Updating My Google Alerts

I've got several diabetes related 'google' alerts set up. Every day, they email me new links that match my search terms. While sites like Diabetes Daily are great for feeding me news and updates from inside the Diabetes Online Community, the google reports tend to give me more news and 'outsider' updates.

It also gives me daily links to articles about how exercise can reduce your risk of diabetes. I swear that's the most common topic I get. I really should do a comparison at some point of stories about 'stuff we know already' and 'new stuff'.

During weeks (months) like this one where my life slips into high gear, I get a little backlogged. I have over 100 diabetes related google alerts just sitting in my gmail waiting for me to filter them to find the 'good ones'.

So I've switched to weekly mode. I just can't seem to keep up with the daily ones. I think it'll also help as I continue to add more terms to find more unusual and interesting links. I havn't found a way to roll up the searches so I just get one big email instead of a bunch of little ones for each variation. Generic searches like 'diabetes' don't return much that interest me right now, but 'glucose meter' occasionally returns something new and interesting.

But it's an interesting tool, and quick to set up - just head over to www.google.com/alerts to try it.

And This Bowl is Just Right

One way I keep my portion sizes under control is to have different sized bowls for different foods. Finishing an entire bowl of anything is satisfying, even if it's a small bowl, and it's easier to resist going back for seconds. It also makes it easy if my husband is putting together a snack - he knows if I ask for a 'bowlfull' to go for the small bowl. We've gotten most of our small bowls in Chinatown - the stores often have a selection of small rice and condiment bowls for reasonable prices. I find them a good size for cereal and servings of fruit, as they hold about a cup. I'll fill them to the brim with berries, and half full for cereal.

The tiny 'ice cream' bowls are actually teacups, and hold single small scoop of ice cream or pudding. Having a tiny cup makes me eat it slower and reminds me to savor the flavor. It was a bit of an adjustment - and every so often I'll upgrade to a larger size - but it really does help re-enforce moderation in sweets and carb heavy foods.

The big bowls are regular salad/soup bowls, and I try to make sure I'm not using them for anything but veggies.

I do this with glasses as well. The only time I use a large glass is if I'm drinking water, crystal light or some other sugar free beverage.

Anything carb heavy like milk or juice gets a small glass, usually only half filled. We found the small glasses in a six pack at the dollar store, so they were really inexpensive.

I find it really tedious to pull out the scale or the measuring cups every time we eat, so having our serving dishes in the appropriate sizes really helps.

The only thing I don't use smaller things for is plates: For those I just try to make sure half the plate is covered with veggies, though I'm not always successful.

Joe's Goals

I'm trying something new right now: tracking my goals with JoesGoals.com. It's a nifty little website. You create an account, set up a few postive and negative goals, and then track by clicking on each day. It's really nice visual feedback to see all the little checks and xes over a week. There's a live demo on the site (see image below) that lets you test it out without creating an account, which also sucked me in.



I know I forget my lunchtime metformin a lot, and I'm not getting close to exercising daily. This seems a really good way to track that sort of thing, without going to a lot of effort. I get really tired of detailed logging, and this one-click-and-you're-done style will hopefully be more effective.

I'm not sure I'd ever use it for blood sugar logging - I like charts and graphs that break it down by time of day and give me monthly averages. In theory I'll start cross referencing food with blood sugar and actually stick with it in the future. For that, I'll want to use diabetic specific software.

But for simple goals like increasing exercise, cutting down coffee, and remembering pills, I think this will work wonderfully.