4 Tips to Help You Eat Halloween Candy Intuitively

It’s Halloween, and we all know what that means. Candy, candy, and more candy.

What a great opportunity to practice eating intuitively! Here are four tips to help you enjoy your Halloween candy and still feel good in your body.

1. Make sure you eat satisfying meals throughout the day so you’re not trying to mindfully enjoy Halloween candy (or any food, really) from a place of urgent hunger. That typically won’t lend itself to landing on your comfortable stopping point.

2. Instead of swearing it off, if you want some candy give yourself full permission to eat it without guilt. Remind yourself that all foods can fit in a health-promoting diet. This mindset shift is important because restriction—even just thinking about restricting certain foods—has been shown to trigger overeating.

This is known as the restrict-binge cycle or “diet starts Monday” thinking in Intuitive Eating—you can read more about this phenomenon and learn the key steps involved in successfully making this powerful mindset shift here.

3. Commit to enjoying any candy you decide to eat mindfully and with intention. Slow down long enough to actually pay attention to what you’re eating—tune into the sights, textures, smells, flavors.

If you love it, savor it. And if you don’t love it, consider whether you really want to eat it!

4. Don’t forget to consider how you WANT to feel. Odds are a few pieces of candy along with a lot of other nourishing foods throughout your day can be enjoyable. But I’m guessing there’s a tipping point of too much candy, too few nourishing foods, or a lack of other self-care that will undermine how you want to feel physically, mentally, or emotionally.

Take a moment now to consider how you’d like to feel and what you can reasonably do today to support that desired feeling.

Cheers and Happy Halloween!

Elizabeth