An Intuitive Eating Guide on Halloween Candy for YOU and Your Kids
Halloween is the holiday for fun costumes, Trick-or-Treating, and CANDY!!!
The holiday’s kick of every year with loads and loads of candy collected by your children from trick-or-treating. Some may think this is awesome and others may struggle because their relationship with food is already in a rocky place without loads of candy sitting in their house.
Most kids LOVE candy. They ask for it at the grocery store, after dinner, at the movies, and as a special treat. Halloween candy is a fun part of Halloween, but so is dressing up and going out trick-or-treating with friends and neighbors. Maybe as a parent, you worry about your kid eating too much candy or you worry about eating too much candy yourself. I get it. Sugar, sweets, and candy are demonized in our health and diet culture. We have holidays like Halloween and Valentine’s day where there is tons of candy everywhere, and then hear the media talk about how sugar is causing x, y, and z problems. These messages are confusing and may have caused you to struggle in regulating your own relationship with sweets, which then makes you concerned about your kid’s ability to do the same.
If you are worried about how you or your children are going to deal with the candy this year here are 5 helpful tips.
Enjoy some candy with your kids.
Eat candy with your children. Show them there are no foods off-limits and enjoying candy on Halloween is totally fine. If you don’t eat candy, but candy is something you really enjoy I would ask you to consider how that restriction is affecting you. Do you tell yourself you can’t have candy and then “blow it” a few days later by eating all kinds of candy or other things? Begin to model to your kids that no foods are off-limits and our body can be our guide instead of some diet restriction. Keep reading to #3 to see how you can do this.
Allow your kids to eat as much as they want on Halloween or the day after.
You might think I’m crazy, but hear me out. Kids are naturally intuitive eaters. Just because you feel like you have difficulty controlling yourself around candy doesn’t mean they have that same problem. They know when they are hungry and they will stop when they are full. If they do eat until they are overfull they will likely pick up on that information and stop sooner next time. Again if candy isn’t that special they will stop because they know they can have more tomorrow.
Encourage your kids to tune into their fullness. Reassure them the candy is going to be there tomorrow. Let them know when they can have some candy tomorrow and how much they can have.
Make candy a normal thing so it really isn’t that special.
The more candy is restricted in your home the more fixated or disordered things may become. If you never allow candy in your home it might be more difficult for your kids to regulate themselves around the candy. Begin to make it a normal thing. Keep candy in your house all year round, so it’s as normal as the other food in your pantry. If kids know they can have candy any time they want, then it really isn’t that big of a deal on Halloween. We want to give ourselves unconditional permission to eat all foods. When we can eat all foods without guilt, shame, or restriction then food is just-food. It is exciting, but then the excitement goes away and our kids can move on to something else instead of having to fixate on the candy.
Pay attention to how the candy tastes.
In our home, we have been buying different assortment bags of Halloween candy all month, and to be honest, I’m already tired of it. I’m tired of it because it has been “habituated” in our home. It’s been there for several weeks so now it’s not that special. The other day, I took a bite of snickers and it honestly did not taste that good. So I threw it away and grabbed something else. Not all candy is created equal. When you are enjoying some of your children’s Halloween candy or better yet if you go and buy some for yourself eat mindfully, eat slowly, and pay attention to how satisfying it truly is.
Slowing down and paying attention while you eat will help you actually enjoy the candy. When you enjoy the candy you likely won’t need as much. Not needing as much comes from intuitively noticing your body not restricting.
If you feel out of control or triggered by candy or another food this holiday season reach out for help.
Maybe Halloween is a hard time for you because candy is triggering. It is hard to control yourself around these foods and the thought of having your children’s Halloween candy in your home and not eating it all at once feels impossible. If you have been dieting for many years or restricting food or food groups then this is going to be hard. As I said before try and allow yourself to have some candy and even buy your own so you don’t feel bad about eating your kid’s candy and begin to move through that intuitive process of paying attention to your own body and thoughts around candy. Feel free to give us a call. Chelsea would be happy to do a consultation with you to see if intuitive eating counseling would be beneficial for you.
Maybe this year the holidays can be different when it comes to food and it can start with Halloween. It’s okay to have candy and let your kids have candy. They will likely forget about the week after Halloween anyway. You have everything within you to tune into your body and be intuitive and teach your children to do the same.
Encounter Counseling offers in-person counseling in Grand Junction and online counseling state-wide in Colorado including Denver, Boulder, Ft. Collins and Colorado Springs.