You poured out all of your two liter soda bottles, replaced all the potato chip snacks with fruit and signed all your children up for winter sports. Just when you thought your family’s activity and diet balance was perfect, along comes Halloween, that fabulous candy-filled holiday to thwart your efforts. Ways to keep the candy deluge down to a trickle:
-Let your children know Halloween (and most holidays) lasts only one day. Live it up on Halloween then dump the extra sweets into the trashcan the next day.
-Buy back the candy with toys or money. Alternatively, have the sweet tooth fairy come overnight, pick up the candy and leave a present behind.
-If you decide to keep a small bag of candy around, watch out, your children will be tempted to eat some daily. Candy becomes an ongoing “must have.” Instead, designate a day to eat candy during the week such as Sweet Saturday or Candy Friday. If the kids whine for candy on any other day of the week, you can say, ”Sorry, it’s not Sweet Saturday.”
-One parent told me she discourages her kids from eating Halloween candy by making their dental appointments on November 1—the day after Halloween.
According to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000, the average American adult gains about a pound over the winter holidays. Unfortunately, the weight is not shed during the rest of the year.
Hope your kids don’t grow into that kind of adult. Now, that’s a scary Halloween thought.
Naline Lai, MD with Julie Kardos, MD
©2010 Two Peds in a Pod
