5 Tips For a Guilt-Free & Enjoyable Halloween

It’s that time of year again, Halloween, where chocolate and sugary treats are plentiful. These treats are usually in a bowl in some high traffic area of your house, like your front entrance or the kitchen island, where your brain proposes: “Ah, one won’t hurt right?” This logical questioning often happening multiple in a day.

Fun fact: did you know that the average kid devours anywhere between 3,500 – 7,000 calories on Halloween?  Yes, that’s in one night (FYI theoretically 3,500 calories = 1 lb. of fat).

My diet for today: 1% food, 99% Halloween candy. #funny #quotes https://t.co/ayE3JEeAwT pic.twitter.com/Zb1oRF97qL

— Cool Funny Quotes (@CoolFunnyQ) November 12, 2016

Just because it’s halloween doesn’t mean you have to skip out on the food, fun, and/or feel anxious. Here are 5 things you can practice to help you have a guilty-free and enjoyable halloween:

1.  Fill up before-hand

Serve a healthy family dinner before the fun begins, this way the kids will not be tempted to eat candy along the way; or if you’re handing out candy, you won’t be so tempted to snack while handing out candy.

Also, after trick-or-treating try, key word try, offering your kids (or yourself?) a health conscious snack like a fruit and glass of low fat milk. Maybe make an agreement with them like this: you can have “X amount” candy, but first you have to eat “insert healthy food option that is ideally high in volume and low in energy” first. Hey, it’s worth a shot.

2.  Set Limits

After trick or treating sort the candy, inspect the candy, and set boundaries on intake amount. For example, that night they get 4 pieces then afterwards the “stash” is put out of reach. The following day and thereafter they are only allowed to pick two pieces per day.

3.  Be Selective

Choose candy bars based on the least amount of fat and calories per serving. Better choices are: 3 Musketeers, 100 Grand Bar, Butterfinger bar, Milky Way bar, Raisinets (who really likes these though?), Starburst and York Peppermint Patties. Also, dark chocolate versions are typically better.

4. Enjoy in Moderation

Educate your children – and yourself – that it’s ok to have candy, but just don’t over do it. Plan to treat yourself with small candy bars here and there but try to limit large quantities being eaten in one sitting.

5.  Be Creative

Get creative with the foods you decide to serve (see image below 😂), you don’t only have to serve chocolates and other candies at Halloween. Hand out things like Protein bars and pre-cut broccoli! Just kidding, don’t do that. But, there are other foods you can hand out that might be a little more health conscious, like mandarin oranges, or others like these ones.

Something to try with your kids (if you have them): the “Switch Witch.” How it works: Switch Witch basically follows the same principles as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, she visits the kids at night while they’re sleeping and she takes away the Halloween candy and “Switches” it for something in return. You can let the kids indulge a little bit the night before while packing a large ziplock bag of their favorite candies, but anything over that goes…to the Switch Witch.  You can “Switch” whatever you think your kids would consider giving up, you could swap out: $20, movie tickets, a toy on the Christmas list, etc.. What happens to all of the leftover candy? You can let the pile slowly dwindle as you stick to your set amount of pieces per day, bring it to work, or possibly contact your dentist and see if they want to buy it back.

All of the above are small compounding tips that you can do at halloween that can help with the caloric surge that can happen. But it’s also important to relax a little and enjoy the tradition for what it is, dressing up and enjoying some candy. Don’t get too worked up about it, you are what you repeatedly do and you don’t eat like this all the time – at least you shouldn’t. So if you eat a little too much candy, don’t let it bug you. Just know that if you’re trying to lose weight you might not lose weight that week – and that’s OK.

Till next time,

-Mike