As you know, Halloween can bring out a lot of scary food rules.
For people who already feel a real loss of control around certain foods, or who worry that their kids will eat “too much,” external rules can actually feel reassuring.
Rules create a sense of safety. Even if they ultimately don’t align with your long-term goals.
I’m thinking of questions like:
How much candy should I “be allowed” to eat?
How much should my kids be “allowed” to eat?
Should we eat dinner first?
Should I ration my own candy…or theirs?
Should we just let everyone go for it?
Should I hide it after a few days…and donate the rest?
Thing is, there is no one “right” answer for you. I’m not going to give you an all-or-nothing answer about what you “should” do. The right answer for you in your house may very well be different from another parent’s in their house.
Instead, I think there is a much more useful question:
Where are you on the Body Trust Spectrum? 👇
Wherever you find yourself on this spectrum can help inform how you approach Halloween this year.
By body trust, I’m referring to your ability to notice and use your body’s internal cues, like hunger, fullness, satisfaction, and energy, without needing external rules to make every eating decision.
Keep the graphic above handy as we go through examples below.
TRUSTING / FREEDOM
If you’ve been practicing body trust and food freedom for a long time, you may recognize yourself toward the TRUSTING or FREEDOM end of the spectrum.
👻 In other words, you generally trust that your body can give you useful information about hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. You know candy can be part of the day, if you want it, without it feeling emotionally charged.
Halloween is fun! But food-wise, it may feel like just another day.
BUILDING
If you’re in more of a BUILDING place, you may trust yourself around some foods, but candy or other foods you’ve historically labeled “off limits,” can still feel hard to be around.
👻 You may be experimenting with more flexibility, but you’re not quite ready to throw out every rule all at once.
This is where asking yourself a few questions can be really useful:
What happens when I know I can have more tomorrow?
What does being satisfied actually feel like to me?
What happens when I eat candy without immediately trying to compensate for it?
You’re practicing. And practice doesn’t require perfection :)
CAUTIOUS
If you’re in more of a CAUTIOUS place, you may be starting to question some of your food rules but still feel safer with a lot of structure in place.
👻 The idea of unrestricted access may sound less like “food freedom” and more like a nightmare.
You might be thinking, Nope. I will absolutely lose control.
In that case, I wouldn’t recommend leaping from rigid rules to complete anarchy overnight.
Your work here may simply be noticing which rules are helping you feel grounded and which ones are actually keeping your food fears alive and well.
FEAR
And if you’re closer to the FEAR end of the spectrum, candy may genuinely feel scary. Those feelings are real.
👻 You might avoid candy entirely, tightly control how much you or your child can have, or feel like the only way to stay safe is to make very clear rules.
This is helpful to recognize, BTW.
Because when we understand what’s driving our decisions around food, we have a better starting point for figuring out what needs to change.
A little something to help you explore 👻
I put together a free BODY TRUST WORKSHEET to help you take this a little further.
It’s three short pages designed to help you look at where food rules show up in your life, where those rules may have come from, and what one small step toward more body trust could look like.
And while Halloween candy inspired this conversation, the worksheet applies to all kinds of foods and situations.
Because our relationship with food doesn’t take a break on November 1st!
Print it, save it, or come back to it whenever you notice food rules creeping in.
Click through the image above to see this play in a visual way on Instagram
You deserve support wherever you are
In the work I do with my clients, I never want to push them too far outside of their comfort zone. Truth be told, this process is a collaboration with my clients to discover their sweet spot for healthy behavior change. This goal setting and pace is going to be guided by YOU.
Reader, feel free to reply and share wherever you are right now (don’t forget to give yourself a hefty dose of compassion).
And reflect on the following question:
What would one small step toward more body trust look like for myself?
Practice makes better (and less scary) 😱
I promise you that it’s possible to go from food fear to food freedom.
But we cannot rush the process. Why? Because removing external rules requires some degree of trust in the ability to regulate internally.
Skills take time (and practice) to develop.
And trust takes time.
Especially if you haven’t trusted your body (or your kids’ bodies) for a long time.
Please be patient with yourself.
In the meantime, here’s a friendly reminder that Halloween might not be the day to prove to yourself or your child that you can suddenly dabble full force in body trust. The realistic goal is to be actively practicing this on the daily.
So my pitch to you is: start by noticing where your level of trust is right now. Whatever answer feels right is okay.
Hit reply if you’d like to talk this through a little more with someone who really, really gets it.
P.S. Full disclosure: when my kids were first starting to trick-or-treat, I remember thinking that letting them have as much candy as they wanted sounded like a crazy idea. And this is coming from someone who has always followed the division of responsibility in feeding.
Part of my hesitation was that, in everyday family meals, Satter’s approach includes offering a serving of dessert when dessert is on the menu. It isn’t generally a free-for-all where kids get unlimited amounts of every food simply because they want it.
But holidays are different.
What I’ve noticed over the years is that Halloween gives kids an unusual opportunity to experience (and experiment with) abundance. There is more candy than they could possibly need to negotiate for, or sneak. And when we can resist turning that abundance into an emergency that needs controlling, they get to have their own opportunity to build skills with it.
We don’t want to steal this teaching moment from them to avoid our own discomfort or our own work that needs doing.
With abundance, our kids get to notice which candy they actually love. Which ones sounded exciting but weren’t that good. What it feels like to eat past comfortable fullness. What it feels like to know the candy will still be there tomorrow.
And, perhaps most importantly, they get to learn that having access to something highly desirable does not mean they have to eat ALL of it right now.
What a valuable lesson, eh?
BTW, it is worth pointing out that this ability of my kids to navigate abundance didn’t happen because I explained body trust to them. You can’t explain it. They need repeated opportunities to practice it each and every day.
Which is really the point of this entire newsletter 🎃
P.P.S. If you or your children could use some support navigating food rules, eating challenges, or building more trust around food, this is exactly the kind of work we do at REVV Health.
I offer individualized nutrition counseling for adults, adolescents, and families, with an approach that respects your health goals, your autonomy, and your relationship with food.
And if you’re wondering whether nutrition counseling might be covered by insurance, we can talk through that, too.
REVV Health is licensed in Washington State and accepts Aetna, Regence, Premera, Lifewise, and BCBS. Marissa also sees clients nationwide, depending on state licensure. Check the map here.
