The holidays are all about SUGAR! Cakes, cookies, sweets and treats!

Halloween is the worst, especially if you have kids. They have parties at school and bring home sweets, then later that evening, they go trick or treating, only to bring home more sweets!

So what can you do to limit your intake of sugar or control those urges to indulge in all the sweets that you have around your home?

• Sort through your child’s treats. Only keep enough for a couple days for your child as a treat. Young children are just as susceptible to obesity as adults and after a couple days will forget about the candy.

• Take all the leftovers to work. That way it’s not all sitting at home for you to ‘nibble’ anytime your home.

• Throw it in the trash. Simple, easy, DONE and GONE!

• Don’t buy Halloween candy until the day of Halloween. Don’t over do it and buy 5 bags of candy. Go for one bag and when all the treats have been given out to trick our treaters, then its gone and you no longer have to worry about it!

Here are some reasons why to cut sugar out of your diet:

1. Sugar causes your glucose to go up and down and unstable blood sugar often leads to mood swings, fatigue, headaches and cravings for more sugar.

2. Sugar increases the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

3. A high-sugar diet often results in chromium deficiency and one of chromium’s main functions is to help regulate blood sugar.

4. Sugar increases stress. After a blood-sugar spike (say, from eating a piece of birthday cake), there’s a compensatory drop, which causes the body to release stress hormones such as adrenaline, epinephrine and cortisol. One of the main things these hormones do is raise blood sugar, providing the body with a quick energy boost. The problem is, these helpful hormones can make us feel anxious, irritable and shaky.

Now that you know the negative impacts refined sugar can have on your body and mind, you’ll want to be more careful about the foods you choose. Most foods don’t even need to taste sweet to be full of sugar. Be sure to read labels, they will tell you just how much sugar is in the product. Just because something says its low in carbs or a ‘diet’ food, doesn’t mean it’s free of sugar!