Note from Katie: Please welcome Anne Bogel from the blog “Modern Mrs Darcy” for this guest post about moderation. Anne and I met at a blogging conference. I think you will really enjoy your letter. Enter Anne.

This year I made a strategic mistake during the holiday season.

For this special season I decided to let my children be pampered some sweet delicacies. They found chocolate in their stockings. You ate cookies at Grandma. We even made healthy homemade chocolate and marshmallows!

But there is no moderation for my 5 year old. Not only can she enjoy a little “a little” from sweet treats. The first taste drives the desire for a second or third or fourth idiot until the box is empty, the bar is torn down, the box out, but it whines and begging for more. Your body screams for more sugar. When it comes to sweets, your body does not seem to have a “off” switch.

Unfortunately, your body shows a remarkably low tolerance towards sugar. I will save you the details, but the symptoms of misery follow exactly behind what actually appears like a “reasonable” part of sugar -containing treatment. Moderation does not work for you.

I want it to be able to occasionally enjoy sweet treats – especially for occasions like this – and moderation seems to be such a reasonable approach. But it doesn’t work for them.

That shouldn’t surprise me because I’m the same. Like my daughter, my body doesn’t seem to have a switch when it comes to sweets. When I take sugar, my body mercilessly asks for more. And more. And more.

When I finally removed all the sugar including artificial from my diet, the desire stopped. I don’t have a sweet tooth anymore. It is so much easier not to eat sweet treats than to eat sometimes. And I was not surprised when the same strategy worked for my children.

When I tell the people that I have decided to do without sweets, start my “extreme” approach. They think I rob myself and say that moderation would be much healthier and happier.

But that’s nothing compared to the reaction I get when I tell people that our children don’t eat sweets! When I say that my children don’t eat sugar, they are horrified. My children certainly miss childhood and condemns a life in corruption/way to an eating disorder/just hungry.

We make the occasional exception, especially during the holidays. But I really tell you: I’m almost always sorry. Because there is no moderation for some of my children (and for me).

Maybe your weakness is not sweets; Maybe it’s chips or crackers or Jalapeño Poppers. Not everyone contains happier, but if it is very difficult to encourage themselves from the weakness, they may want to think about whether they are happier to skip them as a whole.

Just try it out. See how you feel. And if you finally turn out to be a moderator, I have a wonderful chocolate recipe that you can try.

Photo loan: Shauna Younge