I’ve always considered this the beginning of candy season, which is really more than a season and basically half of the year.
It’s crazy how many holidays ahead promote candy and how each one has a different purpose.
Coming up real soon we have Halloween, where buying bags and bags of candy is normal so we can pass it out to children, or simply share it with co-workers and friends.
Then Christmas, where candy is given as gifts and stocking stuffers.
Next up is Valentine’s Day, the day of assorted chocolates and heart shaped everything.
Last is Easter, chocolate bunnies and baskets full of candy.
For me, I wouldn’t really buy the candy before the holiday, except maybe whatever shaped Reese’s was being sold at the time.
Instead I’d wait until after the holiday to get the deal on the leftover candy.
So many discounts!
I liked that the selection was smaller so I didn’t have to spend as much time choosing what I’d get, and secretly I’d be happy when I didn’t like most of what was there.
The whole time there was this opposing force where on one side I really wanted the candy and told myself I’d have just a few each day, and the on the other side where I was afraid I wouldn’t, that I’d eat way too many at once.
There were few times in my adult life that I had just a few.
Those fun size and bite size candies are just way too easy to eat one after another after another and so on.
Plus, when the sugar produces dopamine in the brain, we keep wanting more. We want the reward center in our brain to keep lighting up.
It feels good.
Until it doesn’t of course and by that time we’ve already gone down the rabbit hole and it’s too late.
How many times has this happened to you around the candy holidays?
We want the candy, we go for the deals, and then we become miserable.
So if this season, you decide to buy the candy, bags of it or whatever the option is at the time, what will be different?
How will this time be different than all the other times when you went overboard?
You can’t keep doing the same thing expecting different results.
You can’t just say, “This time will be different” without a reason in place of why it will be different.
I remember saying that all the time.
“This time, for real, I’m only going to eat 3 a day.”
But how? How was I going to do that when so many times before that’s not at all what happened even when I’d said the exact same thing?
What I failed to do each time was prepare myself for the moment when that urge to keep eating would appear.
I didn’t have a plan for when it would come.
This was because I was hoping it wouldn’t.
I was hoping this time it just wouldn’t happen and I’d have no problem stopping.
My hoping was not effective.
What is effective now, is expecting that I’ll want more and knowing how to say no and stop.
Expect that you’re going to feel and urge to keep eating and have a plan for how you’re going to talk yourself out of it.
When you’re faced with all the candy this coming season, be prepared.
What can you say to yourself that will help you to not eat until you’re surround by piles of wrappers?
How will this time be different?
Make a plan and commit to it.
