“Eat what you want. If someone tries to make you feel bad about it, eat them too.”

It’s Halloween. People love this holiday for different reasons; some love the costumes, some love the movies, others enjoy the candy. I myself love the candy.

Now it’s not that I only eat candy on Halloween; I treat myself to candy when I feel like it. But the variety and amount of candy I treat myself to on Halloween is pretty unique. I mean, when else am I going to eat a mini-Milky Way, Snickers, Twix, two mini-Reese’s and a mini-bag of Skittles all in the same day? This type of candy smorgasbord comes but once a year, so I’m living it up!

Halloween-Candy

Go ahead – have one. Or 10. No judgement here.

As I’ve enjoyed my candy this Halloween, I’ve also been seeing a ton of exercise-to-candy-calories posts circulating the social world. Basically, nice little calculators that let you know what exercises and exactly how much exercise you must do to burn off the Halloween candy you just ate.

Let’s get something straight here. Indulging in a few pieces of candy on Halloween is okay. Feeling the need to do 300 burpees to burn off the “bad” calories you ate is not.

Food Isn’t Bad – Exercise Isn’t Punishment
Exercise in NOT a form of penance, something you do to cleanse yourself of your eating sins. It’s bullshit posts like these that only reinforce ideas that exercise is nothing more than a means to burn off calories or erase all the naughty eating you do.

And furthermore, eating a few pieces of Halloween candy (or any treat or indulgence for that matter) isn’t shameful. Something so bad that we need to be conscious of exactly what we have to do and how much we have to do in order to make ourselves feel okay about it. We all know we’re not supposed to reward our exercise with food; why then would we think we have to punish our overeating with exercise?

I’m so sick of all the nonsense negativity that paints food as the enemy and exercise as what we do when we’re bad. That it’s something we have to do, it’s punishment, oh, this is such a drag, ugh I have to burn off all this candy I just ate. Now I feel so awful about myself…

See how that works? How quickly the negativity gets tied to eating and exercise? Let’s instead have a mindset that associates eating and exercise with positivity. Because both are good things!

Reese's

Running and Reese’s – they just happen to be two of my favorite things.

Eating Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect 24/7
So please take your calorie burner calculators, your candy-eating-shaming memes and burpees-to-food-penance cheat sheets and shove em. Everyone else, enjoy Halloween candy and be confident in knowing one day of candy overload isn’t going to wreck you or make you a bad person. Eating is all about balance and getting back on track.

I’m not saying we don’t need to be conscious of what we’re eating and no, I’m not suggesting you eat 15 mini candy bars today just for shits and giggles (thought if you did, I wouldn’t judge you). I am saying, don’t associate eating and exercise with negativity, let’s keep it positive.

Those of you who are with me, I hope you enjoy your extra treat today. After all, you deserve to #TreatYoSelf. Now go on with your life.

And remember – Thanksgiving, Christmas and general holiday season treats and over-indulgences are coming up. It’s going to happen and it’s okay. You won’t be a bad person because of it. Just try to keep it all in moderation and remember: You don’t have to do a single burpee unless you want to. Not one.single.Damn.BURPEE.

What do you think about this whole topic? Should we exercise to cancel out “bad” foods or enjoy a sweet treat on Halloween? The comments are all yours so please leave one.

Connect with me @lindsayinreallife on Instagram or @lindsayIRL on Twitter.

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