Halloween is quickly approaching! In past years it was easy for me to avoid having my favorite candy in the house because my oldest son had a milk allergy.  He recently outgrew that allergy (hooray!!!!), but now he wants all of the yummy candy that he could never have!  I can’t say no since he has heard “no!” for the past 6 years.  Now the M&M’s, Snickers, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kats have invaded my house!

I am very health conscious and try to eat clean, but I know that I will be tempted by all of this Halloween candy.  The benefits of clean eating and limiting the amount of sugar in your diet has been proven to give you more energy, help you lose weight, decrease triglycerides, improve immune system function, and decrease your Diabetes risk.  With that being said, it is important to stay on track with your fitness and nutrition when all of the temptations are lurking!

I developed these 5 tips to help you (and me!!) stay on track with fitness and nutrition and help you survive Halloween! Here they are:

1.  Don’t buy candy you like!

2.  Don’t open the bags of candy until Halloween night.  This will help lessen the temptation to take a candy bar or two when you walk by the candy bowl!

3.  Donate the leftover candy to a local food pantry or if you have children, you can let them bring the extra candy to their dentist and trade it in for money.  Check in your area for a dentist who does this! We did it last year and my son was so excited to get a few extra dollars for his piggy bank and I was happy to get the candy out of the house!

4. Make sure to exercise EVERY day! When you work out you will be less likely to indulge in sweet treats.  A 30 minute workouts only 2% of your day.  No excuses!

5.  Before you reach into the candy bowl consider how much exercise it will take to burn off those extra calories.  I am certain that you will think twice about indulging. Here are some examples:

• 8 pieces of Starburst =163 calories and would require 50 minutes of Pilates to burn off those extra calories

• Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins (2 pack)= 340 calories.  You would have to run for 30 minutes to work these little pumpkins off

 

• 2 Snickers fun bars (one of my favorites!)=160 calories.  If I ate these I would have to do 22 minutes of vigorous Vinyasa yoga

 

• 3 Hershey’s snack size bars = 190 calories.  You would have to do 60 minutes of light to moderate weight lifting to burn these little chocolate bars off

I hope these 5 tips are useful and help you stay on track and survive Halloween without gaining the added pounds!