Halloween candy shouldn't be scary
It's Halloween, which means there's a good likelihood that your house is about to receive an influx of candy. Before you panic, I wanted to remind you of a process called habituation.
Habituation is when you keep “forbidden” foods in the house regularly so that there’s no pressure to eat them before they are gone. Regular access removes the novelty. Plus, knowing that they’ll be available to you now, tomorrow, or some other time later, allows you to better assess if you actually want to eat or even enjoy eating those foods.
When we classify foods as off-limits we create this additional emotion and novelty surrounding those foods that can increase their appeal. When we bring them into the house after a period of restriction, it makes sense that we would want to eat them. They’re new and exciting. Now many people will bring something like Halloween candy into the house, eat it really quickly because they never have candy in the house and it's a novelty (and maybe because they feel like the faster they get it out of the house, the faster they can go back to being "good"), and then after the candy is gone, it's limited again. Unfortunately, making candy forbidden again doesn't really solve the problem, it just preserves the appeal. The next time you bring candy into the house, you have the same issue where you are eating it simply because it's there and not because you actually want or enjoy it. In fact most people eat forbidden foods so quickly they don't even have time to enjoy them.
So, this year, instead of grabbing handfuls of candy to eat in secret or eating candy in larger amounts just to get it out of the house, I would encourage you to take a breath, slow down, and eat with intention so that you can become habituated to the candy.
Tips to start working on Habituation this Halloween
- Include candy as a regular part of meals so it doesn't feel so scary. Normalize thinking about it as just another food. Start to notice if including something sweet at meals cuts down on cravings later.
- Slow down and focus on what you're eating rather than gobbling it up quickly before you realize what you're doing. Because we see sweets as forbidden foods, we may find ourselves eating them in secret. The problem with this...we often eat so quickly that we don't get to enjoy what we're eating. It's time to bring the candy out into the open. Sit at the table, slow down, savour it. Start to notice if this changes the eating experience.
- Notice when you start to feel satisfied and put the candy away when that happens. Notice your self-talk. If it sounds like "I can't believe I'm doing this" or "This is the last time I'm eating this" you're going to feel pressure to eat more in order to get your fill before it's taken away. Can you challenge that self talk? It's a lot easier to stop eating when you reach that satisfaction threshold if you remind yourself that the candy will be there again tomorrow, and there's no rush to get your fill now.
- Give yourself full permission to eat again when you want to and honour your hunger without negative self-talk. This is a form of self-care. The more you listen to your hunger, the more signals your body will send you regarding not only hunger, but also fullness and satisfaction.
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