Are You Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde With Your Food?
November 17, 2020
Halloween may be behind us now, but one of the scariest parts of the year might still be to come. We spend months working towards a healthier lifestyle, and things are going great all year long—that is, until the holidays hit. When we’re surrounded by food for an entire season, you might feel like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde trying to hold back on overindulging.
Halloween is classic for bringing out our darker, munchy side. Those fun sized candies make it easy to justify just one, and then just two, and then just one more after that until you’ve eaten half the bag without even realizing it. This pattern makes it easy to feel icky and guilty about taking a detour from all the progress you’ve worked towards all these months.
Thankfully, the holiday season doesn’t have to mean impersonating Dr. Jekyll by eating nothing but kale salads, or acting like Mr. Hyde and going overboard on the sweets.
Here are a few of my best tips for enjoying the holidays with a little bit of balance between the two.
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Be Intentional About What Treats Are Entering Your Home—and Your Mouth.
You might feel like it’s important to have Christmas cookies or hot cocoa on call at all times during the winter months, but having these in your home all the time can make for a lot of unnecessary temptation. You know better than anyone else what you can and can’t handle, so if you know that having them around will make resisting unbearable, don’t do it. Be intentional about deciding when you’ll splurge on a holiday treat, how much you’ll be having, how much you want your kids to have, and then make a conscious decision about how much of that treat you’ll keep in the house so that you don’t have too many leftovers tempting you.
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Have a Special Treat of Your Own That Isn’t Going to Lead to a Lot of Guilt.
Think about what your favorite treats are and what it is you love about them, and then find a healthier alternative that you can keep around. For example, I love peanut butter cups, so around Halloween, I tried alternative peanut butter snacks to curb my cravings. I snacked on delicious apples with peanut butter, toast with peanut butter and banana, and even a powdered peanut butter and chocolate shake, and these were all tasty treats that satisfied my peanut butter craving.
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Enjoy in Moderation.
If your Thanksgiving just isn’t complete without a slice of pumpkin pie, or you can’t enjoy decorating your tree without a Christmas cookie in hand, that’s okay, too. The important thing to remember is that life is all about moderation. You can absolutely indulge in treats, but the trick is to plan ahead, have really high quality treats, and decide how much you’re going to have so that you don’t end up going overboard.