My Blog List

Friday, October 29, 2010

Have a healthy Halloween

by Michael D. Hume, M.S.

Too many people gain too much weight during the holidays. There are too many delights... too many temptations. Here are some ideas to help you keep this Halloween weekend more healthy.
First, re-dedicate yourself to the five key daily health habits I call The NEWSS: Nutrtion, Exercise, Water, Sleep, and Supplements. If you've been pretty disciplined on these for the last few months, staying healthy with all the candy flowing around you this weekend will be easier. If not, start now! Cut all the junk out of your diet (this definitely includes Halloween candy). Get up tomorrow morning and do a quick workout before you go to work, to jump-start your metabolism for the day... and make sure you work out both mornings this weekend. Drink at least two liters of water every day (you'll feel more full, and won't crave that candy so much. Get at least eight hours of sleep every night, to make sure your
body chemicals stay in healthy balance. And take your vitamins!
Next, when shopping for Halloween candy to give away, buy less than you think you'll need. Try to run out. Don't you find that the latest-arriving trick-or-treaters are typically the greedy teenagers, some of whom you saw an hour earlier? If you're worried about it, save just a few pieces for folks who come by late with little kids (which shouldn't happen as much this year, since Halloween is on a school night).
If you're tempted by Halloween candy, see if you can get someone else to take charge of the bowl and hand out the treats. It's a great idea to get one of the kids to do it... they'll learn good lessons about giving and receiving (just in time for other upcoming holidays).
At a certain point in the evening, decide that you are "closed." Turn off the front porch lights, and the attractive decorations out there. Hopefully, you'll have run out of candy... but if you haven't, immediately bag it up and put it in your car to take to work. If you own your own business, your customers might appreciate some freebies (especially the ones who don't have kids). If you really want to rack up some karma points, find a church or homeless shelter to which you can donate your extra candy.
If you have kids, they're likely to come home with big sacks of candy from their own trick-or-treating forays. Don't let them pig-out on Halloween evening! Tell them before they go out that there'll be a limit on what they can enjoy when they come home, and make a plan to dole out little bits of candy for the next week or so in their lunch boxes. After that, bag up the rest of their candy and donate it somewhere, along with the extras from your hand-out bowl. If you involve the kids in the donation, they'll again learn some great lessons.
Finally, don't deny yourself completely. I would say store-bought Halloween candy is rarely "worth it" - so instead, go buy one piece of REALLY good candy (at a candy store, not the grocery) and reward yourself Sunday evening when it's all over and you've successfully resisted all those temptations.
Halloween is great - it's one of my favorite holidays. But it's only the first in a long line of fall holidays that can really sabotage your health habits. Start this weekend with a plan, and build some momentum in your discipline that could sustain your vitality - and your waistline - all the way through New Year's Day.



Read more: http://health.ezinemark.com/have-a-healthy-halloween-16c761f627c.html#ixzz13lT8inij
Under Creative Commons License:
Attribution No Derivatives

No comments:

Post a Comment