Woo, Friday was a tough day, food-wise for me. It started first thing in the morning at work, because everyone decided to put their treats out right away. I stayed strong the first part of the day, eating my normal breakfast and determinedly trying to focus on work and ignore the siren calls of the junk. But by lunchtime, it was all over.
To preface this, you should know that about 5 months ago, I completely changed my diet. I primarily eat a plant-based, whole food diet now. I’ve lost weight, I look better, feel better and all that fun stuff. I definitely treat myself now and then, so I’m not completely inflexible, but generally I try to keep my treats to one meal or dessert. And normally, I honestly have no trouble sticking to it. But on Halloween? It was an all day food orgy of the junkiest kind.
There was more, but those are the ones I paused long enough to take a picture before I stuffed my big mouth with them. It might not seem soooo terrible, but consider this: I no longer eat meat, sugar or processed food. Which pretty much exactly represents what I ate that day. Saturday and even Sunday were TOUGH getting my raging food hormones (are there such things? it sure feels like there are) back under control.
Halloween night was actually a reprieve. Because our weather was awful this year, my brother and sister-in-law decided to take the kids to the mall for trick or treating. I had no idea malls even did this, but apparently, it’s a thing!
I figured it would be crowded, but people, I had no idea…
The kids had to wait in these HUGE lines to get their candy:
Which meant there was not a lot of candy to be had. Fortunately for the kids, they have the most awesome aunt (me!) and grandparents who brought them some extra candy to make sure they had their proper allotment of Halloween goodies.
And, okay, I did kind of pull a pathetic aunt move by buying the girls organic suckers, instead of the ring pops I was also considering, but thank the candy gods, my brother told me the next day that the girls loved them.
I wasn’t completely pathetic…I did get them some other fun suckers and I got my nephews giant Hershey bars and other chocolates…
…AND now I want junk food again. Great.
Okey dokey, I better get myself out of here until the scent of sugar has dissipated. Feel free to stay and snack, but just be sure to take the empty wrappers with you!
Oh, and p.s. I do allow myself a few pieces of chocolate every night, because chocolate is one thing I’m not gonna give up. I just make sure it’s dark & organic and I take these tiny little bites so I can savor it. Here’s my absolute favorite brand!
Cue angels singing. No, seriously, it’s that good.
Kinley Dane 
I hear ya! I’m actually dreading work today – everyone will bring in their rejected halloween candy to the office. Sigh.
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Oh, crap, I didn’t even think about the surplus being brought to the office…but you are right, that’s exactly what will happen!!
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How long have (had) you been off of processed foods and sugars when you the indulged? Did that make you sick? I just started trying to get off sugars. I love candy. I miss it.
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Well, I went off them completely five months ago and since then, maybe every two weeks I’ve had a ‘treat’ of some kind, but it’s been more in the form of french fries or a hamburger. I think I’ve only had two desserts in that time? Oh, no and some cider mill donuts 🙂 So for the most part, having one treat doesn’t bother me at all, probably because I do eat the organic choocolate every night. The difference, though, is that, yes, even though it has sugar, it is the least refined version of it. Plus, there aren’t the other chemicals and stuff that is in normal candy bars. For whatever reason, having that chocolate doesn’t cause me to crave more sugar. I think processed carbs and processed sugar feed off of each other for me, so as long as I avoid them, I do pretty well. The first two weeks were torture, though, I admit 🙂
I probably should do a post on my eating, but I didn’t want to bore people, but maybe I will.
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What a coincidence! I primarily eat a plant-based, whole food diet now too. Yep, everything I eat is manufactured in a plant, and it’s all very whole. I don’t do half servings.
No, kidding aside, I do try to eat as healthy as I can, but you can’t take away the chocolate. I’ve been going light on the Halloween candy, though. Too sweet – I too am used to the dark chocolate now (with sea salt is one of my favorites). I’ve never seen that particular brand. I’m gonna have to look out for it.
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Well, it’s funny, because I really only had a couple of bites of that chocolate cake, because it was waaaay too sweet, and I didn’t enjoy those candy bars all that much, but I wanted to eat them, anyway. Hopefully I got that out of my system!
They have that brand at Whole Foods. Not sure if they have it anywhere else or not, at least not here in Michigan.
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I actually did okay with my eating on Halloween – or at least no worse than normal. I guess having a small person with a stomach virus actually has its positives. I was so busy dealing with her that I didn’t feel tempted to eat a bunch of junk.
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Well, good job not overdoing the sweets, but that’s sad that one of your kiddos was sick! On Halloween of all days. Hopefully he/she still got candy.
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My older girls were good about giving her some of their loot from trick or treating. In fact, her favorite treat is suckers so one of her sisters promised her all of the suckers she got that night.
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Oh, that’s so sweet! And suckers seem like a good sick-kid kind of treat. I should ship you some of my organic ones, ha ha 🙂
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You mean you treat yourself as well as the kiddies on Halloween? I never knew that was part of the deal! Would you have played a trick on yourself if you hadn’t eaten all those goodies? That, I would have liked to see!
You have my permission to eat dark chocolate, which is good for you. I suggest you supplement your plant-based diet with some insects, which are even better for you!
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Yes, I treated myself, because we humans are a very selfish species. But, hmmm, I wonder what trick I would have played on myself?? Well, I guess I technically did since I stuffed myself with a whole bunch of junk!
As incredibly appetizing as insects sound…I think I’d rather eat brain jelly 🙂
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What makes a sucker organic? That dark chocolate is calling to me. Is the new way of eating the reason you look so sad in your photo? I have a gift for you today. It’s on my blog. Come and get it!
Love,
Janie
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They use organic cane sugar, rather than overly-processed white sugar, as well as they don’t use artificial dyes and chemicals that are in regular suckers. Seriously, I was kind of shocked when I read the ingredient label for ring pops. All kinds of things you can’t pronounce!
You will be glad to know that I have a fancy event this Friday, for which I will wear make-up and I plan to try really hard to get a smiling picture of myself. If I do, I will dedicate it to you 😉
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You don’t know how happy that will make me.
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I am happy to make you happy 🙂
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Those foods looked amazing! I recently ate a whole block of Lindt dark chocolate in front of an older gentleman, who said ‘You wait 20 years, you won’t be able to do that any more.’
Guess I’d better take advantage of it now.
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This is true, kid…at some point, you will no longer be able to eat whatever you want! But I agree, enjoy it while you can 🙂
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I have leftovers from far too few Trick or Treaters, and my kids were far too successful. The temptation to eat tons of junk is strenuous in that I’m literally clenching my jaw to keep the crap out of my mouth. I normally eat a lot like you do, (including the chocolate), so when junk food takes over for a day, I pay big time with how I feel.
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Yeah, that’s the thing, it isn’t as much about gaining weight, rather than losing (which is somewhat important to me) but it’s more that I feel just awful and sluggish. And it took all weekend to get things back under control and to feel right!
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You are much stronger willed than I. Kudos to you for your 5 month progress, especially given how bad of an influence I’ve been on you. 🙂
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Yes, bad influence, you are. Yes. Ha ha 🙂
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I passed out candy at the mall. Unfortunately, it was one piece per person because we had to be able to make what the store owners bought, last through a 12 hour day. We ran out at 7:30 or so, but we lasted much longer than some other stores did. It was a blast handing out the candy though. I didn’t even miss not being able to eat it!
(Of course, we do have a monster bag of candy here at home sooo…)
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I’ve been eating absolute garbage this entire month. And I feel like garbage now. So weird how that works. And now I’m going to head over into the other room where the bowl with leftover Halloween candy is sitting to eat one of the Hersey bars. Damn this post!!!
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I’m so sorry that I passed on the temptation! I don’t even like Hershey’s chocolate all that much, but that huge bar looks delicious, doesn’t it?
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Like you with your chocolate, I will never give up my meat!
And waiting in line to trick-or-treat just isn’t worth it. We went to the ritzy section of town for Halloween, expecting to score big on some candy. Aparently the rest of town had the same idea and we waited in line for each and every house….and all for one single tootsie roll.
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I remember as a kid, when trick or treating was much more popular, at least where I live, we had to wait in line sometimes at houses…but something about waiting in line at a mall, only to get really chintzy treats is annoying!
And what the heck with the ritzy people only giving out tootsie rolls?! I always imagined they gave out full-sized candy bars!
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