What’s your plan for avoiding sugar during the holiday season?

When listening to a new person, a dietitian, on public television describing her recommended diet plan, she started with reducing sugar from your diet. Sigh. Yet another diet plan with that requirement.

For a person such as me with a sugar addiction, the holidays are difficult. However, one holiday season when my A1C score, which measures the amount of hemoglobin in the blood over a three-month period and is used to diagnose diabetes, went up to 6, I did really well. I reduced it to 5.3.

I recently heard a doctor on television say that no matter what diet plan you select – high carb, low carb, Weight Watchers, Paleo, South Beach, Mediterranean, or vegetarian – what you need to do is eat more vegetables and less sugar.

Here are my tips for reducing sugar during the holidays:

• Make a plan for the holiday season. I usually have one cookie or dessert a week. During the holiday season, I plan to splurge on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.

• Leave the baking to others. Years ago, I gave away most of my Christmas cookie cutters. In addition, I don’t make or buy fruitcake anymore. If someone gives me cookies or fruitcake, I freeze them and eat one cookie or a piece of fruitcake a week.

• Don’t drink alcohol except for special occasions. Daniel Amend, M.D. a psychiatrist who also presents on public TV, says more than three alcoholic drinks a week affects the brain. After a six- to eight-week break from alcohol, Amen recommends no more than two alcoholic drinks a week.

• Fill your plate with protein items and vegetables at a party. Choose the meatballs, cheese, or other protein offerings and broccoli, carrots, and celery, if offered. Then if you have a cookie, it won’t shoot your blood sugar up.

• Eat healthy foods before you go to a party. That way, when you arrive and only sweets and alcohol are offered, you’ll be likely to eat fewer of them.

• Bring healthy food to a party. Some suggestions are nuts, salmon, olives, deviled eggs, lunch meats without sodium nitrates, and cheese.

• Offer mostly healthy foods yourself when you have a holiday gathering. It will be helpful for your guests, too.

• Don’t beat yourself up if you eat more sugar than you’d planned. When I do this, I just say, O.K., that was yesterday. Now I’m back on my no-sugar plan again.

Good luck. We all certainly need it.