1, 1 Calorie For Lora

Wah, ha, ha, ha! (Sesame Street? The Count? Maybe it’s just me…)

Anyway, I found a place online where I can track what I’m eating. I enter my food item, see if it’s already in their database, and add it to my daily journal under breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack. If it’s not in the database, I key in the basic nutritional stuff myself, then add it.

The journal keeps track of calories, fat, protein, this, that—and oh, yeah, carbs. I’ll admit I started the food journal as a way to check my calorie intake (this is me, perpetually trying to lost the 10 lbs. gained when the thyroid went). I thought maybe if I could see what I was eating, I’d know where my weaknesses lie and when. I quickly realized, however, I was going to be paying more attention to the carb portion of the journal.

While on the Lantus, I carb-counted in units of 15. Since I wasn’t using any fast-acting insulin, a general rounding up or down of the numbers was sufficient. Now that I’m bolusing for each 15 grams, though, those extra carbs here and there add up a little more. They mean something.

So I’m filling out my food journal before I’m actually eating. Then I’m taking the carb total and dividing by 15 to get a more precise measurement of how much Novolog to take. It’s working well, I must say.

I’ve even keyed in my own food item titled “bolus” and I write down how many units I’ve taken to cover the meal. If I’ve gone higher than I thought I would after eating, I make a note to pump up the insulin power when I eat that item again.

I’ve never done a food journal online and figured I’d last two days tops, but I’m in my second week and I seem to be sticking with it so far. It’s pretty easy to bookmark it and call it up fairly quickly at work and home.

It’s also interesting to see that I thought I wasn’t getting enough protein, but I’m actually eating enough and even more than enough each day. Also, there’s a place where you can put in your “activities,” any sort of exercise, and it will calculate how many calories you’ve burned. It’s a bit of a motivator when that space is empty to move from my chair to the stationary bike while watching television, if only for a half hour.

And hey, if I lose some weight in the process, all the better for me.

As always, more to come…