I had to be careful what picture I chose for this blog post. Many pictures of Halloween candy, chocolate in particular, set off a physiological response in me. I equate it to seeing a...I don't know, fertile member of the opposite sex. Something changes in you if your brain thinks they'd be genetically-suitable to assist you in proliferating your genes throughout the species, to put it politely. Perhaps your heart rate increases, perhaps adrenaline is released.
Chocolate does the same thing to me. Even if you are one of those freaks who don't like chocolate, you probably have an equivalent food porn. You look at that food and your whole body readies itself for it, wants to know how it's going to get it and how much of it it can have. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't have an eating problem and you can go home now.
Last night my family watched part of a documentary on child slave labour used in the harvesting of cocoa. I barely showed concern. I watched people on the streets of the UK being shown chocolate that may have been produced with child labour and all I could think about was the sweet, sweet chocolate. When they gave chocolate bars to the African cocoa workers to try for the first time in their lives it was like heroin was entering their veins. Their eyes almost rolled back.
My impulsive and reckless eating tendencies are no help when I'm presented with chocolate Halloween candy. Years of telling myself it's okay to have more than one, or have more than ten, or keep eating until my stomach feels uncomfortably full have led to me being trained to do the wrong thing.
Retraining myself could take a long time and a lot of work but I did learn a few things in my Craving Change workshop that may help. Just being aware of this dysfunction helps. As along as I don't conveniently turn off my brain when I encounter chocolate, I should be okay.
We don't buy candy to give out on Halloween until the afternoon of. That's how much I can't be trusted. Who knows how many thousands of calories of chocolate I'm capable of consuming in one feeding frenzy but it's probably enough to add significant ounces of fat too my body and cause me to be sickly and moody afterwards. (Tip: My nutritionist only gives out candy she hates to eat.)
The other problem of course is the candy my two kids come home with. They're not very aggressive on Halloween and they still come back with a truck load of sugary treats. Two solutions I've heard involve limiting the amount they can eat and giving the rest to a food bank (although, when you think about it, even food bank users' children probably have lots of candy available to them from trick-or-treating.)
Throwing it out seems wrong but so does putting it all in your body. A dietician in the Globe and Mail wrote that you could celebrate Halloween Week by making up several treat bags with the days of the week written on them, hand them out one per day and discard the rest.
My kids are getting a bit older every year and a bit more aggressive in their candy harvesting on Halloween. I used to actually take some of the candy they brought back midway through their evening and give it out to other kids. A good idea, but it didn't stop me from binging on it or the candy it replaced.
And now a disturbing video I made of myself eating Halloween candy a few years ago. I can't remember if it's work-safe but I'm pretty sure it is (I don't want to watch it again to find out!)
Update: To test my fragile willpower, I'm not going to have one single piece of candy until I get up the morning after Halloween. I'm not cutting out candy completely, just for one day to see if I can do it. So far, I have a slight case of the shakes.
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