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Here come the candy canes. In our house, Santa always hung Hershey's Kisses on the tree. Red and Green M&Ms cohabitate with the micro-Reese's peanut butter cups in the candy dish. The holiday season is an excuse for saturating your house with sugar in all its forms.

And you want to be festive. You don't want to be a Scrooge about things. But you also know that if it makes it in the door, you will eat it.

The Short Term Problem

Sugar not only provides needless calories for your expanding horizons, but also destabilizes your insulin levels ' a result that can lead to overweight, obesity, and even diabetes.

Remember that sugar is not the problem. Overconsumption of sugar is the problem. There is nothing wrong with sugar per se, only when you eat it as a jelly doughnut chased with a soda and a candy cane!

The Long Term Problem

Sugar consumption leads to more sugar consumption. Anyone with a weight problem will recognize the slippery slope this can become ' the more you eat, the more you want to eat. This is so deadly for your weight, leading straight into a spiral that circles the weight gain drain.

The Solution

For your house.

Ban the sugar bomb. Don't even bring it inside. If you need to have nibbles about, use unsalted nuts or fruit. Remember fruit? Apples come in single serving sizes, wrapped in a handy, edible, holiday colored packaging! Tangerines are fabulous to have around. If you have guests over, set a few olives out. They are so great for you, and you can't take 27 of them in your hand and down them all at once.

For your weight.

If you do find your house with candies about, you have got to make it your policy to eat only one of them at a time. One M&M? Yes. One mint? Yes. Eat one and walk away to do something else. Learn this habit and burn it in. This will save you a ton of calories.

For your health.

Remember that brown sugar is better for you than white sugar. So if you do use it, darker is better. If you do have chocolate, darker is better because it has more cocoa and less sugar. Remember that fruit, although it has sugar, also has the fiber that lowers the glycemic index of the juice. In other words, it doesn't just make you tired and hungry like plain sugar can.