Can you feel it?  It’s coming.  Can you sense it?  It’s out there…ready to pounce on all our well-intentioned plans?  I can feel it.

Halloween is coming.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Halloween. As a kid, I loved dressing up as my favorite hero or scary creature.  And while, on this particular day, it’s perfectly acceptable for a grown woman to go traipsing around town in tights and a cape…I refrain.  Generally speaking, super heroes tend to have a lot less kneecap fat than I do.

I celebrate in other ways.  Mainly by turning my house into the most badass display of Halloween fun in my neighborhood.  I rock Halloween so much that I actually get “repeater trick or treaters”.  My house is the best one on the block for Halloween.  That’s how I roll.

So yeah…Halloween is a lot of fun, but you know what?

It’s also a big fucking problem. 

Do you know where I’m going with this?  Let me paint a picture for ya:

They call marijuana “the gateway” drug. Why?  Because young unsuspecting potheads often go looking for a better, stronger high…and they end up addicted to a world o’ shit.  For those of us who’ve had a few self-control issues when it comes to things like…oh, I dunno…chocolate…nougat…cream filling…Twizzlers…you name it, this is dangerous ground we’re about to be walking on.  Halloween is the gateway to a season full of holiday eating madness.  MAAAADNESS, I tell you!!  Bag after bag of temptation in the form of “fun size” bars in cute little packaging that cries out “Eat me!! Just one won’t hurt!  Look how cute I am!”

We need a plan.  With a quickness.  If we don’t come up with something soon we’re gonna be mowing our way through $50 of fun sized evil before we even know what hit us.  Screw that!

Luckily, I have a plan.  If you’re still ooh-ing and aah-ing at the tantalizing candy displays, snap out of it!  This is serious shit.  I know I’m usually all about the “You don’t have to be perfect…just do what you can do…c’mere and give me a hug!” but there’s no time for that.  (And, for the record, you don’t ever have to be perfect…but I don’t want to see any of us fall on our asses because we didn’t have a plan.)  If you don’t have a plan, you can borrow mine…but first you have to snap out of it!!!  Eyes off the Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins, soldier!!  FOCUS!

I don’t just want this year to be different than last year.  I want this year to be better than last year.

Last year, I went shopping for Halloween candy and (just like every year before) I bought all the crap that I love to eat.  I know I’m not the only person who’s done that, right?  If we’re going to spend that much money on free crap for the neighbor kids we might as well enjoy it too, right?  Besides, it’s only one night, right?  Yep.  Well, I mowed through quite a bit of it that night…and it set me directly on a sugary road to hell, my friends.  Just like it’s done every year before that.  Are ya feel’in me?

This year will be different.  No more one night stands with the candy bowl…waking up in a sugar coma…empty wrappers on the dresser making me feel cheap and easy.  I’m not up for a repeat of last year when my sugar coma sent me straight into Thanksgiving with a lust for baked goods.  Before I knew what hit me, Thanksgiving had flown by and I was standing in my kitchen in December…bent over a tin full of butter toffee…crying…because I felt so sick from all the sugar and yet I could not make myself stop eating.

Listen up, peeps…and picture me doing my best Dr. Evil  impression:  Halloween candy is evil.  EEEEVIIIILLLLL!!!!!

After almost a full year of making positive, healthy life changes I’ve lost 45 pounds.  And I’ve managed it without listening to the diet & fitness industry mainstream that makes millions off of those of us who struggle with overeating and weight issues.  The past year has been pretty damn enlightening for me.  And here it comes again: Hallo-frick’in-ween… my own personal gateway drug.

This year, I’ve come up with a plan for getting through the holidays…and it starts this month.  The time for preparation is now.  There’s nothing fun sized about an extra ass in your pants by Christmas.  We’re talking plan & strategy this week here on the blog.  By the time we get to Halloween, we will laugh in the face of danger.

This year, we will control our shit before it controls us.  So get ready. Here’s your homework:

Make a list of what tempts you this month. Halloween candy?  Menu preparations for Thanksgiving? What situations do you find yourself in that always cause you trouble? What are the triggers that are set to launch you into the holidays?  Write ‘em down because you’re going to need them for planning this week.

Let’s band together and show the holidays we’re in it for the fun and the family and the joy…but not the extra weight.  Because we’re too smart to go down this road again…and New Years Resolutions suck ass!

Tomorrow, we plan!!