Making Choices about Food

Why learn about making choices?

• Knowing how to make food choices can help you control your diabetes, rather than letting your diabetes control you.
• Knowing how to fit fast food and snack foods into your food plan can give you more freedom.
• You will have more energy, fewer problems with high and low blood glucose, and fewer long-term problems.

Get better diabetes control

• Try out different foods at different times and check your blood glucose level.
• Think ahead and plan how to manage parties, sports practices and events, snacks, and fast food.
• Learn to make tradeoffs - for example, eat a low-fat breakfast and lunch so you can eat fast food in the evening without having too many calories.
• Be honest and assertive with friends.

Make your food plan work

• Try to eat meals and snacks at the same time each day. Your dietitian can help you develop a meal plan.
• Learn how to substitute sweet foods for other foods in your meal plan. Try to have sweet foods with a meal, not by themselves.
• Get nutrition information from your favorite fast-food restaurants - often available on-line. Use the grams of carbohydrate, calories, and/or exchanges to work out how fast foods can fit into your food plan.
• Find out how you can use more insulin or exercise when you eat more than usual.
• Set an alarm on your watch if you think you may forget to eat a meal or snack or take an insulin dose.

What are your options?

If you want to eat more food than usual at a meal or snack, eat at an unusual time, or eat something sweet:

• Choose a free food (such as a sugar-free Popsicle) or a food that is mostly protein (such as a boiled egg).
• Find out how to switch sweet foods or snack foods for other foods in your meal plan.
• Exercise after eating food with extra carbohydrate to use up some of the glucose. Check your blood glucose after you exercise to see if this works for you.
• Ask your health care team if you can use extra insulin.

If you want to exercise or be more active than usual:

• Eat a snack with about 15 grams of carbohydrates before or after you exercise.
• Check your blood glucose before and after exercise to find out how exercise and extra snacks affect you.
• Ask your health care team if you can use less insulin when you exercise a lot.

To make sure you don't gain weight:

• Choose low-fat foods to avoid extra calories.
• Order hamburgers and sandwiches without cheese, bacon, mayonnaise, or special sauces.
• Munch on fat-free chips, pretzels, or low-fat microwave popcorn.
• Choose Mexican foods made with plain tortillas (not fried) and topped with salsa.
• Take the skin off fried chicken and choose corn on the cob and mashed potatoes on the side.
• Order pizza with vegetable toppings.

Problem-solving basics

• Look at the situation.
• Think about your options: change in food plan, change in exercise plan, and change in insulin schedule
• Monitor the results.
• Decide if next time you would do the same thing or something different.

Here's how it works

The situation: You're going with friends to get fast food after school or work. Your usual afternoon snack is 1/2 sandwich and a piece of fruit.

Options

• Choose a similar snack, such as fries OR a small hamburger and diet soda.
• Eat more, such as a large hamburger and fries, AND get extra exercise.
• Eat more than usual AND take extra insulin.
• Try to get your friends to do something else or go for dinner instead.
• Just overeat.

What You Need to Know

• Which fast foods have the same amount of carbohydrate as your usual snack.
• How much exercise you will need for the extra food and whether you will do it.
• How much extra insulin you would need for the extra food.
• How your choices will affect the rest of the day.
• Whether your friends will listen to what you want to do.
• The consequences if you overeat.

Monitoring: Check your blood glucose two hours later to see if it is in your target range.

Did your choice work? If not, what could you try next time?