[00:00:00] Halloween is almost here, and you know what that means.

[00:00:04] Those cute little miniature candy bars are showing up everywhere, and before you know it, one innocent little piece can turn into a full-blown sugar spell.

[00:00:16] And here’s the scary part: Halloween candy can be the gateway to an entire holiday season of cravings, overeating, and feeling like you’ve lost control.

[00:00:27] But it doesn’t have to be that way.

[00:00:29] That’s why I am bringing back our annual Halloween candy episode.

[00:00:35] We are diving into the spooky little tricks our brains play on us around trigger foods, why certain treats seem to call our names, and how to use some powerful mindset strategies to break the spell. So grab your broomstick and come on in.

[00:00:59] Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym?

[00:01:05] 80% of our weight struggle is mental.

[00:01:10] That’s right, the key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind.

[00:01:16] Hi there. I’m Rita Black.

[00:01:18] I’m a clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, best-selling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery process.

[00:01:26] 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.

[00:01:39] And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis.

[00:01:46] Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years.

[00:01:52] Enter the Thin Thinking podcast where you, too, will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling.

[00:02:00] 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.

[00:02:13] Sound good? Let’s get started.

[00:02:17] Hello, my pretties.

[00:02:19] Hello. Happy Halloween.

[00:02:22] It’s the wicked witch of Halloween candy cravings here.

[00:02:26] Come on in. I won’t hurt you.

[00:02:30] I am here to help you find the good witch on the other side.

[00:02:38] Okay. Oh, goodness. All right. We all know it.

[00:02:43] Halloween’s coming, and that means it’s time for the annual Halloween candy episode, okay?

[00:02:52] Oh, my God, we have been doing this episode every year since the podcast started, I swear, and honestly, there is a reason I keep bringing it back because every year, dang, those little miniature candy bars keep showing up, and every year our brains can play the same old tricks on us.

[00:03:10] They just do.

[00:03:11] So the other day, my husband says to me, “Shall we go out and buy some Halloween candy?”

[00:03:19] And I said, “Absolutely not.”

[00:03:21] First of all, why would we buy Halloween candy two weeks before Halloween?

[00:03:25] And secondly, why do we need those little miniature candy bars hanging around the house calling our names?

[00:03:31] I mean, seriously, those things are dangerous, and I just don’t let them in the house.

[00:03:38] Now, if you want to go out and buy that candy that you don’t particularly care for, that’s perfectly fine.

[00:03:43] But why bring in a big old bag of your favorite trigger foods weeks before you actually need to give it away?

[00:03:51] That is just a fool’s folly, right?

[00:03:54] Because here is the thing we all know, Halloween candy can be the gateway drug to the entire holiday season.

[00:04:03] And that’s not a newsflash.

[00:04:05] And we all know it starts in October, we’re rolling through Thanksgiving, holiday parties, Christmas cookies, New Year’s, and then what the heck happened?

[00:04:14] And I don’t want that for you.

[00:04:16] I want you to be able to enjoy Halloween, have fun, dress up, answer the door for those cute little kids, and not have to spend the next two months battling the ghouls and goblins of your own cravings, right?

[00:04:31] Now, I don’t know about you, but I do not know what I’m going to be this year for Halloween.

[00:04:37] Are you like me?

[00:04:38] I don’t know.

[00:04:38] I think I’m insane, because I will have these flashes of brilliance of ideas of Halloween costumes.

[00:04:48] And during the year, I’ll be in the summer, I’ll say, “That will be my Halloween costume for October,” and then I won’t be able to remember.

[00:04:56] So I end up just wearing a witch’s hat or something and just calling it a day, which I suppose is appropriate for today’s episode.

[00:05:04] But seriously, I think one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is going into Halloween having a strategy and feeling strong.

[00:05:13] That is why I am gifting everyone a sugar-free hypnosis session.

[00:05:19] If you go to www.shiftweightmastery.com/sugar, you will have a little form to fill out, and then voila, our sugar-free hypnosis session will end up in your inbox.

[00:05:35] So how about that?

[00:05:36] So hopefully between that and today’s episode, you will be one step closer to feeling strong through the holiday season.

[00:05:45] So let’s step in to our Halloween candy episode.

[00:05:52] Enjoy.

[00:05:52] Halloween is the official opening of the season of candy, but let’s face it, until we all go on a sugar detox in January, it’s usually from now until the end of the year, unfortunately.

[00:06:04] So, I want you to have a great relationship with sugar now, so please listen in.

[00:06:10] Sugar and other trigger foods.

[00:06:12] I mean, because for some of you, you might not be a sugar person.

[00:06:15] You might be a savory salty person, or just a savory person, so I’m not excluding you in the trigger foods episode at all.

[00:06:24] So please listen in.

[00:06:26] But if you are into sugar and don’t wanna be run by sugar anymore, please, if you haven’t, grab my free Shift Out of Sugar Cravings hypnosis session that is in the show notes, and it is also available on my website, www.shiftweightmastery.com.

[00:06:48] That’s www.shiftweightmastery.com, and grab it there.

[00:06:54] And let’s dive into today’s episode, shall we?

[00:06:58] And now let’s just unwrap the wrapper around these trigger foods and get to the soft and caramely center of it all, okay?

[00:07:07] “So what exactly are trigger foods, Rita?” you would ask.

[00:07:14] So you may know what trigger foods are, but if you don’t, a trigger food is a food that we really, we eat one and then we want another one, and then we want another one.

[00:07:29] And really trigger foods are foods that our brain and bodies react to that Kind of render us powerless.

[00:07:35] We’ll eat the whole bag, we’ll eat the whole gallon, we’ll eat all of it.

[00:07:40] And typically trigger foods are wired in kind of in a special way in our brain.

[00:07:46] And from my understanding with working with people in weight management for 20 years, I think there’s a genetic component, I think there’s an emotional component, and I think that these foods get wired in our brain and hit our dopamine center in a special way.

[00:08:07] Because nobody has the same trigger foods, you know?

[00:08:12] I have very specific trigger foods for me, and of the thousands of people I’ve helped, and obviously there are trigger foods that are common for a lot of people.

[00:08:23] For a lot of people, frozen yogurt is a trigger food.

[00:08:26] Popcorn can be a trigger food for people.

[00:08:29] Candy is definitely a trigger food for people, and especially that really sweet, sweet candy, and that is me.

[00:08:35] That is, my trigger foods are all really sugar-based.

[00:08:39] But they don’t need to be sugar-based.

[00:08:41] They can be they can be a savory food.

[00:08:44] They can even be a non-carbohydrate food.

[00:08:46] But the trigger foods are just foods that we tend to not once we begin eating them, we really don’t have a lot of control over them.

[00:08:55] We can’t stop at just one.

[00:08:58] And mine are, just to share with you, Sweetarts.

[00:09:02] Mine are also candy corn, AKA the Halloween candy that is my biggest nemesis.

[00:09:09] And then, my other one, probably my favorite one, other than frosting, and I’ve done a whole episode on frosting, so, i’m not gonna get into frosting today, but I’m talking about candies today ’cause it’s Halloween are wine gums.

[00:09:23] Do you guys know what wine gums are?

[00:09:25] Now, if you’re British, you absolutely know, or if you’re maybe Australian or even Canadian.

[00:09:31] But wine gums are kind of like gummy bears, but you think wine gums.

[00:09:35] When I first moved to England, I moved there with my husband in the beginning of well, many, many years ago.

[00:09:42] So I lived there probably about 30 years ago at the beginning of our married life.

[00:09:46] And, wine gums, I discovered them, and I…

[00:09:50] People say, “Oh, yes. Oh, I love those wine gums.”

[00:09:54] And I thought they were talking about gum that was flavored like Chardonnay or Cabernet.

[00:09:59] I mean, like… And that was the like, I don’t know if anybody’s watching, Ted Lasso, which is about an American coach who’s over in England, and he kind of highlights all the different isms between the Brits and the Americans.

[00:10:13] But I’ll tell you a really quick funny other thing is there’s this pickle in England, and it’s a spread.

[00:10:20] You put it with cheese, you eat it with cheese.

[00:10:22] It’s like a dark brown, very sweet relish basically.

[00:10:26] It’s like a, a dark brown relish that has onions in it, and it’s I don’t think it does have pickle in it, but they call it pickle, right?

[00:10:34] It’s like a chutney.

[00:10:37] And I worked, when I lived in England, I worked at a sandwich shop very briefly during… I was a student there, so I had like a winter break, and so I got some job.

[00:10:47] I needed some money, so I got a job at the sandwich shop and somebody came up and they’ll go, “Oh, yes, I’ll have a turkey sandwich with pickle.”

[00:10:54] And I thought, oh, well, they wanted pickles in the, sandwich.

[00:10:58] And I went to go and, go to the refrigerator and look for… and I was like, “Where are the pickles? And where’s the pickle? Where’s the pickle?”

[00:11:06] And the girl who was working with me was like, “Oh, it’s right over there. It’s right over there. You can’t see it? It’s right in front of your face.”

[00:11:11] And I was like, “I don’t see any pickle.”

[00:11:12] And then she brings out this jar of brown stuff, and I was like, “Oh, that’s pickle.”

[00:11:18] So that was my introduction to pickle.

[00:11:21] And actually, I really, when I lived there, loved pickle because it had sugar in it, and of course, anything with sugar stimulates my brain.

[00:11:30] But anyway, so our trigger foods… I digress greatly.

[00:11:34] I’m sorry.

[00:11:35] I’m gonna bring you all the way back.

[00:11:36] I had my little remembrance of England.

[00:11:38] But, I’m bringing you back to this idea that your trigger foods are always your trigger foods.

[00:11:47] And I think what I see people getting stuck in is it’s kind of like smokers.

[00:11:52] When I work with smokers, they think that sometimes people think that when you quit smoking if you go for enough time after a while, you could just have a cigarette every once in a while, right?

[00:12:06] But the problem is, in my experience with working with smokers for 20 years and being a former pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker myself, is once the brain is wired with a highly addictive substance, the wires even though they’re no longer, those wires are no longer primed, those you know, the wires of that habit they exist, right?

[00:12:28] So with smokers, a lot of times they’ll stop smoking and then they’ll go for a year or two years or I’ve had smokers tell me stories, they went for 20 years and then they were like, “Well, it’s been 20 years. I haven’t had a cigarette. I can just have a cigarette.”

[00:12:43] And they smoke one, and then that part of their brain gets a little nicotine, and it starts to sort of tripwire the rest of the wiring.

[00:12:53] And I see this again and again and again.

[00:12:55] So when I work with smokers, it’s like you have to understand that you smoke one, the rest smoke you.

[00:13:02] And it’s really, I do see with our trigger foods, I’m not saying with all, foods, not all sweet foods, but with a lot of trigger foods, it is the same sort of thing for people.

[00:13:15] So like, if I eat candy corn, the impact in my brain because my brain has been wired, I have an emotional connection to candy corn, I have a physiological connection to candy corn, and I have a history with candy corn where I have been able to sit down with two bags of candy corn and eat the whole thing and get myself into a sugar high, sugar coma.

[00:13:36] Even though candy corn and me are an unhappy yolking, because obviously all of those episodes with bags and bags of candy corn had ended up with me laying down in a sugar coma feeling horrible and awful.

[00:13:51] And totally feeling like a fool and like a loser and all that too for not having that willpower.

[00:13:57] Even though I’ve had those memories, there in my mind the next year, because it’s been a year, “Oh, this year I can manage the candy corn,” right?

[00:14:06] And then I’ll buy it and then again, I’m brought to my knees by candy corn again and again.

[00:14:12] And I’m brought to my knees by wine gums again and again.

[00:14:15] Okay, I could tell you another, a quick London story.

[00:14:17] I had been on a diet and I had quit smoking.

[00:14:20] So I was a big smoker when I lived in London.

[00:14:23] And as many people are.

[00:14:25] And I had quit smoking, I’d lost weight.

[00:14:29] I was like, okay, you know?

[00:14:31] I went and in the Underground they had a like the candy shop, like the 7-Eleven, but it was underneath in the Underground.

[00:14:37] And those of you who are like in cities that have underground transportation, it’s probably the same.

[00:14:43] Like New York, I think.

[00:14:44] I don’t remember, but I know I would get off the tube and I would pass by this sort of stand that had wine gums and cigarettes, and one day I was just like, you know what?

[00:14:54] It’s been so long since I’ve had a cigarette and so long since I’ve had wine gums.

[00:14:58] I’m gonna buy both.

[00:15:00] I’ll just have a few wine gums, and I’ll just smoke a few cigarettes, and I’ll throw away the pack, and I’ll just eat a couple of wine gums, and then I’ll give them to my husband, and then I’ll be done with that.

[00:15:10] But, I just feel like I can have a couple.

[00:15:13] And of course, then it cut to me walking down the street, like eating four wine gums all in my mouth at the same time, and smoking a cigarette.

[00:15:25] And then smoking another cigarette and eating another four wine gums and then, smoking myself and eating wine gums, like after one gum, and it was just like, it was… you know, of course.

[00:15:34] I was brought to my knees by both of the, my habits.

[00:15:38] So we really have to understand that we have a relationship.

[00:15:42] Our brain puts our wine gum in the same place in our brain as our friends and our family.

[00:15:47] There is an emotional, visceral connection to our trigger food sometimes.

[00:15:51] So it’s really hard for us to really make peace with the fact that maybe we need to put those trigger foods to the back of our mind.

[00:16:00] And you can… there’s a million other foods.

[00:16:02] There’s so many other candies that I can have a few of and take it or leave it.

[00:16:08] Chocolate is one of those. I’m not a chocoholic.

[00:16:10] Some of you may be, but that’s not something that’s a problem for me.

[00:16:14] I can eat a nice piece of chocolate, be like, “Okay, thank you very much.

[00:16:18] That was lovely,” and enjoy it mindfully and move on with my day.

[00:16:22] It doesn’t haunt me and hunt me down like candy corn does.

[00:16:28] So, I just wanted to have this conversation with you guys because I want to be real with you with regards to, your relationship with your trigger foods and maybe starting to have a different relationship with them.

[00:16:43] So I wanted to give you a couple of tools so that they don’t own you, and especially if you’re one of those people that around Halloween, those foods end up in your household, whether it’s you buying them or your family buying them or your kids bringing them in their baskets.

[00:16:59] I’d like to give you a word of caution, and I don’t mean to be a killjoy because I know, again, like it’s a love-hate relationship.

[00:17:06] We’re eating and we’re like, “Why am I eating this?

[00:17:09] I don’t wanna be eating this, but it’s ugh.”

[00:17:11] So there’s a love-hate.

[00:17:13] Like, we don’t want it, but we do want it, and I completely… Our brains are so screwy when it comes to things like smoking.

[00:17:23] People will be like, “Why am I smoking this cigarette? I hate it so much.”

[00:17:26] And the other part of the brain’s like, “Because you love it.”

[00:17:28] So the part of your brain that loves your trigger foods doesn’t really care about your weight management, doesn’t care about your happiness, doesn’t care about your blood sugar insulin levels or that you’re pre-diabetic or that it’s a problem for you.

[00:17:44] It’s just like, “I want what I want when I want it, and you’re gonna give it to me.”

[00:17:48] So we have to start to listen and really create a firm boundary with ourselves and our trigger foods.

[00:17:55] So one, one technique I would say is to really just make your trigger foods not an option for you and to get really clear on what they are.

[00:18:03] I think sometimes people aren’t quite sure, like is that a trigger food or is it not?

[00:18:07] So hopefully this conversation has helped you, kind of ascertain, like, is that really a problem for me or is that not?

[00:18:14] And if you’re thinking it’s a problem for you, it probably is .

[00:18:19] But, sorry, but it probably is.

[00:18:21] Again, don’t hate me.

[00:18:23] I’m just the messenger.

[00:18:24] I am, I didn’t make this up.

[00:18:27] So what I would say is creating something like a not an option zone or and I’m gonna get into a way that you can have your trigger food, so don’t hate me completely, but it’s, the not an option is just really clear.

[00:18:39] Because and I would just say, “I am XYZ free.”

[00:18:43] Like, I am wine gum free, or I am candy corn free, because when I say, “I don’t want to eat candy corns,” or, “I don’t eat candy corns,” or, “I’m trying not to eat candy corns,” or, “I’m trying to do this Halloween without eating candy corns,” that’s all deprivation language in my brain, and that makes me feel deprived.

[00:19:00] It makes me feel like, oh, I’m one of those dieters and I have to… but when I say I’m candy corn free, in my brain it opens up my brain.

[00:19:07] It’s like, oh, I’m free.

[00:19:09] I’ve chosen my freedom.

[00:19:11] I’ve chosen to stay clear of that stuff because I know the second I put a candy corn in my mouth, I’m not there anymore, but that other part of my brain is there saying, “And now have another one, and now have another one, and now have another one.”

[00:19:23] Right? So I choose my freedom.

[00:19:25] It’s the same with smoking. I’ve been a non-smoker for 25 years.

[00:19:28] I’ve chosen that.

[00:19:29] I’ve seen people smoking and it looks… I was like, that looks damn good.

[00:19:34] Like I’m, I like occasionally.

[00:19:37] Most times I see people smoking I feel so sorry for them, but, occasionally and it hasn’t been for years, but I remember in the first years of my being a non-smoker, I’ll be like, oh yeah, that looks good.

[00:19:46] But then I’d say, but then I would wa- if I had that cigarette, I would wake up tomorrow, and then I would want another one, and then I would want another one, and my mind wouldn’t be my own anymore.

[00:19:57] It would be gone.

[00:19:59] And I’ve learned that having that freedom of my mind, being clear and being aligned with myself, feels so much better than eating candy corn.

[00:20:08] Because really honestly, after three bites of candy corn, we don’t even experience it anymore, or whatever your thing is.

[00:20:16] We’re then off to the races, and our dopamine center is just going and again, and again, and again.

[00:20:21] Remember, I don’t know if you’ve heard me quote this study, but they gave rats sugar water, and they stimulated the dopamine center in the rat brain, and the rat continued to drink sugar water till its stomach exploded.

[00:20:32] So that part of the brain that is driving your eating that trigger food doesn’t care about you or your health, right?

[00:20:38] You can see, so we need to be aggressive back because that part of our brain will speak to us and it’s smarter than us, right?

[00:20:44] It will say, “Oh, come on. You’ll just have one. Oh, come on.”

[00:20:48] It looks so good and you’re gonna enjoy it, and then tomorrow you’re not gonna eat it again for another year.

[00:20:54] Oh, they’re only here this time of year.

[00:20:56] Or, if you go and, oh, they only have them in this part of the state.

[00:21:00] Whatever it is the brain will bug you like a child that wants some money from you, right?

[00:21:05] And if you aren’t clear like, “No, that’s not an option and I’m choosing to be wine gum-free, thank you very much.”

[00:21:11] Now believe me, I’ve had people bring me bags of wine gum from England.

[00:21:15] Every time people come to visit me in my house.

[00:21:18] I don’t know, I tell them, “Don’t bring me wine gums,” and their brains must just absorb oh, bring her wine gums ’cause they bring me these damn bags of wine gums and I’m like, “Nope, I’m not gonna take ’em.”

[00:21:30] I give them to my husband.

[00:21:31] I’m like, “Get rid of these,” to my husband.

[00:21:34] And of course then my kids end up eating them or whatever.

[00:21:36] But yeah, I’m wine gum-free, and I’m a happy wine gum person till they invent wine gum that sugar-free gum that tastes like wine.

[00:21:45] Maybe I might buy that.

[00:21:47] See, it’s not a bad idea.

[00:21:49] So now I wanna read to you from my book From Fat to Thin Thinking and yes, it’s, I’m being lazy.

[00:21:56] It’s the lazy man’s way of walking you through this other tool and technique.

[00:22:00] But, I think I lay it out pretty well in the book, so I’m just gonna read to you from it.

[00:22:04] And this is in underneath stimulus control.

[00:22:07] So that, that’s one of the skills of weight mastery is stimulus control.

[00:22:11] It’s really a huge skill, and people really don’t seem to know that so much is that if a food, especially a trigger food, is in our environment, it’s gonna call our name.

[00:22:22] It’s gonna say, “Hey, Rita, I’m over here. Come and get me.”

[00:22:27] And it will wear you down.

[00:22:29] And so one really key skill is to remove those things from your environment.

[00:22:35] And I think a lot of us think, “Well, I should be able to have them in my environment.”

[00:22:39] Well, why? Really, why?

[00:22:41] Like, would an alcoholic have an open bar at their home?

[00:22:45] And again I don’t want us to think of ourselves as like, oh, we’re this person who just, can’t be controlled.

[00:22:52] No, you’re a powerful person, and you’re a cool person, and you’re a highly functioning person.

[00:22:58] But your brain has been wired and your body has been wired in a particular way around this particular food, so why the hell would you have it in your house?

[00:23:07] Why the hell would you have to have a conversation with that thing again and again?

[00:23:12] It’s like a toxic friend.

[00:23:14] You had a lot of fun in the beginning of the relationship, but now they’re kind of bugging you.

[00:23:19] And now they’re bringing you down.

[00:23:21] And so why have them around, honestly?

[00:23:24] Get them out.

[00:23:25] Respect yourself enough for doing that.

[00:23:27] Show up for yourself and love yourself.

[00:23:29] And you can have other food in your house.

[00:23:31] I’m not saying you have to strip your house bare of all goodies.

[00:23:35] I’m just saying that these foods that bring you to your knees love and respect yourself enough to get them the hell out of your house and bring some foods in your house that you can enjoy and have in your house, right?

[00:23:46] Show up for yourself.

[00:23:48] But now, having said that, here’s a way.

[00:23:50] It’s called creating a loving boundary with your trigger foods.

[00:23:55] So I’m just gonna read from the book.

[00:23:56] So life is long, and there will be times when you want to indulge in a pleasurable treat, including your trigger foods.

[00:24:04] How do you set your mind up for success when having that treat?

[00:24:08] Make a rule with your inner coach ahead of time about when and how much of a treat that you are going to enjoy.

[00:24:17] That treat is not an option at any other time.

[00:24:21] I call this strategy creating a loving boundary Alan Daher, PhD, a neurologist at Montreal’s Neurological Institute, conducted a study on expectation and brain activity with regard to smoking.

[00:24:39] He measured the brain activity of smokers who were kept from smoking for four hours.

[00:24:44] One group was told that after four hours, they could smoke.

[00:24:49] The other group was told they needed to continue to abstain from smoking for six more hours.

[00:24:55] The smokers who expected the cigarette after four hours began to show high levels of arousal the closer their time came to smoke.

[00:25:04] The other smokers who did not expect a cigarette showed no arousal.

[00:25:10] When the brain knows that a reward or treat will not be forthcoming, it puts the attention elsewhere.

[00:25:17] Once you make a decision about something and you are clear about that boundary, it helps your mind to say no easily.

[00:25:26] So here’s how and this definitely happens with smokers.

[00:25:29] Like, I’d ask them all the time.

[00:25:30] I say “When you get on a plane and go, are you okay?”

[00:25:33] Even though they might be a very heavy smoker, “Yes, I’m fine.

[00:25:36] I might think about the cigarette, but it’s not an option, and my mind just forgets about it and moves on to something else.”

[00:25:42] So here’s how to do it step by step.

[00:25:44] Identify the trigger food. This should be easy.

[00:25:46] It’s the one you can’t stop eating.

[00:25:49] Think of what a single serving would be in both amount and calories if that’s your thing.

[00:25:57] And make sure that it allows you to make sure that is a real serving.

[00:26:00] It’s not a multiple serving, but a real serving.

[00:26:03] ‘Cause you don’t wanna eat too much.

[00:26:04] You don’t wanna trigger your brain.

[00:26:06] And now think of an environment in which it will be safe to eat a single serving.

[00:26:11] This environment is one that you have not had a stimulus control issue in.

[00:26:18] So, I wouldn’t advise in your car. I wouldn’t advise in your home.

[00:26:21] You wanna take it outside your house.

[00:26:23] So create a limit how, on how often you might enjoy your trigger food in this setting.

[00:26:28] Create a limit.

[00:26:30] It keeps you from overindulging or abusing the boundary.

[00:26:34] For instance, you say your trigger food is ice cream.

[00:26:37] If you can’t stop eating the ice cream until the carton is empty, our stimulus control strategy would keep ice cream out of your house.

[00:26:46] But what if you want to be able to enjoy its creamy goodness every once in a while?

[00:26:51] You can create a new loving boundary with ice cream.

[00:26:54] For example, a loving boundary for ice cream might be once a week.

[00:26:58] I can have a scoop of my favorite at the ice cream parlor, right?

[00:27:02] Or your local ice cream store.

[00:27:04] So you’re sitting and eating it there or outside on the street, but you aren’t taking it into your home, and you’re not buying a carton.

[00:27:12] You are giving yourself something you enjoy, but in a moderate and measured way outside your environment.

[00:27:19] So that is a way that you can create your loving boundary around your trigger foods.

[00:27:29] I hope with this Halloween season, or any season that you might be, that you have found this a helpful conversation.

[00:27:38] This Halloween, don’t buy candy that is your trigger.

[00:27:41] Do yourself a loving favor.

[00:27:43] And if you have kids and they bring that trigger food home, just have them keep their candy out of sight, out of mind from you, right?

[00:27:52] Stimulus control. You might even have a little mantra for yourself.

[00:27:57] You might have a mantra for yourself that says “It’s my kids’ candy, not mine,” or, “I don’t wear my kids’ clothes and I don’t eat their candy either,” right?

[00:28:08] So just keep it out of sight, out of mind, practice stimulus control, practice it’s not an option.

[00:28:15] And if you wanna have a Tootsie Roll, if that’s your thing, your trigger food, have a Tootsie Roll, but not in your home, not in your car, somewhere out, and have one, enjoy it, be mindful of it.

[00:28:26] And I would also advise having it not on an empty stomach, because that will even tripwire your brain more quickly, but have it after a meal, okay?

[00:28:35] All right, everybody, I hope you have a wonderful time if you are celebrating Halloween, a powerful time.

[00:28:42] I love getting dressed up. It is fun.

[00:28:44] That is one thing I do every year, or I try to do, especially I like to dress up and answer the door, go out walking in the neighborhood.

[00:28:52] But definitely pick up that sugar cravings hypnosis session if you haven’t already.

[00:28:58] And have an amazing week and Halloween.

[00:29:01] And remember that the key, and probably the only key, to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you.

[00:29:09] So keep listening and find it.

[00:29:11] Do you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release?

[00:29:15] Head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com. That’s www.shiftweightmastery.com, where you will find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release, tips, strategies, and more.

[00:29:35] 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.

[00:29:46] Thanks for listening to the Thin Thinking podcast.

[00:29:50] Did that episode go by way too fast for you?

[00:29:53] If so, and you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com.

[00:30:04] That’s www.shiftweightmastery.com, where you will find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release, tips, strategies, and more.

[00:30:18] 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.