EP. 125 Control Your Candy Cravings

Hey, LuxeLifer! It is happening! Enrollment into my life-changing lifestyle membership, Stop Dieting Forever, officially opens on Halloween, October 31st, after the delivery of my free 3-part video series, Holiday Help, which will begin on Monday, October 24th. Now the holiday season is quickly approaching and your concerns about holiday weight gain are quickly growing. I hear you. Y'all have been sending me what you struggle with during the holiday season, and I know the struggle. Every response that I get, I'm like, mm-hmm, yep, been there. Mm-hmm, yep, understand. So I am here to help you. I want to teach you what I have learned about navigating the holiday season without gaining weight. Now I just want to tell you right now, losing weight isn't something that you give up on just because the date on the calendar changes. Come on, y'all. Stop Dieting Forever is designed to teach you how to create a lifestyle that results in weight loss no matter what time of year it is. Got that? Because when you focus on changing your habits You can't help but to continue to lose weight no matter whether it's November, December, January, or July. It doesn't matter. And if you can't wrap your head around not eating your favorite seasonal pies or sipping on a bubbly cocktail at every social gathering during the holiday season, you will be pleasantly surprised to learn inside Stop Dieting Forever that weight loss doesn't mean excluding the foods that you love. It actually means enjoying what you want, but doing so with intention. Y'all, traditional diets don't teach you how to eat with intention. They just teach you how to make quote-unquote healthier versions of your favorite foods. I have to tell you, one year I tried to make cauliflower mac and cheese for my family's Christmas dinner, and the Dent family was not having it. My mother gave me that look like, didn't I raise you better than this? So I know it sounds counterintuitive to eat what you want and still be able to lose weight, but we know the alternative doesn't work, right? Cutting out all the things that you love to eat. So why not approach your favorite holiday foods differently this season? I've been teaching this approach to holiday weight loss and eating for years, and every year my clients are wowed and amazed. Now, it's your year to be wowed and amazed because I want you to learn how to experience the holiday season in the way that I do, in the way that my clients do. So inside Stop Dieting Forever, you will learn my game-changing weight loss process, which will solve 3 main holiday problems for you. The first one is how to enjoy your holiday dinners without being fearful. That you're going to overeat. And not just at dinner, in the days after the holiday too. It's going to help you solve the problem of how to politely decline foods that you know you don't want to eat, but you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so you end up eating it anyway. And it's also going to help you figure out how to not give up on yourself and just give in to laying around and eating whatever you want during the holiday break. Remember, Weight loss doesn't have to stop just because the date on the calendar changes. So as a member of Stop Dieting Forever, I will give you all the tools. I will teach you the mindset practices to help you enjoy your family and your friends more than the food. And I will teach you how to stay committed to your goals no matter what. So instead of lamenting about all of your bad choices come January 1st, you will for the very first time be damn proud of yourself so you can start the new year off with amazing new energy. Yes, y'all, this is what I call the luck state of mind, my friend, and it is available to you this season no matter how many objections your bratty brain is throwing at you. So not only will you get access to all of the tools inside Stop Dieting Forever, including the Essential 90-Day Planner, and you'll get access to the Stop Dieting Forever process, but you're also going to get access to the best weight loss coaching on the internet. Y'all, I have 3 coaching calls a week where I coach my clients faces off. And you also get to enjoy our amazing supportive community of Luxe Lifers. I have to be honest with you, this is the most transformational weight loss program available on the internet today, and it is specifically designed to help the woman who is fed up with trying to depend on sheer willpower just to lose weight and keep it off. That is exhausting. So my promise to you is that you will lose at least 10 pounds in 90 days, or I will give you your money back. Yes, I will give you your money back. That is how confident I am that my process will work when you follow it. But hey, don't take my word for it. I want you to listen to my client Angie. She's one of the newest Luxelifers, and she's lost 11 pounds so far in her first 30 days of following my process.

The advice I would give for someone who wants to try Stop Dieting Forever is do it, do it. You know, we, we live in such a conditioned world that we have to count our carbs, or we have to count our calories, or we have to eat according to a certain schedule. All of a sudden, I'm not doing any of those things. And you know what's really crazy about that is I've been I've been more successful in the last month, less than a month, on this program where I've stopped dieting, where I'm learning how to stop thinking like a dieter, than I ever have on any other kind of program where they told me to eat this or that, or don't eat this and don't eat that, and eat at this time, and eat 5 times a day, or eat, you know, 2 times a day, or don't eat at all. All of these things. Drink these shakes. All of a sudden, as I'm learning how to have a relationship with food that's a good relationship. None of those things are mattering because I am intentionally stopping when I'm not hungry anymore, eating when I am hungry. And so it's just a byproduct to eat less. It's just a byproduct to want to choose the things that make my body feel good. So if you are interested in this, I'm going to tell you, this will change your life. And it's not just going to help you lose weight. The principles that Jennifer teaches are going to flow over into every aspect of your life and all of your relationships, and you're going to start thinking very differently and making your choices differently. So don't hesitate. I wish I would have done this 6 months ago. I wish I would have met her years ago. This is probably the best choice I've ever made for my life.

You're listening to the Stop Dieting Forever podcast, episode 125. What if it were possible to achieve your goal weight and stay there permanently without dieting? Welcome to the Stop Dieting Forever podcast, where you will discover the key components that most diets won't tell you because they want you to keep coming back. Not here. This is your last stop on the weight loss struggle bus. I am your host, Jennifer Dent-Brown, life and weight loss coach, and I am going to show you how to Stop dieting forever. Let's jump into today's episode. Hey, LuxeLifer, welcome to another episode. I am Jennifer Dent-Brown, your certified life and weight loss coach from JenniferDent.com. And listen, I am here to offer holiday help. So a few weeks ago, I sent a survey out to my list and just asked you guys to tell me what were some of your biggest worries that you have during the holiday season. And I heard everything from not knowing how to handle eating when you go to your relative's house, to candy, candy, candy everywhere, to fear of missing out on eating some of the favorite things, to traveling during the holidays, So what I'm doing is over the next few podcasts, and I actually started in episode 124, I'm going to address some of your most common worries. But if you're already enrolled or opted into my 3-part video series, you know that I am teaching you right now the Stop Dieting Forever process of navigating the holidays. And so either way, whether you listen to the podcast, whether you're receiving the free videos, you're gonna walk away knowing exactly how to enjoy your favorite holiday foods without going overboard. I don't want you to think anymore that you have to resort to a big ol' restrictive diet come January 1st, or that you have to say no to everything and everyone between now and January. You don't have to choose between losing weight and eating your favorite foods. You actually can have it all. And it does work. This is part of the Stop Dieting Forever Have It All holiday process. And I'm going to support you as much as I can through this holiday season on the podcast and through my email. So you want to make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast so you hear everything that I'm dropping this holiday season between now and the end of the year. And you want to make sure you're on my email list and you want to make sure you've given me your best email address. So if you're like, wait a second, I think I'm on your list, but you're not receiving at least a Monday email from me, then you need to check your spam folder or you need to give me a new email address. So go to JenniferDent.com, scroll down where it says get on my email list and then add your name to the email list. Okay. So I am here to help you through this holiday season because I understand It's like, man, I've been doing good all year. Summer was great, feeling good, and now I don't want to backslide my way into 2023, into the next year. So let's continue with this— the seasonal strategies. Oh, I just thought about that. That's a good one. Seasonal strategies to avoid weight gain. All right, so today we're going to talk about candy because one person did respond to me and she's like, one of her biggest worries is the fact that there is candy everywhere. So if you're in the US and you're listening to this real time, it's like Halloween time here. And everywhere you look, there is candy, all types of candy, all of your favorite candy and the special seasonal candy. And it's going to the store and it's all lined up waiting for you. It's all in the special colored wrappers of orange and black. And it just is there to catch your eye. And even if you do manage to get out of Target, where I was yesterday, or get out of Costco without putting any Halloween candy into your cart, there are plenty of other people who are not as thoughtful as you. So when you go to work, you're gonna see the bowls of candy. People are gonna think it's a nice idea to leave you a little chocolate treat on your desk in the afternoon. Your kids are gonna come home with little baggies of candy. So no matter how strict you think you're going to be, like, oh, no candy this season, somehow, someway, those little orange wrappers of sugary goodness end up in your car, they end up in your home, and they end up in your purse, and eventually they end up in your mouth. So in order for us to avoid all of that candy drama, I'm going to give you one simple strategy that you can follow every single time you see a stray piece of candy in your space and you notice that your brain is beginning to light up thinking about that delight that is going to happen when you consume that candy. But you know, I keep it real, small candy is still candy. Now the food companies know that your brain has a harder time saying no to smaller things. They intentionally make everything smaller because they know that you're not going to look at it and be like, oh, no thank you. No, your brain is going to be like, oh no, just a little piece, just a little piece. Think about it. If you've been watching your weight and maybe you've been like making sure you don't consume a lot of excess sugar, and maybe you just don't really eat candy a whole lot, it's much easier to pass up a full-size Snickers bar than it is for your brain to say no to a cute little mini Snickers square. And you know what happens when you pop one of those bad boys in your mouth? You unwrap that second and third one, that second and third mini Snickers at lightning speed. And before you know it, you've consumed probably the equivalent of a full-size candy bar because your bratty brain gave you permission to have just one little piece. It's just one little piece of candy. So listen, when you see that cute little piece of candy and your brain is like, oh, it's just a little Snickers or a little Kit Kat, I want you to just keep it real with yourself. If you know you cannot enjoy just one little piece of candy and leave it at that, then proceed with eating that piece of candy with caution. Let me just give you a peek inside my brain, because a lot of times I just do things automatically. And so in order for me to help you, I have to, like, dissect my brain and my thinking process and explain to you my thought process. But for me, it's just— I'm on autopilot. It's not even a thing I have to consciously think about. So let me tell you what I do when I am faced with a decision to eat a little piece of candy. A little cute piece of candy. So when I see the cute piece of candy and I'm faced with the decision to eat it or not, I bypass my bratty brain by just checking in with my future self. Within Stop Dieting Forever, we call our future self the version 2.0 of ourselves, our version 2.0 brains. And I've talked about this before on the podcast, so if you're new, you can go in and search. And I think I did a whole podcast episode on version 2.0, but I talk about it a lot. So version 2.0 essentially is the woman who already weighs your goal weight, the one that is already living her healthiest life. She's already achieved what you're hoping to achieve now. So right now you're thinking with your 1.0 brain when you look at that piece of candy and your brain lights up and you're like, oh my God, candy. And you want to start thinking from your 2.0 brain. But because you have not yet become that person, thinking like your 2.0 self is not automatic. You've got to check in with yourself. This is a really easy way to do that. So when you are faced with eating the candy, somebody leaves you like a bunch of little mini Skittles bag on your desk or something at work. I want you to pause. And check in with your 2.0 self. Okay, I want you to just check in and ask your future self, is she gonna be chomping on a bunch of little Skittles right now? So this is a strategy, y'all. This is a very simple strategy. It's called pause and ask. Pause and ask. You see the candy, you pause, and then you ask yourself, would my 2.0 self be eating this candy right now? And then listen to what your brain offers you. Your brain is like Google. It will always offer you an answer if you ask it a question. So in this moment, you see the candy, you're going to pause, and then you're going to ask yourself, would my 2.0 self be eating this candy right now? What happens when you pause? Pause just means that you are disrupting your old thought patterns that are on repeat. So for those of you who see candy and automatically eat the candy, that's just your habit. That's just your brain on autoplay, and it's just doing what it's wired to do, and you don't even think about it. So when you pause, you disrupt that automatic habit. And I like to think it's like slapping your bratty brain in its place. Because it stops your autopilot bad habit of just seeing candy and eating the candy. So now, y'all, I want you to like, when you see the candy and you feel like candy's all around you, I want you to just simply pause and ask. Pause and ask. Pause and ask. Write that on your forearm if you think you're going to forget to do it. Or put a Post-it note on your computer, or put a reminder on your phone to remind you to pause and ask when you see candy. If your goal is truly not to gain weight this holiday season— and because of the responses that y'all have sent me in, I know that a lot of you don't want to gain weight this holiday season— It's going to require you to do this holiday season differently, and that starts with questioning your desire to eat candy. Now, I don't want you to listen to me right now and then all of a sudden you're going to vow to yourself like, "I will not eat candy ever again. I'm not eating any more candy until next year." No, that is your dieter's mentality trying to depend on willpower to avoid eating candy. I don't want you to approach weight loss like that anymore. Because what happens when you tell yourself, no, I'm not going to do it. No, I'm just going to, like, use my willpower and not eat the candy. What happens is as soon as your brain is in a weak emotional state, you're going to end up eating the candy. And then you're going to feel badly about yourself because you'll be like, but no, I told myself I wasn't going to eat the candy. So you did not hear me just say don't ever eat candy again, right? I want you to learn how to eat with intention versus eating with emotion. Women, men who live life at their goal weight, at their forever weight, they eat intentionally all the time. They don't eat emotionally. So eating with intention simply means making a plan ahead of time to eat the candy and deciding if that aligns with your 2.0 self. Eating with emotion means not having a plan and eating whatever, whenever, and then beating yourself up when you start gaining weight during the holidays. So would you rather learn how to eat with intention 99.9% of the time Or do you want to keep doing the holidays like you normally have been doing it and eating emotionally for the next 60 days? And then come January, you're all upset because you've gained weight. Of course you did, because you didn't have a plan. So Stop Dieting Forever is about learning how to make decisions and dealing with the uncomfortable feeling that comes with making those intentional decisions. When you first start thinking intentionally and eating intentionally, it doesn't always feel great. And I get it. For some of you, the urge to eat candy is real. It can feel incredibly intense. And I know for those of you who try to, like, muscle through with willpower, the longer you try and, like, avoid eating the candy and the longer you try to use willpower to not eat the candy, the more intense that urge to eat the candy actually gets. And in that moment, your brain is like, come on, girl. It's just so much easier to just quiet this urge, eat the damn candy so you can get on with your day and you can stop focusing on the candy. But when you do this repeatedly, you're going to end up training your brain to believe that you can't control yourself, right? I hear that a lot. Like, a lot of you are just worried about losing control during the holiday season, and then you start to believe the story of like, I can't control myself around food. And it's not that you can't control yourself around food, you just haven't learned how to control the urge to eat. You haven't learned how to address the urge in the first place when it comes up. So inside Stop Dieting Forever, we go deep with the urge to eat the candy. Again, I'm like digging into my own brain. Like, generally, I don't have a desire to eat Halloween candy anymore. Now, I used to love me some Twix and Kit Kat and Three Musketeers and the Snickers. Those are my candy. Give me those, and I'm like, oh, game on. I'm eating it. But I don't have that desire to eat those candies anymore. They just don't do it for me anymore. But when I think about it, it's like, oh, I had to train my brain how to neutralize my feelings about this candy. So instead of getting excited when I see mini Twix and Kit Kat and Snickers, my desire to not eat the candy is stronger than my desire to eat the candy. And listen, I was in Target yesterday, and I was looking for a Halloween costume that I could wear with my friends. We're going to this adult trick-or-treating event. And I saw all the candy, and I looked at it because I'm always curious to see, like, what's new? What new kind of candy do they have out? And I looked at it, and you know, there's like a thought like, oh, that would probably taste good. But I don't have a desire to eat it. There's no intense urge to put the candy in my cart so I can put it in my mouth later. No, because I know where that's going to get me, right? My desire to not eat the candy is stronger than my desire to eat the candy. My desire to feel good in my body is stronger than my desire to have a temporary, like, ooh, this tastes so good moment by eating the candy. I was not always like that. I was not always in this place. But it's taken practice. But I'm here. And it's 100% possible for you to walk down the aisle of Target or Costco and see the candy and not want it, right? It's possible for you to create that same feeling for yourself. Now, here's the thing, y'all. If I do feel a strong urge to eat candy, which is out of the blue, I know very quickly that something else is going on and that I am emotionally avoiding something. So I don't get freaked out by the urge. It actually makes me get curious. And I never shame myself for wanting candy. If my brain is like, ooh, I think I want to eat that, I never shame myself like, Jennifer, what are you talking about? You can't eat that candy. You're a certified life and weight loss coach. No, no, no, no, no. It actually causes me to be curious. It's like a gift. It's like that yellow flag waving at me saying, OK, Jennifer, something's happening here. Something is different. You're out of alignment. What is going on? And it's just a prompt for me to check in with myself and see what's happening emotionally. What am I worried about? What am I afraid of? What is subconsciously stressing me out that I'm just not addressing? What uncomfortable emotion am I trying not to feel by diving into a bowl of mini Snickers, right? That's how I look at urges when they come up now. Whereas before, I would get the urge to eat, and I'd be like, "Oh, I'm just gonna eat all this candy," and I would eat the candy, not think about it in the moment, but later I would be mad at myself, be like, damn girl, you ate all that candy again. Nope, nope, nope. So this is how you begin to move past the candy cravings. This is how you begin to control your candy cravings, by simply pausing and asking, would my 2.0 self be eating this candy right now? So as you hear me explaining how I'm digging deeper into my brain, that is like some of the work that you will learn inside Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Stop Dieting Forever process, which is Learn and Lose. So my process basically is 3 phases: Learn, Lose, Live. In case you didn't know, in case you're new to the podcast, let me just tell you real quick. When you join Stop Dieting Forever, you learn the process in Phase 1. I teach you all of the strategies, all of the tools. I give you the planner, all the things. I teach you how to think. I teach you how to identify those urges. I teach you all the things that we've been talking about on all these podcasts. And then you move into the Lose Phase, which is like a level deeper. We take what you've learned in LEARN and we apply it to our goals 90 days at a time. And we just keep rinsing and repeating, rinsing and repeating, rinsing and repeating. Until we get to our goal weight. And then when you reached your forever weight, you move into live, which is you learning how to think in maintenance mode, right? Move from active weight loss to maintenance, and you're learning to live life at your forever weight. So in phase 1 and phase 2, we go deeper into why do we have these urges to eat? Why do we feel out of control around candy? What does that mean? How can we manage these urges? So if you're just beginning to understand the Stop Dieting Forever process, you don't really need to worry about all that right now. I want to make this super simple for you. All you need to know is that you no longer want to be a victim of Halloween candy. So all you need to do is start with pause and ask. Pause and ask. Pause and ask yourself, would my 2.0 self be eating this candy right now? So easy, y'all. Losing weight without a diet is so much easier than we think. And it doesn't have to be hard. And navigating around bowls of candy and little baggies of candy this season really can be that simple. Pause and ask. And as you pause and ask, I want you to remind yourself that you have the power to change your relationship with candy And it begins simply by asking yourself a very simple question before you decide to eat it. Pause and ask, would my 2.0 self be eating this candy right now? So as I mentioned before, in episode 124, I taught you how to deal with seasonal FOMO. And in this episode, you just learned how to control your candy craving. Look, I am hooking you up this holiday season. You're welcome. So if you are serious about giving up your dieter's mentality, learning how to navigate the holiday season, following the Stop Dieting Forever process, I want you to come join us inside Stop Dieting Forever, which is my life-changing lifestyle membership. So right now, I want you to listen to Stop Dieting Forever member Nisha. She's going to share how the Stop Dieting Forever process helped her win this battle of 15 pounds. She gained the same 15 pounds every holiday season, and she would take like 5 to 6 months to lose it off by summer. And then as soon as the holiday season rolled around, she would gain the same 15 pounds again. So she learned the Stop Dieting Forever process, and it helped her win this battle with this damn 15 pounds that she kept losing and gaining, losing and gaining every year. So she's going to tell you about that. But not only has she lost it, she's kept that 15 pounds off, plus some, for over 2 years now. So let's hear from Nisha.

This process is nothing like a diet. And it's exactly what I wanted. I love telling the story of how I decided to work with Jennifer. I'd known her for several years prior, and I, like I said, I was in the gym once a week, not eating my best, but expecting something amazing to happen. So I was gaining the same 15 pounds every year, and then I would do something drastic at the beginning of a new year, like an exercise program and a diet to lose the 15 pounds, and then As soon as I was done with that and I had accomplished a goal and I went on vacation or went to someone's wedding, I was right back to where I was with my eating and exercise habits. And so when I finally reached out to her, I was like, "I'm just so tired of this. I'm getting older. I'm doing these drastic things and my body just can't handle it anymore. And I just really want to lose this 15 pounds and keep it off." And she, in that moment, made me recognize that my eating habits and why I could not keep this 15 pounds off were connected to my thinking and my emotional health. And in our consultation, I started crying, and I had no idea why I was crying. It was just emotional. Not what I expected. And I think in that moment is when I realized, okay, there's something to this. So I joined the program and learned that this is exactly what I needed because this is not a diet, this is a lifestyle. And that was like the perfect answer to what I needed, something I can maintain for the rest of my life, something that's something that's steady, something that's consistent, something that I could do on my own. And so every component of her program creates this lifestyle for you to be able to do that. Like, I know that if I never spoke to Jennifer again, all the tools that she has given me will carry me through the rest of my life. And it's not about who I am portion control, and you got to do this type of exercise. And it's really not about that. It's really all about your thinking and your mindset and how that can change your perspective on things. It changes your reaction to things, which changes your results. And I have really simplified it, but that really is what this consists of. I always tell her that this is the best investment that I ever made in myself because it may have initially been about weight, but it has been so much more. So much more.

I'm so proud of Nisha. And her story is not unique. Women come to me because they want to lose weight, but what they find inside the Stop Dieting Forever process, just like Nisha explained, is so much more. It's literally life-changing. So if you just want to keep dieting to lose weight, go right on ahead. But if you know that you are tired of dieting, you know that something needs to change in your life, I want you to consider joining us inside the Stop Dieting Forever membership. How much is it worth to you to lose weight and change your life in the process? So if you're ready to create a healthy lifestyle just like Anisha has, just like I have, come and join us. The next enrollment opens on Monday, October 31st, if you're listening to this in real time. If that date has passed, you can still go to jenniferdent.com/stopdietingforever to find out how you can get started to live your healthiest life. All right, live luxe, y'all, and I will see you in the next episode. If you like today's episode of the Stop Dieting Forever podcast and you want to learn more about creating a lifestyle instead of following a diet to lose weight permanently, be sure to visit jenniferdent.com. There you'll learn more about my unique weight loss process and how it can can work for you. Go to JenniferDent.com to discover what you can do to stop dieting forever.