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You are here: Home / Home Matters / Holidays / Get Real: Valentine’s Sugar Esca-scapes

Get Real: Valentine’s Sugar Esca-scapes

February 13, 2012 by KerryAnn 2 Comments

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My posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, you won't pay more but we will receive a small commission. That helps keep the blog up and the free recipes coming. Thanks!

To achieve love, you need an equal

The dead of winter is the perfect time to sugar binge. Your immune system isn’t in peak condition due to reduced exercise, more carbs since nothing but root veggies are in season, less fresh air and less sun exposure. Cold weather slows down even the most active among us. What’s one more head cold this year or a kid up half the night with a stomachache? It’s a holiday, live a little! Society demands you be inconvenienced in the interest of someone else’s idea of fun. Oh, wait. It’s supposed to be about love and excitement. What could be more exciting than a head cold? Don’t we all love getting head colds or the flu from eating garbage?

Tomorrow is one of the two sugar-fueled holidays that hyper-focus on kiddie-drool-inducing sweets. There’s chocolate everywhere and if it doesn’t contain chocolate, it contains enough white sugar and artificial colors/flavors to make you queasy. There’s no winning. At least at Thanksgiving and Christmas, there are the family-favorite foods that children know they must consume before dessert. You can normally push a big meal at them at the family table so they’re full before the sugar hits their plate. ‘Here! Have another slice of turkey!’

Valentine’s Day holds no such promise. It’s a wall-to-wall carb fest. It’s fortunate that begging from door to door isn’t the custom for Valentine’s Day but rumor has it that many schools don’t miss it by much. I even saw one mom mention a pizza party in her child’s classroom before the chocolate-binge begins.

So, how to cope?

Recruiting other mothers to help cut down on the material available on which to binge can certainly help, but you can’t reach them all. ‘Oh, look! It’s a Valentine with a PENICL!’ might not thrill the kids in the same way it thrills your soul, but the four-foot set won’t rattle too many cages when it’s a portion of the booty instead of the sole content. Even if you can’t talk them into pencils or erasers instead of candy, at least you might have a chance of talking them into a generic piece of peppermint instead of the mini chocolate, nougat and caramel ‘Suckers’ bar.

Make sure your child is going to eat a very solid and modestly low-carb breakfast and lunch that day. Allow them to eat a few pieces at the party and pick out a few pieces for the next day or two. Then you have two options. The first is to offer a bounty- a nickel per piece, perhaps, to entice them to trade. The other option is to have a nice toy for which to trade away the rest of the candy. Most kids are willing to take the high-value object or the money in exchange for the candy.

Another option is to buy a package of yummy earth lollipops or gummy worms or another such treat and swap them. Three-for-one firesale, anyone? However, I don’t like to do this one because the kids seem to be more likely to remember that it is there and want to eat more of it than they would have of the original junk. If your child has a vampiresque taste for sugar, this one might backfire.

If all else fails and your wide-eyed sugar freak has suddenly become a rich hoarder, dole it out a few pieces per day and throw it out when they loose interest. One can hope, right? Most kids will loose interest or forget about it after a few days. The trick is to keep yourself out of it in the meantime.

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Filed Under: Holidays

I'm KerryAnn Foster, a crazy vibrant Jesus Freak with a heart full of hope. I'm not afraid to love on the least of these or get my hands dirty. This blog is my journey from ineffective, uptight, obese wallflower to a woman on fire for God and living the most vibrant, passionate life possible!

I live in the mountains of Western North Carolina with my husband, Jeff, and our two teens. I blog about self-confidence, health and home, homeschooling and living a vibrant, wide-open Jesus-centered lifestyle. I have over seventeen years of real food, natural lifestyle and health experience. We have homeschooled our children since birth and both Jeff and I run home-based businesses. We're crazy, we know it, and we love every second of it!

Read about my journey to health through celiac disease, PCOS, food allergies, obesity, adrenal fatigue and heavy metals.

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Comments

  1. Lea H says

    February 13, 2012 at 12:25 pm

    Great advice! We just avoid V-Day all together and so we don’t have this problem LOL
    Lea H recently posted..Tonight’s the Night! Pampered Chef Facebook Party + Prizes

    Reply
  2. Sarah says

    February 17, 2012 at 2:00 pm

    These are great tips! I get so frustrated feeling like I’m the bad mom for limiting my daughter’s sugar intake. I usually end up caving and letting her have whatever she wants when we’re in public, but I still don’t understand what’s “kind” about giving my kid something that’s detrimental to her health just because it tastes good to her. Especially when she’d be just as happy with a piece of fruit!
    Sarah recently posted..Kefir Grain Giveaway!

    Reply

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Meet KerryAnn

I'm KerryAnn Foster, a crazy vibrant Jesus Freak with a heart full of hope. I'm not afraid to love on the least of these or get my hands dirty. This blog is my journey from ineffective, uptight, obese wallflower to a woman on fire for God and living the most vibrant, passionate life possible!

I live in the mountains of Western North Carolina with my husband, Jeff, and our two teens. I blog about self-confidence, health and home, homeschooling and living a vibrant, wide-open Jesus-centered lifestyle. I have over seventeen years of real food, natural lifestyle and health experience. We have homeschooled our children since birth and both Jeff and I run home-based businesses. We're crazy, we know it, and we love every second of it!

Read about my journey to health through celiac disease, PCOS, food allergies, obesity, adrenal fatigue and heavy metals.

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