Rita Black: Ahh! There is nothing more traditional for many of us as baking during the holidays, even if you don't bake during the year. So many people use baking as a way to bond with others or just to bake the things that others love to receive. If baking is your jam, but also it is a challenge for your waistline, today's Thin Thinking episode is all about thin thinking strategies about letting the dough raise without raising your weight as well. So grab that rolling pin and come on in.

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, best selling 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.

Rita Black: Ho, ho ho. Everyone come on in. Hello and welcome to today's show where we are gonna discuss baking. That's right. Baking. I can't tell you how many bakers we have here in the Thin Thinking Community. Do you bake? Well, if you bake, I have a question for you. Have you ever had a cookie gun? You may or may not. If you are from a German background, you may, or a Scandinavian background, I don't know if other cultures have cookie guns, but a cookie gun is basically a contraption that you put dough in and you squeeze it out with like a trigger finger and the dough comes out in these nice shapes like little, you know, little stars, little Christmas trees, little bows and things like that, so and so. It's called the cookie gun. And it's perfect for delicate sugar cookies and German Christmas cookies.

Rita Black: My mom used to make all types of cookies and every year, this was my mom's way of, you know, being the most popular lady in the neighborhood, is she would make literally, because she had these, my mom, when she died oh my gosh, she had, how many cookbooks did she make? Because she's, my mom was so old school. So she made her own cookbooks. She would clip recipes out of all the papers and have them organized with index you know, like binders with the index, you know, pies, cookies, cakes, that kind of thing. And she had these big, thick binders and I inherited all of her cookbooks. I don't really use them, but I have them sitting there. They remind me of my mother. And I've worked on getting rid of some of them because, you know, we're working on elimination, not, you know adding but subtraction. But anyway, so my mom would open up these cookbooks and literally make 12 different cookies. And it was a big organized thing. Maybe your mom did this too, or your grandma did it, or maybe your dad did it. I don't know. But it was like literally a production company at our house. The table was filled with different trays of cookies. And of course for me, a sugar carb addict, it was like being in a meth lab, you know, or a weed dispensary or, you know, a heroin shop. I don't know. It was just like drug heaven. She made fudge, she made rumbles, she made all these cookies. So of all the cookies though, my favorite was this German, well, I don't even know if it was German, but we used the cookie gun for it. And it was this, it was like a cream cheese orange cookie, and it was so delicate and light, so it felt like, oh, this isn't that bad for you. And it was made a very simple ingredients, so it wasn't that heavy.

Rita Black: But what happened is, it was a trigger food for me, so I couldn't stop eating it. So I remember one year, I literally, my mom made the dough, she said, I'm gonna run out some errands, you know how to do this, make the cookies. So she left. And I was like, okay. So I started making, I made like a pan of the cookies and then I just put that gun in my mouth and I started shooting dough in my mouth, straight in my mouth. Dough. And I was like, dang, this is good. And I just kept going until that gun was empty and I was so, and then I was, and then all of a sudden I felt sick. I felt like, oh God, I ate so much. And then my mom came home and she's like, why is there only one pan of the cookies? And I was so embarrassed and I had to tell her and she had to go make some more dough and she wouldn't let me, you know, make, have the gun anymore. So anyway, but I just remember jamming that dough down my throat and you know, like literally my eyes rolling back in my head in some sort of heroin stupor. But that's my memory of the cookie gun.

Rita Black: So today's episode is my love letter to you all, a practice coaching session on how to avoid the easy and seductive pitfalls of holiday baking so that you can bake but in a mindful way, not like me in the cookie gun shot into my mouth, that allows you to stay healthy through the holidays so you can bake and have some of those goodies, but stay connected to yourself and stay on your track, whatever that track or goal is for the holidays.

Rita Black: So maybe something, if you haven't done this yet, go and download my free Sugar Shift Outta Sugar Cravings Hypnosis Session, because I know that will help you over the holidays. That's free and it's in the show notes. So go check it out. Okay, let's get our aprons on and get ready for the thin thinking bake off.

Rita Black: So what you wanna do really, and all my approaches 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.

Rita Black: First of all, what I do say is to eat before 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. So don't do that, but just start with eating some protein before you head into it. Protein's amazing because it just really stabilizes your blood sugar insulin levels, you know, whether it's eating just some yogurt or some a piece of cheese 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 want to know how much, and what I mean by that is you want to know how much you are going to, oh, sorry, I'm gonna move that up there, you wanna know how much you are going to allow yourself to eat. 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. I mean, I know that's a no-no, there's eggs, eggs and some dough, but you, like, I always am like, well, screw it, I like eating dough, but I'm only gonna let myself, I'm going to be fed first. And then, you know, if 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.

Rita Black: Because if our mind is prepared ahead of time, if we have a vision and a plan, chances are we are going to 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. That's what the mind likes to do. It will, it's that all or nothing attitude. And we don't want to go into this with an all or nothing attitude. Also, you want to kind of go into your holiday baking, my guess is that you're probably going to 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 really, what I'm doing is creating a, something with love, right?

Rita Black: And the true meaning of the holiday really isn't in the eating the taste of the food, 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. And I think the more that we 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.

Rita Black: 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, and they're all right there at your fingertips, you know. The last year I made a batch of low carb gingerbread that when was so popular with everybody, they were like, oh, thank, I'm going gluten free or I'm going keto. This is so great, you know? 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 gave them to the neighbors and to the relatives and I mean, it was a serious affair.

Rita Black: 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 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 it, 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 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, you know, create a distance between yourself. Because I think a lot of times what we do is we eat the memories. 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 I don't need to eat it. And it's just, it fills me with joy. So if that is helpful for you, then take that to the bank and take that to your baking episode.

Rita Black: So when I was a kid and when I was struggling with my weight, I baked a lot. Like, and baking for me was like a drug-like experience, you know? Like flour, sugar and butter equaled heroin to me, you know? People have their 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, if you end up putting flour, sugar in your mouth, that you are not putting 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. 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 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 Year diets, which is another video, but let's continue with this.

Rita Black: Something you might consider, And this was a tip I got from an old baking expert because 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. So it would 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 going to paint, you know, like a frosted different color, like gingerbread cookies or something, she wasn't, you know, it wasn't getting messy and then looking hands and all of that kind of stuff.

Rita Black: So that is also something that, a trick that I learned from my old mentor. And while you are baking and making merry, 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 or listening to the Netcracker suite and pretending I'm a ballerina. And that way, you're, you're having, you're moving, you're getting exercise and you are baking. 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 going to 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.

Rita Black: 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 going to 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 going to have to have a relationship with those cookies because they're going to 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, we just, you know, I'm a little gingerbread man and don't you want to 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 willpower is very low during the holiday season because we're so stimulated. So chances are, if it's out and about, you're going to end, it's going to 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 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 because I know what they taste like, you know? I don't need, I'll choose a couple of things, maybe eat 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 butter. 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.

Rita Black: And after you are done with your holiday baking, please rest and take care of yourself because when you're rested, it is, you're renewing your willpower. And my famous three bite 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. I got that down. So, you know, eat those three bites, enjoy them, be mindful about them, but then maybe you don't need them anymore. All right?

Rita Black: So I really feel like you are ready and prepared now to head out and to bake powerfully through the holiday season. All right, well I can smell those amazing treats in the oven already and I hope that today was helpful and that you're ready to dive into holiday baking powerfully and healthfully and mindfully. And also, if you're still with me right now, if you write a review, you can go get your free download in the show notes for that Sugar Shift Outta Sugar Cravings. But also if you write a review for our show, a review, just remember, reviews are great for us because they help us get discovered. By writing a good review will help other people discover us and join the world of Thin Thinking. If you write one, take a picture of it or send copy and paste and send it to me. There is a place in the show notes, or you can send it to me at rita shift weight mastery.com. And if you do that, I'm going ti send you a link to the shift store with a coupon code to get a free download. So whatever download you want from the shift store, it's yours when you write that review and you send it in. So thank you so much for your support and like I said, we'll send that coupon code and there are so many great downloads in there. So go write that review and get your download. Be ready for those holidays. Okay? So have an amazing week, happy baking.

Rita Black: 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.

Rita Black: If you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of weight release, head on over to www shift weight mastery.com. That's www shift weight mastery.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.