Your Friday Five: No More Candy Chaos

This special Halloween Your Friday Five episode is all about removing the candy scarcity mindset and setting yourself up for success. For many people, Halloween can feel like a slippery slope — candy in the house, kids bringing home buckets of it, and old habits kicking in. But it doesn’t have to derail you.

In this episode, I cover:

1. How to create candy neutrality.
   Candy isn’t forbidden, and it’s not scarce. Halloween candy is available all year long. When we remove the “forbidden fruit” mentality, the brain stops screaming for it. Remind yourself you can have it tomorrow, next week, or whenever you choose — there’s no urgency.
2. Why eating real food first matters.
   When you have a balanced meal with protein, fiber, and healthy fats before eating candy, your blood sugar is steadier, your dopamine hit is lower, and you’re far less likely to feel out of control. Eating real food first changes how the candy impacts your body and your decision-making.
3. Plan it, don’t police it.
   Instead of strict rules, create gentle boundaries that make you feel empowered. For example: decide to choose your favorite two pieces, savor them slowly, and wait until you’re home to enjoy them. This moves you from restriction to intention — and that’s where you regain control.

And if things don’t go as planned, remember: one night won’t undo your progress. Give it a five-second funeral, wake up the next day, and go right back to your normal, balanced habits.

Your power doesn’t come from perfection — it comes from intention.

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

✨ Season 2 of Behind the Curtain is officially live! ✨ You can join the season on its own or take it a step further by opting into the live 21-Day Challenge with Dr. Rentea, running December 1–21—the perfect way to finish the year strong and head into the holidays with momentum.👉 JOIN HERE — spots are limited for the live challenge!

Transcript

0:29

Welcome back to another, your Friday five. This could not be a more perfect Friday for this episode to air because at the time when you're hearing this, it will be Halloween, and I don't know about everywhere else around the country, but on October 31st, everybody goes wild on Halloween eating candy. Not true, not true. That might have been you in the past, but let's talk today about what are two strategies so that this. Day does not take you down, and it might have already been starting. You guys might have already had candy in your house leading up to this. You might be someone like me that has little kids in the house that you're gonna get a ton of candy tonight, and I want you to be successful. So let's talk through this. So number one, I want us to create some neutrality around Halloween candy, just candy in general. Let's take away this forbidden aspect and there's nothing off limits here. Okay, you hear me? Really say this. There's no such thing as good food or bad food. We could think about good, better, best. We're good. We like the taste, but it doesn't really align with our health goals. Better is it's a little bit of an improvement and best we feel amazing. We like what it does for us. So we could think about maybe candy potentially fitting in the good category. We like how it tastes, but we maybe get low blood sugar afterward. We feel a dip in our energy, but there's nothing off limits about this because when you do that, the brain really screams louder for it. So we really wanna do anything to sort of take away this forbidden fruit element of it. So I want you to remind yourself that Halloween candy, it is not scarce. It's actually available year round. There's absolutely no urgency to eat it right now. It's still gonna be there for you months and months from now. So you can have it tomorrow if you want. You can have one piece every single day. You can do whatever you want. But the point is, there is no scarcity here. So let's do two things. First. Number one, let's eat some real food first. When you balance your meals, so means that you are gonna get some fiber in there. You're gonna get some protein, some healthy fats, if you are gonna do all that and then you have some candy, it will impact you differently. You're not gonna get as much of a blood sugar spike. The insulin's not gonna be activated as much. You're not gonna feel as out of control. The dopamine hit isn't as high. It is different. So let's go ahead and eat some real food first. A lot of us, I'll tell you at least how it looks in our house, they set parameters in the neighborhood that we're at, where well. They recommend, let me put it that way. That trick or treating only starts at 6:00 PM this is actually nice because in my mind, everyone should have dinner before we go out. So we're not going stark, raving mad as we're walking around. Eating the real foods first is gonna give you such a better shot at this because we just think differently when we're not hungry. Okay? I would say maybe even if you're not hungry, you're gonna go ahead and have a little bit of a dinner. Just that you stand a better chance throughout the evening. The other thing that we're gonna do is this concept where we're gonna plan it, but we're not gonna police it. Okay? Instead of setting these really strict rules, I want you just to do gentle boundary setting. Because you're gonna feel so much more empowered with this. So it could look something like this. Okay, I'm gonna choose two pieces. I really love. I'm gonna savor them really slowly. I'm gonna wait till I get home to eat them so I can really enjoy. I'm not gonna eat it as I'm walking, and I don't even know how many wrappers are going back into the bin, right? You're gonna say, when I get home I'm gonna look at everything and really. Pick the best of the best, the creme de la creme, right? So this shifts your energy from restriction to intention, and usually with intention comes curiosity. And there's no shame or regret, anything like that. There's no judgment. So when we do that, that is where you get your power back. So if you want to have power this season with Halloween candy with. Any treats that are coming up in this holiday season, I would say real food first, and then you're gonna plan. Don't police it. Make some boundaries that sound realistic, where when you do it, you're a hundred percent on board, 10 out of 10 you can do it. If you make a plan ahead of time and you're sorta eh, you're six outta 10 that you can do it. Not a good plan. It's not good enough. The temptation is too high, so we want to take away restriction. You can have these things. The only reason we're not gonna have a million of them is because you feel horrible afterward. This is not because you can't, this is not because you're out of control. It's that you don't feel good afterward. We wanna give you every shot in the land to be successful with that. If you've hydrated and if you've had real food, things like that, your chances of going wild. Oh, and having a plan, right? And you're saying, okay, two pieces, or whatever it is you set out for. You have a shot at the end of the night to feel so much better. Let's say that everything goes to hell in a hand basket and you eat all the candy that night. Okay? Awesome. Can you give it a five second funeral and move on immediately the next day? Do not restrict the next day. Go ahead and eat your normal meals that are balanced where you feel great. Move right on with your life. There is almost no impact that you can do in one evening. I just wanna remind you of that. Okay. So have an amazing Halloween. I hope that you guys all have an amazing weekend. I feel like, again, this like kicks off the holiday season. I love this time of year we got these little LightUp pumpkins that they're little rubber pumpkins where you touch the top of it and the light goes on and you charge it up and they stay on for 15 minutes and they go off. I'm gonna be using these little puppies all. All winter long. This is not just a till Halloween situation, so I hope that you have some candles that you like or some lights or that there's something that just gives you joy as the darkness is starting to set in. Alright, we will talk on Monday. Have a great weekend.