Halloween seems to signal the start of an abundance of junk food/high calorie dessert at every turn. This year is the year you can make choices in line with the healthy you aspire to be!
If you are the type of person who can eat candy in moderation, no need to keep reading. This is for those of you who put a bag of dark kisses the pantry and manage 20 trips to said pantry in one day. Whether you have kids bringing candy from trick or treating home, or my co-workers putting out candy corn, or leftover candy from Halloween, you need a plan.
If the sand isn’t what I need, why do my kids need it? Our dentist (Kids Dentist) is donating collecting candy to send to the troops overseas. You get a scented pencil and entered into a raffle for Target gift cards. My kids do a lot of Halloween activities, so we go thru and pick 14 pieces of candy for each kid. We donate the rest. And then, for the next 2 weeks, they each get 1 piece a day.
If it is a co-worker leaving out a candy dish, place a small dish next to the candy. Every time you walk by without taking candy, drop a paper clip into the dish. Give yourself a reward for the number of paperclips in there at the new year. Something like, 20 clips is a water bottle, 30 clips is a pedicure, 50 paper clips is both water bottle and pedicure. I can almost guarantee you announce your plan and you will get people to join you too.
If you don’t have small children to have a school or dentist participating in Operation Gratitude, you can donate the candy yourself. When you remove the temptation, it makes it so much easier to be successful.
One of the sayings you often hear when I’m around is Eat to fuel your body, not your feelings. Seems easy enough, but it is not all that easy. It starts when we are ever so little, and get M&Ms to celebrate peeing in a toilet. You celebrate your birthday with cake. Thanksgiving is all about the pies. When someone passes, people bring tray after casserole to the house. When your heat is broken, ice cream supposedly mends it. We’ve been hard wired to think that food is for celebration, condolences, and comfort. I’m here to try and break that cycle with you. It starts with this year’s Halloween. We are heading into the holidays, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas, which are supposed to be a happy and joyous time. For may people, it is a time of sadness and heartache. Whichever end of the spectrum you are at, I encourage you to head into November on a healthy foot, and the first step is to stay away from the Halloween candy.
So, tell me, what will you do to avoid the sugar rush?