Candy Chaos? Navigating Halloween with Less Stress & More Joy
Halloween can be a challenging time for parents in terms of the abundance of candy around every corner. Many parents find themselves asking, “How much candy is too much?” “Should we limit our kids' intake, or let them have what they want?” “How do we ensure a balance between enjoying the holiday and maintaining our child's well-being?”
As a certified eating disorder specialist and clinician who helps people with the principles of intuitive eating, let’s unpack how Halloween can be approached using this lens (and what research demonstrates about this approach as well).
Understanding Intuitive Eating
Intuitive eating is an approach to nutrition that emphasizes listening to your body's natural hunger and fullness cues, rather than following strict diets or external rules. It encourages individuals to trust their bodies and make food choices based on their own physical and emotional needs. Intuitive eating promotes the idea that all foods can have a place in a balanced, well-rounded diet. Sometimes folks erroneously conclude that intuitive eating is just about consuming “whatever you want, whenever you want it, as much as you want” (so, hamburgers and ice cream for every meal!)… This is not fully grasping the concepts behind intuitive eating at all. A huge part of intuitive eating is about prioritizing the relationship you have with food and paying attention to how you eat. It’s about looking at the bigger picture, in terms of how you are feeding and nourishing yourself, as opposed to critiquing and obsessing over every small decision. It is about using food to adequately nourish and energize your body, helping it function smoothly and efficiently. It’s also about recognizing that food is used for connection and pleasure as well. Basically, applying intuitive eating principles to Halloween can help children and parents alike develop a more effective relationship with the holiday and the associated abundance of candy, without the anxiety, guilt, and second-guessing of every decision.
Intuitive Eating: An Empirically-Supported Approach
Research Highlights
Individuals who practice intuitive eating are more likely to experience a stable weight, improved health outcomes like lower blood pressure and cholesterol, and improved psychological outcomes (Van Dyke & Drinkwater, 2014).
Intuitive eaters are less likely to engage in binge eating, emotional eating and eating in response to external cues (Warren, Smith, & Ashwell, 2017).
Intuitive eating aids in body attunement, which can improve overall diet quality (Hensley-Hackett et al., 2022).
For an extensive list of intuitive eating research, please visit: https://www.intuitiveeating.org/resources/studies/
Intuitive Eating & Halloween
So, how do we take an intuitive eating approach this Halloween?
Lead by Example: Children model their behavior after their parents. Show them they can enjoy candy, without the guilt and shame. Try not to make comments like, “I’m being so bad today!” or “Tomorrow, I’m going to be healthy again!” Bringing so much attention to the candy and depicting it in such a negative light can create unnecessary stress and anxiety around the food. Try, as best you can, taking a more neutral approach.
Reduce the Deprivation/Restriction Mindset: The less children feel deprived, the less likely they are to binge on candy when given the chance (see above for research that backs this statement up!). I know many parents fear that their child will completely lose control around candy. When we consistently promote intuitive eating in our homes, we see this just isn’t the case. I can hear some folks saying, “But Emily, you should see my kiddo!” If you feel that your child does appear “out of control” around certain food, I would pose the following questions to you:
-is the child regularly deprived of a certain food, that they really enjoy?
-is there dichotomous language around food in the home, that might be setting the child up to feel some element of “mental restriction” around the particular food?
-can you find ways to incorporate that food item into your child’s intake?
-does the child know how to differentiate between emotional hunger, physical hunger, and cravings?
-does the child have a robust set of coping skills, to deal with a wide range of emotions?
*** Most often, when we address and answer these questions, eliminating restricition and increasing emotional coping, the “out of control” eating dissipates.***
Avoid Food Policing: Refrain from critiquing and harshly commenting on your child's candy intake. You can ask questions like, “Are you still feeling hungry?”, but be sure that you’re asking this in a neutral manner. (I realize this can be challenging when you’re first learning to trust your child’s intuive eater!)
See the Big Picture: Be sure to focus on your child’s overall health habits, not just the ones pertaining to food, but also in regards to movement, relationships, emotional coping, etc. Remember that Halloween is one day, and that your child’s relationship with food is an ever-evolving, ongoing process.
Halloween is a time for yummy foods and fun traditions. Here’s the deal with intuitive eating: we’re not always going to get it “right”, and that’s ok. We may have days where we feel we ate “too much” or even feel physically uncomfortable or sick (various holidays come to mind); however, an intuitive eater does not sink into a place of guilt or despair. An intuitive eater uses this as important information to improve their relationship with their body and how they care for it. Our kids very well might eat beyond their fullness and feel uncomfortable on Halloween. This can actually be helpful in the intuitive eating process, because it’s feedback for your child. Without guilt and shame attached, they can learn: “Hmm…that didn’t feel so good…my body doesn’t feel so great.” Especially for kids who have grown up in homes with lots of food rules or restriction, learning to trust their bodies and their hunger cues can take some time at first. However, the longer we practice and embrace intuitive eating, the easier it becomes. I know many intuitive eaters who do not struggle with Halloween at all any more, because they’ve learned to trust their body, listen to their cues, and they don’t feel so tempted to binge eat because they know they could have candy any other day (i.e., it’s not taboo or forbidden). So, let’s take the pressure off the holiday, recognize that it’s just one day out of the whole year, and enjoy the fun.
Wishing everyone a safe and happy Halloween!
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Hensley-Hackett, K., Bosker, J., Keefe, A., Reidlinger, D., Warner, M., D’Arcy, A., & Utter, J. (2022). Intuitive Eating Intervention and Diet Quality in Adults: A Systematic Literature Review. Journal of nutrition education and behavior.
Van Dyke, N., & Drinkwater, E. (2014). Review Article Relationships between intuitive eating and health indicators: Literature review. Public Health Nutrition, 17(8), 1757-1766. doi:10.1017/S1368980013002139
Warren, J., Smith, N., & Ashwell, M. (2017). A structured literature review on the role of mindfulness, mindful eating and intuitive eating in changing eating behaviours: Effectiveness and associated potential mechanisms. Nutrition Research Reviews, 30(2), 272-283. doi:10.1017/S0954422417000154