Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body, I’m Katy Harvey. This episode we need to chat about Halloween candy, because Halloween is right around the corner and if you’re like me you’ve already got candy coming into your orbit. 

I can remember being a kid and getting SO EXCITED for Halloween candy, because we didn’t typically keep candy in our house throughout the year. It wasn’t a diet-y thing (I don’t think…) because we had all sorts of other sweets like cookies, and Twinkies, and ice cream, and Poptarts. I’m not sure if my mom just didn’t like candy, or if she didn’t really trust herself with it but she didn’t tend to buy it for us. The only time I really remember having candy outside of Halloween was of course our Easter baskets, our Christmas stockings, and then she’d get some mini candy bars for my dad every December when he would go deer hunting with his crew of guys that he hunted with. He liked taking the little Snickers and Milky Way bars out into the field with him for energy while they were hunting. And I’d always sneak a few of his candies before he left to go hunting, but they were clearly FOR him and not for us kids. 

And because of our rare access to candy, Halloween was a BIG DEAL in my mind. And naturally, I’d eat way too much candy on Halloween night and would end up with a stomach ache. 

As an adult I remember one year that we shut off our porch light early (this was pre-kids) because we were running low on candy and we wanted to keep the rest of it for ourselves…as if we couldn’t just buy ourselves more. As I’m tinking about this, I think I was still operating under the assumption that I was only allowed to buy candy at Halloween time. 

Here’s one of my biggest lessons as an adult intuitive eater: I can buy candy any time I want it. Same with with cake. I can eat birthday cake any day of the year if I want to. That can be both simultaneously freeing and terrifying, depending on how you feel about sweets. And my goal in this episode we’re going to talk about why you don’t feel like you can trust yourself with them, and it’s probably not what you think. 

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: Go Pure Beauty (from Mattie)

Headline on website: “Feeling beautiful & confident should be within reach for everyone”

Products:

– Tighten and lift neck cream, belly cream, butt and thigh cream
– Sculpt and tone arm cream

Their mantra is “Pure, potent and proven” 

This concept of “pure” is something we see a lot in diet culture…

“Proven” is an interesting term, because there are no studies posted on their website. So they’re saying this – but proven HOW? They use a lot of testimonials (from people I assume were either paid or given free product), as well as “ambassador” dermatologists to make it seem legit. Let’s remember that a brand ambassador is receiving financial incentive for promoting any product. 

Interestingly, if you look at what’s in these products, their ingredients list is a mile long – and you don’t hear diet culture harping on that when it comes to these products like they do about food. Kind of makes you think…

I don’t know whether these things work or not. I’m skeptical. If they do, I suspect it’s pretty short lived and not the miracle product it promises. 

The main reason I’m covering this as woo is because of the message it’s sending – that we need to be “tighten, lifted and toned” in order to feel confident about our bodies…

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…

WHY HALLOWEEN CANDY FEELS SO COMPLICATED

• Every year, we’re surrounded by messages that candy and sugar are “bad,” “unhealthy,” or something we need to “get out of the house.”
  
• From the Switch Witch swooping in to trade our kids’ candy for toys, to adults announcing they’re “being good” by skipping the treats — it’s everywhere.
  
• This kind of messaging teaches us that candy is off-limits or something to feel guilty about.
  
• But when we label foods as “bad,” even just in our minds, that’s a form of mental restriction — and restriction always backfires.
  
• The more we tell ourselves we shouldn’t eat it, the more we want it.
  
• So when we finally do let ourselves have candy (because of course we do — we’re human!), we eat it quickly, secretly, or past the point of satisfaction.
  
• It’s not because we have no self-control — it’s because diet culture has trained us to approach candy from a place of guilt and scarcity.
  
• Halloween candy becomes the perfect storm: it’s everywhere, it’s tied to nostalgia and fun, and yet we’ve been told it’s “bad.” That tension alone fuels the overeating spiral.

WHAT’S ACTUALLY GOING ON WHEN YOU FEEL “OUT OF CONTROL”

• When you feel like you can’t trust yourself around candy, it’s not a character flaw — it’s your brain and body responding to restriction.
  
• Whether that restriction is physical (“I shouldn’t eat this”) or mental (“I shouldn’t want this”), your brain hears the same message: scarcity.
  
• And when something feels scarce, your brain’s natural response is to want more of it — now — before it’s taken away again.
  
• This isn’t weakness; it’s survival wiring. Your body is simply trying to protect you from deprivation.
  
• Over time, these repeated cycles of “I shouldn’t eat it” → “I can’t stop eating it” → “I feel guilty” train your brain to associate candy with both pleasure and shame.
  
• That’s why the sight of a bowl of Halloween candy can feel emotionally loaded — it’s not about the candy itself, it’s about years of conditioning.
  
• Diet culture has taught us to fear sugar, moralize food choices, and equate eating candy with being “bad.” No wonder it feels so fraught.
  
• The good news? Once you start dismantling those rules and give yourself true permission, that urgent, chaotic feeling around candy starts to fade.
  

WHY WILLPOWER WON’T WORK (AND WHAT YOU ACTUALLY NEED INSTEAD)

• Most people assume the solution is to “just have more willpower” — to resist the candy, distract themselves, or keep it out of the house.
  
• But here’s the problem: willpower and restriction come from the same mindset. Both are rooted in the belief that you can’t be trusted.
  
• The more you try to control or resist candy, the more power it gains in your mind. It becomes this forbidden thing that you can’t stop thinking about.
  
• Willpower is a short-term strategy — it might work for a few hours or days — but it always ends in backlash. You end up swinging to the other extreme, eating past fullness, and feeling like you “blew it.”
  
• That’s not lack of discipline — it’s the pendulum effect of deprivation and rebellion.
  
• What you actually need isn’t more control — it’s permission. Permission to have candy without guilt or rules.
  
• Because when you remove the sense of scarcity, your brain stops panicking. Candy becomes just candy — not a test of your worth or self-control.
  
• And that’s exactly what we’re going to practice inside the Decharming Halloween Candy Workshop this upcoming Saturday 10/25— learning to take the emotional charge and “charm” out of candy so you can finally feel calm and confident around it. If you’re listening to this after that date, you can purchase the recording, just click the link in the show notes or DM me for it.
  

WHAT ACTUALLY RESTORES TRUST WITH CANDY (AND YOURSELF)

• Rebuilding trust with candy isn’t about control — it’s about curiosity.
  
• When you allow yourself to have candy without guilt or rules, you start teaching your brain that it’s not off-limits anymore.
  
• This takes the intensity out of the experience. You no longer feel that “I have to eat it all now” urgency, because you know you can have it whenever you want.
  
• Trust grows when you give yourself permission and stay present enough to notice how the candy actually tastes and feels.
  
• That’s what I call decharming — taking away the power that candy (or any food) seems to have over you.
  
• Through decharming, you learn to:
  
  • See candy as emotionally neutral instead of “good” or “bad.”
    
  • Eat it mindfully, noticing satisfaction instead of guilt.
    
  • Understand what triggers the “I can’t stop” feeling — and how to calm it.
    
  • Create a sense of peace and self-trust around food again.
    
• This isn’t about eating candy all the time; it’s about making candy no big deal.
  
• When you get to that place, you can have Halloween candy in the house — even a whole bowl of it — and not feel pulled to overeat.
  

YOUR INVITATION TO DECHARM HALLOWEEN CANDY

• If you’ve been nodding along and thinking, “This is me every single year,” I want you to know — this doesn’t have to keep happening.
  
• You can absolutely learn to feel calm, confident, and in control around candy — not by restricting it, but by understanding and neutralizing its hold on you.
  
• That’s exactly what we’ll do inside my Decharming Halloween Candy Workshop.
  
• It’s a 60-minute experience where I’ll guide you step-by-step through my decharming process.
  
• You’ll choose one specific candy that tends to “call your name,” and together we’ll create your personalized plan to take its power away.
  
• You’ll leave knowing exactly what to do the next time candy is in your house — and for the first time, you’ll be able to just enjoy it without guilt or chaos.
  
• The workshop is only $27, and it’s happening Oct 25 — plus you’ll get the replay if you can’t join live.
  
• Spots are limited, and this is your chance to finally stop feeling out of control and start feeling free.
  
• Go grab your spot now — the link is in the show notes. You could probably SAVE $27 on candy that you’re not going to binge on and have to replace before the trick-or-treaters arrive.
  
• And when you do, you’ll taking a really important step toward rebuilding trust with food and with yourself. Because if you don’t have peace with sugar and candy, you don’t have peace with food. And I’m not in the business of giving people partial peace with food. I want you to have FULL peace with food. That is my mission, and I’m not going to stop until women everywhere are at peace with food and their bodies. We’ve spent too gosh darn long battling against food, hating our bodies, and yo-yo’ing up and down with our weight. It’s time to fully make peace with ALL foods. And learning to trust yourself with candy is going to create a ripple effect to trust yourself with other foods too, I can promise you that. 

As we wrap up, I want to reiterate to you that you CAN trust your body. You CAN trust yourself. Diet culture has taken that from you, and it’s time for you to reclaim it. You’ve wasted too much time and energy in your life hating yourself and not trusting yourself. You’ve missed out on too many joyful moments, and your body has been through enough. As women, our bodies are full of so much intuition and wisdom, and a therapist friend of mine recently said, “Your intuition is kind, not harsh and critical.” What she meant is that your intuitive voice inside of you speaks with kindness, not the language of picking your body apart and treating you like a drill sergeant. 

Let’s cultivate that kind, compassionate, curious intuitive voice and foster a peaceful relationship with food and your body. 

In case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

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