If you have been to a supermarket recently, you cannot help but notice the Halloween displays prominently positioned. The colorful, autumn colored, “spooky” displays house a bunch of candy “treats” that intended to be given out when the costume-wearing children ring our doorbells. These large (often huge) size bags contain bite-sized wrapped “treats” ranging from Three Musketeers to Milky Ways to Reese’s Pieces to Skittles to a bunch of other well-known candy treats.
Tradition being what it is, we are not going to hand out proteins and vegetables to the children that visit our homes. Like everyone else, we are going to “treat” those cute dressed up children with stuff they love, i.e. the aforementioned candies. We feel bound and obligated to pass out the traditional candies that we, ourselves received when we were kids.
During a long-term weight control journey, the very last thing we need in our pantries are these bite-sized, high caloric/high fat candies. If we buy them early we will e very tempted to open those bags and “steal” a few here and there. The problem is that in the aggregate, having a “few here and there” can actually wind up being LOTS of damage to our weight control plans.
The stores psychologically coerce us to buy NOW as they will often place these on sale so when you whip out your bonus card, you get a discount when checking out. They know very well that by placing these displays up in September, they will sell LOTS more than if they set these things up in October.
My advice: Do NOT be lulled into buying your bags of Halloween candies now. If you feel compelled to hand out candies to the kids, make your purchase much closer to October 31. If you buy them now, you are likely to give in to the normal human nature compulsion we all have to snack on these “feel good” items before the actual Halloween day.
And no, I refuse to post “The Monster Mash” as the ending song. When I owned my medical practice in Burke, we did have a yearly tradition of dressing up in costumes on Halloween. It was sort of hard to maintain credibility when I was seeing patients while wearing a Superman, Elvis or my usual “go to” costumes I would wear. One year I wore a Phantom Of The Opera outfit. Enjoy Michael Crawford , the original Phantom, singing the Music Of The Night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3NIK-nsI2g
