Halloween (or Hallowe’en), an annual holiday observed on October 31, has its roots in the Celtic of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints’ Day. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes, costume parties, carving jack-o’-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, apple bobbing, haunted houses, ghost stories, watching horror films, and eating candy. AND … Not just a little candy. Copious amounts of candy that wreak havoc on your metabolism and s-l-o-w … it d-o-w-n.
Halloween, and its platters full of candy, is also the unofficial kick-off to the holiday season. For many that means that the season within which the healthy living goes out the window with the ghosts and goblins and 7 extra pounds are summarily delivered to thy stomach, thighs and hips is upon us!
As your Weight Loss Success Coach, I’d like to take this moment to ask you … is that what you really want? To be out of control, spiraling downward, padding your body with an extra layer of adipose tissue (a.k.a. fat)? Do you want to start 2011 off with a thud or a self-loving svelte smile?
If you choose the latter – a Self-Loving Svelte Smile … then you’ve come to the right place. Here follows …
The Our Lady of Weight Loss HALLOWEEN SURVIVAL GUIDE
Part I – 9 Halloween Healthy Tips
What NOT to DO.
Tip #1: Do NOT buy your Favorite Candy. For goodness sake, folks. Why in Our Lady of Weight Loss’s name would you stock your Halloween bowl with your favorite candy and have to say ‘no’ to it every single time you hand a piece to your trick or treaters?
Tip #2: Do NOT buy until the very last minute. If temptation enters the house too early, you just may give into it. Wait till the very last minute – no, the last second – before the kids are knocking on your door to buy the goodies, and then hand them out fast!
Tip #3: Do NOT buy any Candy at all! OMG, I know that’s a hard ‘candy’ to swallow. Still, if candy is a ‘red light’ food, a ‘trigger’ food for you; something that is going to send you spinning out of control – causing you to take a 10 year detour from your healthy eating/living plan, you might consider skipping the candy all together! (suggestions of what to buy – see Tip #4)
What TO DO.
Tip #4: THINK Outside the Candy Box. Instead of doing the candy thing, there are other fun options such as Halloween stickers, fake tattoos, stick on ‘gems,’ crayons, pencils, erasers, or how about rubber spiders!!! What kid wouldn’t appreciate a spider?
Tip # 5: Go HEALTHY. How about individual boxes of raisins, or little bags of pumpkin seeds? I’m betting that there are plenty of individually wrapped healthy choices in your supermarket. Search with a healthy eye!
Tip # 6: FRUIT First. On a personal note, if you absolutely must indulge in a piece or two (not the entire bowl) of candy, then eat a luscious piece of vibrant fruit and drink a big glass of water before you get yourself into deep and dark chocolate trouble. You will be full and sated, have fed your brain so that it can make better choices; and therefore, you are much more likely to eat less candy.
Tip # 7: GIVE it Away. The minute – no the second – Halloween is over, purge, baby, purge. If you can’t bring yourself to toss it, then give it away. Just get rid of it!
Tip # 8: Get HIP to Thyself. If you start bargaining with yourself (I’ll eat the candy and skip dinner), or if you start telling yourself that you’ll go back on your healthy living plan tomorrow, you may be in trouble. Remember, tomorrow never comes. There’s only today!
Tip # 9: WRAP It Up. If you find that all of these tips have failed and that you are relentlessly putting your hand in the bowl and unwrapping piece after piece of candy, at the very least save the wrappers!
Yes, you heard me right! Save the wrappers so that you can see how much you actually are eating (a sobering experience that may stop you mid-stream) and at the end of the holiday, we can make a fun post-Halloween collage! (Instructions coming post Halloween).
Tune in tomorrow for: Halloween Tips for the KIDS!
Next week: Wrap It Up COLLAGE!
Spread the word … NOT the icing,
Janice Taylor
Weight Loss Success Coach
wise * fun * utterly useful
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