Half size me episode 531 brought to you by the half size me community to join us. Please go to half size me dot com forward slash join.

Welcome back to the half size me show I am your coach Heather and today I'll be coaching Abigail. She's done a lot of good work. She's actually done the coaching cast stop dieting and start losing. She also did the emotional eating but she needed a little bit of more fine tuning when it came to how she was thinking about food and calorie counting. So in this I think you're going to see how we helped her take it to the next level to where she would be able to be better successful.

She had already put into place which was a lot of good stuff. Now before I get to Abigail's coaching call. I wanted to take a minute and do a few of the VIP questions that have been submitted. And if you have a question and it's been really plugging you you have questions you need help. There is so many ways that you can get help one obviously you're listening to this podcast that I've been turning out since 2012 and you've been getting lots of good stuff from listening to other people's stories and coaching time with them. The second thing is

my YouTube channel on my YouTube channel I am turning out content to help you reframe your thinking to answer the most frequently asked questions I tend to get. So almost every question I get there's usually a YouTube video for it and the ones I get that I don't have one that's what I create for new content. So if you ever have a question you can always go to YouTube check my playlist see what I've got to offer you and I think you'll find a lot there.

The third thing is my VIP email I put a lot of time and effort into putting some good content together for you every single week to help you learn more. Have things to focus on that would be helpful for you and that's totally free all you have to do is go to half size me dot com forward slash VIP.

And then if you have a question that you would like me to cover just hit reply to your email and that comes to my help desk and then I get a digest of emails to go through to cover here on the show. So that would be something that you could do to get your question answered as well.

And then of course we have the podcast premium service which allows you to do the ask me anything questions. So that's also another way that you can ask for help if you're a podcast premium subscriber.

So anyway today we're going to dive in to those VIP questions.

Our first question comes from Rachel she says thank you so much for all the work you do I've been a listener for a few years now and have recently started calorie counting and tracking that way after many years of W W trying to unlearn W W is providing tricky and all or nothing

mentality is slowly improving I have two young children and really enjoy baking with them I find however that it is really hard to not lick the spoons which leads to trying the results of our baking activity and then stopping at one.

I would really appreciate some help and ideas on how to manage better with this I don't want to stop baking with my girls as they love it so much as do I kind of regards from across the pond Rachel.

I love this OK so couple thoughts that might be helpful first off I like seeing the fact that you're cooking with your kids so a couple ideas just high level thinking here you could start to migrate away from doing baking only with your daughters and I'm not saying you are but just kind of from the email sounds like that might be what you guys tend to focus on together.

What I mean by that is maybe they could help you in the kitchen doing other things to wear every single time you guys cook it could be something different not always just a baked good right so that might be one way that you can start to enjoy your time with your daughters in the kitchen but not having it be a struggle as much for you.

The second thing that you can do is make individual desserts so as a matter of fact since covid I take my kids to a homeschool cooking class and what they do is they break all the ingredients into individual portions for the kids and they have them make just their own desserts and so it's actually been more from sanitary purposes that they're trying to do this but it's actually provided to be better for them because they don't end up coming home with lots of extras they just bring home the kids.

They just bring home their one serving so it might be like you look up a recipe that's more individual desserts like getting individual little cute little pie shells and everybody makes their own tart or everyone makes their own little pie it could be that you take a recipe that would yield maybe I don't know 10 servings of brownies you cut the recipe and half you get your girls each their own little Remkin or you guys get those really big muffin tins where everyone's are separated out.

And that way you guys are making this stuff together your portioning it out individually and baking it but everyone just gets one so that will help a lot with the seconds and thirds and honestly that's what I did I ended up not getting you know not being consistent with baking but when I had to segue from what I had been doing into a more maintainable way of baking it was to do individual portions of desserts and to reduce the quantity that the recipes put out and you can even freeze it like if you.

A cookie recipe unless you say it yield 30 cookies and you guys only need to you know for your family maybe you only need a third of that 10 cookies or something like that you could just make it cut it into thirds free it and then bake it some other time so that's another option right so so baking less quantity so the seconds and leftovers now as far as the not licking stuff one what I would say is that I'm going to do that.

One what I would say is keep a mint or sugar free gum in your mouth when you have something in your mouth that you would have to take out to lick a spoon it brings awareness to what you're doing so when I was in the kitchen with the kids if I had an out toy or sugar free mint gum if I wanted to lick the spoon I have to pull the gum or the mint out and then of course it didn't taste as good either because it was a very strong tasting gum or very strong tasting mint so that can bring awareness to the fact you're doing.

Also what you can do is before you even get started say hey girls you know we're going to make this cookie recipe this brown recipe and these are the only two spatulas we're going to use and when we get down each of you gets to lick them so you're kind of already setting a boundary for yourself that you're not going to lick them and that you're going to let them do the licking I my son already beats me to it is like mom I get to lick it right.

I'm like yes so this is a way that you can start to kind of do it will make less make less actual substance to bake individual portions three set some healthy boundaries with who gets to lick the spatula for put something in your mouth to bring awareness to that so you don't find yourself falling into that pit I hope all those ideas help.

And this was a great email I got in from Sandy and I just wanted to share it she says I'm listening to your podcast from March the seventh with lady who replaced artificial sweeteners and drinks and food with more real food during her maintenance and led to her gaining some weight back.

I have been reading a book called the end of craving by Mark Schatzker and it seems to blame artificial sweeteners and fake fats for causing dietary mismatch in our gut and leading us to eating more to satisfy what we're missing to be fair I have not completed the book but this is the the just that I'm getting so far I use artificial sweeteners here and there like a half a pack of sweetener in my plane yogurt or oatmeal with fruit because I need a little bit of something sweetener.

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