How Halloween helps you lose weight
You CAN celebrate Halloween without ruining your diet - treat it as a rehearsal for coping with Christmas!
I love Halloween. It’s the only time of the year I fill my kitchen with the kind of sweets I wouldn’t buy any other time of year. It’s a great excuse to buy the biggest tin of Quality Street I can find - and I DO buy a tin, not a plastic one! And then hope like hell the sweets don’t all go and I’m left with a few of those gorgeous orange, mauve, red, blue, pink and green-wrapped goodies.
What am I doing writing about sweets in a diet column? Well, I love sweets and I adore chocolate. Usually to sate my sweet tooth I buy only the very best, high-quality chocolate at least 70% cocoa solids. But at Halloween I buy the kind of treats I loved as a kid but which we were only allowed very sparingly. Rationing stopped a few years before I was born but sweets were an occasional treat not a regular occurrence. Now of course trying to lose weight means they remain a treat. Treats are good. There even used to be chocolates called Treats! Think Minstrels or M&Ms.
So given the temptation of Halloween if you’re doing Trick Or Treat how can it possibly help dieters? Here’s how. Treat it like a mini dress rehearsal for Christmas. Test yourself. You will almost definitely come off the diet at Christmas which is fine, normal, and would be odd if you didn’t. But the trick to cope with your treat is to go back on the diet it afterwards. For that’s where so many of us fall down: “I’ve gone off my diet so I might as well stay off it.” And so the yoyo goes so it goes.
Taking time off a diet is a good thing because we’re humans not robots. Few people can stick to a diet long term without lapses. Perhaps we shouldn’t call it a lapse? Or a failure? Or liken it to an recovering alcoholic falling off the wagon? Why shouldn’t you take a diet Time Out? It’s hard to eat less than you want to. It’s bloody difficult, especially as the days get shorter, the nights get longer and the weather gets colder. I’ve been really struggling this month. I haven’t lost anything, in part because I simply cannot stick to my diet at the moment. I’m just relieved I’m not gaining. It’s possible all the steps I’m walking is helping though I remain of the view exercise makes very little difference either way.
So I’ll be opening that giant tin of Quality Street on Sunday and offering it to any children who knock on my door. I’ve got Freddos and mini Mars bars too. I won’t indulge myself till all my customers have had their fill. The trick of this treat is to enjoy giving to others. And the social contact is lovely too. I’ve lived in the same house for so long I now see parents I knew as kids bringing their kids to knock on. It’s lovely. A sense of continuity and community.
I know not everyone likes or approves of Trick or Treat and that’s fine. Each to their own. But I think this year more people are taking part and looking forward to it as we couldn’t do it last year due to lockdown. I’ve seen lots of houses festooned with Halloween decorations which is something I’d never previously seen weeks before the actual event. I like it. It’s cheering and I totally get why people want to do it.
So have a wee indulge if you want. Prove to yourself you can come off your diet without staying off it. Whatever you’re doing Sunday, have a lovely Halloween or, you know, a Not Halloween.