind of go into your holiday baking, my guess is that you’re probably gonna be either holiday baking for other people or with other people, which is always super fun. So you wanna really think about your holiday baking, not just like here I’m, you know, making a bunch of cookies or cakes or pies or all of the above. But that I, I really, what I’m doing is creating something with love, right? And the true meaning of the holiday really isn’t in the eating the taste of the food. It’s the smells. It’s the sincere purity of your intentions to create joy for other people. So it’s nice to play music and to just really get into the spirit of the holiday because I feel like sometimes it all gets focused on the food rather than what’s going on here with us in our hearts.

Rita Black: And I think the more that we are, are focused on the true meaning of the holiday and that it’s about people coming together, or if you’re not coming together with people, the giving of the giving spirit, the generosity of the holiday, then you are, you know, way better off. And you’re not just thinking about the food, but you’re thinking about what’s going on in here. Also, you may think about making healthier holiday options for your friends and family. Chances are they may be trying to manage their weight too. And there’s awesome recipes if you just google like lower calorie cakes or low carb cakes or cookies. There’s so many options out there now. I mean, they’re, and they’re all right there at your fingertips. You know, I I, the last year I made a batch of low carb gingerbread that, that when was so popular with everybody, they were like, oh, thank, I’m going gluten free or I’m going keto.

Rita Black: This is so great. You know, so, so think about it. You might be surprised at how many people appreciate a healthier, lighter holiday treat. And then again, one more thing that you can do before you head into this is often, I mean, if you were at my house in the seventies and, well, yeah, it was the seventies, maybe the early eighties, but my mom’s house holiday baking was a two day event, right? Like, she was serious. She made like probably 15 different recipes and put them all together and give ’em to the neighbors and to the relatives. And I mean, it was a serious affair. So if you’re gonna be baking more than an hour or two, make sure you have healthy snacks that you can reach for. So again, that you aren’t starting to just eat cookies or broken off pieces of cake in instead of eating something nourishing and stabilizing so that you can, you know, you can stay within your healthy eating plan and stay maintaining or releasing weight through the holidays.

Rita Black: So now during the actual baking itself, I want you to understand, and maybe you already do that, the biggest portal into memory because so much of the holidays is about memory and that idea of family and love and connectedness. And so much of that portal isn’t actually through food, but through smell. So I want you to understand as you head into the holidays, that the most important thing isn’t your taste buds, but it’s your actually your, your your nose. And that the more you understand like the smell of what’s baking in the oven and the smell of the goodies is actually filling you with those memories and emotions way more than the actual tasting of those things, then you can again start to to, you know, create a distance between yourself. Because I think a lot of times what we do is we eat the memories.

Rita Black: We think, oh my gosh, you know, I had this when I was a kid and it was so good. And a lot of times, ironically, those things don’t even taste that good anymore. You know, you eat a couple of bites and they’re like, that’s too sweet, but then we’re eating it and then off we go to the races. But if you focus on the smell, I had a client, she released 50 pounds and she said, you know, all I do is I take it and I smell it, and I think about that memory and, and I don’t need to eat it. And it’s just, it fills me with joy. So if that is helpful for you, then, then take that to the bank and take that to your baking episode. So when I was a kid and when I was struggling with my weight, I baked a lot.

Rita Black: Like, and baking for me was like a drug-like experience. You know, it like flour, sugar and butter equaled heroin to me, you know, of people have their met meth kitchens. Well, my kitchen was, I felt like my kitchen was a drug den too, because I could get high off of eating those things. So again, that’s why it’s so important to prepare so that when you are put, if you end up putting flour, sugar in your mouth, that you are not putting it on an empty stomach because it will go to your brain and create like a drug-like experience. And then then you have a lot harder time managing, eating that day. And then obviously so much of a struggle with our weight over the holidays is because once we kind of get that high, then we’re chasing the high through the holidays, continuing to eat all that stuff all day long.

Rita Black: And that part of the brain gets engaged and then it just wants more and more and more. And we’re helplessly going, why am I eating all this food? I’m not even tasting. I’m not really, I mean, of course you enjoy some of it, but a lot of it we don’t even experience. And and then we gain weight and then we feel horrible at the beginning of the new year. And then we have to start one of those crazy new diets, new Year’s diets, which is another video, but let’s continue with this. Something you might consider. And this was a, a tip I got from an old baking expert. ’cause She never ate. She was so serious about baking. She was like, oh, I don’t eat, I never eat any of the dough. She was just like, she was like, this is just like a pure art form for her.

Rita Black: So it’d be like a painter eating his paints. So she always had a hot water, a glass of hot water that she could, she would wear plastic gloves and she could dip her hand and, you know, wipe off or dip her knife if she was like frosting cookies. And instead of licking the knife, which is what I love to do she would dip it in the hot water and then, and then she would have a towel and she would just wipe it off so that if she was gonna paint, you know, like a, a frosted different color, like gingerbread cookies or something, she wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t getting messy. And then licking hands and all of that kind of stuff. So that is also something that, a trick that I learned from my old mentor. And while you are baking and making Mary, please put on some amazing music and sing and dance while you’re doing it, because that is the joy of the holiday. You know, that movie elf that everybody loves? Well, I just think about being an elf in the kitchen and kicking up my heels and dancing and, and or listening to the Nutcracker suite and pretending I’m a ballerina. And, and that way you’re, you’re having, you’re moving, you’re getting exercise and you are baking.

Rita Black: And if and when you decide you’re going to eat your treat, like let’s say you bake a batch of cookies and you’ve planned like, I’m gonna sit down and eat two, you know, a gingerbread cookie, don’t eat it. Standing up mindlessly, sit down, you know, enjoy every bite. Be conscious and mindful so it means something to you and that you really experience it. Versus like, well, I didn’t even taste that one. Let me eat another one. Now, afterwards, this is, this is very important because this is gonna make or break your baking experience into the future as far as what those baked goods are gonna do. So here’s the thing, like stimulus control is 60, 70% of weight management. If it’s not in your environment, chances are you are not going to eat it. So baking a bunch of cookies and baking a bunch of holiday goods and having them out on the counters and in the, you know, right in your eye line, you are gonna have to have a relationship with those cookies.

Rita Black: ‘Cause They’re gonna call your name. You know, they’re gonna be like every time you walk by them, you have to have a conversation with yourself in your mind. Like, am I going to eat it? Am I not? And they might say, come over. We’re so cute. Will you just, you know, I’m a little gingerbread man and don’t you wanna eat me? You know, like you, you’re always having to manage that. And what happens is we’re stressed over the holiday seasons. Our, our willpower is very low during the holiday season because we’re so stimulated. So chances are, if it’s out and about, you’re gonna end, it’s gonna end up in your mouth. So please pack things up, put it away. I mean, hopefully you’re baking stuff, not just for you, but for other people. And that you are going to wrap up and, you know, take the things and get them out of your house leaving just a few for you that you can, you know, eat.

Rita Black: And, and I am always one for, you know, choosing a couple of holiday treats that I’m gonna really enjoy and have. And then, because I don’t need to eat everything in the holiday season to know that it’s there. You know, like I don’t need the candy canes ’cause I know what they taste like, you know, I don’t need, I’ll choose a couple of things, maybe some gingerbread, you know, maybe a couple of my like favorite holiday treats, but otherwise and then have a couple of servings of them. But otherwise I don’t need to eat my way through the holidays to know that I have had the holidays. In fact, I am happier, more connected to myself managing my weight and not feeling deprived at all, but feeling like I’m thriving because I’m not stuck in that coma of sugar car, you know, sugar, flour and, and and butter.

Rita Black: Which can really put you in a comatose state and make you feel bad and unhealthy and really, really bring your holidays down, really. So don’t think deprived, think thrive. And after you are done with your holiday baking, please rest and take care of yourself. Because when you’re, we rested, it is you’re, you’re, you’re renewing your willpower. And my famous three by rule, that’s something that I think you should know about if you don’t, maybe you do, if you know me and know my stuff. But the idea is that after three bites, our mouth experience goes from 90% down to 20%. So most of these holiday baked goods, we only really need three bites of to really know, like, oh, I remember what grandma’s fruitcake tasted like, yeah, that’s good. I only need three bites, you know? Oh, I know what fudge tastes like. Okay, that’s good.

Rita Black: I got that down. So, so, you know, eat the three bites, enjoy them, be mindful about them, but then maybe you don’t need them anymore. All right? So I really feel like you are ready and prepared now to head out and to bake powerfully through the holiday season.

Rita Black: Okay everyone, so take that batch out of the oven, let it cool, and get over to my show notes where you’ll find the link to my free masterclass, online masterclass with weight hypnosis and some great and powerful mindsets to keep you rocking the holidays thin thinking style. Have a great week, and remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door, the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it. I will see you here next week.

Rita Black: Thanks for listening to The Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that episode go by way too fast for you? If so, and you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com. That’s www.shiftweightmastery.com, where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release tips, strategies, and more. And be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book from Fat to Thin Thinking, Unlock Your Mind For Permanent Weight Loss, and to learn how to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode.