Keeping Your Halloween Diet Healthy
Holidays are never a good time for dieters and Halloween is no exception. For one thing, it's more or less the start of winter when more solid food is attractive in order to keep warm, and it's the first of a succession of holidays with Thanksgiving and Christmas following hot on its heels.
Unfortunately, sweets feature heavily in the Halloween diet but you can try to keep your Halloween diet healthy by following the tips below. The worst thing about Halloween sweets is that they're usually quite small so the would be dieter is fooled into thinking that they're not very fattening but that isn't the case; there's still plenty of sugar packed into those fun sized treats. Apparently, only nine small candy bars can add a quarter of a pound of fat.
Sweets aren't the only culprits at Halloween with toffee apples, pumpkin pie and all sorts of goodies waiting to ambush the unwary dieter. Even if you can't resist all sweet things over Halloween there are some things you can do to mitigate the damage so try following these tips.
1) If you're going trick or treating, walk around the neighborhood. You'll be able to keep an eye on the kids and you'll be getting some exercise while you do it.
2) Don't leave leftover sweets out in plain view or you'll be tempted to grab one to munch on every time you pass the bowl. Store them in the cupboard or fridge so that you'll have to consciously go and get one.
3) Don't buy your Halloween supply of sweets in advance. Even if you have to shop at the last minute, at least you won't have the temptation sitting around the house for weeks or even days in advance. If you really need to shop in advance, just buy sweets you don't like yourself.
4) Of course you don't have to include sweets in your Halloween diet; why not buy fruit like apples or oranges? If you're expecting trick or treaters buy some colored pens or trendy stickers or cheap jewellery or toys to give out. For partying get in low fat dips and sticks of pepper, carrot, cucumber and celery and you can make bakes to cut in squares similar to quiche but without the pastry.
5) If you do buy sweets, set a date by when it must all be out of the house. Give it away or bag it up and freeze it for Thanksgiving.
6) Alternatively, you can participate in activities that don't involve eating. Where I live, we all dress up and play padel (a cross between tennis and squash) then go out dancing to live music.
If you don't think you can keep your Halloween diet healthy then try going that extra mile to lose weight in advance.