Measuring Success

We have been packing all of Joey's food this year to take to school. We discovered that school food is too highly caloric and heavily invested in carbohydrates to be good for Joey, who was becoming increasingly round. My family is prone to diabetes, so the increase in weight was a big red flag for me (we tend to pork up as a sign of diabetes- the metabolism change is a harbinger that our ability to use insulin properly has broken down).

But has this change in diet worked?

By packing Joey's meals, I can control not only how many calories he is consuming, but how many carbohydrates, fats, and other nutrients he is consuming. For those of you unfamiliar with diabetes, it's not about the sugar, it is about the carbohydrates. Many of those "sugar-free" foods you see advertised are absolutely useless to a diabetic, because they contained the same (and sometimes more!) carbohydrates than regular foods. With my family history and my own gestational diabetes, I have become something of a whiz at reading food labels (it isn't very hard, anyway; the real trick is doing it.)

So, Super Control-Freak Woman is now micromanaging Joey's access to food. He needs about 1400 calories a day, so about 350 calories at breakfast, 450 calories at lunch, and no more than 100 calories for a snack. He needs no more than 45g of carb at breakfast (and 30 is better), about 45g of carb at lunch, and no more than 30g of carb for a snack (15 is better). I also prefer there to be 3 servings of fruits and veggies throughout his school day, and I don't count "fruit flavored" stuff a fruit (ie, his strawberry yogurt is not a serving of fruit). I've gotten a few nice combinations that fit into these guidelines for him.

Have we succeeded?

Well, I can say that I was having roll up Joey's pants with four folds, and now he is wearing the same pants, but with only 3 folds. And that's a whole inch. So we have a taller boy, but not a rounder boy. My next project: upping his activity at home. Snatching activity into pockets of five minutes . Perhaps that is what a trampoline in the kitchen is really for?