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3 Simple Strategies to Survive Halloween Candy Season
See the problem?
Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in The Atlantic that:
“The brain’s pleasure center, called the nucleus accumbens, is essential for our survival as a species… When you consume any substance of abuse, including sugar, the nucleus accumbens receives a dopamine signal, from which you experience pleasure. And so you consume more. The problem is that with prolonged exposure, the signal attenuates, gets weaker. So you have to consume more to get the same effect — tolerance. And if you pull back on the substance, you go into withdrawal. Tolerance and withdrawal constitute addiction.” (source)
3 Simple Strategies to Survive Halloween Candy Season
#2: On Halloween…eat the candy!!
Assuming you don’t spend the entire month snacking on mini candy bars, enjoy the candy on the actual holiday…guilt-free! One day of indulgence is not going to destroy your health, make you gain weight or ruin all your hard work. One day is one day – it matters more what we do the other 364 days of the year. So, enjoy a day of holiday treats…guilt-free!
#3: Give it away.
We all know what happens when we have bowls of leftover candy in the house, right? So, after the holiday, the best thing we can do to prevent forming a bad habit of late-night candy snacking is to get it out of the house. Donate the candy to a teacher to pass out in class or find a dental office that is hosting a give-back program. You can even participate in Operation Gratitude which sends leftover Halloween candy in care packages to deployed troops and first responders!
Do you have strategies to survive Halloween candy season without creating a daily sugar habit? Post them in the comments! 🙂
PS – As a mom to a kid with food allergies, I also love the Teal Pumpkin Project which encourages people to provide non-food goodies so that kids with allergies can enjoy the fun of Trick or Treating too.
Robin Long
Robin Long, founder and CEO of Lindywell, certified Pilates instructor, Nutrition Therapy Practitioner, and author of 'Well to the Core,' blends 15 years of expertise with a lifelong commitment to holistic health.
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14 thoughts on “3 Simple Strategies to Survive Halloween Candy Season”
One of my good friends doesn’t buy candy at all! She takes her kids to as many trick-or-treat street type events as she can before Halloween. She lets them pick one candy from each event to eat. Then on actual Halloween, she uses all the candy they picked up to give out to trick-or-treaters! That way she doesn’t spend money on it, and they give almost all of it away that night! (If they have leftover, they donate it).
Clever! 🙂
We usually get our candy early- we go to an even at Hershey Park in early October and visit Chocolate World! It goes in the basement where I forget about it- comes out for Halloween, then goes back down there for my girlies to slowly snack on through the year. I again forget about it! We re-seal the bags so it is more of a challenge to get into! Our Halloween candy lasts at least until Easter and then Easter until Halloween. Teaching my girls that moderation is key and a piece or two occasionally is OK!
That is an important skill to learn! Good for you mama. 🙂
These are useful, Robin, thank you! One strategy I tried last year was to buy treats to give out that I didn’t like!! It worked beautifully. I bought fruit gummies and goldfish packets, because for me I have no interest in eating those. I also leave any extras left at the end of the evening when I shut down in a bowl on my porch so kids can take the rest. My kids are little so candy coming in is less of an issue but I like your suggestions for that. Thanks!
Ooh that’s smart too!
Another tip is to not buy candy to pass out. Buy little toys in bulk on Amazon and it’ll cost about the same. Then you can still celebrate Halloween without adding to the mountain of candy!
Yes, and I was also going to add that you can participate in the Teal Pumpkin Project which is a gift to many (as a mama to an allergy kiddo, I love this mission). https://www.foodallergy.org/education-awareness/teal-pumpkin-project
I have a food allergy child, too, and so appreciate those who participate in the Teal Pumpkin Project. This is an incredibly stressful time of year for us. Thanks for spreading the word about this, Robin!
I buy candy I don’t like.
Love this. When I tell people our house is candy free, including all holidays, they always give me weird looks. One lady even asked me this Easter how do you do Easter without Candy? Before we had kids I would get holiday candy for my husband but we realized we were eating it. And if we didn’t buy it we didn’t eat it. So we stopped buying it years ago. I’ve passed out granola bars for Halloween and now we don’t live in a neighborhood and don’t have trick or treaters so we don’t get anything. For the first 4 years with kids we just went to grandparents and aunties house, they respected our decision and did cut fruit or other snacks. Last year we attended a Candy Carnival at a local church. Although I about had a heart attack at the amount of candy there my boys were happily telling everyone their candy was going to troops overseas. This year we bought dollar store items to bring for our donation at the Carnival and we will be donating our candy again.
It is harder this time of year for sure but when you start counting up how many times a week or month people offer your kids ‘treats’ (most often candy but other sugar treats and junk food at well) it really is over whelming. My kids know we don’t eat much sugar and so it doesn’t phase them when we say no thank you. But people often are offended and say ‘it’s just a treat’. I don’t think people realize how ‘treats’ are no longer ‘treats’ in our society when they are happening that often.
Yes, exactly! A treat is no longer a treat when it’s a part of daily life. A good reminder. 🙂
When my kids were little I would let them choose 10 pieces from their trick or treat stash and then I would trade a new toy for the rest of their candy. We lived in a really high volume trick or treat neighborhood so it was pretty easy to give the rest away that night.
We give out Five Alive drinking boxes. They seemed to be well received. Any leftovers go to our local food bank.