This is Easter week, and there are small, dangerous items lurking on grocery store shelves, in friend’s pantries, your co-workers desk and perhaps your own house. John and I went out the other night and bought some Easter candy to put in those adorable plastic eggs for an Easter egg hunt. Besides candy being awfully expensive, it is also awfully high in calories. Here are some examples:
Peeps Chocolate Egg, Hollow – 420 calories
1 Cadbury Cream egg – 150 calories
1 Reese’s Peanut Butter egg – 180 calories
5 Malted Easter Eggs, large size – 180 calories
35 Jelly Beans – 140 calories
Those calorie amounts are high for what you get. If you are disciplined, and can just decide within yourself to eat just a taste of your favorite and keep moving forward, I am impressed and proud of you. If you are more like I was (and still can be), and find it difficult to resist opening one Cadbury egg, eating it, then quickly dispensing with two or three more in rapid succession, understanding the caloric cost of your choices can help you tread lightly when it comes to those tiny, foiled wrapped goodies that pack a huge wallop calorie-wise.
People often ask me if I ever eat candy, and the answer is yes. But the qualification to that answer is that I rarely overindulge because the calories just aren’t worth it. Although Easter only comes once a year, the relationship you develop with food during your weight loss journey lasts a lifetime. If you find yourself using the holiday as an excuse to eat bunches of candy just because it’s the only time of year Cadbury releases those gooey eggs, I’d encourage you to think about how you are going to handle all the other holidays and social occasions that come around each and every year.
We have so many opportunities to overindulge, that if we continually eat more than we intend during each holiday season, it may make staying on your weight loss track difficult. Am I saying that you should never have a piece of Easter candy? No. I’m simply reminding you that even though you may be in the midst of your weight loss journey now, there are going to be other Easter celebrations throughout the rest of your life.
If you decide to indulge in Easter candy, that’s a valid choice – provided you are doing so with deliberation, planning and a realization that too much Easter candy can lead to the desire for more, and the desire for more may make it difficult to stop after the Easter candy has gone away.
So what do I eat at Easter? I usually have a couple pieces of Dove dark chocolate and a small, child-size handful of jelly beans – although not at the same time. I don’t mix fruit candy with chocolate candy! Ruins both in my opinion!!
How do you view Easter candy? Indulge carefully, skip altogether or throw caution to the wind? Diane
I tread very lightly around ALL candy and its not just at Easter.
I use to eat chocolate bars and Reese’s a lot and its been a great accomplishment to be able to ignore them now.
For me, I give no leeway to eat food including Holidays. Its not good for my Diabetes nor is it good for me mentally as a food addicted person.
I do allow myself once in a while to eat a Reese’s or M&M’s, but I usually replace them with my VitaTops or Weight Watcher desert.
Sheri´s last fabulous musings ..What Is Your Goal
someone, long ago, wrote a piece about eating just one hershey’s kiss. The point was that she would normally eat one after the other, but when she ate just one, she didn’t actually even like it. The kiss tasted waxy to her.
I think one of the real dangers of this type of candy/junk is it really sets off some ‘hand to mouth’ or grazing thing in us. And once that is triggered, it is hard to get it stopped again.
Vickie´s last fabulous musings ..Voids-holes are real- and in the past- we often filled them with food
I remind myself at how addictive sugar can be. That makes me think twice, whether I really want that candy and if I can afford it. And like you say, there will be many more “special occasions” in my future. Why indulged in it now.
blackhuff´s last fabulous musings ..Winter months and exercise
I only allow myself to indulge on Cadbury Eggs. And I buy 1 four pack, and that’s it. I space that out over the 6 weeks that easter candy is out and it keeps me from wanting to indulge. I know that I have it waiting for me at home, so if I really want something when I get back home from wherever I am, I know I can.
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I don’t celebrate so I don’t have to worry but I am like you in general with holidays Diane. I plan for what I want like any other treat day or holiday & it has to be a 10 out of 10 to eat it if it is a treat type thing. I don’t waste my calories just because….
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I like what Jody just said about the taste having to be a 10 out of 10 (I think I also heard that from you on another post/Oz). Anyway, I’ve been learning to eat slowly and to see if it is really worth my taste buds. If not, I won’t finish it. If it is worth it, I eat it slowly to fully enjoy it.
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Like all holidays, Easter has become something of a minefield for me, due to the abundance of food (candy, sweets, desserts). Unfortunately, I just try to get through holidays the best that I can, instead of enjoying the holiday itself. Just one piece of candy is addictive for me.
We have none now that my kids are older and I hope my husband doesn’t buy any! Last week he bought Tootsie Rolls out of the blue.
Karen@WaistingTime´s last fabulous musings ..It’s All in My Head
My problem will not be Easter candy which we do not buy. It will be the Chicken and Dumplin’s at MIL’s house for Easter dinner. A tradition that goes back 30+ years and since I’m not the only one in the house, I can’t ask her to stop making them. Wouldn’t do that anyway – it brings her too much pleasure.
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I plan on passing on Easter candy this year – I’ve been eating WAY too much junk at work and it’s upsetting me.
So maybe a reese’s cup or two (my FAVORITE) but that’s IT! 
fittingbackin´s last fabulous musings ..Monday Two-a-Days- Spinning Shoes
I love those Cadbury eggs, but for me, it’s a weird thing. I see them, think, “Oh those things are GREAT!” Then, I eat ONE, feel sick, and think, “Thank dawg they only show up once a year.” They’re practically diet food. They’re so sweet that there’s no way I could eat more than one a year.
Thank goodness there are no children in my house so this is an easy one for me…:)
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Easter Candy and Halloween Candy are huge triggers for me. I used to buy BAGS and eat them all by myself. It’s a hard thing to resist sometimes.
The way I am successful is that I avoid those isles at the grocery store, I never buy them now, and I honestly don’t think about it. UNTIL coworkers started bringing in bags to work. Now they are at work and when I get the munchies, or I’m bored, or I just SEE the candy I’m tempted. Sometimes I can resist them. Sometimes I can’t. It sucks.
At one time I could stop at one. Once I crossed that border I could never get my round body back into the square hole of having just one. I have been happier without sugar and milk fat than I ever was when I ‘decided’ to eat any of the Easter candy I wanted so no chocolate for me this year unless it is unsweetened dark cocoa powder. I think I miss unwrapping all the pretty colored foil more than I miss the milk chocolate eggs. No candy in our house for holidays anymore. My husband (a normie) is just has happy with a piece of a chocolate bar as he is with an Easter chocolate anything so there are no feelings of deprivation for him and no guilt for me. Our children are adults so I do not need to buy them candy anymore.
This year I am concentrating on the Easter Story and not munching on candy after church.
Jane~
Gifts of a Lifetime
Jane C´s last fabulous musings ..You do NOT want fries with that!
With 8 kids, Easter baskets are a given around here. Several years ago I started giving my husband and I baskets too, because we kept snagging candy from the kids baskets. So I always have my very own basket of candy. Last year I made sure I had only a small amount of high quality, good tasting candy, cause I figured if I was going to eat it it should be the best there was. I hate to waste my calories on something that doesn’t taste good.
This year, it doesn’t feel like having my own basket of candy is that big of a deal. So I haven’t decided yet if I will fill up a basket for myself or not. I know that when I fill them on Saturday night that I will be looking at all the calorie info, just to remind myself of what I’m ‘missing’.
I know that I won’t be missing the weight I’ll gain back from pigging out on candy. I won’t miss the heartburn, the shame, the anger towards myself, the helplessness, the utter sense of failure. Easter is not candy! It’s Christ’s resurrection, it’s church, it’s family, it’s a special family dinner that I lovingly prepare for everyone that they look forward to, and they all expect their favorite dishes. It’s just not another day in a long series of days where I get to stuff my face and destroy everything I have worked for. Keeping this stuff in perspective is key for me.
Milk chocolate is way too sweet for me these days. I had one Cadbury Egg the other day. I wished it were dark chocolate.
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Cadbury Eggs are my all time biggest weakness.
And jelly beans have so many carbs runners have been using them for years as a quick energy boost on the go.
Joe´s last fabulous musings ..100th Post –
I hate the fact that Easter (and Valentine’s Day) have become the new Halloween, with every candy vendor making their own pastel-colored version of their candy.
I have never been a huge sugar/fruit candy person. Chocolate tastes way better! I was all about the chocolate bunny and chocolate eggs growing up. But I will take a couple of the kids jelly beans here and there. But overall, Easter is not really my thing. I don’t like Peeps or Cadbury eggs. But a couple of chocolate eggs I can control. No way I could buy anything Reese though – they wouldn’t survive in my house!
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