How to Survive Halloween!

A cocker spaniel weighs about 24 pounds. You know what else weighs 24 pounds? The massive amount of candy the average American gobbles down each year, a big chunk of that falling to our waistlines in the days before and after Halloween. Fun size? I don't think so—unless it's fun being size 16. These stats could very well turn you as white as a ghost:
• Three miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups—the kind you find in office candy bowls and trick-or-treat-bags—fill your belly with more sugar than a glazed doughnut.
• Half a pack of Skittles has more sugar than a scoop of Haagen-Dazs Cookies and Cream Ice Cream.
• Nine Twizzlers carry as many calories as a Wendy’s Double Stack Burger.

These are some spooky treats. And Halloween is only the beginning of the eating season: Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner. If you want to see your feet come January, start by conquering the sugar fest that’s nearly upon us. Here's your plan for surviving the scariest night of the year for your waistline. 

 
WORST “FUN SIZE” CANDY BAR
Butterfinger Bar (fun size bar)
100 calories 4 g fat (2 g saturated) 10 g sugars
Again, fun for whom? Your cardiologist? By calling it “fun,” food marketers are cleverly pulling your attention away from the fact that candy bars are flab-inducing logs of concentrated fats and sugars. And Butterfinger is the worst offender— there's no quicker way to swallow 100 calories. 
Eat This, Instead! 3 Musketeers (fun size bar) 63 calories 2 g fat (1.5 g saturated) 10 g sugars

SURVIVAL TIP #1: Toss the candy bowl
Alabama researchers found that people who have snacks within reach when they're watching TV consume more calories per day overall. But instead of simply relocating the bowl to another table, limit the potential for mindless munching by keeping the candy bagged and in the cupboard. 

SURVIVAL TIP #2: Consume drinks before treats
Drinking 16 ounces of water before a meal fills the stomach, supressing hunger, and helps you lose weight, according to a study presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Use this strategy to help control your candy cravings. Just don't substitute a sugary beverage for the water or this strategy will backfire: A can of soda has more sugar than two Hershey’s Take 5 bars.

WORST FRUITY CANDY
Brach’s Airheads (3 pieces)
140 calories 1.5 g fat (1 g saturated) 19 g sugars
Here’s the basic formula for an Airhead: Sugar and filler carbohydrates, artificial colors and flavors, and partially hydrogenated oils— a source of trans fat. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like our Eat This Instead, Dum Dums, are nutritional paragons, but they do have two noteworthy advantages over Airheads: They have no heart-wrecking oils, and they're hard candy. That means they dissolve slowly on your tongue, letting you enjoy the sweetness over time. 
Eat This, Instead! Spangler Dum Dum Pops (3 pops) 77 calories 0 g fat 15 g sugars

SURVIVAL TIP #3: Work out on Halloween morning
Lifting weights reduces levels of blood sugar by 15 percent for more than 12 hours after you’ve left the gym, according to research from Syracuse University. Why does that matter? Some of the sugar you consume will stay in your blood stream, providing energy to your cells, instead of pitching a tent in your belly.

SURVIVAL TIP #4: Switch to dark chocolate
It won’t necessarily save you calories, but dark chocolate boasts a bevy of health benefits that milk chocolate can’t claim. Flavonoids in the cocoa help keep your arteries soft, decreasing your risk of cardiovascular disease . Keep a bar on hand to nibble on any time you have a craving. Seek out those bars with at least 60% cocoa.




WORST MINIATURE CANDY BARS
Twix Miniatures (3 pieces) 150 calories 8 g fat (6 g saturated) 15 g sugars
Twix has the worst saturated fat profile of any candy in your kid’s trick-or-treat bag. Think about it like this: Each one of these bite-sized candies carries 10 percent of the saturated fat you should consume in an entire day. Switch to Tootsie Rolls and you’ll cut your calories by more than half and trim your total fat intake by a whopping 81 percent.  Eat This Instead! Tootsie Roll (3 pieces)
70 calories 1.5 g fat (0.5 g saturated) 9.5 g sugars

SURVIVAL TIP #5: Chew gum
Sort through any trick-or-treat bag and you’ll undoubtedly discover a handful of Super or Dubble Bubble—those small pink cubes wrapped in old-fashioned, end-twisted candy papers. Instead of plowing through the chocolates and taffies, throw a big gob of the gum in your mouth. The chewing suppresses cravings, and each piece has only about 15 calories. 
SURVIVAL TIP #6: Don’t hand out your favorite candy
If your favorite candy is Milk Duds, and you’re handing out Milk Duds all night, doesn’t it seem likely that you’re going to wind up with a pound of chocolate and caramel in your stomach by night’s end? Of course! And that’s not even factoring in how many Duds you’ll plow through as they sit on the counter in the days leading up to Halloween. Choose something less tempting.



WORST CHEWY CANDY
Brach’s Milk Maid Caramels (4 pieces)
160 calories 4.5 g fat (3.5 g saturated) 16 g sugars
"Milk Maid” sounds a lot like "Milk Made,” doesn't it? Very clever, Brach's! This candy contains a couple milk derivatives (whey and “lipolyzed butter fat”), but it hardly constitutes a dairy product. Plus, 90 percent of the fat is saturated. That’s bad news for your heart. If you enjoy the challenge of fighting chewy candy out of your teeth, switch over to Now and Later and save more than 100 calories per serving.  Eat This, Instead!  Now and Later (4 pieces)
53 calories 0.5 g fat (0 g saturated) 10 g sugars


SURVIVAL TIP #7: Keep the candy-calorie load to 400
The fewer calories you take in during candy season, the better off you’ll be heading into turkey season. So if you worry that you risk overindulgence, set a caloric limit and hold yourself to it. Four hundred is a good number—indulgent yet not overly destructive. That means you could eat every “Eat This Instead” on our list, and have 65 calories left for one of your personal favorites. 

SURVIVAL TIP #8: Don’t skip dinner
A healthy dinner will take the edge off your candy craving, not to mention temper the blood-sugar rush that converts your body into a flab factory and puts you at risk for diabetes. What you want is a meal rich with fiber and lean protein—think chicken breast with vegetables. 



WORST NOVELTY CANDY
Reese’s Pumpkin 
170 calories 10 g fat (3 g saturated) 16 g sugars

This one should send your gimmick radar into the red zone. It’s simply an oversized peanut butter cup shaped like a pumpkin. What price novelty? Nearly two-thirds more calories than a regular Reese’s peanut butter cup! Grab two bite-size Reese's instead—you'll save more than half the calories, fat, and sugar. Eat This, Instead! Reese's Bite Size Peanut Butter Cups (2 pieces)
72 calories 4 g fat (3 g saturated) 6 g sugars

SURVIVAL TIP #9: Take it outside
The worst thing you can do on Halloween night, after most of the trick-or-treaters have cleared off the street, is set your candy bowl by the door where you can grab a handful every day on your way out. Noshing 300 extra candy calories a day will add a pound of flab to your frame in less than two weeks. Instead, set the bowl on the porch before you go to bed. The leftover candy will be gone by morning, guaranteed. 

SURVIVAL TIP #10: Remember: Halloween is a one-day event
A study in the journal of Nature Neuroscience found that eating junk food doesn’t just satisfy cravings—it creates them. That’s right; junk food is addictive. Limit your sugar.

Symptoms of Breast Cancer



An important way to fight breast cancer is to be aware of how your breasts normally look and feel, and know what changes to look for. Finding breast cancer as early as possible gives you a better chance of successful treatment. But knowing what to look for is not a substitute for screening mammograms and other tests, which can help find breast cancer in its early stages, even before any symptoms appear.

 

Below are some common breast symptoms and what they might mean. If you have any of them, get checked right away.

 

A lump in your breast
A lump or mass in the breast is the most common symptom of breast cancer. Such lumps are often hard and painless, though some may be painful. Not all lumps are cancer, though. There are a number of benign breast conditions (like cysts) that can also cause lumps. Still, it’s important to have your doctor check out any new lump or mass right away. If it does turn out to be cancer, the sooner it’s diagnosed the better.

 

Swelling in or around your breast, collarbone, or armpit
Breast swelling can be caused by inflammatory breast cancer, a particularly aggressive form of the disease. Swelling or lumps around your collarbone or armpits can be caused by breast cancer that has spread to lymph nodes in those areas. The swelling may occur even before you can feel a lump in your breast, so if you have this symptom, be sure to see a doctor.

 

Skin thickening or redness
If the skin of your breast starts to feel like an orange peel or gets red, have it checked right away. Often, these are caused by mastitis, a breast infection common among women who are breast feeding. Your doctor may prescribe antibiotics to treat the infection. If your symptoms don’t improve after a week, though, get checked again, because these symptoms can also be caused by inflammatory breast cancer. This form of breast cancer can look a lot like a breast infection, and because it grows quickly it’s important to diagnose it as soon as possible.

 

Breast warmth and itching
Like skin thickening and redness, breast warmth and itching may be symptoms of mastitis – or inflammatory breast cancer. If antibiotics don’t help, see your doctor again.

 

Nipple changes
Breast cancer can sometimes cause changes to how your nipple looks. If your nipple turns inward, or the skin on it thickens or gets red or scaly, get checked by a doctor right away. All of these can be symptoms of breast cancer.

 

Nipple discharge
A discharge (other than milk) from the nipple may be alarming, but in most cases it is caused by injury, infection, or a benign tumor (not cancer). Breast cancer is a possibility, though, especially if the fluid is bloody, so your doctor needs to check it out.

 

Pain
Although most breast cancers do not cause pain in the breast, some do. More often, women have breast pain or discomfort that is related to their menstrual cycle. This type of pain is most common in the week or so before their periods, and often goes away once menstruation begins. Some other benign breast conditions, such as mastitis, may cause a more sudden pain. In these cases the pain is not related to the menstrual cycle. If you have breast pain that is severe or persists and is not related to the menstrual cycle, you should be checked by your doctor. You could have cancer or a benign condition that needs to be treated.

 

Again, while benign breast conditions are much more common than breast cancer, it is important to let your health care team know about any changes in your breast so they can be checked out right away.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Once a month adult women of all ages are encouraged to perform breast self-exams at least once a month.  Forty percent of diagnosed breast cancers are detected by women who feel a lump, so establishing a regular breast self-exam is very important.

While mammograms can help you to detect cancer before you can feel a lump, breast self-exams help you to be familiar with how your breasts look and feel so you can alert your healthcare professional if there are any changes.



How should a breast self-exam be performed?

Using the pads of your fingers, move around your entire breast in a circular pattern moving from the outside to the center, checking the entire breast and armpit area. Check both breasts each month feeling for any lump, thickening, or hardened knot. Notice any changes and get lumps evaluated by your healthcare provider.

 

Visually inspect your breasts with your arms at your sides. Next, raise your arms high overhead. Look for any changes in the contour, any swelling, or dimpling of the skin, or changes in the nipples. Next, rest your palms on your hips and press firmly to flex your chest muscles. Left and right breasts will not exactly match —few women's breasts do, so look for any  dimpling, puckering, or changes, particularly on one side.

 

When lying down, the breast tissue spreads out evenly along the chest wall. Place a pillow under your right shoulder and your right arm behind your head. Using your left hand, move the pads of your fingers around your right breast gently in small circular motions covering the entire breast area and armpit. Use light, medium, and firm pressure. Squeeze the nipple; check for discharge and lumps. Repeat these steps for your left breast.