Another one of my many trouble areas is that I do almost everything I can to avoid actually measure or weigh any of my foods.
This includes depending heavily on pre-packaged, already measured foods, also just SWAG or LADCS bolusing. Pretty much whatever it takes to not weigh or measure my food.
It’s not that I don’t know how – I’m comfortable with the tools of the trade, and do actually know how to use the equipment. When you start throwing conversions and stuff at me, I get a little shaky though…
For some reason it is the actual act of weighing and measuring that really dredges up some powerful negative emotions for me. I don’t know exactly what that is all about.
And the thing is, I completely understand that it is a very necessary and vital part of “getting it right”. Logically it makes all the sense in the world. So why is it so hard for me? Why do I work so hard to avoid it, and pay such a steep price for doing so?
I know that I’m not alone in hating this part of diabetes control or management. Who else out there struggles with this? How have you worked through it to achieve some sort of balance?
Hi Scott,
I used to be unable to log, measure, weigh or control portions. It all seemed equally impossibly compulsively anal. I just tried to guesstimate quietly to avoid setting off bad eating behavior.
When I thought about it more, I noticed that some things set me off, but other things didn’t. I realized that I couldn’t write down stuff in a logbook but I could download my Cozmo and use those logs. And I couldn’t weigh and measure all my food, but I could keep track of my carb dense food at home and weigh/measure grains, cereals, pasta, bread, and juice. And that restricting my portions to some preset amount regardless of how much I FELT like eating made me crazy and weird about food, but noting the cups or grams of what I FELT like eating before eating them did not make me particularly crazy, it was just an extra little step. So for me, breaking down what made me crazy and what didn’t was helpful and I’ve ended up with some strategies I can use without being made miserable or getting into some good vs bad eating trap. It’s actually helped. Not that this didn’t all take about a decade…
good luck and keep blogging, you’re amazing
nothing to say about this post, other than we use the WAGSystem too. Both of my kids do, never have weighed a single thing. Thats the beautiful thing about a pump…. you can correct even if you are wrong.
And thanks again for checking on me Scott. Made my morning better.
I remember when I was a little kid and my mother used to break out the measuring cups at restaurants and birthday parties. I. Hated. It. I think that’s why I don’t weight, if I can help it.
I am notorious for eating the same sort of things all the time, so I agree with Lyrecha: measure something enough times so that you can accurately eyeball it. And make sure you measure it for real every few months or so, to make sure your eye balls are rolling out of your head … sometimes I have a magical way of “measuring” completely wrong if I don’t reference it once in a while.
🙂
Scott, the insulin has pooled somewhere around that site only to spontaneously absorb at any time that is least convenient for you. Honest. I SWEAR IT. I haven’t changed my site yet, I’m sticking it out. It is an arm site and sometimes I have problems with absorption in my arm. This is weird because it is absorbing fine now, but something was really wrong this morning! Thanks for the kind comments about sandis. You obviously haven’t seen this world class mom throw a world class temper tantrum! maybe sometime I will let bob tell ya’ll all about my temper tantrums!
Hey Scott!
Thanks for congratulating me on pulling my blood sugar back into check. Don’t think no-one has ever said well done to me for doing that before.
So thanks…..Keep up the measuring, it sucks but it works well. Uusally!!! Eventually I just kinda know what the right amount is. I’m boring though, I eat the same foods and same amounts all the time – geek! :o)
Vic xx
For me, measuring/weighing brings up painful memories of an (early dx) carbohydrate restricted diet, one couldn’t go over x number of carbs + exactness was key to the equation. Measuring/weighing was vital.
Now, I make insulin adjust to the food, and even when I have no clue how many carbs is in something I’d rather guess, then use a measuring cup.
(Stupid, yeah, what is it with a PWD’s ego..)
We weigh food, but when we eat out, we guesstimate.
If I had the choice to eliminate one management item without compromising Brendon’s health, it would be weighing food and carb counting. It just slows everything up.
But choosing between measuring and weighing…weighing gives a much more accurate carb amount than measuring.
I have never really practised weighing my foods, and we don’t have measuring cups or the like here in DK – or at least I have never been introduced to any!
When I started the pump, I remember being told that I would have to weigh my foods, at least in the beginning, in order to get an idea of the carbs they contained. I didn’t say it out loud, but in my mind I was like “no F…. way am I going to weigh my foods”. I don’t know why, but I think that it has something to do with feeling different, being constrained by having to do such thing. I am fully aware that my bolusing would greatly benefit from weighed out the food, at least occasionally, but I too hate having to do so, and thus I count on my experience. I guestimate the carbs and evaluate my bolus based on what I usually require for a given meal, and most often it works out okay 🙂
I hve nothing contructive to say except that once again “I hear you.”
I bought a very cool scale, stylish measuring devices and I think I have only used it 4 times! I need to do it buy i am too lazy.
Sometimes I measure.
If found that for something like cereal for instance, if you eat the stuff out of the same damn cup or bowl and measure it for a week, you can virtually eyeball it from then forward.
Never do I weigh food. I don’t even have the tools of the trade.
In honor of the MLB playoffs, I give you this variant on the taunt from the stands against the opposing teams hitter (and also featured at a Cubs game in the movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)…
Here…eater, eater, eater, eater, eater,eater,eater…SWwwwAG EATER!!
I got a sort of fancy digital scale that zero’s itself out after you put the empty bowl on it – measures in both grams and ounces. I considered it somewhat pricey, but I also now use it to weigh yarn, beads, potting soil.
When I was really minding my p’s & q’s I even took it with to McDonald’s in my totebag so I could weigh their softserve cones and see if they matched the weight on the online nutritional info. (They pretty much did.)
And, like L said, you do get a pretty good idea once you’ve weighed/measured a few times.
Every day for breakfast I nuke Uncle Ben’s Instant Brown Rice with some frozen vegetables and curry powder. I measure the rice simply because there’s a certain ratio of rice/water and if it’s not exact, the rice comes out mushy or crunchy. Plus, I know how many portions are in a box and won’t run out unexpectedly.
I measure, but I don’t weigh. It is a trade-off. Sometimes I downright lie to myself though, and end up with a 304 blood sugar (like last night when a sip here and there of cran-pomegranite juice turned into half a bottle between 12 am and 3am!). I don’t even OWN a scale. I do count out chips though…..1.2.3.4.5…….all the way up to 15 or 20, whatever they recommend
YUP, I hate it too and that is one reason why I eat the same food thing for all breakfast’s and lunches. Just so I do not have to measure. I suppose I could even go wrong with the exact size of each bread slices, but ONCE IN A WHILE I force myself to do a control check! Scott, measuring IS a pain in the butt!
Measuring totally doesn’t let you get away with lying to yourself. I hate it! I have significant comments and writing to do about food plans and eating. But right now I’m in denial.
“That looks like about a cup,” she says, dishing up 2 cups of spaghetti.
Would buying nicer measuring cups help? I have some fancy ones that I use every morning to measure raspberries, and they’re more pleasant to use than the plastic giveaways I got from CVS years ago.
Plus, once you weigh something a few times, you can usually eyeball the amount and you don’t have to keep using the measuring cups. Just my two cents.
NO wonderful words of wisdom here…I HATE measuring, but I can’t tell you why. Maybe its pure laziness? Maybe stubborness?
I dunno, but my D and my waistline pay for it.