Little Steps On Our Health Journey: Kicking the Juice Habit

**Weekly, I will write a post on something that my family is doing to take little steps in our  health journey. Please note, this is all my personal opinion and what I see in MY family.  You may have different results and opinions. If so, please let me know in the comment section, I would love to hear.**

My children love juice. In fact I always say how it would get on my nerves that as soon as I walked in the door, the kids were asking for juice:) Even though I have heard many times "Don't drink your calories away." or "Cut down on your children's juice consumption." I never really did anything serious about it.  Every once in a while, I would get "light" juice or try to cut down on how much juice they drink but it was never anything consistent.

One of the first things that the nutritionist told us was to stop the juice drinking. Juice has a lot of calories.  Even "real fruit juice". All the juices that my kids have drank have about 110-120 calories per 8 ounces.  I will tell you that my kids don't just drink 8 ounces a day, they probably drank 3-4 servings a day. That means on any given day, they could have DRANK 400 calories. And sugar levels were very high too.

Bottles of juice and juice boxes was one of the things that we had to STOP buying and not have in the house.  Now, my son loves apple juice so I still buy that for him every once and a while but I do limit his consumption. My daughter doesn't like apple juice so, there is no issue.

We went back to drinking Sugar Free drink mixes and plain water.  I have even cut down on my diet soda's a little, to once a day:) I'm trying people! But I am drinking a Diet Pepsi right no. *lol*  I keep bottled water in plain sight because the kids are more prone to drink it if they see it.  I also purchased the single serve drink packs to put in the water.  The Crystal Light ones are not the best tasting and they are the most expensive.  I am cheap so I usually by the Kool-Aid ones from the dollar store or they have them at another discount store I shop at for 99 cents a box. Much better than paying $3.00 for Crystal light packs and they taste better. I also by the sugar free Kool-Aid tubs to make 2 quarts of juice.

The single serve packs have 5 calories but if she drinks 4 servings it is only 40 calories versus 400!

My son is coming around too. We bought some orange drink packs last weekend and he liked them.  He things it is energy juice.  Whatever gets him off the juice habit, I will let him think it :)

I know they may get juice at school or other places but it is not as big of an issue if they are drinking it when they go out AND when they are home.  When I packed their lunch last week, I sent water bottles or put the made up juice packet in their thermos.

How much juice are your children drinking a day? Have you ever paid attention to the calorie or sugar information? Have you done anything to cut down on juice consumption?

What little steps have you come across that work for your family?