October 30

Oct 30, 2024

Halloween – a single evening holiday that can light the fuse and set the stage for the whole ensuing holiday season.  Virtually all of the special candy is just the same ole candy they sell everywhere all the time dressed up in Halloween colors.   There is still another month to go before the start of the real “hurricane season” in weight management.  I have a great Kathy Halloween comic that I give out each year that starts out, “I will take a drive, but I will not go by the grocery store…”.  Do I need to tell you how it ends up?

Here are a few strategies from the ranks of the successful weight managers to be able to enjoy the holiday and even the candy…and then get on with business as usual.

Tony stops going into pharmacies altogether about a month before any holiday!  They are a veritable minefield.  The entire front of the store is wall to wall Holiday candy.  I could have eaten my Halloween treats fully four times or more before I actually get to the holiday.

I give away sugar treats (that little kids really prefer – ask them) rather than the chocolate adults love.  Buy something that you really wouldn’t eat on a bet.  I give BlowPops.  Kids really love them, and they don’t get stale for another year or so, so I can carry over the leftovers year to year if need be.  I am so un-invested in them that I can even just leave them without regret in a basket outside my door at the end of the evening and let someone take them all.  I really don’t care.  Not true for me with anything chocolate.

Case in point:  I once generously offered to take three bags of unopened chocolate candies (York Peppermint Patties, KitKats and Snickers Bars) off the hands of a friend who had had no Trick or Treaters.  Thinking better of it just in time, I dramatically threw them in the dumpster outside the grocery store in Washington Township.  Sometime later that evening, regretting my haste, I actually climbed into the dumpster and retrieved them.  I can just imagine someone driving by and seeing my legs coming out of the top of the dumpster.  What if it had been client?  Didn’t matter to me at the time.  I wanted them back at any cost.

Bruce plans to have the exact candy bar he truly loves and buys one for himself.  At the end of the evening when the rest of the candy is gone, he sits down and enjoys the heck out of the one bar (even a giant one if you can fit it in the budget) he bought for himself.

Give away something non-food.  I had a client last year who was a big hit for giving away tattoos.

Have a Halloween party.  Annie did all kinds of clever things with the food so that it looked like worms, eye balls, brains, etc.  She had the kids bob for apples, painted their faces, made a giant spider web with prizes on the ends that it took them hours to untangle  -all kinds of interesting things that were not food.

Adrienne has her kids pick out and keep a certain number of pieces of their candy for however many days she wants to let them have it.  They even make a little ritual about having a piece each night as their dessert.  Each of her kids has a special container for their private stash.  This way they know whose is whose and exactly how much they have…and it is not hers.

Tracy puts her kid’s candy somewhere where she doesn’t come across it.  Actually you might even put it somewhere where they don’t just come across it either.  Amazingly, many times clients tell me that even their kids eventually forget about it if it is not visible.

Go out that night.