It's that time of year. It's inevitable.
Few people I know can resist having Halloween treats in the house in October. Next to Valentine's Day, more candy is sold and consumed than any other time of the year. All those little delectable goodies... so tempting... What if you could enjoy the Halloween treats you love without gaining weight? Well, you can! The first thing to do is RELAX!!! Keep reading to find out how many treats you would have to eat AT ONE SITTING in order to gain a pound of body fat. I don't know about you, but the mere thought of having to eat 58 chocolate bars or 489 pieces of candy corn makes me more than a little queasy!!!★To gain one pound of fat... you’d have to eat 58 Halloween chocolate bars in one sitting. ★
It takes eating 3500 calories of EXTRA food–food your body doesn’t need–to gain one pound of body fat. Second, give yourself permission to eat one or two of your favorite Halloween treats every day until Halloween AND—this is IMPORTANT—every day after Halloween (until you no longer feel like it). If you do this, you will not gain weight from those Hallowe'en treats.Why is it important to give yourself permission to eat them after Halloween?
Because when we fall into the dangerous trap of setting a cut-off date to stop eating the foods we love–i.e. I’ll stop eating this the day after Halloween–it often triggers a binge the day before the cut-off date. For some of us, it can trigger many binges on the days leading up to the cut-off day. This was the case with "Cathy." In the past, when she was going to start a diet on a Monday, she always started about 5 pounds heavier because of all the foods she’d eat on the weekend prior... the very same foods that she was going to give up on the Monday... and some more for good measure! When we reach for what we think is a forbidden food, we don’t give ourselves total permission to eat and enjoy the food. We think we have, because, after all, we ARE eating the food. But usually, there are "conditions." What are these? Conditions are thoughts like; “I shouldn’t be eating this,” or, “Okay, just this once,” or, “I’ll get back on my diet tomorrow (or Monday—or after Halloween).” These thoughts, these conditions, often trigger you to eat more, and may even trigger a binge. (Further, they cause a low-grade stress on your body... which has even more negative effects.) And so, instead of eating just 1 or 2 pieces of Halloween treats, we stuff ourselves! We might also think something like, Well, I’ve blown it now....so, I might as well stop and eat a whole pizza on the way home from work...or get a box of donuts to eat on the way home. So, let me restate... It takes eating 3500 calories of EXTRA food–food your body doesn’t need–to gain one pound of body fat. Reality Check: If you gain a pound overnight unless you ate 3500 calories of food the day before–above and beyond what your body needs–then it’s not a pound of fat. It’s usually water retention. It could also be inflammation from a food that did not agree with your body. Avocado causes my body to gain 3 pounds overnight! It could also be that you are overdue for a trip to the bathroom. The truth is that, at any given time, your body can fluctuate 2-3 pounds because of water and bowel retention. I checked out the calories of Halloween treats the other day. Here's what I found:- The chocolate bars have 40-60 calories (depending on the type).
- Each small bag of potato chips has 90 calories.
- 21 pieces of Candy Corn is 150 Calories.
- 6 Gummi Worms are 130 calories.
- 1 Fun Size bag of M & M's... 70 Calories.