Stefany Shaheen

There is nothing like having a Type 1 diabetic in your household to make you conscious about your relationship food. Unfortunately, there is nothing like the boob tube to take that consciousness away. I do like having a TV in the kitchen so I can watch a ball game or the news if I’m cooking alone, but if your goal is for your kids to be conscious about what they eat, the worst possible thing you can do is find a spot for the television in your kitchen. We’ve had lots of random high blood sugar days, but the most egregious failures to monitor food intake have been a result of the combined effect of a television and an open box or bag of (fill in the blank) at snack time.

The first sign of their collective lack of consciousness is their bizarre kitchen-TV-watching-posture. There is nothing about my kitchen that makes eating in front of a TV comfortable or relaxing. They seem to always end up in these odd configurations – sometimes three of them end up either sitting on the countertop next to the TV or they get all twisted up trying to balanced by kneeling on a stool and sometimes that just stand there staring. This is definitely not comfortable, but with the TV on, they don’t even notice. When this lack of awareness of their physical selves is combined with an open bag of pretzels, no matter how whole wheat, gluten free or organic they are, there is zero consciousness about how much food they actually eat, until of course the bag is emptied.

It didn’t take our family too many 300 or 400 blood sugars (ouch) to see that this whole after school snacking system needed a serious makeover. As crazy as it sounds, this is one of those instances where I’m thankful for Elle’s diabetes. Without diabetes, there is no question in my mind that I would have never noticed anything awry here. Because Elle has diabetes, this lack of consciousness has a quantitative value – milligrams of glucose per deciliter of blood. For most families, signs of this same problem are not immediate.

Obviously, solving this problem was not rocket science. We just took the TV out of the kitchen and replaced it with music, and real life human conversation. In all honesty, I do still keep the TV in a kitchen cabinet so I can pull it out if I want to watch something, but then put it away before the next after school feeding frenzy comes along.

The other thing we try to do to solve the unconscious overeating problem is try to instill the habit of putting our snacks into a dish or bowl. How can anyone possibly be conscious of how much they are eating if they are eating it straight from a Family Size box or bag? We always try to keep plenty of easy to grab-and-eat fruit and cut-up veggies on hand and those portions are easy to control (and so what if they are not). To help them be more conscious of their portions, we also keep small colorful bowls on low easy to reach shelves and get them in the habit of using them.

I would love to add any tips or tactics to our “encourage conscious eating” repertoire. Please feel free to share any pointers you have learned and adopted over the years.