3 Tips for a Healthier Halloween – Guest Post!

The Invasion of the Halloween Candy has begun! Between school parties, social gatherings and good ol’-fashioned trick-or-treating, the amount of candy your kids bring home can easily become overwhelming.   My dear friend and health coach extraordinaire, Jess Pedersen of Be Mama, Be Well, takes over the blog today to offer several great tips for handling the always-tempting influx of sugary treats.

Guest post from Jess Pedersen, CHHC

Considering I’m a health coach, you probably wouldn’t guess that Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. But I LOVE it! The costumes, cooler weather, decorations, pumpkin carving – I dig it! The only thing that I don’t absolutely love about Halloween is the junk food — the piles of candy that make their way into our homes, filling our kids with high fructose corn syrup and dyes. And then the rejected bits end up tagging along with us to the office so we can share the candy-induced irritability and sugar crashes with our co-workers. Ugh!

If you are interested in creating healthier traditions in your household this year, here are my Top 3 Tips to make Halloween healthier for you and your kiddos:

SET A GOOD EXAMPLE
The best way to begin is to set a good example for your family with your own Halloween to-dos. Purchase a healthy snack or even a non-food item for your class party treat bags. Clementines are festive and go over well with little ones because they look like mini pumpkins. Orange and black tubs of playdough, spider rings, festive stickers, Halloween themed crayons or creepy pencils are easy non-food items that will last much longer than a candy bar. You can also find hundreds of fun alternatives to sweet treats on Pinterest.com.When it comes time to preparing for your neighborhood trick-or-treaters, consider replacing your big bags of candy bars with granola or cereal bars, popcorn, cheese sticks, mini pretzel bags, 100% real fruit juice boxes, dried fruit, or a fun non-food item. If you’re a traditionalist and want to hand out something sweet, plain chocolate bars are a safe bet. With more and more kids being diagnosed with allergies to peanuts, gluten, dyes, etc., the simpler the candy bar the better. If you want to crank up the healthiness a notch, try Lake Champlain Chocolates, Yummy Earth Lollipops, Annie’s Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks or Endangered Species Chocolates.

CREATE A PLAN & SET EXPECTATIONS
Before your children leave the house on Halloween night, set some guidelines and expectations about how you will handle the candy once they return. When your children come home with pillowcases overflowing with sweet treats, allow them to dump out their stash and sort their candy just like they did in previous years. Then remind them that they can choose a certain number of pieces to eat right then and there and a certain number to save. In our house, my son eats three pieces that night and can save ten of his favorite pieces for the days ahead. The rest goes into a container with a lid and we leave it on the front porch for the Great Pumpkin. The next morning there is a note and a toy on the porch from the Great Pumpkin.He knows that the more candy you give the Great Pumpkin the cooler the gift. So he readily gives up his candy, much of it he can’t eat due to food allergies and intolerances, to the mysterious Great Pumpkin! You can try this too if your kids are young. But if they are older, check out my next tip.

ENCOURAGE GENEROSITY
Halloween is the last major holiday before Thanksgiving. We often think of Thanksgiving as a time to be generous. Why not start early and encourage our children to be generous with their leftover Halloween candy. There are several organizations that accept donations of candy, including Operation Gratitude (operationgratitude.com) who will send your leftover candy to US troops, veterans, and wounded warriors. You can also donate to Meals on Wheels, a local food bank, or homeless shelter. So encourage your children to pack up your leftover candy into a bag or box and donate it in early November!

About the Author
Jess Pedersen, CHHC is a health coach specializing in helping women with unexplained infertility, PCOS, and hormone imbalances discover a holistic approach to improving their fertility and ability to conceive. Through her personal struggles with infertility and pregnancy loss, Jess has discovered her life’s purpose and is compassionate toward women who face the same uncertainty regarding their ability to have a family.

Website: bemamabewell.com
Twitter: @bemamabewell
Facebook: Be Mama, Be Well

Photo courtesy SOFABEAN Photography

Like what you see here? Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter!