October brings many terrifying things. Horror films. Ghosts. Questionable fancy dress choices. Children appearing at your front door and demanding snacks with absolutely no intention of saying thank you.

And Diet Culture absolutely losing its mind over a miniature chocolate bar.

Halloween is interesting because it shines a light on something many of us learn incredibly young: food rules.

Don't eat too much.

You've had enough.

That's bad for you.

You'll make yourself sick.

And somewhere along the way, food stops simply being food.

Chocolate becomes "naughty." Cake becomes something we have to "earn." Eating more than we planned means we've "lost control." And if we eat something we've decided we shouldn't? We've "been bad."

Which is quite a lot of moral responsibility to place on a KitKat.

Research suggests restriction can actually make forbidden foods more appealing. In one experiment involving 70 children aged five to seven, researchers restricted access to either sweets or fruit. When the restriction was lifted, the children ate more of the food they'd previously been forbidden from eating than children who hadn't experienced the same restriction.

Basically, tell a human they absolutely cannot have something and watch it immediately become the most interesting thing in the room.

And I know how early these messages can take hold because I started my first diet at eight years old.

Eight.

At an age when my biggest concern should have been what was for pudding, I had already absorbed the idea that my body needed managing. That there were foods I should and shouldn't eat. That changing my body was something worth pursuing.

And that's the part I find genuinely scary.

Children are listening.

Not only to what we say about their bodies, but to what we say about our own. They hear us say we're "being good" because we ordered the salad. They notice when weight loss is met with compliments. They hear the jokes about needing to "work off" dinner.

Little comments that can seem harmless because we've heard them our entire lives.

That's how Diet Culture becomes culture.

So maybe this Halloween, the sweets aren't the thing we need to be quite so frightened of.

Maybe it's the shame we're serving alongside them 🤷🏽‍♀️

Stay vigilant,

L x

If you are interested in training without a side of shame, I have launched Remote Coaching - a personalised workout program tailored to you and your goals... because it is all about you babes!