Your health: Is the candy worth the cost?

Is the candy worth the cost?

Halloween is over, but it's likely that your home or office now has an abundance of candy around to tempt you.

An occasional treat isn't going to totally derail your healthy eating plans, but it's easy to fool yourself into thinking because the candy is "fun size," it doesn't really count.

In fact, all those tiny treats add up pretty fast.

Men's Health Magazine gives a reality check on how many calories are in those small candy bars and, perhaps more telling, how much exercise it would take to burn off those calories.

Here's a sample:

• Reese's peanut butter cups (5 miniatures): 220 calories; 39 minutes of cycling

• Kit Kat (2 fun size bars): 210 calories; 15 minutes of swimming

• Starbursts (8 pieces): 160 calories; 12 minutes of running

• Candy corn (19 pieces): 140 calories; 15 minutes of weightlifting

• Skittles (1 fun size pack): 60 calories: 5 minutes of boxing/sparring

And if you had a little feast with all of those - the Kit Kats, Starbursts, Skittles, Reeses' and candy corn? That adds up to 790 calories.

Ouch.

Develop better sleep habits

Did you enjoy that extra hour of shut-eye you got Saturday night, when Daylight Saving Time fell back?

The fall time change, as it begins to get dark earlier in the evening, is the ideal opportunity to make healthy sleep a priority by adopting an earlier bedtime.

Re-evaluate sleep habits with this extra hour of sleep and start dedicating more time to the bed.

A recent CDC analysis showed that 29 percent of U.S. adults sleep less than six hours per night. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends adults sleep seven or more hours each night to avoid the health risks of chronic inadequate sleep.

Here are some tips from the AASM for adults to use the fall time to adjust their sleep schedule:

• Wake up at your normal wake time.

• Take note of how much better you feel after an extra hour of sleep.

• Continue to go to bed each night at the earlier bedtime.

One hour of extra sleep will not erase a chronic sleep debt. However, waking up feeling more alert and refreshed after an hour of extra sleep may help motivate you to maintain an earlier nightly bedtime.

How do you know if you could use an extra hour of sleep each night? Here are signs that you need more sleep:

• You depend on an alarm clock to wake you up each morning.

• You rely on caffeine to keep you alert and productive during the day.

• You try to "catch up" on sleep by sleeping longer on weekends.

• You are easily distracted and have trouble focusing on tasks.

• You are forgetful or make mistakes.

• You are irritable or feel depressed.

• You struggle to stay awake while driving.

• You are likely to fall asleep while reading, watching TV or sitting in a meeting.