Healthy Tricks for a Healthier Halloween

Halloween is a fun, festive celebration to kick off the holiday season. It’s usually celebrated with spooky decorations, costumes, and of course, with sweets and treats.

The team at New Life Center for Bariatric Surgery in Knoxville knows that holiday celebrations like Halloween can be challenging for people who are trying to lose weight. This rings true for bariatric patients.

Bariatric or weight loss surgery is just a tool for helping a person lose weight. It doesn’t guarantee weight loss. This is why bariatric patients are counseled before and after surgery regarding nutrition and physical activity to help them lose weight and sustain that in the long run.

Why do people gain weight around the holidays?

Contrary to what many people think, it’s not really the amount of food served around the holidays that are making them gain weight; it’s the quality of the food being served.

Many of the traditional holiday foods are loaded with extra calories that don’t necessarily fill you up.

Let’s take Halloween as an example. Traditional trick or treating is often done with candies and other sweet treats. The problem with this is that these store-bought candies are often loaded with so much sugar. A 73-gram chocolate bar can have as much as 406 calories! For a bariatric patient, that’s more than enough for a treat.

How can you survive Halloween after bariatric surgery?

The good news is, there are simple tricks that can help you celebrate Halloween while still being in compliance with your weight loss plan:

Don’t do traditional
If you don’t trust yourself not giving in to candies, it’s best to set a rule for a no candy trick or trick.

There are non-candy options you can hand out to kids – spooky temporary tattoos, stamps, scented pencils, and things like that. Kids would love that! And parents will be thankful for having fewer candies in their house.

Serve or bring healthy snacks
Hosting a Halloween party? Serve healthy snacks. Think about fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy proteins. Apps like Pinterest offer a ton of fun ideas on how to make them spooky for your guests!

If you’re attending a party and you don’t know what will be served, it would be smart to fill up before you go. You may also want to pack a healthy snack or two such as a protein bar for unexpected hunger pangs.

Learn to say ‘no’
Offered with candies from the office or by friends? Just say no.

If you struggle to do that, you may accept it with the plan of giving them away. Don’t let candies lay around the house for no reason. Remember, out of sight, out of mind.

Celebrate wins with your support group
Sometimes, we can be too hard on ourselves, often overlooking the small wins we have and magnifying our failures. In situations like this, it definitely helps to have a support group with whom you can share both your struggles and wins.

New Life Center for Bariatric Surgery in Knoxville, TN has dedicated support groups for its bariatric patients. The groups give members a chance to share information and with other bariatric patients.

If you’re interested in weight loss surgery, you can learn about the process by watching New Life’s online seminar. It’s the first step towards becoming a bariatric patient. Register to view the seminar at: https://newlifeseminar.premiersurgical.com/. Questions? Call us at (865) 694-9676.

New Life Center for Bariatric Surgery is part of Premier Surgical Bariatrics in Knoxville, Tennessee. New Life is affiliated with the Parkwest Center for Bariatric Surgery, part of Covenant Health Bariatric Services.