The Best & Worst Candy For Your Waistline! -

Okay, so let me just clear up ahead of time…I am definitely not saying that eating ANY of these is specifically healthy…food coloring and artificial ingredients are hell on your body.

But, in reality, most people are more concerned with counting calories than not consuming sugar and fake ingredients… So I made this list for those of you who are going to indulge (responsibly LOL) this Halloween! Sometimes ya just gotta live a little! 😀

The ONLY saving grace of the Halloween candy rush is that the majority of the candies passed out or bought are mini-sized! Exercise some restraint and only have one or two and BOOM! you don’t have to be guilty!

Snickers

TRICK! Sure, nothing satisfies like a Snickers, but your gut may pay the price for giving in to your cravings. Loaded with peanuts, nougat, caramel, and chocolate, a regular-size bar will put you back close to 300 calories, 14 g of fat and 30 g of sugar!

Smarties

TREAT! Smarties really are the smarter choice after all. These hard candies might be straight sugar, but even if you go through an entire roll, you’ve only taken in 25 calories.

Skittles

TRICK! You might not be seeing any double rainbows after breaking into a bag of these colored treats, but you’ll surely experience a sugar rush. One regular-size bag contains 47 g of sugar—that’s the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar!

York Peppermint Pattie

TREAT! <—-This ones for you, MOM! lol Cool and refreshing, York peppermint patties are low in fat—just 2.5 grams in a large patty. Downgrade to the snack size and you can satisfy your sweet tooth for only 60 calories and 1 g of fat…STILL 25 g of sugar though!

Starburst

TREAT! Prefer a chewier snack? If you can limit yourself to just a few pieces, Starbursts are a fat-free, low-calorie indulgence—a single square packs only 15 calories.

Baby Ruth

TRICK! A Baby Ruth bar touts 4 g of protein, but that doesn’t make it a health food…In fact, I think it’s fantastic marketing to sell more bars but ridiculous to think this is a good source of protein! Don’t be fooled! Use your common sense lol The peanuts have some protein, but they’re also covered in caramel and chocolate. One bar has as many calories as a single-patty hamburger.

Jolly Ranchers

TREAT! Hard candies such as Jolly Ranchers, Lifesavers, and lollipops are good choices because they tend to be low in fat and take a bit longer to eat than a candy bar, so you’re less likely to polish off a whole bag. Three pieces of the sweet stuff contain about 70 calories.

ButterFinger

TRICK! Before you lay a finger on a Butterfinger, you should probably know that if your candy bar contains peanuts, it’s usually code for high in calories and fat. Plus, when peanuts are coated in chocolate, as in a Butterfinger, the salty-sweet combo can trigger even more cravings.

Mounds

TRICK! While other bad-for-you candy bars are full of calorie and fat-dense peanuts, Mounds is layered with coconut… and not the good-for-you kind. The result: Even though the bar is about 10 ounces smaller than other candy bars, it packs a whopping 10 g of saturated fat—the highest of any candy bar, and 50% of your daily recommended limit!

Quick tip: Cut large bars into quarters and freeze ..they take longer to eat and fool your mind into feeling like you’ve eaten a bigger portion because of the time it takes to eat it! Same goes for the minis!

Finally, use the old “out of site out of mind” technique. (Personally, I cannot even have this stuff in my house at all simply because my hubs has will power issues and he will polish off a whole bag LOL ) But I did find that putting the candies up and out of sight into a “less traveled” area of your kitchen definitely helps!