Admittedly, it sounds like a Reader’s Digest cover tag, but it’s not as hard as you think to cut the sugar from your child’s diet. As with any addiction, cold turkey can be a shock to the system, but if you make it a long-term project and work on the trouble spots (ie, the in-laws and birthday parties), you’ll be surprised at how good food tastes without sugar. It’s really not that hard, and much more attainable than getting six-pack abs in 21 days.

Do it Slowly

As I mentioned in an earlier post, adopt “the 25% rule” and start cutting 25% of the sugar you normally add to things like tea and coffee and any other recipes. You’ll hardly notice the difference. Depending on how well this goes and how quickly you can adapt any family recipes that are a bit more challenging, you could be way below the 50% mark before anyone even notices.

The next step is to eat sugary snacks or foods 25% less of the time. If you make pancakes with syrup 3x a week, do it only once. Instead of a cake or pie or cookies, dress up some fruit instead. Don’t stop baking and don’t stop giving your kids snacks; just do it a lot less. Some folks think going cold turkey on sugar is easier, because of the cravings, but unless you have the full support and enthusiasm of your whole family behind you – and let’s face it, you probably don’t – it’s going to be easier to make a gradual change.

Every time you have one 25% increment down, take it down another 25%. Your palate will adjust and soon, instead of reaching for a quick snack, you’ll find yourself opting for something healthier. Even when you do indulge on occasion, you’ll naturally eat less because you’ll find that a few bites of a sugary snack is enough to satisfy you.

Substitute, Substitute, Substitute

I don’t mean load up on agave nectar or honey instead of sugar; that’s just semantics. If you get a craving, reach for something healthy instead. Craving a cookie? Reach for a piece of fruit. Dying for a scoop of ice cream? Make a low-sugar popsicle or smoothie. Talk to your kids about what a craving is, and why they might be having them. Learn delayed gratification together. If you all really want ice cream, eat a healthy meal and then decide if you could wait to have it tomorrow. Or have fun creating faces with different kinds of fruit and then “eat” the face with your hands behind your back. After all that giggling, you’ll hardly remember that you wanted ice cream in the first place!

Give your kids poker chips every time they substitute a sugary snack for something healthy (you can decide the threshold for a sugary snack; at our house it’s 8-10 grams of sugar). They can cash in 20 chips for a trip to the library or 50 chips for a trip to the zoo. Make the rewards chart together, and participate in your healthy choices too. Poker chips make it easy to dole out the sugar ration for the week; hand out the number of portions and let your kids choose how to use them.

Exercise is great for helping keep the cravings under control — or try a big glass of water. Are you just bored? Often several bad habits go together — like junk food and TV instead of a real dinner. You’ll start to unravel the craving as you substitute small, healthy changes. You’ll find that sugar is often a substitute for emotions you are uncomfortable with, or just a response to the craving, not true hunger. But it takes time to change a habit. Experts say that two weeks minimum is needed to make that switch in your brain.

Party Favors

I read an article recently about how we’d all have a fit if someone handed out cigarettes at a birthday party, but we don’t think twice about giving out 100 grams of sugar. Whether you agree with the cigarette analogy or not, it does make you think. But parents want to make their kids happy; birthdays go hand in hand with record sugar consumption and you can’t tell other parents what to do. Healthy parents risk major tantrums from their children when they refuse to allow them to “sugar it up” at birthday parties. But what to do?

I talk to Julia before parties and have a plan in place. We often agree to make something together later, or do something she’s been wanting to do with me — like go roller skating. But that still can feel like a bribe. Talk to your child ahead of time and set the expectation. Maybe a piece of birthday cake is worth 15 poker chips. Or you add up how much sugar is in the full experience of a party (cake, soda, ice cream, etc.) and decide how much is reasonable.

Less is More

Have a contest with your kids to find healthy ways to cut out the sugar. Do a “cooking show” and have them each try a different recipe or suggest a sugary snack that they can make healthier. Give prizes! Is your family competitive? Use that to your advantage; offer a prize for the person who eats the least amount of sugar in a week. Because sugar makes us think we feel great after we eat it, reducing sugar has to go hand in hand with something that really does make us feel good. Curing an addiction is tough work and you can have setbacks; keep handy a list of things that really make you feel happy. I post a list on my refrigerator and look at it often, especially during Girl Scout cookie season.

If all else fails, take the cold hard cash you’d spend on ice cream and put it in a vacation jar. Direct your energy to counting up the cash and adding up all the reasons that less sugar equals more time having fun.

Clean it Out

Check every food product in your home. Give your kids a poker chip if they find sugar in something yet undiscovered, like spaghetti sauce (really!). If you’ve been eating flavored yogurt, buy some plain yogurt and start mixing the two. Cereal is a big culprit for hidden sugar; look for healthier options that are still just as tasty. Juice boxes can have as much sugar as a Snickers bar; push water or healthy alternatives like Little Me Tea. When you’re shopping, enlist the help of your children to find hidden sugar. If they find more than 5 grams of sugar per serving for something you’ve put in the cart, they get a poker chip.

You’ll be surprised how fast kids figure out what’s healthy and what’s not. For an extra math problem, have them figure out the sugar content of the entire package. That’ll keep them busy for a bit!

Measure Twice, Cut Once

This tip applies to more than carpenters.  If you want a real eye-opener, dole out the sugar content of your food by the teaspoon, then ask yourself if you really want that item. For example, a serving of ice cream with 20 grams of sugar has the equivalent of five teaspoons of the white stuff. Measure it out into a bowl; guaranteed, you will eat less of that item.

It’s less messy to lay out sugar cubes for smaller children. The visual of 10 cubes is powerful, even for grandmas. We keep 10 gram increments in leftover plastic wrap and pile them up for a nasty visual. If your plan to reduce sugar is met with resistance, pile up the sugar from an average day’s consumption and set it by the cereal in the morning, then talk about how it added up.

Fill ‘er Up

Your body is really like a car, a horse, or whatever your child is obsessed with. Would they feed that ice cream or sugary cereal to their favorite animal? Would a big, powerful truck run well if you put sugar in the gas tank? (Make sure no one tries that one!) Take note of what healthy animals eat. Ask at the zoo for the animal keeper to talk to your kids about what the animal eats, and ask what happens if the animal has sugar. Ask what happens if the keeper doesn’t make healthy decisions for them.

If your kids start thinking of food as fuel and even medicine, they’ll evaluate their choices better long-term. Older kids can do experiments on calories and what kind of energy your body makes from different kinds of calories.

It’s Worth It

Kicking the sugar habit will be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. Paste a list of what happens if you get diabetes on the fridge to remind yourself why it’s worth it. It’s easy to fall into the pit of temptation (as my niece likes to say) and it’s not easy to get out. It takes a lot of work, but in the end, cutting down on sugar comes with the lofty reward of good health – for you and for your precious family.